LDS Church Breaks Silence About Mountain Meadows

In what is being called unprecedented terms, the LDS Church is talking openly about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. On the Church's website, there is a new article and account of the infamous 1857 event. The article will also be published in September in the LDS Church's Ensign Magazine.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre remains one of the darkest moments in Utah and LDS Church history. 120 California bound settlers were attacked and killed by Mormons and Paiutes. Ironically, it took place on 9-11, 1857.

And while the LDS Church has expressed sympathy for the Mountain Meadows slayings, it hasn't always been anxious to talk about it. At a memorial service there in 1999, President Gordon B. Hinckley said, "We have a Christian duty to honor, to respect and to do all feasible to remember and recognize those who died here."

But now, in this article, the church is openly discussing what happened. The article asks, "How could this have happened? How could members of the Church have participated in such a crime?"

This article originally came just days before the opening of the controversial movie, "September Dawn," but now filmmakers have once again delayed it's release. The film is a fictionalized version of the darkest day in Utah history. In retelling the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, it paints all Mormons especially their leader Brigham Young as dangerous religious zealots. It was originally set to release in early May. Then it was June 22. Now the target date is August 24.

The only explanation is that August will be "a less competitive time." Filmmakers are apparently referring to summer blockbusters. If "September Dawn" had been released Friday, it would have been up against the opening of "Evan Almighty" as well as "Pirates of the Caribbean" and other movies already in general release.

This September 11 will mark the 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. LDS Church Leaders are expected to take part in special memorial services at the Mountain Meadows site.

Will Bagley, on the involvement of the Church in the Mountain Meadows Massacre:

As is the case of many other dark, malevolent deeds, the true facts of the tragedy were at first suppressed and later deliberately falsified, distorted, and confused. Though some important details relating to the initiation, planning, and actual execution of the massacre still remain obscure, the evidence shows clearly enough that a number of authorities of the Mormon Church in southern Utah were directly responsible for the tragedy and authorized or perhaps even planned its most revolting features.


The Mormon leaders in Salt Lake, moreover, not only failed to bring the murderers to justice but for nearly twenty years effectively used their authority and influence to prevent the federal officers from arresting the offenders. It is obvious, moreover, that Brigham Young and his highest advisers were fully informed of the massacre soon after it occurred and knew to what degree each participant was accountable for its initiation and execution.


To deny that Young had at least full ex post facto knowledge of the appalling business of the massacre is to deny the supreme and minute control that he habitually exercised over all the affairs of church and state in Utah, and to take the naïve position that a man who kept himself as fully and completely informed on all matters that went on in the "Kingdom of the Saints" as absolute authority and human ingenuity made possible would choose to remain complacently ignorant of an incident that threatened to bring stark ruin to the whole Mormon dream of spiritual and temporal sovereignty in the State of Deseret.


Brigham Young was not a credulous simpleton: he was not duped or hoodwinked: he was not misinformed. He knew the true story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, about which the most damning reports were soon published in the hostile Gentile world and widely circulated even among the Mormons themselves, as well as any man in Utah; and he knew the names of the individual Mormons, whether prominent or obscure, who participated in the wholesale atrocities.


*****My Thoughts*****


I have to wonder about the approach that the church is taking when talking about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It's not as if this event is common knowledge throughout the ranks of the faithful, so why are they treating it as if it is? One of the lines I noticed in the article:

For a century and a half the Mountain Meadows Massacre has shocked and distressed those who have learned of it.

This, to me, says that they had no active part in making sure ANYONE learned of it.

The article goes on to say:


The tragedy has deeply grieved the victims’ relatives, burdened the perpetrators’ descendants and Church members generally with sorrow and feelings of collective guilt, unleashed criticism on the Church, and raised painful, difficult questions. How could this have happened? How could members of the Church have participated in such a crime?


