In February 1846, in the depths of a winter so bitter that the Mississippi River froze solid enough to drive wagon carts over it, a group of people fled their homes in Nauvoo, Illinois to avoid being murdered, and crossed the river into Iowa. Once across the Mississippi, they set up tents and tried to figure out what to do next. They were Mormons, the only group of people aside from the Cherokee to be evicted from their homes under threat of death, then forced to walk halfway across the country to an entirely new home.
These people, some of whom were my ancestors, walked 1,300 miles across North America, in a journey that lasted almost 18 months. Hundreds of Latter-day Saints, as they called themselves, died on the way, of illness, exhaustion, exposure and starvation. The survivors began trickling into the Great Salt Lake Valley in late July 1847. Brigham Young, leader and organizer of the trek, first saw the Mormons' new home from the back of a wagon he was too ill to leave on July 24, 1847. Young sat up in his sickbed, surveyed the scene, then said, "This is the right place. Drive on."
The Saints were home. Their joy at being able to claim a secure home (as its only other inhabitants were Native Americans whom they had few qualms about displacing), stop traveling, plant crops (fairly late in the year), and live without fear of persecution isn't hard to imagine.
The saga of the Saints crossing the plains left an indelible mark on the collective Mormon psyche. July 24, or Pioneer Day, became one of the most important dates in the Mormon calendar. A legal holiday in Utah, it is also celebrated in Mormon communities outside of Utah.
I grew up in a tiny Mormon town in southern Arizona, 800 miles south of Salt Lake City. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, when I was a little girl, we'd don pioneer costumes and have a parade. We children often complained: walking a mile or two in heavy clothing in southern Arizona in late July isn't really fun. That was the point, we were told firmly: to help us understand the sacrifices our ancestors made so that we could grow up in Zion, the promised land -- meaning not just Utah but the whole intermountain West, breathtaking in its beauty, expansiveness and possibility.
As far as I'm concerned, my activity in the Mormon church is irrelevant to my identity as a Mormon. Mormons call themselves saints; I suppose these days I'm a secular saint rather than a devout one. But that indelible mark made on the collective Mormon psyche by the trek across the plains? It's as vivid and deep on my psyche as on anyone's. What it marks is not my relationship to orthodoxy but to sacrifice, landscape, the unknown, and change.
I am proud of and humbled by the actions of my ancestors. They abandoned the familiar and strode bravely into the unknown, confident that doing so would enable a better future. They gave up possessions, relationships that no longer nurtured them, ideologies they had outgrown. They did the hardest thing they could, both because they could and because they had no other choice.
I cannot count the number of people who have said to me,"I have profound doubts about the church -- its politics, its doctrines, its social structures. I don't always feel at home. But I'll never stop attending or voice certain doubts in public because that would render the sacrifices of my ancestors null and void."
And I say, "How is doing the opposite of what your ancestors did the best way to honor their actions? Isn't the best way to honor their examples simply to follow it?"
I currently live in Salt Lake City, with ample opportunity to celebrate Pioneer Day: concerts in the tabernacle, a ball, a powwow, fireworks, the obligatory parade. I'll probably skip it, because these days Pioneer Day is about settling down, when the spirit that made the arrival in the Salt Lake Valley possible in the first place was about rising up. Mormons today are instructed to submit to authority, when the impetus for the trek across America was rejection of authority.
So this year I celebrate by imagining the Pioneer Day parade of my latter-day dreams. The marshals of my parade wouldn't be men who make pronouncements about doctrine, but the contemporary pioneers who challenge and remake the ways Mormons lives their day-to-day lives.
These people have challenged the status quo in one way or another. Instead of settling down, they've shaken things up, trying to create important, fundamental changes. That is the pioneer spirit I choose to celebrate. A parade led by these pioneers is a parade I would proudly march in.
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Holidays: Pioneer Day in United States
"I cannot count the number of people who have said to me,'I have profound doubts about the church -- its politics, its doctrines, its social structures. I don't always feel at home. But I'll never stop attending or voice certain doubts in public because that would render the sacrifices of my ancestors null and void.'"
This comment raises a host of issues. Perhaps it would be best to just say that the sentiment -- while widespread -- is not that well supported by the facts. The Mormon Church of Brigham Young's time was much different from the Mormon Church of today.
HOW ABOUT IF ALL THOSE MISSIONS THAT ARE ABOUT CONVERSION MOVE TO PAKISTAN, WHERE MILLIONS NEED HELP DESPERATELY?
It's so silly to send missions to Japan, France, whatever.
Today, Proposition 8 in California was knocked down as having no purpose other than to assert the moral superiority of straight over Gay.
