The Challenge of LDS Church Engagement
And I’m your host, Shawn McCraney. Three calls to Lyman Kirkland of the LDS Church Public Relations – none returned. This all started when an LDS caller complained that I had never actually telephoned Thomas Monson and invited him on the program. I told her I would. In so doing I was instructed to go through the LDS PR department – specifically through one Lyman Kirkland. But Lyman won’t return my calls.
Now understand, the gauntlet was thrown down by one of your members. I’ve been doing this program for a number of years now and could have called with the invitation at any time. But your own members suggest I extend this invitation as it being only right, and so we are. And you won’t call me back, Lyman. It is really amazing that your leadership tells its congregants to get online and defend their faith but that same leadership won’t get on television to do the same. I promise I’ll be polite. I promise, I let you speak – but I just want to be able to sit down and ask a few questions of you. Yes, they will be difficult questions, but valid nonetheless.
So Lyman Kirkland, who I was told I needed to call, where art thou? Can’t you at least stand up and reject the invitation on some grounds or another? Tell me I’m not worth your time or something? And then to the rest of you faithful out there, you have to wonder: “Of what are they afraid?” I am NOT an apologist. I will not argue with them. But I will prompt and probe them to speak what they really believe and teach as official doctrine. (Hey, do you think that . . .) . . . maybe they are afraid to reveal these things on the air? (hmmmm?) Do you think they know that I know when they are spinning and are afraid when I won’t let them get away with it right here on live TV?
Now look – I mean really listen closely – this is truly my heart: I don’t CARE, at all, what people choose to believe. Worship a blonde monkey-god in gold lamay for all I care. But don’t lie. And don’t use subtle inferences to appear one way when you are another. That’s all. Just tell us what you really teach and believe so we can judge whether you’re Christian or not. Lyman? (beat) Kirkland? (beat) Lyman Kirkland?! Call me, friend.
Engaging with Christian Ministries
At Alathea Ministries, we stand behind the right of all Christian Ministries to reach out to the LDS as they are led of the Lord. We don’t really appreciate some methods (like the General Conference people) but we rarely make a public stance against any ministry or their methods. In addition to UTLM.org and others like “Living Hope Ministries,” we’ve found another ministry method we appreciate. It’s called “Transitions.” I have with me tonight the president of the Transitions project, Ken Mullholland, formerly of the Salt Lake City Theological Seminary. Brother Ken, wilkommen! And with that, let’s have a prayer.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
Two more shows on the Mormon Mountain Meadows Murders: Tonight, on the conviction of scapegoat John D. Lee, and next week, the LDS response to it all over the years – including Hinckley’s speech. There were a number of faithful LDS men involved – leaders – in the Mormon Mountain Meadow Massacre – like Lee, Dame, Haight, Higbee, Klingensmith, and Stewart, but from past experience it was well known that above them all, John D. Lee would be the best candidate to take one for the team.
John D. Lee was an adopted son of Brigham Young and went deep in his devotion to both Young and Mormonism. When all the cards hit the table, the Lees were convinced, writes Bagley that Brigham Young “selected John D. Lee as the goat because he was well aware that Lee would never refuse to do anything he was called on to do by authorities (obviously).
The Fate of John D. Lee
They needed to place the blame on someone and Lee was told over and over again by leading Mormon authorities that if he would “stay quiet, or remain faithful, he would escape the whole ordeal unharmed. Lee believed these reassurances and kept his mouth shut and his allegiances to the church. Fourteen years after the incident at the meadows, the twelve “apostles” excommunicated three of the participants: Stake President Isaac Haight, John D. Lee and George Wood for “Committing a great sin.” Bagley writes that Lee was confident that Brigham Young had allowed him to be cut off.
Historical Context of John D. Lee's Betrayal
A wise purpose & not for any malicious intent.
What Lee didn’t realize was his own adoptive father was setting him up for a major betrayal. Because of greater federal pressure to get to the bottom of the massacre, and the Mormon churches desire to end the whole ugly affair as it had been an enormous burr in the saddle of Young, something needed to be done and someone had to take the fall. In typical Brigham Young fashion, he denounced the murderers in public while at the same time reassuring them privately of their safety and security. Lee followed the prophet hook, line, and sinker.
But Young’s past was catching up with him. Attorney William Hickman, also known as “Wild Bill Hickman,” whom Young once recommended for a federal judicial post, turned on him by writing a book called, Brigham’s Destroying Angel, and not only admitted in lurid detail his numerous crimes of bloodshed, but implicated Young as an accomplice in most of them.
The Fallout from Young's Legal Troubles
Then Young’s last multiple wife, Ann Eliza Webb, sued him for divorce and demanded a $1,000.00 a month in alimony. She then wrote, Wife No. 19, or the Story of a Life in Bondage, which ridiculed and embarrassed him. Every federal prosecutor even slightly familiar with the case knew Young somehow had his hand in the Mountain Meadows massacre but attempts to connect him had been countered by an impenetrable wall of in-house silence and denial. With Young and Mormonism cracking and the country crying for justice, the wheels of political compromise began turning and the need and identity for a scapegoat was a no brainer. John D. Lee.
Prior to Lee being arrested (while hiding in a chicken coup in Southern Utah) Brigham Young was warned of the pending capture and was offered horses and riders who could race to Lee’s location and rescue him from the law. Young thought deeply for a moment, then replied:
“The time will come when they will try John D. Lee and not the Mormon church, and that is all we have ever wanted. Go to bed and sleep, for it is alright.”
Two trials were held. In the first, Mormonism and Young did everything possible to clam up and protect Lee. Young even bankrolled Lee’s defense. A few days after Lee’s arrest he was visited by Apostles Smith, Orson Hyde, Erastus Snow, and other church leaders. Lee recorded:
“They all told me to stand to my integrity and all would come out all right in the end.”