Up until the announcement that September Dawn was about to be released, the church has NEVER claimed to have "feelings of collective guilt". The wording here is that the DESCENDANTS and the church MEMBERS have been the ones burdened with the sorrow and guilt, as a result of what happened. Not the church. As a matter of fact, Gordon Hinckley has gone OUT OF HIS WAY to make the point that the church does not admit fault!!!

At the 1999 dedication of the Mountain Meadows Monument:

"I come as a peacemaker. This is not a time for recrimination or the assigning of blame," he said at the ceremony that was broadcast to LDS Church buildings in Utah and Arkansas.

"No one can explain what happened in these meadows 142 years ago. We may speculate, but we do not know," Hinckley said. "We do not understand it. We cannot comprehend it. We can only say that the past is long since gone."

Hinckley said the church was not involved in the killings, and, "That which we have done here must never be construed as an acknowledgment on the part of the church of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful and tragic day."


Did you know THAT? Is the world spinning, or is it just me?

And of course, the church is being PERSECUTED by critics and forced to answer "painful, difficult questions". Who made this bed, the critics or the church? Maybe if those bones hadn't accidentally been dug up in the first place, you wouldn't have to deal with the aftermath!!! Here's a thought: maybe if Brigham Young had been punished for his crimes of treason against the United States, for his acts of TERRORISM, then the church wouldn't have anything to apologize for!!

How about checking out what the descendants of those murdered by the Mormons in that valley have to say? Seems like they explain it pretty well, even if Hinckley claims they can't understand or comprehend what happened on that fateful day. All you have to do is read the personal accounts, read the history, follow-up on the events of the trial that followed, learn how long the cover-ups lasted and the efforts Brigham Young made to make sure the true story would never be heard. I don't think it's time to put it in the past and move on, I think it's time to finally deal with the past, make your proper apologies and explanations to the people from whom you have withheld information, and THEN move on.

Treating this as if they have already dealt with it, and they are being mercilessly persecuted for something that happened 150 years ago gives the false impression that they are open about their history, and all the members of their church know their side of the story. Well, if that were true, why are they just now coming out with an article about it, telling their members about the tragedy for the first time ever? And every member who reads this will be asking the same things: "Why didn't I know about this before?", "What else have they 'not' mentioned to me?" , "Can I trust them to tell me the truth about everything, when they hid this from me?"

Yep, it's time for them to squirm uncomfortably in their seats...

Too Little, Too Late: LDS Church FINALLY Admits that Mountain Meadows Massacre DID Occur After All

Just before the release of September Dawn, (opening has been pushed to August 24th as of today), The Mormons decide its time to finally talk about the matter and admit involvement, by publishing (and spinning) their own version of events in the July issue of the widely distributed Ensign magazine, to which thousands of faithful members subscribe to, and treat with the same reverence as the BoM.

For those members who have NEVER heard of such an event, it's going to be an eye-opener for sure. They should wonder why the church never openly spoke of this event before, instead preferring to let it fade into memory and the back annals of history, just like polygamy and racial prejudice against Blacks obtaining priesthood authority.

For those who have heard about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but vehemently denied that the church had any involvement, and it was ALL Indians... surely you must realize by now that limiting yourself to church sources for information will never give you the full picture, and believing everything that issues forth from Church Authority lets them control your world view and your beliefs. You might as well hand over the keys to your house too...

The church is afraid of this movie. The information on the Mountain Meadows Massacre is all over the web and is just one Google away...

I'll get you started:

link here

and here

another here

one more here

Mormon church, foundation at odds over Mountain Meadows monument

from: The Associated Press

Descendants of a 120-member Arkansas immigrant party say their plea for federal stewardship of the Mountain Meadows mass grave site has been rejected by LDS Church.

Phil Bolinger and Scott Fancher of the Arkansas-based Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation say they got the news June 6 in a telephone call from Elder Marlin Jensen, who oversees the church history department.

"He told us that President (Gordon B.) Hinckley had turned us down. He doesn't think it's in the best interests of the church to allow federal stewardship in the meadows," said Bolinger, the foundation president who is related to 30 of those killed. "That really bit me bad."

