Religious Violence

The era during which the Book of Mormon came into print was a time when religious-based violence reached another historic peak. Religious violence shaped the contours of history in the Middle Ages, and was one of the direct contributors to the Renaissance by exposing European armies to Islamic inventions, literature and architecture. Today’s religious violence is again reshaping the thinking of all mankind. During the Crusades, the great battle lines were drawn between Islam and Christianity over geography considered holy by both. Even now, in the turbulent present, the great battle lines are not just drawn between Islam and Christianity, but also between numerous faiths in various settings. The best known conflict is between Islam and the West. But we also see religious violence between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. Jewish settlement in Palestine has become the catalyst for religious violence between Palestinians and their supporters against the Jewish State and its followers.

For many years, Sikhs have been involved in religious violence in India and Pakistan. Even the normally passive Buddhist followers of some cultic leaders have been responsible for religious terrorism in Japan. Abortion doctors have been killed by fundamentalist Christians, whose violence was viewed as a justifiable response to abortion. Our day is a day in which religion and violence are increasingly inseparable.

The Book of Mormon comes into this era with the longest and most robust scriptural treatment of violence of any other scriptural record, including the Koran. The numerous “war chapters” of the Book of Mormon provide us with greater instruction on this subject than any other single source of God’s word on violence.

Hugh Nibley reviewed the “war chapters” of the Book of Mormon and used the work of Carl von Clausewitz to assess the credibility of the text. Nibley’s nimble and brilliant mind found much to work with there. However, beyond Clausewitz and Nibley’s comparisons, the work of Mark Jurgensmeyer gives another useful context for viewing these materials. In Jurgensmeyer’s book, Terror in the Mind of God, he provides a very well-documented treatment of modern religious terrorism. From time to time, every religious institution must come to grips with violence. How the institution responds depends not only on the religious texts belonging to the faith, but also upon the personalities of the people living at the moment violence breaks out.

Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a relatively young institution, its history has been punctuated with formidable challenges resulting from violence. In its earliest encounters, the violence was directed against it. The founder was mobbed and beaten from New York to Ohio to Missouri. When the Church regrouped in Nauvoo after the Missouri expulsion, Joseph Smith organized the Nauvoo Legion and practiced military maneuvers as a show of force. It was intended to deter violence. It didn’t work. When violence broke out again, and Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob while imprisoned in neighboring Carthage, the Nauvoo Legion did nothing to either prevent the violence or to retaliate in its wake.

The first leadership of the Church set a powerful example of how to meet violence when they submitted and died without organizing any defensive or retaliatory military action. Although there was a military organized and ready at their command, they elected not to use it. They died as a result. This early example, however, has been dwarfed in the popular imagination by a later event in Utah.

When Latter-day Saints in the Southern Utah Territory killed all but eighteen small children of the Fancher Company in September, 1857, the Latter-day Saints joined the ranks of religious organizations whose members have attacked and killed others. Juanita Brooks’ book The Mountain Meadows Massacre; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970, puts this incident into its historical context. She makes the violence of that day almost inevitable, and the Latter-day Saints’ motivation something understandable.

The Francher Company provoked anger throughout their migration across the Utah Territory. They claimed to have been involved in earlier mobbings of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri, and even boasted of having been complicit in the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Contemporaneously, there was an army marching against Utah to quell a reported rebellion by the Latter-day Saints. The Church was in a defensive mode, and its leaders were preparing the Saints for potential conflict. In this setting, it was not difficult for the anger felt by the Saints to become the seedbed for rationalizing violence against these migrants.

Juanita Brooks writes:

On August 6, Franklin D. Richards, brigadier general commanding, in his orders to the officers serving under him in the 2 Brigade, 1 Division, declaimed:

We have experienced the repeated desolation of our homes. Our women have been ravished. Our prophets and brethren have been imprisoned and murdered, & the people en masse have been exterminated from their midst.