Brigham Young visited Rachael Lee, John’s wife on his annual visit south and said:
“Tell brother John to stand to his integrity to the end, and not a hair of his head shall be harmed.”
Bagley writes:
(READ QUOTE FROM PAGE 299 HERE) A man named Sumner Howard from Michigan became the US Attorney for the Utah Territory in April of 1876 and long story short struck up a deal with Young and the Church. It seemed that if Howard would agree to impanel a Mormon jury and place affidavits Brigham Young and Apostle Smith had submitted in evidence and exonerate Mormon authorities of complicity in the murders, Young would deliver witnesses and documents that would guarantee the conviction of Lee – and any and all other indictments against LDS men held prisoner for the massacre would be dropped as they were threatening to turn states evidence on Young.
The Trials and Lee's Realization
Needless to say, the second trial of Lee was nothing like the first, and Lee began to see the entire tribe that had once stood by supporting him, turn. But Lee held out that his adoptive father would never betray him. In his opening statements, prosecuting attorney Howard made it clear that he had not come to try Brigham Young and the LDS church but to prosecute John D. Lee for his crimes.
As the trial progressed on, Lee was certain IN SPITE OF ALL THE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY that the Mormon leaders would save him. Bagley writes:
“He only slowly realized that “those low, deceitful, treacherous, cowardly, dastardly syncophants and serfs had combined to fasten the rope around his neck.”
And they’ve named a university after one of them. Bagley adds:
“While not a single faithful Mormon appeared for the prosecution at the first trial, enough testified at the second to make up a respectable congregation. By the time the prosecution rested, Lee knew he had been deceived.”
I wonder what John D. Lee would say to the Mormon leaders claims that you can never go wrong placing your trust in the prophets and apostles of the Mormon church?
After three hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Lee of first degree.
John D. Lee's Trial and Conviction
Murder on Sept 20th. His attorney said:
“In the first trial, Mormonism prevented conviction and at the second trial Mormonism insured conviction.”
Whatever benefits Mormonism, right boys? Don’t cha just love institutions and the men who run them?
The last one on the jury, Andrew Correy said:
“Some one had to be sacrificed, so at last I gave in.” Then he quoted from Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon:
“Better for one man to die than for a whole nation to dwindle in unbelief.”
Even though Lee was troubled by the backhanded betrayal, he still held out that somehow he would be saved in the end. “I have many a warm-hearted noble minded friend whom I believe will never see me sacrificed at the shrine of imposition bigotry & falsehood & ignorance. My firm conviction is that all will come out right in the end.” So much for “firm convictions,” “testimonies of modern prophets,” and the idea that there is safety in “following the prophet.”
Execution of John D. Lee
Lee was sentenced to die by one Judge Boreman on October 10th, 1876. He had the choice to be hanged, shot, or beheaded, which was the preferred method of blood atonement. As a means to claim his innocence, Lee elected to be shot. Knowing a grand cover-up when he saw one, Judge Boreman at the sentencing of Lee, said that Lee’s trial revealed that “high LDS church authorities had inaugurated and decided upon the wholesale slaughter of the emigrants” and that from the time the crime took place there had been “a persistent and determined opposition to an investigation of the massacre.”
In light of the single conviction of Lee for the whole of the Mormon Mountain Meadows Massacre, Bagley remarks that nobody ever seemed to ask how one man could individually kill over 120 people or why so much evidence was allowed to be withheld by Mormons in the first trial then revealed so readily in the second.
On the afternoon of March 21st, 1877, Lee was loaded into an enclosed carriage and driven south to Mountain Meadows. On the morning of March 23rd, three wagons formed a semi-circle 100 yards east of where the one-time rock memorial stood before Young had it disassembled. A reporter from the San Francisco Bulletin described the scene as “weird and strange beyond description.” About seventy-five Utahns gathered at the site in spite of great efforts to keep the event secret.
Lee spent some time in transit to his destiny with death with a Methodist Minister named George Stokes who said Lee admitted to killing five people. He showed no emotion. Lee made out his last will and split his property between his three remaining wives. He passed around a bottle of “bitters” and took a last drink. As Marshal Nelson read Lee the death warrant and asked him if he had any last words, a gathering of still unknown men today spread out in their places behind the three wagons. Lee wanted the privileged to keep his hat on which signaled all those there to witness to remove theirs. He requested that each of his three wives receive a copy of a recently taken photographic portrait. Prosecuting attorney Sumner said it would happen. Then Lee spoke:
(READ QUOTE FROM 316)
When Lee finished, Pastor Stokes kneeled beside him and offered a fervent prayer. He was then blindfolded but requested his hands remain unbound. He sat on the edge of his pine coffin, raised his arms, and shouted: “Center my heart boys!” meaning, aim well. The newspapers said he uttered something else against Brigham Young, but some witnesses suggest otherwise. And then at exactly 11 am the order was given: “Ready, Aim, Fire!” And John D. Lee fell quietly into his coffin. Reports said that his feet remained resting on the ground, and unlike his victims, he died without a struggle.
Aftermath and Reflection
Like the Mormon Church before and after him, John D. Lee never apologized for his part in the Mormon Mountain Meadows Massacre nor did he ever beg for forgiveness. To the bitter end, he was convinced he had done nothing wrong. I wonder what his opinion is today. Next week, we’ll conclude with some follow-up events to Lee’s execution and the present-day LDS response.
Let’s open up the phone lines.
(801) 973-8820 (801) 973-TV20
Please, have a question ready. The operators cannot spend time speaking with you in depth.
First time callers. LDS callers preferred. And turn down them television sets!
Let’s take a break and come back for your phone calls.
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