Launch of Mormon Website

by Brett Hendrickson

Dr. Fred E. Woods, professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, has recently made available a user-friendly website that compiles years of his research on LDS migration.

The website explains the scope of the project:
“The Mormon Migration website offers the inspiring first person accounts of over one thousand international converts who turned their faces toward Zion from 1840–1890. The autobiographies, journals, diaries, reminiscences, and letters link to over 500 known LDS immigrant voyages and they provide a composite history of those who crossed the Atlantic and Pacific, traveling by land and water to gather to Zion. Immigrants from 1840–46 gathered to Nauvoo, Illinois. Beginning in 1847, the Saints, driven west, gathered in the Salt Lake Valley. The immigrant accounts of their travels to the Great Basin describe not only their experiences crossing the oceans, but also their trek to frontier outfitting posts, and entry into the Salt Lake Valley (1847–1869).”

Also included is a growing archive of searchable articles about Mormon migration.

NAISA and Blogs to Come

by Brandi Denison

I just got back from the second annual Native American and Indigenous Studies Association conference in Tuscon, Arizona. If you haven’t heard about this association, please check it out. NAISA supports cutting edge scholarship on indigenous peoples throughout the world. If this year’s conference is any indication of future success, NAISA will become the primary site for thoughtful and engaging scholarship.

Religious studies folks made a good showing. Most notably, David Walsh, PhD student in religious studies at ASU, won the graduate student paper prize. His paper was titled “Moving Beyond Widdowson and Howard: Traditional Knowledge as an Approach to Knowledge.” Congratulations, David!

My trip “out west” as well as shared anxiety about attending a conference on indigeneity in Arizona has me thinking about the Tea Party as an American West political movement. In the coming days, look for a three part blog on the Wild West of Christianity, Capitalism, and the Tea Party.

What is Right and What is Legal: Arizona Mormons

by Brett Hendrickson

According to a recent story in the Arizona Republic, the new anti-immigrant legislation in that state is having a negative effect on Latter-day Saint efforts to proselytize Hispanics. The problem for many potential converts is Russell Pearce. A Republican state senator, he has been the gasoline driving almost all immigration crackdown legislation in Arizona. He is also a Mormon.

Kenneth Patrick Smith, a lawyer and the president of a Spanish-speaking LDS branch in Mesa (Pearce’s home turf and a Mormon stronghold) said, “It's a great disconnect because on one hand the missionaries are out there preaching brotherly love, kindness, charity, tolerance, faith, hope, etc., and then they see on TV a quote-unquote Mormon pushing this legislation that makes them not only . . . terrified but terrorized.”

Another leader in Arizona Hispanic LDS circles, Jorge Pimienta, said, “I don't know Russell Pearce. I don't know where he is coming from. All I know is that what he is doing is not what Jesus Christ taught.”

Naturally, Pearce defends his faithfulness and refers his detractors to The Articles of Faith of the Mormon Church. Number twelve of the thirteen articles reads: “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.” Illegal immigrants, Mormon or otherwise, cannot follow this article.

This division among the Saints on the issue of immigration presents heaps of fodder for classroom discussion. A short list of topics could include the separation of church and state, the role of authority in Mormon scripture vs. ongoing revelation in LDS immigrant fellowships, and how a global church with U.S. headquarters does or does not monitor and influence public perceptions of the Church.

But my go-to discussion would have to be how far Russell Pearce has deviated from the central Mormon narrative of being a persecuted and unwelcome people in the United States. A little over one hundred sixty years ago, Mormons en masse entered what is now Utah but was then Mexican territory (without papers) to get away from the sort of intolerance for difference that Pearce seems to be promoting. On the other hand, Mormon leaders from Joseph Smith on down have been keen on participating fully in American government, and there is no doubt that the United States has a very unique place in Mormon self-understanding.

So which is it? Is it Mormon to reach out to the dispossessed, even those who are here illegally? Or is it Mormon to stand firmly behind American laws?

Environmentalism vs. Indian Religious Freedom

by Tisa Wenger

Yet again, legislation aimed at protecting the environment ends up doing violence to Native American cultural and religious traditions. As reported in Indybay’s online newsletter earlier this week, tribal leaders in California are protesting a new law banning fishing and harvesting activities—including their traditional practices—in special marine protected areas along the state’s north central coast. Above all this is an issue of environmental justice. Environmentalist goals needs to be pursued in ways that allow indigenous cultures to flourish—especially when the cultures in question have historically maintained sustainable practices.

This story is also important for understanding the dilemmas of Native American religious freedom, as well as the intertwined histories of land and religion in the region—two important topics for the study of religion in the American west, as Quincy Newell reminded us in her post just a few days ago. The Indybay piece reports:

Members of the Kashia Pomo Tribe and other tribes are now banned from their traditional seaweed, abalone and mussel harvesting grounds by the creation of a massive new no-take marine reserve off Stewarts Point in Sonoma County.

The reserve is the largest in a network of 21 marine protected areas (MPAs) that took effect on May 1 along California's north central coast under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.

To mark the final day before the unprecedented closure, tribal leaders held a historic ceremony to bless an area where the Kashia Tribe of Pomo Indians has gathered seaweed, mussel, abalone, clams and fish for centuries. Stewarts Point, called “Danaka” by the tribe, is sacred to the tribe since it is regarded in their creation story as the place where the tribe first stepped on land, according to Eric Wilder, former chair of the Kashia Pomo.

Like Wilder, other Pomo tribal leaders quoted in the article emphasize the religious quality of their relationship with the site. Their story illustrates the disjuncture between indigenous traditions on the one hand, and the concept of religion as framed in American law and governmental practice on the other. As Tribal Elder Violet Chappell put it, “I don’t think the Fish and Game would be allowed to close down a Catholic Church, would they?” Although some exceptions have been painstakingly created, the system is simply not set up to work for land-based traditions. Come to think of it, maybe mainstream America’s lack of any real connection between land and religion is what got us into this environmental mess in the first place.

Mojave Cross Stolen

by Brandi Denison

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court heard a case about a cross that stood in the Mojave Desert--not about the constitutionality of a religious symbol on public land, but about the legality of the transfer of land in order to allow keep such religious symbols. The Court ruled that this transfer was constitutional AND that religious symbols on public land do not violate the establishment clause. Here NPR's story here.

Today, the cross was stolen.