Alma: Secret Combinations

Background

The Book of Alma is filled with mention of secret combinations associated with kingmakers and related plots.

I personally find conspiracy theories as boring and pointless as Sherlock from Elementary does. However, a fascination with conspiracy theories is part of the human condition. Nineteenth-century readers were quite familiar with the so-called Burr conspiracy which occurred in the century's first decade. It was reported in multiple newspapers. It was likely the most famous national event of that time.

 

In sum, Aaron Burr, after he killed Alexander Hamilton, started gathering supporters to create a country out of the Mississippi Valley. Within fifty years, the United States would be divided North versus South. But at the time, the divide was between the Atlantic states and the states/territories to the West. The perception was that the Eastern states were run by elite politicians and moneymakers who wanted to rob farmers and ordinary people of their goods and money and land, a perception that was fueled, in part, by the Whiskey Rebellion (and yes, that perception lingers).

 

Burr's rhetoric and his behavior (which may have been part of a kind of Ponzi scheme) were reported--in part by people who claimed to have joined the conspiracy (see Sherlock's point above). And he was ultimately found not guilty since his behavior seems to have fallen into blustering bombastic populist egotistic self-flattery that didn't result in any actual violent military action. He did leave the United States after his trial, however.

 

It is entirely a matter of speculation whether the average citizen, for whom Burr claimed to be acting, would have favored Burr in the long run any more than any other high-handed self-appointed autocrat. The Book of Mormon, for one, pairs elitism with local kingmakers. Captain Moroni heads to the country's capital to restore the government there, an act that many nineteenth-century readers would have endorsed. (In 1814, the Burning of Washington resulted in the president being temporarily ousted from the capital.) 

 

In other words, the Federal government was perceived by many groups, including what became the Mormons, as a necessary check to what James Madison called "the spirit of locality," that is, the bullying that can occur in a pure democracy (the inevitable bullying here is why the electoral college is still a decent form of democracy). The attitude of the Federal government at that time, however, was to restrict Federal involvement, as demonstrated in Barron v. Baltimore, in which a property owner's loss of income was not (fully) redressed despite the state violating the owner's rights; the Supreme Court determined that the problem was between the owner and the state. The issue wasn't a Federal one. 

The problem of rights and the individual is complex and indicates that libertarianism is not automatically a state v. Federal issue, at least not historically. Utah Mormons would later have a fraught relationship with the Feds. Some of the seeds of distrust were sown in the Nauvoo years when petitions for Federal protection against state harassment were, from the view of Joseph Smith and his followers, ignored. 

 

That disillusionment was to come. Early readers of The Book of Mormon would have encountered a more optimistic solution in The Book of Mormon's Captain Moroni. And it is notable that despite the time period's Millennial fever, many low to middleclass Americans were not interested in revolutions of the messy kind (however proud they were of their own revolution) but, rather, in balanced and rational governments so they could get on with life. 

 

I highly recommend!

Freemasonry & Themes in The Book of Mormon

 

Any discussion of Mormons and conspiracies brings up freemasonry. 

Nineteenth-century Mormons, including Joseph Smith, were well-aware of the inherent tension of freemasonry.

On the one hand was the desire for secret or gnostic knowledge separate from metaphysical, "educated" theoretical blatherings amongst Eastern elites. Freemasonry returned rituals to Protestantism as well as the mysticism and active participation that not only the Enlightenment but late Calvinism seemed to be wiping out (aside from revivals, of course, but even revivals maintained a kind of top-down expectation of "correct" performance--see social media). The desire for knowledge and ritual is arguably a human one. Freemasonry likely mirrors the Ancient Roman soldier's interest in Mithraism. Like the Ancient Roman soldier, many non-educated (and educated) Americans wanted something real and powerful and non-labelly yet profound--something other than country club religion (which frankly, Ancient Roman paganism rather resembled for the elite).

Freemasonry appeared to deliver. (It also filled a gap in American culture as church and state increasingly separated after the American Revolution.)

 

And yet, on the other side, was an intense dislike of secret societies, which dislike often expanded to include a dislike of elites making backroom deals at the expense of the "common" man (see above). In the early 1800s, the "common" citizen was a farmer while Masons were often merchants and professionals. Not wealthy earners from our modern point of view. But not "common" enough. (However, that image is complicated by the sheer number of social organizations, freemasonry and otherwise, within the United States at the time.)

 

The tensions here resided in Gothicism, which began in the eighteenth century, and go a long way to explaining the popularity of Dracula and Ann Radcliffe.

 

On the one hand was a yearning for the ritualistic, knightly Catholic past, including its buildings and Saints and priests.

 

On the other was a dislike of Catholic doctrine (as understood by Protestants).

 

On the one hand was a desire for supernatural romanticism, elements of the human experience that the carefully constructed arguments of Protestantism and the Enlightenment seemed to be eliminating.

 

On the other was a paranoid dislike of secrecy and stuff happening behind closed doors (see pamphlets about Maria Monk).

 

So, on the one hand, The Book of Mormon promises that more mysteries are forthcoming. On the other, it contains an ongoing worry about conspiring groups.

 

The text continually marks the difference: namely, positive communities want to expand rights while negative societies want to remove them. The problem is arguably more difficult. But the characterizations remain consistent within the text.

 

The problem, eventually, in Nauvoo, was that Joseph Smith perceived polygamy and its rational outgrowth, temple ceremonies, as positives that joined more and more members together--while others saw such things as violations of basic Christianity and therefore, negative and destructive (and secretive) influences.

 

I am reminded of a scene in That Hideous Strength in which the main character, Mark, who has always wanted to be in "the know" of a secret society doesn't even recognize when he becomes part of one with the ragged beggar man.

 

C.S. Lewis returns here to an idea that he raises in Surprised by Joy. He paints in an entirely positive light the boys' secret brotherhood at the worst private school he attended. Yet the later "in-group" mentality of intellectuals and poseurs and social climbers, he paints wholly negatively. The first group didn't set out to be a society. The boys were merely trying to survive and helped each other out ("we few, we happy few"). The second group, however, could only exist if "outsiders" were torn down; they couldn't advance unless others were put in their place.

 

As definitions--society that joins people together through ties of fellowship is good; society that bands together to mock and find things wrong with others is bad--these are quite usable even if the events to which they are applied can be quite complex. Such definitions appear in The Book of Mormon over and over again. 

 

Regarding freemasonry and the temple, Joseph Smith borrowed from whatever was to hand--as did lots of people. Like with most human institutions, one monolithic freemasonry organization didn't exist in the United States, especially since women, Native Americans, Jews, and Blacks created their own lodges. 

 

"Borrowing"--even appropriation--is not the same as a conspiracy.