We have appealed to Judges[?] and Governors of those States for redress of our wrongs in vain, and when we applied to the Presidents of the United States for our rights we were told “your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.”

We now appeal to the God of our Fathers & Prophets for protection against the hostilities of any Mob that shall invade our Territory, and invoke the aid of the heavens to strengthen us in defending ourselves against further aggressions. (Mountain Meadows Massacre; supra, p. 20, italics and punctuation in original.)

Note the characterization by Elder Richards of any prospective violence by the Saints as defensive. It is to protect them against further oppression. It is not to take the offensive, but to resist evil and act in defense.

Brigham Young viewed any risk of violence in a similarly defensive way. He wrote a letter to his nephew on September 4, 1857 in which he referred to the general conspiracy of the Latter-day Saints’ enemies who:

…have for years been seeking, to make a final or fatal blow at the kingdom. We had determined years ago, if a mob again attack us, whether led by their own passions, or constitutionally legalized by the General Government or Government of any of the States or territories, that we will resist their aggressions, by making an appeal to God, and our own right arms, for that protection which has ever been denied us by Christianized and civilized nations…(Id., p. 22.)

Again, the view being expressed is defensive. The Latter-day “kingdom” is threatened by outside mob violence. Any response is for “protection” of the Church.

Even John Taylor, a normally peaceful and reserved soul, made this declaration:

It was when I heard the Brethren say, “You are free, brethren, you are free; and you may prove yourselves before God and man that you are willing to defend yourselves against tyrants and oppressors.” When I heard this, I was full of joy, and who would not be? Who would not rather die than bow down to the yoke of the enemy? It would sweeten death to a man to know that he should lay down his life in defense of freedom and the kingdom of God, rather than to longer bow to the cruelty of mobs, even when the mob have the name of being legalized by the nation. I thank God, and I rejoice that this people are determined to be free of mobocracy and oppression, and that they are determined to have peace, if they have to fight for it. (Id., p. 23.)

This is again describing defensive action. Elder Taylor speaks in favor of “defending” themselves against “tyrants and oppressors.” Nothing in the statement is soliciting the Saints to become the aggressors. Becoming “free of mobocracy and oppression” is a defensive, not an offensive call to arms.

The perception among the leadership of the Church, both at the general and local level, was the same: This was a time to defend against an outward threat. Local leader, Isaac C. Haight made similar remarks:

The sentiments that were expressed by the stake president, Isaac C. Haight, and recorded in the minutes of the ward meeting held on September 6, seemed to be shared by many of his listeners: “They [the Missourians] drove us out to starve. When we pled for mercy, Haun’s Mill was our answer, and when we asked for bread they gave us a stone. We left the confines of civilization and came far into the wilderness where we could worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience without annoyance to our neighbors. We resolved that if they would leave us alone we would never trouble them. But the Gentiles will not leave us alone. They have followed and hounded us. They come among us asking us to trade with them, and in the name of humanity to feed them. All of these we have done and now they are sending an army to exterminate us. So far as I am concerned I have been driven from my home the last time. I am prepared to feed to the Gentiles the same bread they have fed to us. God being my helper I will give the last ounce of strength and if need be my last drop of blood in defense of Zion.” (Id., p. 52.)

These words are not a call to mere undirected violence. They speak of being “followed and hounded” by the real aggressors. It is not a call to become the aggressors.

Brooks provides further background for the Mountain Meadows Massacre: “Ever since the days of Missouri and Nauvoo, ever since the martyrdom of their prophet, the Saints had been taught that they should never cease to importune the Lord to avenge the blood of the prophets. Now here were men who had boasted openly and defiantly they had helped to kill Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. One had displayed the pistol which fired the fatal shot.” (Id., p. 53.)