Jensen declined an interview, but confirmed through spokeswoman Kim Farah that the church will not pursue federal stewardship of the site. A similar request was also rejected in 1999.

Descendants want the site in the hands of a neutral third party because they believe the institutional church is complicit in the murders.

"It's not right for the people who had complicity to the killings to be the grave owner," said Bolinger, who discussed the issue with Jensen on April 25 in Salt Lake City.

"I asked him, 'How you do you think the Kennedy family would feel if the Lee Harvey Oswald family had control of the Kennedy tomb?'"

History hangs the Sept. 11, 1857, event on southern Utah Mormon leaders and a small band of Paiute Indians, leaving the culpability of then-church president Brigham Young up for debate. An upcoming book from church historians takes the same position.

Headed to California, the wagon train led by Capt. Alexander Fancher and John Baker arrived in the Utah territory at the same time the federal government was mounting pressure on the Mormon church for its practice of polygamy and disregard for federal oversight.

They camped first near Salt Lake City and then headed south to the meadow, a well-known stopover on the old Spanish Trail. The immigrants were attacked and spent a week engaged in gun skirmishes before local Mormon Elder John D. Lee rode in on horseback with a white flag to negotiate their rescue.

Persuaded to walk single-file and unarmed from the valley, the immigrants were shot at close range, stabbed or beaten to death. Their bodies were not buried.

Seventeen children were spared, all of them under age six _ young enough, some said, not to remember or speak of what they saw. The youngsters were adopted by local families and later returned to their relatives in Arkansas.

Lee was tried, convicted and executed for the massacre 20 years later and is the only person ever held responsible.

Today, the Mountain Meadows monument site is a 2,500-acre parcel in a rolling scrub-pine and sagebrush valley about 35 miles northwest of St. George.

The land is a patchwork of public and private holdings, some of which was passed down through families from pioneer ancestors.

There are four known mass grave sites and two memorials _ the rock pyramid known as the Carelton Cairn on the valley floor and a memorial wall on Dan Sill Hill, which overlooks the valley and is inscribed with the known names of victims from the 29 different families on the wagon train.

The monument is already on the National Park Service's Register of Historic Places, but the designation doesn't guarantee public access or public input before construction or other site changes, foundation attorney Scott Fancher said.

Foundation members believe a higher designation, such as national monument status, would better protect the interests of all and salve the wounds of many Fancher party descendants, said Bolinger, of Hindsville, Ark.

"Federal stewardship of this grave site ... that's all it would take to put this to bed," he said.

Federal oversight might also have prevented the Aug. 3, 1999, maintenance work on the cairn when a church crew accidentally unearthed the remains of at least 28 men, women and children. A forensic evaluation was begun, but cut short on an order from Utah's then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, a descendant of some who participated in the massacre.

At a dedication ceremony of the rebuilt cairn that September, Hinckley said the church carries a moral responsibility to remember the victims, but fell short of acknowledging church complicity to the crime.

Mormon church leaders are committed to appropriately preserving the Mountain Meadows site, Farah said.

"The church has owned the monument site at Mountain Meadows for many years. The property is open to the public and considerable time and resources are allocated to ensure that the property is well-maintained, open to the public and that those who perished there are appropriately remembered," she said.

Farah also confirmed what Washington County recorder's office records show - over the past few months, the church has increased its holdings in the meadow. Since March at least two families have deeded their property over to the church.

"The church intends to administer and maintain this property in like manner, thereby preserving it from either residential or commercial development," said Farah.

Bolinger said the foundation, one of three descendant groups, shared concerns that residential development in fast-growing Washington County would damage the site. But he's rankled by the church's acquisition of more land and says he'll continue to push for federal stewardship.

"It's the highest honor we could pay these people," Bolinger said.



*****My Thoughts*****

Just in time for September Dawn to be released this Friday....