Revision as of 21:44, 13 March 2009

Loaded and prejudicial language

The author's hostile bias to the truth claims of the LDS Church often lead him to use loaded, prejudicial, or necessarily negative language when discussing events or people. These choices both reveal his bias, and serve to prejudice the incautious reader against Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints. More accurate, neutral language would create quite a different impression.

The following are some examples:

• p. x: Joseph is claimed to have had a "predilection" to "take an interest in more than one woman."
• p. xii: "Beyond [Joseph's] quest for female companionship...."
• p. xii: "...Smith utilized plural marriage to create a byzantine structure of relationships intended for successive worlds."
• p. xiv: Joseph is claimed to have "courted and eloped with his first wife."
• p. 2: "With an acquisitive eye on neighboring lands and the will to triumph over older settlers through political bloc voting, Joseph's behavior concerned some of the longtime Illinoisans who lived around the Saints."
• p. 2: "Now fear of [the Mormons'] city-wide militia, use of local petitions of habeas corpus to dismiss state warrants, and rumors of a 'plurality of wives' had put citizens on edge."
• p. 7: Joseph is claimed to have "had already proven his own mettle among God's elect when he mastered the use of magic stones and 'translated' the Book of Mormon."
• p. 11: Attempting to create a tie-in between the United Order and Communism, the book notes: "Across the Atlantic, the communal experiment advocated by Marx and Engels appeared in London only a few years later in 1848."
• p. 12: The author reminds us once again that Joseph and Emma "eloped" by noting that the Book of Mormon was "…begun shortly after he eloped with Emma Hale in January 1827."
• p. 12: Joseph is claimed to have performed a "ritualized" five-year search for the gold plates.
• p. 12: Presuming that "magick" was involved, the author claims that "[e]ach year at the autumnal equinox, which according to rodsmen and seers was a favourable time to approach the spirits guarding buried treasures, Smith had gone to the hill where he sought after the plates."
• p. 12n29: "As noted by Quinn, that day in September 1823 was ruled by Jupiter, Smith's ruling planet…"
• p. 13: The author misquotes Quinn by claiming that Oliver Cowdery said Joseph wanted to "commune with some kind of messenger." In reality, Oliver said "some kind messenger."
• p. 13: Removal of Oliver's quote from context makes this quote sound more "magical" when he said that Joseph "had heard of the power of enchantment, and a thousand like stories, which held the hidden treasures of the earth."
• p. 14: "W.W. Phelps reported on the prophet's instructions in all their antebellum racism..."
• p. 14n34: The author claims that "[s]kin color was important in other LDS scriptures as well" in reference to the priesthood ban.
• p. 14n34: "Interestingly, the rhetoric underlying the theology may have resulted from 1830s Mormons trying to convince their neighbors in the slave state of Missouri that they were not abolitionists."
• p. 15: The author speculates: "We know Joseph often stayed overnight on visits with other families. Was Emma aware that later marriages would develop out of these family visits among their close friends? Could she have seen this coming—the injunction to enter into 'celestial marriage'?"
• p. 22: A bit of sarcasm creeps in here as the author states: "…it must have been a fascinating courtship, conducted as it was among unseen spirits and Joseph's unsettling conversations with angels."
• p. 22: "Joseph and Emma had been bound by treasure magic from their first meeting in 1825, because Joseph…[came] to help Josiah Stowell located buried treasure [and] boarded with Emma's father."
• p. 23: "The treasure seeker presented himself as someone who had special knowledge that was beyond the woman's ken."
• p. 25: The Bainbridge "glass-looking" appearance is called "a trial."
• p. 27: The author claims that Isaac Hale not being allowed to look at the gold plates was a "clumsy subterfuge."
• p. 28: "Joseph's personal charisma was working its effect where he needed to rely on others for help. He elicited sympathy and created a sense of urgency; his enterprises bore a strange significance."
• p. 28: "Married life was not easy. In fact, it was riddled with doubts, rumors, and deception from the start."
• p. 28: "…Joseph was haunted by the suspicion, which followed him from place to place, that he crossed moral boundaries in his friendship with other women."
• p. 31: "It was eleven years after the Smiths roomed with the Whitneys that Joseph expressed a romantic interest in their daughter, as well."
• p. 32-33: "How relevant is it that in many instances he had lived under the same roof as his future wife prior to marrying her?"
• p. 34: The author claims that in Illinois Joseph "was still hunted by law officials for old offenses."
• p. 38: "…Smith and fellow prisoners escaped to join their people in Illinois, where they proceeded to found a theocratic society."
• p. 48: "In Smith's narrative, an otherworldly being Smith called 'the Lord' defends polygamy…."
• p. 51: The author claims that today there is "the continued abusive coercion of underage girls in polygamous communities. Although polygamy has been repeatedly condemned by the contemporary LDS Church, the Nauvoo beginnings of the practice remain in LDS scripture as Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants and in the church's temple sealings.

Endnotes

None

Further reading