When the killing occurred on the Mountain Meadows site, over a hundred people were murdered by a group of Latter-day Saints, who, with the help of Indian accomplices, acted out of a sense of vengeance and defense. The killers viewed themselves as the victims, and the ones being killed as the aggressors who deserved to be killed. The victims were not “innocent” because of their general complicity in persecuting the Saints, and their specific boasting of involvement in Joseph and Hyrum Smith’s deaths. The “guilt” of these victims seemed to justify the act of mass murder.

It is one thing to act when stirred to passionate violence, but it is another to feel justified in the aftermath. “Exaggeration, misrepresentation, sensation, ungrounded fears, unreasoning hate, desire for revenge, yes, even the lust for property of the emigrants, all combined to give justification which, once the crime was done, looked inadequate and flimsy indeed.” (Id., p. 59.) Ultimately, this act of violence became the subject of shame and ignominy. It lapsed into hushed embarrassment, until finally a prosecution was demanded for the deed. A politically crafted trial resulted in the conviction and execution of John D. Lee as evidence of the Saints’ disapproval of the murders. He was the scapegoat whose life was taken to cover the embarrassment of the people of Utah.

Juanita Brooks’ study includes this somber observation of the Saints involved in these murders: “A careful study of the lives of the participants will show that they were normally not highwayman or murders; they were sober and industrious folk, deeply religious, superstitious, perhaps, but unquestioningly loyal to their church.” (Id., p. 218.)

As strangely bizarre as this event may seem, it falls within a pattern of religious violence which Mark Jurgensmeyer has studied and documented. His study involves divergent religious traditions which all involve specific acts of violence. The study is a result of his curiosity about how religion and violence seem to be so often linked together. He notes: “What puzzles me is not why bad things are done by bad people, but rather why bad things are done by people who otherwise appear to be good—in cases of religious terrorism, by pious people dedicated to a moral vision of the world.” (Jurgensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, p. 7.) Jurgensmeyer’s words are echoed in the Church’s own publication which, describing the Mountain Meadows Massacre, stated: “Brother Turley said what makes the massacre extraordinarily disturbing is ‘the idea of good people killing good people.’” (LDS Church News for week ending June 2, 2007. Salt Lake City: Deseret News; p. 4.) Of course, “good” people just do not kill good people. One of them (and it is almost invariably the ones doing the killing) must by definition be something other than “good.” The article calls this “what may be the most troubling event in the Church’s turbulent 19 century past.” (Id., p. 3.) It is “the most troubling event” because it exposes the Saints vulnerability to troublesome group behavior. It puts the Saints in the middle of the Book of Mormon’s awful formula that it is the wicked who kill the wicked. The righteous do not participate. As a body of religiously committed believers, the Latter-day Saints have control over whether they will ever again join in religious-based killing.

Jurgensmeyer begins his book’s first discussion of religiously-justified killing with Reverend Mike Bray, who began a campaign of bombing abortion clinics in Delaware, and continued his campaign across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. He was ultimately convicted in 1985 of destroying seven clinics and causing over a million dollars in property damages.

Jurgensmeyer writes: “When I talked with Rev. Bray in his suburban home many years later, I found nothing sinister or intensely fanatical about him. He was a cheerful, handsome man in his early 40s who liked to be called Mike. Hardly the image of an ignorant, narrow-minded fundamentalist, Mike Bray enjoyed a glass of wine before dinner and talked knowledgeably about theology and political ideas.” (Id., p. 21.)

As the dilemma of religious violence by a Christian believer is considered, the history of Christian ideas becomes relevant. “When Christianity vaulted into the status of state religion in the fourth century C.E., Church leaders began to reject pacifism and accept the doctrine of a just war, an idea first stated by Cicero and later developed by Ambrose and Augustine. This idea justified the use of military force under certain conditions, including proportionality—the expectation that more lives would be saved by the use of force than would be lost—and legitimacy, the notion that the undertaking must be approved by an established authority.” (Id., p. 25.) “Bray sees the legitimacy of using violence …to resist what he regards as murder—abortion…In Bray’s mind, a little violence is a small price to pay for the possibility of fulfilling God’s law and establishing His kingdom on earth.” (Id., p. 30.)

