Review
Title: Converting the Saints: A Study of Religious Rivalry in America
Author: Charles Randall Paul
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books, Salt Lake City
Genre: Religious Non-Fiction
Year Published: 2018
Number of Pages: 256
Binding: Paperback and Hardcover
ISBN: 9781589587564 (paperback)
Price: $26.95
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
Missionary work is hard. Anyone who has served a mission can identify with that statement. I recently spent three years overseeing the missionary work in my LDS congregation, working with dozens of eager young missionaries who rarely became discouraged despite infrequent successes, and many disheartening failures. Indeed, the opening sentences in Charles Randall Paul’s book, Converting the Saints, states: “Saving the world is complicated. Missions to do so are attacks no matter how benign the motives.” (p xv)
No one likes being attacked, no matter how polite and friendly the attacker. Both sides, armed with the sure knowledge that they have exclusive and sure knowledge of the keys to ultimate truth, can easily resort to a defensive stance that focuses on counterattack and counter-conversion.
Paul’s book is about Protestant missions to Utah Mormons from 1890 to 1920. One can certainly imagine the difficulties faced by these sincere missionaries, intent on saving the Mormons by showing them the errors of their beliefs and leading them back to true biblical Christianity. Each of the three missionaries featured pursued different tactics and worked hard at finding ways to reach both disaffected and faithful Mormons. Success was limited. Most Mormons were reluctant to return to the organized Protestant churches that they or their parents a generation earlier had abandoned. and more often than not, disaffected Mormons generally became atheists or deists.
There are certainly lessons here about missionary work as a general subject. But Paul is interested in larger topics about the nature of religious diversity and what he calls “persuasive contestation” between competing religious and ideological claims. Wrapped around the chapters relating to the details of these Protestant missionaries is a larger exploration of the role of religion in the great experiment in democracy that the United States represents. The roots of American democracy are grounded in a quest for religious freedom and individual sovereignty. Many of the first American settlers were fleeing religious persecution and the restraints on religious freedom imposed by European nations with state-sponsored churches.
As America developed a national identity before and after the Revolutionary War, religious freedoms and diversity of belief were considered foundational principles. In order to accommodate these concepts, the fledgling United States recognized both a common set of mores grounded in Protestant Christianity, and that national interests required recognizing the sovereign right of individuals to choose their own paths within those bounds. First Amendment rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, and the press follow the provision banning any sort of state sponsored or supported religion. The writers of the constitution sensed that most Americans understood the basic rules of morality. Be they Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, or non-believers, the majority recognized these common values and rules of behavior considered vital to maintaining public order and the peace. Rarely did the new federal government feel it necessary to step into religious disputes, except in a handful of high profile conflicts that appeared to threaten the shared national value system. Violence broadly defined includes not only physical violence, but also the suppression of basic rights. Such violent coercion was viewed as the solution of last resort.
The three largest such conflicts, Paul writes, were with the Native Americans, the Civil War, and the conflict with Mormon polygamy and theocracy. Paul shows how Mormons, Native Americans, and Southern plantation owners all shared certain characteristics. All three were geographically separate from the rest of the nation, conducted activities considered antithetical to the established moral codes, and resisted efforts to bring them into the mainstream of American culture in the 19th century.
It is easy to frame the conflict between the Mormon church and the Federal government as religious, but less obvious for the Civil War and the American Indian wars. In the case of the Civil War, both the Southern plantation owners and the Northern abolitionists resorted to pleas to biblical authority, claiming that Christian doctrine supported their separate views on slavery. As Paul phrases it, the competing sides in the Civil War had to view their opponents as “traitors to the fellowship of Christ that once had united them…opening the way for former compatriots to kill one another…Upholding the sanctity of slavery became the most important element in the Southern states’ consensus for secession and war.” (p 25)
Coercion, Paul writes, failed as a means of proselytizing. Southern resentment over the Civil War continues to the present day, as evidenced by public argument over statues of Confederate heroes. Over one million Native Americans still occupy geographically separate tribal lands. (2010 census) Mormons may have discarded their practice of polygamy and theocratic rule in Utah, but they have maintained the rest of their unique doctrines that Protestants found distasteful, even while embracing the larger American culture.
It is hard not to see how these experiences apply to our present political and ideological climate, and that appears to be the author’s intention. His argument is that “persuasive contestation over religion, ideology or founding principles” should be normal in our democracy, and given a space in the public square. Paul points out that presently religious discussions are mostly shunned in the public sphere. The beginnings of this trend coincided with the ends of the missions of the Protestant evangelists to Utah. Mainstream Protestantism turned to alternative activist causes in the 1920s. Paul writes “The social gospel movement that rose to prominence in early-twentieth-century Christianity downplayed theology and became more interested in political and institutional initiatives, less as a form for influencing moral correctness that as a means for mobilizing community resources to help the less fortunate.” (p 164).
At the risk of oversimplifying, one can draw a line from these changes in the priorities of most mainline Protestant churches to the socially and religiously conservative right, concerned with moral correctness, and the increasingly secular left that promotes humanitarian and communitarian efforts by governments and other organizations intended to serve the greater good, rather than individual conversion. Both sides pursue an agenda they believe is based in ultimate truth, but both have deeply different views of what they feel America’s core values are. Both also view some level of coercive action as a means to an end and both fear the violence of individual rights being curtailed, and an increased potential for physical violence in the extreme fringes of their movements. This is a sharp departure from what the founding fathers apparently intended.
To underscore this perceived dual purpose of Paul’s book, it should be noted that he is the Chairman and Founder of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, a non-profit devoted to promoting his concept of “persuasive contestation,” as opposed to coercion and contention. One need only spend a short time with social media to see that we most often are talking past each other and using ridicule and sarcasm as tools, finding few if any converts.
This parallel approach to an inversion of our normal view of missionary work offers historical perspectives and valuable insights from a time when the LDS Church was actively seeking accommodation with the greater American culture, but still maintain its unique doctrines and practices. Those challenges continue to this day. Paul provides an intriguing look into how we can turn the tumultuous cacophony of partisanship into constructive dialogue that promotes a more peaceful society. Mormons may have discarded their practice of polygamy and theocratic rule in Utah, but they have maintained the rest of their unique doctrines that Protestants found distasteful, even while embracing the larger American culture.