View source for Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Postscript

{{FairMormon}} 
{{H1
|L=Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Postscript
|H=Response to claims made in "Postscript" (paperback only)
|T=[[../../|One Nation Under Gods]]
|A=Richard Abanes
|<=[[../Chapter 18|Claims made in "Chapter 18: Cover-Ups, Conspiracies, and Controversies"]]
|>=[[../Appendix A|Claims made in "Appendix A: Abraham's Book?"]]
}}
{{ChartOneNationUnderGodsPostscript}}
<onlyinclude>
{{H2
|L=Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Postscript
|H=Response to claims made in One Nation Under Gods, "Postscript" (paperback only)
|S=
|L1=Response to claim: 437, n2 - "all marriages continued in heaven will involve participation in plural marriage"
|L2=Response to claim: 438 - "More than a few Mormons, although they had never actually read my book, declared without hesitation that it was rife with errors"
|L3=Response to claim: 441, n10 - Boyd K. Packer said: "I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth"
|L4=Response to claim: 442, n14 - "Some of the harshest criticism I received from Mormons came from those who were irate over my depiction of Brigham Young"
|L5=Response to claim: 442 - Did Will Bagley demonstrate that LDS leaders, and particularly Brigham Young, "probably" planned and executed the Mountain Meadows Massacre?
|L6=Response to claim: 442 - "Mormons...consider it their religious right to kill antagonistic outsiders, common criminals, LDS apostates, and even faithful Mormons who committed sins worthy of death"
|L7=Response to claim: 443 - Did Will Bagley "prove the charge often dismissed by faithful LDS church members" that Latter-day Saints refused to sell any provisions to the Fancher party?
|L8=Response to claim: 443 - "Blood of the Prophets once and for all dispelled the long-standing Mormon myth that members of the doomed company poisoned an important cattle stream, thereby almost deserving their fate"
|L9=Response to claim: 443, 615n15 (PB) - Bagley states "In their desire to exonerate Brigham Young of any guilt, official Mormon accounts of the crime laid the blame on victims and Indians, a tradition that is alive and well today"
|L10=Response to claim: 443, 615n16-18 - Brigham Young said: "When a man is found to be a thief, he will be a thief no longer, cut his throat, & thro' him in the River"
|L11=Response to claim: 444-446, n23-24 - Did past LDS leaders hold and expound racist views?
|L12=Response to claim: 447, 616n31 - Did Gordon B. Hinckley "admit" in April 2002 that Latter-day Saints do not believe in the same 'Jesus' as non-LDS Christians?
|L13=Response to claim: 448, 616n34 - The author claims that Dallin Oaks told Latter-day Saints in 1995 "that so-called Christianity sees God as an entirely different kind of being"
}}
</onlyinclude>

==Response to claim: 437, n2 - "all marriages continued in heaven will involve participation in plural marriage"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Quoting Whelan: "[T]here still remains within the Church a limited form of plural marriage. Those husbands who have lost a beloved spouse and are left alone in this world can still be married for time and eternity to another wife....It is clear that all marriages continued in heaven will involve participation in plural marriage."
|authorsources=<br>
#Shane LeGrand Whelan, ''More Than One: Plural Marriage&mdash;A Sacred Heritage, A Promise for Tomorrow'', 208.
}}
{{misinformation|While it is possible for a man to be sealed to more than one woman in the next life, there is no evidence that "all marriages continued in heaven will involve participation in plural marriage." It is not clear what the author hopes to demonstrate by this claim, or why Shane Whelan's view carries any weight beyond his own opinions.
}}

==Response to claim: 438 - "More than a few Mormons, although they had never actually read my book, declared without hesitation that it was rife with errors"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
{{AuthorQuote|"More than a few Mormons, although they had never actually read my book, declared without hesitation that it was rife with errors."}}
|authorsources=<br>
#Author's statement.
}}
{{propaganda|FairMormon can assure the author that we have read his book, and can declare without hesitation that both the hardbound and paperback version are rife with errors.
}}

==Response to claim: 441, n10 - Boyd K. Packer said: "I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Boyd K. Packer said: "I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth."
|authorsources=<br>
#Roger D. Launius, Book Review, ''Journal of the West'', reproduced online at Signature Books.
}}
{{propaganda|There is much that the author does not reveal about this quote or its context.
}}
* [[../Use of sources/Boyd K. Packer on the truth|Use of sources: Boyd K. Packer on the truth]]

==Response to claim: 442, n14 - "Some of the harshest criticism I received from Mormons came from those who were irate over my depiction of Brigham Young"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
{{AuthorQuote|"Some of the harshest criticism I received from Mormons came from those who were irate over my depiction of Brigham Young....then I acquired a new book dealing with the issue&mdash;''Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows'' by independent historian and ''Salt Lake Tribune'' columnist Will Bagley....This tremendously in-depth volume not only supported my perspective, but greatly expanded on my conclusions..."}}
|authorsources=<br>
#Author's statement.
}}
{{propaganda|Bagley's work has major problems, and the author shares many of them.  See reviews of his work [[../../Use of sources/Will Bagley reviews|here.]]
}}
*See [[One Nation Under Gods/Index/Chapter 11|Claims made in "Chapter 11: Bloody Brigham"]] for a list of claims and responses.

