Church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact - religion and politics should not be mingled.
Millard Fillmore
Those who believe that politics and religion do not mix, understand neither.
Albert Einstein
It was 170 years ago that Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers came to the Salt Lake Valley in search of religious freedom… and, finally, a land of their own in which to practice it.
Mike Lee.
In this thread, we're going to tread, which will be part one of two, where we shouldn't.
Religion and politics.
Well, religion, politics and history.
And in the context of public land.
Eh?
Well, exactly.
Albert Einstein was exactly correct. Those that believe politics and religion do not mix truly do not understand either. Indeed, they should mix. A person who holds a religion should let him inform his views. If a person doesn't, they're not very sincere about their religion, or have a weakly developed intellect. If a person strongly believes that something is wrong, such as abortion, and their religion informs them on that, well, they can't really walk away from that, a la Joe Biden. By the same token, however, a person should not be foreclosed from advancing their views for other reasons, nor should a person demand that another person except their views solely because of their religious views, unless they clearly put it that way.
The thing a person ought not to do, however, is to advance a position for religious views, while keeping that view hidden.
Particularly if it forms the primary basis for the view.
And we look here first, at the transfer of public lands. Later on we'll look at the US support of Israel in warfare this past year.
Yesterday was Pioneer Day in Utah, a state holiday.
Like Wyoming Day here, probably almost nobody gets it off. The day commemorates the first entry of Brigham Young and his group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.
That's interesting in that, essentially, it's sort of a species of religious observation. There are no doubt other such observations in the US, but they're rare. Wyoming Day commemorates the day that Wyoming became a state. Utah became a state in 1896, after Wyoming. Pioneer Day, however, celebrates an event occurring fifty years before that, and which is inseparable from the LDS religious migration. Unlike the often cited landing of the passengers of the Mayflower, which is often erroneously to be an exclusively a religious migration, nobody in that 1847 team of travelers was not a Mormon.1
There have been two big backers of the concept of Utah grabbing Federal lands in Congress, Celest Maloy and Mike Lee, both of Utah.
Routine analysis of this notes that the grab the land movement is strong in Utah in general. Their state took a recent run at it in court, and their legislature has been in favor of it, even if certain districts in Utah are not. Congressman Jason Chaffetz found out the demographic differences when he went down the same path as Lee a decade ago.
While its changing, over 50% of Utah is a member of the Latter Day Saints.
No surprise there.
Nor is it a surprise that Lee is, and that Maloy is.
Nor is there something shocking or wrong with that, just as there isn't anything wrong, right wing pundits aside, with the next Mayor of New York City (probably), Zohran Mamdani, being Shi'a Muslim.
But the argument here is that their religious convictions are informing them, and other Utah politicians, to seek to remove Federal ownership from Federal land, as well as the history of their faith.
Which takes us to the Mormon War and the Utah War, with the former name sometimes being used for the latter (indeed, we've done that here in the past).
The actual Mormon War was the period of violence that occurred in Missouri when members of the LDS church were there.
Which probably requires some background to make sense.
The Latter Day Saints are not a Christian religion, although if you ask them, they'll most certainly maintain that they are. The fact is, however, they aren't. The LDS is a polytheistic religion holding that there are many gods and many worlds. We simply happen to live in a world in which God the Father, as Abrahamic religions worship, is actually a man who became a god after having lived his life in another world. The Mormons believe that Jesus Christ was the product of a Devine man (God) and a Devine mother and that Jesus Christ is their elder brother, since he was the firstborn in the spirit world. Perhaps in order for that to make sense to non Mormons its important to note that Mormon's believe that all the souls in our world already exist, and that when a child is born, a preexisting soul is embodied in that person, with the souls memory of his pre birth existence blocked. Mormons do admit that Christ became God before his birth. Mormon's also feel that if you live as a Mormon and adhere closely to the tenants of the LDS, you too can become a god, and will have your own world in the afterlife.2
That sort of sums up their beliefs today, sort of, although no doubt very unfairly.
What's that have to do with public lands?
Bear with us.