Reverend Bray’s justification is not unlike the Mountain Meadows Massacre mentality. It is not an abandonment of principle which justifies violence, but fidelity to it. There is an ominous rational similarity found in these two different events with widely different actors. Just as Brigham Young and John Taylor saw the events leading up to the massacre in terms of a large, aggressive and persecuting society with the Saints under siege, so, too, Rev. Bray saw his actions as defensive. “As Mike Bray explained, his justification of violence against abortion clinics is not the result of a personal vendetta against agencies with which he and others have moral differences, but the consequences of a grand religious vision. His position is part of a great crusade conducted by a Christian subculture in America that considers itself at war with the larger society, and to some extent victimized by it.” (Id., p. 36.)

In his discussion of another Christian struggle in Northern Ireland, Jurgensmeyer writes:

“[R]eligion is a part of the equation.” Elaborating, Wright explained that he not only had an obligation to defend his religious compatriates—by violence if necessary—but also that religion provided him a moral sanction to enter into violent encounters. According to Wright, he and his Protestant comrades “have the right to fight, to defend and to die for what we believe is Truth.”

Interestingly, some of the paramilitary activists on the Catholic side of the conflict said much the same thing about their own dedication to the struggle and their own moral justifications for killing. (Id., p. 41.)

Again the terminology is defensive. Both sides of the conflict are “defending” themselves against the aggressor. And both feel their position to be morally sanctioned even when it involves violence and killing.

In the case of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, an American-raised Jewish physician, there is little doubt of his educational attainments or status as a solid citizen. He was elected to the Hebron City Council, and was regarded as one of the city’s leading Jewish residents. On February 24, 1994, he visited the shrine at the Tomb of the Patriarchs to meditate on the eve of Purim, when his religious observances were interrupted by a loud demonstration of Arab youths who chanted “slaughter the Jews.” In the midst of his religious observances, this was too much. He took deep offense and felt his faith, his people and his God had been attacked. Jurgensmeyer records what happened next:

Goldstein had had enough. Before dawn the next morning, on the day of Purim, he returned to the shrine, this time entering the mosque on the Muslim side of the building, where early-rising worshippers were beginning their morning prayers. Goldstein pulled out a Galil assault rifle he had hidden in his coat and began firing indiscriminately into the crowd of men and boys who were prayerfully kneeling on the carpeted floor. After firing 111 shots and killing more than thirty worshippers, and injuring scores more, Goldstein was overwhelmed by the crowd and pummeled to death.” (Id., p., 51.)

We don’t associate the Jewish faith with violence and murder. The legacy of Christian persecution of the Jews and the modern Muslim reaction to the State of Israel makes us think about Judaism as the target of violence, not the originator of it. Yet the actions of Dr. Goldstein are justified by the thinking of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of Israel’s right-wing Kach Party. Speaking of the destiny of Jews, Rabbi Kahane’s thoughts are explained by him in these words:

If violence was necessary to achieve this remarkable alteration of the course of history, Rabbi Kahane said, so be it. As one of Kahane’s collegues explained, they had “no problem” with “using force” to achieve religious goals. They reminded me that Jewish law allowed for two kinds of just war: obligatory and permissible. The former was required for defense, and the latter was allowed when it seemed prudent for a state to do so. The determination of when the conditions existed for a just war was to be made by a council of elders—the Sanhedrin—or a prophet, in the case of permissible war. (Id., p. 57.)

Violence is not to be ruled out, under proper circumstances. The idea of proper use of violence, however, is linked to “defense” in this view of Judaism. This is the constant theme. Violence becomes tolerable when it is perpetrated as a defense, not as an offense. And all these acts are justified by this notion across these diverse religious traditions.

