Review
Title: Contingent Citizens: Shifting Perceptions of Latter-day Saints in American Political Culture
Author: Spencer W. McBride, Brent M. Rogers, Keith A. Erekson, ed.
Publisher: Cornell University Press, Ithaca
Genre: Religious History
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages:291
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9781501749544
Price: $29.95
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
Contingent Citizens is a great title for this collection of articles on new perspectives about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its relationship with local, state, and federal governments. Contingent truths in philosophy are those that are neither always true, nor always false, as opposed to necessary truths that are always true. Applying this to the relationship of the church to government authority, it implies that the church and its members have not always been viewed as full and equal citizens. Events like the Extermination Order in Missouri, the expulsion from Nauvoo, and the decades-long battle for statehood in the shadow of polygamy bear witness to this tentative relationship with civil authority.
I sometimes struggle with collections featuring multiple authors, finding that the quality of contributions can vary widely. Not this one. Editors Spencer McBride, Brent Rogers, and Keith Erekson have compiled selections that vary widely in topic, yet mesh together in an easily accessible overview of the history of the LDS church as it relates to governments and the greater American public. The foundation of this collection relies more on national cultural and historical trends than a retelling of historical grievances that focused on the church itself.
For example, Brent Rogers [Chapter 7], Managing Historian for the Joseph Smith Papers Project, looks at Joseph Smith’s 1844 declaration of martial law in Nauvoo and Brigham Young’s similar 1857 decree in advance of the arrival in Utah Territory of the United States Army. He reviews the history of martial law in the United States and its mixed perception by the American public. Smith’s declaration in Nauvoo came in the same year that Congress voted to return a fine levied against President Andrew Jackson for his imposition of martial law during his defense of New Orleans in the War of 1812. That declaration was finally determined to be necessary to the safety and defense of the republic, while Smith’s action was perceived as a threat to republican government by a group of outsiders led by a charismatic prophet with theocratic ambitions.
The removal of ten thousand Mormons from Nauvoo to the west, bolstered by the anticipated emigration of even larger numbers of saints from the British Isles, caused consternation in the unsettled and mostly ungoverned West of the 1840s. Author Thomas Richards [Chapter 6] points out that the three thousand members of the Nauvoo Legion were equivalent to half the strength of the standing US Army at a time when a war with Mexico was looming, and Great Britain was feared to have designs on California.
Contingent Saints also includes some important contributions by women scholars on gender-related issues. Amy Greenberg, Penn State University, examines the part cultural gender roles may have played in the conflicts in and around Nauvoo in the 1840s. [Chapter 5] In antebellum America, military service provided a way of proving masculinity and fitness for public service. The Black Hawk War in Illinois in the early 1830s served as a springboard for several prominent Illinois politicians and other participants in the Navuoo troubles. Future governor Thomas Ford, former congressman and militia leader John Hardin, and Nauvoo Police Chief and officer in the Nauvoo Legion Hosea Stout had all participated in the Black Hawk War, along with Abraham Lincoln. Rumors of polygamy and attendant fears of an endangered female population all contributed to the view of the Mormons in Nauvoo as outsiders and a threat to civil order, not unlike Black Hawk’s Kickapoo Indians. Natalie Rose [Chapter 4]writes about the mobilization of women in the church against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the National Organization of Women (NOW). Church members packed International Women’s Year conferences in several states in 1977 to oppose passage of the ERA, prompting NOW in 1981 to send “missionaries” to Utah to promote the ERA. Rose details the interactions and cognitive dissonance that such activities created during those years.
J. B. Haws writes about the church in the 1950s portrayed in the media in almost universally favorable terms, in large part because the church’s most unusual elements, such as polygamy, were mostly ignored in national publications. Patrick Mason discusses Apostle Ezra Taft Benson’s service as the Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower administration during the same decade. Both Mason and Haws argue in separate chapters that the 1950s represented the apogee of favorable views of the church and the confluence of typically Mormon and American values of family, faith, and patriotism. This era was also the point at which public confidence in religion and government were at their peaks. The unrest of the civil rights movement and antiwar sentiment of the 1960s began to chip away at these traditional American values. Echoes of these changes are still with us in present-day nostalgia for an America that seemed universally peaceful and prosperous but ignored long-standing inequities and persistent racial prejudice
Contingent Saints gave me new insights with each chapter. While not rewriting traditional Mormon history, the editors and authors asked critical questions and responded with answers that added dimension and texture to well-known narratives. Perhaps the real message of Contingent Citizens should be that our Otherness as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States is never that far beneath the surface. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns showed that the doctrines and policies that make us a peculiar people still have the potential to alienate us from our fellow citizens in unexpected ways and at unanticipated times. Knowing our history will help us better understand and bridge the gaps between us and our fellow citizens. It should also prompt us to recognize the similarities we have with other contingent elements of our citizenry, create greater empathy, and help promote a diverse but unified nation.