Joseph Smith started out is religious career in the Second Great Awakening as a fairly conventional protestant evangelist. Indeed, his evangelical career started after the dates for the events he claimed made him a profit, which raise the question of why he was a regular protestant at first and didn't mention his later claims at the time. By the early 1830s, however, he'd relocated to Ohio along with his early adherents and was espousing a new set of beliefs, some of which we've summarized above, but which also claimed that Native Americans were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel and that giant battles featuring armored men and elephants had taken place in North America. He also had Jesus Christ visiting the continent, and blacks as descendants of a union between Cain and an ape. Most controversially, however, his new religion strongly advocated polygamy.
Sexual libertine behavior, which Smith personally displayed, was not unknown at the time, and there were "free love" movements even then, although they were not linked with religion.3 Smith, whose own sexual behavior exceeded the bounds of what he espoused for his followers, was unique in doing so. It was all too much for the residents of Ohio, and it proved to be too much for the residents of Missouri, to which he relocated with adherents in 1838.
Violence ensued and Smith himself lost his life over the matter of sex, when breakaway members of the LDS accused him of advocating polygamy in order to dally with women, a fairly fair charge. Smith reacted with destruction of a press that made accusations against him. He ended up in jail, and a riot of upset locals ultimately resulted in storming the jail. He was shot through a jail door he was attempting to block.
The LDS suffered a schism right at the time, with one branch of it evolving rapidly back into a conventional protestant church. The main branch, however, took off for the West and started settling in the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847, at which time the region was in Mexico. The first really largescale American settlement of that type (Spanish settlements up into the West dated back to the 1600s and were well established, but not in what is now upper Utah), they became a major presence right away.
The Great Salt Lake Valley is a long ways from Missouri, and it was even a greater distance if you had to walk or travel by horse, but the entire oddity of Mormon beliefs remained bothersome to most Americans, particularly Second and Third Great Awakening Americans for whom even Catholics were way too much. And it wasn't just Americans. John Stuart Mill in his great book On Liberty briefly pondered the practically of the British landing troops in Texas in order that they could march to Utah and stamp out the religion.
On Liberty came out in 1859, and was no doubt written prior to that. While Mill concluded that such an expedition was impractical, by 1857 the United States and the Mormons were actually at war. The war ended in 1858 with concessions on the part of the LDS combatants, but like a lot of people who've lost a war (consider the American South) a sort of lost cause element to it remains, even though the Mormons did not seek to separate from the US. They did seek, however, autonomy.
Early on the LDS hoped for a huge state in the southwest, which they called Deseret.
The US didn't see eye to eye on that. Be that as it may, they heavily settled throughout the region of what was imagined to be Deseret and are strongly represented throughout it today. And the name "Deseret" lives on, preserving its memory.
Early on, Mormon pioneers often viewed land communally. The LDS church today owns 1.7 million acres of land, operates some of the largest agricultural businesses in the US. It owns major blocks of land throughout the US, including in Wyoming and Nebraska. The fact that it a gigantic landowner is often missed. It's reasons to purchase land are varied, and it makes no effort to hide that it does this. Part of this is done for a sort of agrarian charitable reason, but there are other reasons as well.
Mormons tend to have large families, although this is not always the case by any means. The extent to which their families are abnormally large, moreover, is exaggerated as in the American WASP culture any number of offspring over two is regarded as freakishly large. I am, of course, from a Catholic family and got this all the time growing up, even though I'm an only child.
Having said that, the more traditionalist a Catholic family is, the more children there tends to be in it.
The reason differs considerably however. Catholics would point toward the marriage vow itself and how it notes that it includes the question “Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?” I've heard one Catholic cleric, Fr. Hugh Barbour, note the purpose of the marriage is to bring up children willingly for the worship of God.
Catholics, like most Christians, believe that human beings cooperate in the creation of souls through the marital act. Mormons, however, do not believe that. They believe that there are a finite number of souls and that they exist in already, and that the marital act causes those souls to inhabit a body. One the full number is run through, the end of time occurs. By having large families, in their view, they are assisting in bringing that about.
Which brings us back to Mike Lee.
