Notes on The Book of Mormon from a Nineteenth Century Perspective: Conspiracies II

Not fatuous. I highly recommend!

Any discussion of Mormons and conspiracies brings up freemasonry. 

Nineteenth-century Mormons and Joseph Smith were well-aware of the inherent tension of freemasonry.

On the one hand was the desire for secret or gnostic knowledge separate from metaphysical, "educated" theoretical blatherings amongst Eastern elites. Freemasonry returned rituals to Protestantism as well as the mysticism and active participation that not only the Enlightenment but late Calvinism seemed to be wiping out. The desire for knowledge and ritual is arguably a human one. Freemasonry likely mirrors the Ancient Roman soldier's interest in Mithraism. Like the Ancient Roman soldier, many non-educated (and educated) Americans wanted something real and powerful and non-labelly yet profound--something other than country club religion (which frankly, Ancient Roman paganism rather resembled for the elite).

Freemasonry appeared to deliver. (It also filled a gap in American culture as church and state increasingly separated after the American Revolution.)

 

And yet, on the other side, was an intense dislike of secret societies, which dislike often expanded to include a dislike of elites making backroom deals at the expense of the "common" man (see prior post). In the early 1800s, the "common" man was a farmer while Masons were often merchants and professionals. Not wealthy earners from our modern point of view. But not "common" enough. (However, that image is complicated by the sheer number of social organizations, freemasonry and otherwise, within the United States at the time.)

 

The tensions here resided in Gothicism, which began in the eighteenth century, and go a long way to explaining the popularity of Dracula and Ann Radcliffe.

 

On the one hand was a yearning for the ritualistic, knightly Catholic past, including its buildings and Saints and priests.

 

On the other was a dislike of Catholic doctrine (as understood by Protestants).

 

On the one hand was a desire for supernatural romanticism, elements of the human experience that the carefully constructed arguments of Protestantism and the Enlightenment seemed to be eliminating.

 

On the other was a paranoid dislike of secrecy and stuff happening behind closed doors (see pamphlets about Maria Monk).

 

So, on the one hand, The Book of Mormon promises that more mysteries are forthcoming. On the other, it contains an ongoing worry about conspiring groups.

 

The text continually marks the difference: namely, positive communities want to expand rights while negative societies want to remove them. The problem is arguably more difficult. But the characterizations remain consistent within the text.

 

The problem, eventually, in Nauvoo, was that Joseph Smith perceived polygamy and its rational outgrowth, subsequent temple ceremonies, as positives that joined more and more members together--while others saw such things as violations of basic Christianity and therefore, negative and destructive (and secretive) influences.

 

I am reminded of a scene in That Hideous Strength in which the main character, Mark, who has always wanted to be in "the know" of a secret society doesn't even recognize when he becomes part of one with the ragged beggar man.

 

C.S. Lewis returns here to an idea that he raises in Surprised by Joy. He paints in an entirely positive light the boys' secret brotherhood at the worst private school he attended. Yet the later "in-group" mentality of intellectuals and poseurs and social climbers, he paints wholly negatively. The first group didn't set out to be a society. The boys were merely trying to survive and helped each other out ("we few, we happy few"). The second group could only exist if an "outside" group was torn down; they couldn't advance unless others were put in their place.

 

As definitions--society that joins people together through ties of fellowship is good; society that bands together to mock and find things wrong with others is bad--these are quite usable even if the events to which they are applied can be quite complex. Such definitions appear in The Book of Mormon over and over again. 

 

Regarding freemasonry and the temple, Joseph Smith borrowed from whatever was to hand--as did lots of people. Like most things, one monolithic freemasonry organization didn't exist in the United States, especially since women, Native Americans, Jews, and Blacks created their own lodges. "Borrowing"--even appropriation--is not the same as a conspiracy.