==Response to claim: 442 - Did Will Bagley demonstrate that LDS leaders, and particularly Brigham Young, "probably" planned and executed the Mountain Meadows Massacre?==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Did Will Bagley demonstrate that LDS leaders, and particularly Brigham Young, "probably" planned and executed the Mountain Meadows Massacre?
|authorsources=<br>
#Author's conclusion based upon Bagley's conclusion.
}}
{{misinformation|There is substantial evidence that Brigham Young did not order the massacre. Bagley (and, following him, the author of ONUG) have distorted the contents of the Huntington diary and ignored other evidence.
}}
*[[../Use of sources/Brigham Young ordered MMM|Use of sources: Brigham Young ordered Mountain Meadows Massacre?]]

==Response to claim: 442 - "Mormons...consider it their religious right to kill antagonistic outsiders, common criminals, LDS apostates, and even faithful Mormons who committed sins worthy of death"====
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Will Bagley, referring to a statement made by Quinn, said "The decision to do whatever was necessary to build the kingdom 'encouraged Mormons to consider it their religious right to kill antagonistic outsiders, common criminals, LDS apostates, and even faithful Mormons who committed sins worthy of death.'"
|authorsources=<br>
#Bagley, 42.
}}
{{propaganda|Critics of Mormonism have created a long list of alleged "crimes" that were "worthy of death" in the 1800s.
}}
*[[Utah/Crime and violence/Crimes critics allege to have been "worthy of death" in the 1800's]]

==Response to claim: 443 - Did Will Bagley "prove the charge often dismissed by faithful LDS church members" that Latter-day Saints refused to sell any provisions to the Fancher party?==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Did Will Bagley "prove the charge often dismissed by faithful LDS church members" that Latter-day Saints refused to sell any provisions to the Fancher party?
{{Abanes:One Nation:MMM}}
|authorsources=<br>
#Author's opinion.
}}
{{propaganda|There were reasons that Brigham ordered that no provisions be sold to the immigrants, and it had to do with preparation for the approaching army.
}}
{{:Question: Did Brigham Young issue orders that no food or grain should be sold to "Gentiles" that were passing through Utah?}}

==Response to claim: 443 - "''Blood of the Prophets'' once and for all dispelled the long-standing Mormon myth that members of the doomed company poisoned an important cattle stream, thereby almost deserving their fate"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
{{AuthorQuote|"''Blood of the Prophets'' once and for all dispelled the long-standing Mormon myth that members of the doomed company poisoned an important cattle stream, thereby almost deserving their fate."}}
|authorsources=<br>
#Author's opinion.
}}
{{misinformation|Mormon authors have not accepted the poisoning uncritically, and Bagley is not the first to challenge it, or claim that if true it would not justify the slaughter at Mountain Meadows. Even if the immigrants had poisoned a stream, they would not have deserved their fate.
}}
* [[../Use of sources/Poisoning myth|Use of sources: Poisoning myth]]

==Response to claim: 443, 615n15 (PB) - Bagley states "In their desire to exonerate Brigham Young of any guilt, official Mormon accounts of the crime laid the blame on victims and Indians, a tradition that is alive and well today"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Bagley states "In their desire to exonerate Brigham Young of any guilt, official Mormon accounts of the crime laid the blame on victims and Indians, a tradition that is alive and well today."
|authorsources=<br>
#Bagley, xvii.
}}
{{misinformation|The closest thing to an "official Mormon account" of the massacre is probably an ''Ensign'' article: "some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by American Indian allies, massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. The horrific crime, which spared only 17 children age six and under, occurred in a highland valley called the Mountain Meadows...."<ref>{{Ensign|author=Richard E. Turley, Jr.|article=[http://www.lds.org/mountain-meadows-massacre The Mountain Meadows Massacre]|date=September 2007|start=14|end=21}}</ref>

A new book coauthored by Turley expresses similar views.<ref>{{MMM0|start=xii-xiii}}  notes: "One approach [to recounting the massacre] portrays the perpetrators as good people and the victims as evil ones who committed outrages during their travel through central and southern Utah.  Some descendants of the perpetrators and several Mormon historians have adopted this approach because it seems, on the surface, to excuse or soften what happened....Readers of our book will find little sympathy for...[this] approach..."</ref>

See link in previous row which demonstrates that some LDS historians have not 'blamed' the victims.
}}
* [[Mountain Meadows Massacre]]
* [[../Use of sources/Brigham Young ordered MMM|Use of sources: Brigham Young ordered Mountain Meadows Massacre?]]