When he interviewed one of the founders of Hamas, Dr. Abdul Aziz Rantisi, Jurgensmeyer found the rationalization used to justify Islamic terrorism against Israel framed in the same defensive language. He gives us the reasons the Hamas volunteers were willing to perform suicide bombings:

“It is important for you to understand,” he said, “that we are the victims in this struggle, not the cause of it.” He repeated this at the end of my interview, when I asked Rantisi in what way he thought Hamas was misunderstood and what misrepresentations he would like to correct. “You think we are the aggressors,” Rantisi said. “That is the number one misunderstanding. We are not: we are the victims.” (Id., p. 75.)

The tension between Sikhism and Hinduism in the Punjab region of India has become a bloody test of wills in recent decades. Though normally regarded as peaceful, both sides of this contest have shown an appetite for killing. With respect to the Sikh attitude toward violence in this conflict, Jurgensmeyer explains:

One of the surviving leaders of the movement concurred that violence was sanctioned in Sikhism, but ordinarily as a defensive act. The leader, Sohan Singh, whose name is associated with one of the main coordinating bodies of the militant Sikh movement—the Sohan Sing Panthic Committee—was in his eighties when I interviewed him in the suburb of Mohalli near Chandigarh. Sohan Singh spoke eloquently about the role of love in Sikhism, saying that the tradition emphasizes love and allows conversion only through moral suasion. But, Sohan Singh said, if others try to kill you, you are warranted in trying to kill them. He argued that the violence of the Sikhs in recent years was primarily a response to the violence of the state. Sohan Singh claimed that the killings undertaken by militants were always done for a purpose, they were not “killing for killing’s sake.” Moreover, Sohan Singh said that warnings were given and punishment was meted out only if the offenders persisted in the conduct that the militants regarded as offensive. (Id., p. 100.)

Even Buddhism has a history of religious violence and killing. As in other religious traditions, attempts to limit violence to direct defensive action alone, has been met with rationalized “exceptions” which allows the violence to go further:

Using violence nondefensively for the purpose of political expansion is prohibited under Buddhist rules. But armed defense—even warfare—has been justified on the grounds that such violence has been in the nature of response, not intent. Like Islam, the great expansion of Buddhism in various parts of the world has been credited in part to the support given it by victorious kings and military forces who have claimed to be fighting only to defend the faith against infidels and to establish peaceful moral order. (Id., p. 114.)

Once again, we see how easily the use of “defense” is spread into offense with little constraint. The idea of resisting persecution as a pretext for initiating violence is seductive, even to a pacifist belief system. This observation illustrates the point:

Billy Wright, who had been convicted for his role in the terrorist acts conducted by the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitary group, said that “there’s no doubt” that within “every terrorist” there is the conviction that “he is the victim.” According to Wright, this allows the terrorist to justify his action “morally within his own mind.” (Id., p. 170.)

It is little wonder a volume of scripture saved up for publication until the latter-days would address this issue so directly, and with so many chapters. The “war chapters” of the Book of Mormon are distressing to some readers. They wonder why so much of the book is devoted to descriptions of the ways in which violence began and the manner in which the violence was conducted. Yet, the prophet writers and abridgers claimed to have seen our day and been acquainted with our times. They concluded these descriptions of religious violence were necessary to inform us about how to live out our days.

The verse we consider in this Chapter arises out of religious warfare. The victims of religious violence acted defensively in the battle. The tide of the fight had turned, and the victims gained the upper hand. The aggressors were terrified by the change in the tide of battle. Sensing their terror, their commander stopped the fight and withdrew a pace from engaging the enemy. He then assured them their lives would be spared if the violence ended.

