Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (Updated)

Ever since Harold Bloom's brilliant The American Religion was published, a difficult stalemate in Mormon studies has at least been partially broken. Mormon apologists and their anti-Mormon adversaries have always shot at each other like World War I armies engaged in trench warfare, trying to prove or disprove what is ultimately empirically and secularly unverifiable. Bloom's great insight was to examine Mormonism as a rhetorical system -- critically examining the doctrine as an intellectual construct within the context of American culture. He (and eventually many others) were surprised by just how attractive, encouraging, and quintessentially American Mormon doctrine really is. (And maybe this surprise will have the side effect of inducing sympathetic outsiders to take our truth claims more seriously.) Other scholars are beginning to follow Bloom's lead. Terryl L. Givens' The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, myths, and the Construction of Heresy is a small gem of Mormon historiography and cultural criticism. The first half of the book is a tour-de-force recounting of Mormonism's eruption into 19th-century American consciousness. Because Jackson-era Americans were unable to admit they could not tolerate a new, home-grown religion (because of American constitutional doctrine of official religious tolerance), Givens says they recast their conflict with the upstart Mormons by stereotyping members of the new church as sinister, "Oriental" despots The second half of the book documents the construction of this image of Mormon heresy through 75 years of anti-Mormon fiction. These books were very successful commercially and in molding public opinion, Givens says, because of the newness of the "novel" as a genre and a new, vastly expanding reading audience willing to be sexually titillated by lurid tales of polygamy. (Many of these novels sound similar to the sensational made-for-TV movies that glut television network schedules. The more things change . . .) Here we meet the lustful, cunning Mormon elder with his hypnotic powers (Americans were unable to admit that anyone, especially women, would join the church of their own free will: they had to be Mesmerized.) Some of us have seen the camp, amusing old silent movie Trapped by the Mormons. The evil missionary "Isoldi Keene" comes straight out of these anti-Mormon novels. The movie is pretty funny by today's standards: only later, after it's over do you reflect how similar this stigmatizing of Mormons as "the Other" is to anti-Semitism. The final chapter details the Mormon public image in the 20th century. Occasionally you will find traces of the old stereotype, like the infamous 1993 episode of the CBS television series "Picket Fences" where a Mormon splinter group engages in polygamy with young girls. Givens points out how this gives the creators of the show the opportunity to strut their lofty liberal tolerance, while at the same time once again appealing to the prurient interests of the audience. But

1. Inquisition: The heretic has always been a much graver threat to spiritual solidarity than the infidel. The fires of the Inquisition scorched the lapsed Christian or deviant believer, not the professing Jew or the Muslim. 2. Authority: If the believer accepts whatever is as origin or primary, then anything else is schism or apostasy from the primal, sanctioned order, and authority may legitimately identify and censure such deviance wherever it occurs. 3. Enlightenment: Doctrines peculiar to the LDS: 1. Miracles can be wrought by faith 2. Special revelations are now being given to men through Prophets, Seers, and revelators. 3. The nature of God is not a mystery. Givens says, "Mystification is a concomitant of such discontinuity and is the very heart of Christian tradition." Charles Dickens says Mormonism can be seen as "the refusal to endow its own origins with the mystic transcendence, while endowing those origins with universal import since they represent the implementation of the fullest gospel dispensation ever." "The typical Mormon conception of a miracle is that the miraculous event, though entirely natural, is simply not understood." 4. Republican values: Given the American tradition of innovation and independence and hostility towards authoritarianism and conformity, the attacks on Mormon heresy seem odd. What weight or legitimacy does a label like heresy have in a Democratic society? In American society every Christian doctrine has been widely debated and discussed. Debate, forums, freedom of speech has been fundamental rights protected by Republican government values. "Christians have argued, often passionately, over every conceivable point of Christian doctrine from the filioque to the immaculate conception" . Stephen Robinson states, Mormons are labeled heretics for "opinions and practices that are freely tolerated in other main stream denominations." Freedom of Religion protected and guaranteed religious tolerance and reduced heretical persecutions by a religious governmental entity. 5. Sphere of religion: George Q. Cannon claimed, "the pure Gospel was lost because of propagation, for centuries, by so-called Christian ministers, of the soul destroying and damnable heresy that God cannot or will not speak to man again from the heavens; that God will not reveal his will, send his angels, or exercise his power in the affairs of earth as much as he did in ancient days." Givens says, "What takes Mormonism out of the sphere of religion may be driven by external than internal factors; the shift may be as much a function of rhetorical strategies and political imperatives as it is a consequence of some morphological or sociological evolution". Illinois politicians feared LDS political power. Missourians feared fictional slave revolt myths. Anti-Mormon paralleled many of the same tactics as anti-catholic strategies in the early 1840s. Governor Boggs executive order read in part, as follows, "Mormons must be treated as ene

Have you ever wondered at the character of hate and prejudice in a society that claims to revere diversity? Terryl Givens uses the Mormon experience to explain how that happens, and specifically demonstrates the role of fiction in exacerbating persecution. The book is the result of obvious exhaustive research, and is well put together, the arguments clear and concise. It is, however, a scholarly effort in both approach and language. Keep your dictionary handy. You may need it. I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and recommend the book to Mormons and non-Mormons alike. It's very interesting. Dorothy Peterson