Not all Mormons are traditionalist by any means. The Mormon church itself has been fluid over the years in regard to its beliefs and has abandoned polygamy and certain other tenants which brought them disrepute in American society. There remains, however, a conservative element that is sympathetic to the original views and while it embarrasses the larger LDS church, it's usually not to hard to find examples. Polygamy, for instance, persisted in being widely accepted in Mormon communities for well after its official abandonment, and of course, it continues on in Mormon communities today, even though it is definitely a minority view, and definitely condemned.
But amongst those like Lee, the history of Deseret and deeply held LDS beliefs heavily inform his views. He was willing to abandon Montana from his land grab, but Montana had never been part of Deseret. Everywhere else he held on.
Grabbing the land from the Federal government would sort of reverse a position that early Mormon pioneers had to abandon, and it satiates a fear of the Federal government that remains in some quarters today. Additionally, the "more land for housing" view makes some sense for those who imagine very large families. Lee himself was one of seven children to a father was president of BYU, although Mike Lee only had three children himself.
In the background of it all, however, are changing times.
Even now you will hear reports on how fast the LDS faith is growing. But it isn't. Having had a dramatic late 20th Century and early 21st Century increase, its numbers are now really dropping off and its in decline. The late 20th Century and very early 21st was sort of the golden age of Mormon expansion, and it altered the culture of the faith a bit. Outside of the "Jello Belt", that region of the west, and predominantly in southwestern Wyoming, southeastern Idaho, and Utah, where Mormons are a majority or at least very strongly represented in the population, Mormons were a little reluctant to identify too strongly with their faith, lest they run into a prejudiced reaction. At least two Mormon lawyers I knew would make excuses for their Mormonism, usually on the basis of "not being a Mormon" and "marrying into the faith", even though they were really in the LDS and at least one of them was born into it. When I was a kid, Mormon kids routinely identified themselves as "Jack Mormons", i.e.., those who only weekly observed their faith, even though they were not.
By the early 21st Century things really began to change, and particularly did after Mitt Romney was the GOP nominee for the President. Mormons had sort of arrived and come out of the shadows.
It didn't really last long, however, as a variety of forces began to work against it. One was that the industrial nature of Mormons had made Utah into a really attractive place to live. Utah's towns and cities are beautiful and well kept, something that is frankly often not the case for a lot of the West. Compared to Salt Lake, Denver is a dump. Towns like Morgan Utah make small Wyoming towns look pathetic.
What that means, however, is that Utah has attracted a lot of non Mormons and Salt Lake shows it in particular. Salt Lake has the temple, to be sure, but it also has a young non Mormon community, some of which outright flaunt their non Mormon status. Hence the title of this entry. July 24 is Pioneer Day, but it's also Pie & Beer Day in which hipsters celebrate with, well, pie and beer. It's become sort of a big deal.
And as Mormons have moved into the mainstream, the mainstream has sort of pushed back. Regular Mormon families are moving more towards the conventional American midstream in terms of belief, than the other way around.
What this means for it long term cannot yet be known, but Mormon birthrates are also dropping off dramatically.
When things start changing, the reaction often is to grasp back towards the past to try to drag it into the future. In the West, the Ghost Dance provides a spectacular late 19th Century example of that. What Lee and Maloy are doing does as well. It's probably not so much part of a deliberate plan as an instinct.
It's an instinct that a lot of Mormons in Utah and elsewhere outright reject, which shows that its always dangerous to assume that any one group can be really narrowly defined. And we're not saying that this is an overall Mormon world view on the topic. We're only noting what we think we're seeing in Lee, Maloy, and Utah's elected government.
And we'd note this is probably a fading, if presently strong, effort.
One of the Salt Lake newspapers has started a series on this, noting basically what I just did (I actually started this tread prior to the paper). This doesn't cover it all, however. It'd explain none of what we see in Wyoming backers like Harriet Hageman. We'll look at that next.
Footnotes.
1. Most of the passengers on the Mayflower were not Puritans.
2. There's a lot more to the LDS faith than this, including that the Book of Mormon is "another testament", but I'm not going to go into it here as I only hope to touch on what's relevant to the topic. In shorty, this isn't a discussion on Mormonism itself.
3. Such movements must have been extraordinarily risky for secular women, but they were oddly common, and not just in the US. There were a variety of them, and it was a feature such varied movements pre Stalinist Communism and Russian Orthodox Khlysts.
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