Under any of the scenarios discussed in this Chapter, continuing violence would be justified by the view of the participants. The “victims” of the warfare all claimed to be acting defensively, and therefore appropriately. They all viewed themselves as “victims” and not aggressors. They thought they could resort to violence because they didn’t “start” the violence. Every example we have here, from Mountain Meadows and the Latter-day Saints, to the Christian abortion clinic bombers, to the persecuted Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Mormons and Buddhists, used rationalizations to justify their killing of those they claimed were the aggressors. But in this Chapter’s verse, the Book of Mormon teaches us to end violence as soon as the aggressors end their aggression. There is no need to continue killing to exterminate the enemy. Rather, allowing the enemy the chance for life is required by Christ’s teachings. The aggressors are told all they need to do to end the violence is agree to “go your way and come not again to war against us.” There is no authorization for preventative war. There is no approval for retaliation. The only kind of violence justified is purely defensive, not some rationalized “defensive” attack. Defensive struggle is limited to the time in which the aggressor is actively aggressive. Once the aggressor is willing to end the violence, the violence should end.

Alma 48: 14: “Now the Nephites were taught to defend themselves against their enemies, even to the shedding of blood if it were necessary; yea, and they were also taught never to give an offense, yea, and never to raise the sword except it were against an enemy, except it were to preserve their lives.”

The Book of Mormon emerges in print in an era which is scarred by religious violence. In anticipation of the times, it provides us a solution. The Saints of Southern Utah in 1857 did not heed its guidance. As Juanita Brooks put it, in the sober reflection of hindsight, all the reasons of the time “give justification which, once the crime was done, looked inadequate and flimsy indeed.” (Mountain Meadows Massacre, supra, p. 59.) Now it just looks wrong and embarrassing.

Our challenge is not in understanding these principles. Rather, it is in implementing them. When the provocation seems to justify violence, we should still refrain. When the enemy ceases its aggression, we should not retaliate. When we would have total victory ahead, if we just press the battle farther, we should allow our enemy to surrender and find peace.

The Latter-day Saints have not faced their last conflict with violence. Their future contains the probability of violence directed at them. When those times arrive, it will be a difficult thing to model General Moroni’s teachings in the verse of this Chapter, and not the attitude of Stake President Haight and Bishop John D. Lee. They could not see themselves inside the greater historical judgments of later calm reflection. That is to be expected. Killing occurs in times of excitement and fervor. Confrontations where killing is required do not involve people whose lives are at that moment calm and reflective. They come while emotions are running high and dispassionate deliberation isn’t possible. We must decide in calm times how we will govern ourselves in exciting, turbulent times.

President Spencer W. warned us about trusting violence for deliverance. Although his remarks were addressed to the greater culture, it applies to the Saints, doubly. For the Saints, of all people, should know better. His landmark talk included these warnings:

We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 5: 44–55.)

We forget that if we are righteous the Lord will either not suffer our enemies to come upon us—and this is the special promise to the inhabitants of the land of the Americas (see 2 Ne. 1: 7)—or he will fight our battles for us (Exod. 14: 14; D&C 98: 38, to name only two references of many). This he is able to do, for as he said at the time of his betrayal,

“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26: 53.)

We can imagine what fearsome soldiers they could be. King Jehosaphat and his people were delivered by such a troop (see 2 Chron. 20), and when Elisha’s life was threatened, he comforted his servant by saying,

“Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” (2 Kings 6: 16).

The Lord then opened the eyes of the servant, “And he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” (V. 17.)

Enoch, too, was a man of great faith who would not be distracted from his duties by the enemy:

“And so great was the faith of Enoch, that he led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of lions was heard out of the wilderness; and all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch.” (Moses 7: 13.)

What are we to fear when the Lord is with us? Can

we not take the Lord at his word and exercise a particle of faith in him? Our assignment is affirmative; to forsake the things of the world as ends in themselves; to leave off idolatry and press forward in faith; to carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies. We must leave off the worship of modern-day idols and a reliance on the “arm of flesh” for the Lord has said to all the world in our day, “I will not spare any that remain in Babylon.” (D&C 64: 24.) (Kimball, Spencer W. The False Gods We Worship; Ensign, June, 1976, pp. 3–6.)