When the first church history buffs came to Nauvoo in the 1930s, the Mormon population was less than one million, concentrated in Utah and a few western pockets. Today, as the final touches are put on the new temple, Mormons number more than ten million, with most adherents living outside the United States. And, as the upcoming Salt Lake Winter Olympics attest, public acceptance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is widespread. Mobs are no longer harassing the Latter-day Saint community, for one thing. Mormons no longer have to pull handcarts across the plains in order to preserve their beliefs and way of life. And far fewer Americans unfairly write off the Church as a puzzling bunch of Utah-dwelling, caffeine-shunning polygamists.
This change comes partly as a result of the church's evolution, including the 1978 repeal of the ban on blacks from the priesthood and the visibility brought on by their growing numbers. It is also a result of a concerted public relations effort by the church to be seen as Christians. While many evangelical Christian groups still regard Mormonism as a cult, mainline Christians have been more responsive to these overtures.
Ostling describes the Mormon position as "the predicament of respectability"--the growing pains a group faces as it gains mainstream acceptance. It is the realization that a group's identity is in part reliant upon its exclusion. Sites like Nauvoo provide an opportunity to maintain, even celebrate, a feeling of exclusion, persecution, and hardship while simultaneously cultivating mainstream acceptability. After all, what could be more mainstream than a historical reenactment? (It is worth noting that many trips to Nauvoo are coupled with a visit to nearby New Salem, a reconstruction of a village where Abraham Lincoln once lived.) But Nauvoo is a paradox: The Latter-day Saints were driven out by anti-Mormon activities, and yet Mormonism's dramatic return to Nauvoo is a success story for American freedom of religion. As one travels through Nauvoo it is presented as simultaneously fully American and uniquely Mormon.
In 1989, the Smithsonian Institution purchased for $100,000 one of the two "sun stones" that decorated the original temple. Museum officials called the stone "a central symbol of the heroic efforts by the Mormon pioneers in their movement from upstate New York to Utah to maintain their belief system." This is a sentiment that the church encourages, always leading with Nauvoo's relevance to the country as a whole while downplaying the less conformist and more mysterious aspects of the church--references to polygamy, for example, are rare in the G-rated Nauvoo. A Nauvoo Restoration Incorporated manual from the 1960s encourages guides to "radiate a spiritual quality and positive attitude." This is shown, the manual says, "not by preaching or proselytizing but rather by your knowledge and appreciation of America as well as the Church … Specific references to deeds in church should be avoided." In one sense this is an intentional whitewashing of Mormonism. In another light, however, Nauvoo is simply recognizing the intertwined nature of a uniquely American religion and pioneer life. As Wallace Stegner wrote, "the tradition of the pioneer that is strong all through the west is a cult in Utah."
Back in today's Nauvoo, MaryIrene Homer gains spiritual strength by looking back to the lives of her ancestors. She takes pride in retelling what she's learned in her Church History and Teachings of the Prophet classes, pulling out Scripture to share passages and pointing out interesting facts about Nauvoo. She points to the temple and eagerly notes how some sections of the building are made with small bricks, others with large bricks. This mimics the original temple, she says. The pioneers used the small stones when life was safe and the larger stones when anti-Mormon activity flared. Like its temple, the story of Nauvoo is told in bits and pieces, anecdotes and artifacts, tourist trinkets and sacred texts. Every retelling of the story, be it by an elderly missionary at a reconstructed bakery or by the silent stones of a reconstructed temple, is mindful, like Homer, to celebrate the Mormons' triumphant return to Nauvoo, yet careful to preserve the details of the struggles that shaped it.
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Mormon America: The Power and the
Promise By Richard and Joan Ostling | Harper San Francisco | 1999 Amazon.com (click here for paperback) or Barnes & Noble.com (click here for paperback) |
Walking a mile in Nauvoo shoes
'The predictability of respectability'