YOUR Church and many of you paid millions and millions of dollars (which might have fed millions of hungry children) for this, and performed nearly the entirety of the task to get the proposition on the ballot. (Although others joined in later)
IF THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK YOUR FAITH SHOULD BE ABOUT --- please speak up to one another, to your leaders, to the elders of the church, etc.
DO YOU belong in others' private lives?
IS IT RIGHT for a religion that is 2% of California (far less than the Gays) to step in?
It seemed REALLY INCONGRUOUS to me to read the celebratory article about your pioneers -- headed on HP by a photo of the Gay Dustin Lance Black -- when the present version of the Church seems to see no problem in being the oppressors, after having once been the oppressed.
SORRY, I personally think you all should be ashamed, and be willing to turn the direction back to God, and away from political meddling.
IT'S EVEN MORE COLD-BLOODED THAN THAT
IT'S ABOUT TREATING THE MEMBERS LIKE A FLOCK OF DUCKS WHO MUST BE KEPT IN A ROW TO KEEP THE LEADERS IN POWER
--- besides the fascism, which is definitely there.....
----If Gay Mormon kid A sees the California thing, he/she might actually want to be who God made him/her. Since there is no way to be Gay in the Mormon church, other than the antiquated and antidiluvian "promise to be celibate", those people would be lost.
Then maybe their brothers and sisters would question the perfection of the church, and there you go!
And the significant minority who KNEW THIS WAS WRONG are going to Hell with the fascists, because they didn't organize, speak up, and do the right thing -- they are trained that the church will ostracize them, costing them relatives, friends, and livelihoods, which is too much to face.
I personally feel FEAR AND REVULSION WHEN I DRIVE PAST THE LA TEMPLE -- it's almost like being a turkey in mid-November: you feel hunted.
While I appreciate that she appears to be a feminist and secular, honoring the mormons for their history is like honoring the catholics for the inquistition.
I always say that the Mormon way of life is good, except for those not lucky enough to "fit in", due to the luck of genetic combinations: those people either act out or are abused, and, if lucky, leave.
Here are some facts that show that simply calling the LDS Church evil is grossly oversimplifying the whole thing:
Utah was the first territory to grant women the right to vote. This right was taken away from Utah women by the federal government with the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887.
Joseph Smith ordained black men to the LDS Preisthood and supported the abolition of slavery when he ran for president. Racism is considered a sin in the Church and is preached against by the Church's leaders.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported LBGT rights in Salt Lake City.
The LDS Church provides millions of dollars worth of aid in a variety of situations.
For a more balanced view than you'll get from the comments below, read about Mormons and social issues on wikipedia.
For a Mormon view, talk to a Mormon, go to mormon.org, lds.org, or fairlds.org.
Her book "Housewife to Heretic" is a searing account of the shabby, dishonest way church officials (principally Gordon B. Hinckley) treated her.
Today Hinckley is dead, Hofmann is in jail, and Sonia runs a little B&B near a natural hot spring. Karma, baby.
(P.S. Oh, since the "church" treats women so well, can you tell me why young women are leaving the "church" in droves?)
The reason Mormons submit to authority is because it is the Mormons who run this state. And when they followed their leaders out of Navou? Submission. Married their young daughters off? Submission. The LDS cult is all about submission, just like any other organized religion.
And they have taken over our governance in this state so we all have to abide by the tenants of the LDS heiarchy.
So what is there for loyal LDS believers to stand up to? They like it the way it is, their way.
But I see that if you want to establish a newly created religion you need events in which to anchor new converts' faith and with which you can whip up a little religious zeal from time to time. Hence the official party line on the trek and Brigham Young being referred to as "America's Moses". Never mind the rift in the LDS and the legal problems which resulted in the LDS being asked to leave Illinois. Needless to say, BY's involvement in the butchering at Mountain Meadows is not celebrated so much.
Some other FACTS that show that these issues are a lot more complicated than you are making them out to be:
Utah was the first territory to grant women the right to vote. This right was taken away from Utah women by the federal government with the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887.
Joseph Smith ordained black men to the LDS Preisthood and supported the abolition of slavery when he ran for president.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported LBGT rights in Salt Lake City.
There are several other examples of how many of the comments below are flat out wrong or at best distortions of the truth. The issue is a lot grayer than "The LDS Church is evil."
Have know several native americans they are all shock to learn they are Jewish!
Of course I save the best for last. Up until the 1970's the Morman's taught that the lighter your skin color is a symbol of your salvation. Thus Minorities with a dark tan need not apply.
Prop 8.
They went out of their way to do that.
And that'll take some un-doing, if Mormons want to play 'oppressed minority.'