==Response to claim: 443, 615n16-18 - Brigham Young said: "When a man is found to be a thief, he will be a thief no longer, cut his throat, & thro' him in the River"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Brigham Young said: "When a man is found to be a thief, he will be a thief no longer, cut his throat, & thro' him in the River."
|authorsources=<br>
*Instruction to Bishops, quoted in Thomas Bullock diary, December 13, 1846. Cited in {{CriticalWork:Quinn:Mormon Hierarchy|pages=657}}; 
*{{HC1|vol=7|start=597}}
*Thomas G. Alexander, ''Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff'', a Mormon Prophet, 182.
*{{Dialogue|author=Thomas G. Alexander|article=Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57|date=Summer 1992|vol=25num=2|pages=27}}
}}
{{misinformation|The citations from Alexander deal with [[Church doctrine/Repudiated/Blood atonement|blood atonement]] and the [[Mormon Reformation]].  The author does not tell us that Alexander says in both places that "Young's references to blood atonement were probably hyperbole...." The author is repeating himself; these charges have been raised in [[One_Nation_Under_Gods/Index/Chapter_11|Chapter 11]].
}}
* [[../Use of sources/Brigham Young on thieves|Use of sources: Brigham Young on thieves]]

==Response to claim: 444-446, n23-24 - Did past LDS leaders hold and expound racist views?==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Did past LDS leaders hold and expound racist views?
|authorsources=<br>
*Joseph Fielding Smith, ''The Way to Perfection'', 101.
*{{JDfairwiki|author=Brigham Young|disc=45|vol=7|start=290|end=291}}
}}
{{information|Some past LDS leaders held racial attitudes that were common at the time that they lived.
}}
* The author is [[One_Nation_Under_Gods/Index/Chapter_16#358.2C_597n14-15|repeating himself]].
{{:Question: How did the "curse of Ham" or "curse of Cain" become associated with Mormonism?}}

<!-- ====446====
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title={{check}}
|claim={{AuthorQuote|"Of course, when any religion or denomination is tainted by the stain of racism, it always leaves future members in a very awkward position. And to be fair, Mormonism is not alone in this predicament. A number of Christian denominations (e.g. the Southern Baptists) have had to work very hard at racial reconciliation, often using public declarations to repudiate past racist statements by leaders."}}
}}
* There is, "of course," no hint of this perspective in the chapter branding members of the Church as racists with a "white supremacist" theology.
* [[One_Nation_Under_Gods/Use_of_sources/Double_standard_on_race|ONUG's double standard on race]]
|authorsources=<br>
# N/A
}} -->

==Response to claim: 447, 616n31 - Did Gordon B. Hinckley "admit" in April 2002 that Latter-day Saints do ''not believe'' in the same 'Jesus' as non-LDS Christians?==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
Did Gordon B. Hinckley "admit" in April 2002 that Latter-day Saints do ''not believe'' in the same 'Jesus' as non-LDS Christians?  
|authorsources=<br>
#}}
{{misinformation|This was no "confession"&mdash;President Hinckley was bearing testimony of Christ.  The Saints believe in the God of the Bible, which is consistent with Joseph Smith's vision.  They do not accept the nonbiblical creeds added later.
}}
{{:Question: Did Gordon B. Hinckley say that Latter-day Saints do not worship the biblical Jesus?}}

==Response to claim: 448, 616n34 - The author claims that Dallin Oaks told Latter-day Saints in 1995 "that so-called Christianity sees God as an entirely different kind of being"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=One Nation Under Gods
|claim=
The author claims that Dallin Oaks told Latter-day Saints in 1995 "that so-called Christianity sees God as an entirely different kind of being"
|authorsources=<br>
#{{Ensign|author=Dallin H. Oaks|article=[https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1995/04/apostasy-and-restoration?lang=eng Apostasy and Restoration]|date=May 1995|pages=84}}
}}
{{disinformation|Elder Oaks nowhere says "so-called Christianity," or uses the phrase "an entirely different kind of being."
}}
* [[../Use of sources/Dallin H. Oaks on God|Use of sources: Dallin H. Oaks on God]]
{{:Question: Did Elder Dallin Oaks say that "so-called Christianity sees God as an entirely different kind of being"?}}

{{endnotes sources}}



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