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Notes
1. This approach is particularly pronounced in the essays by Henshaw et al., Deane, and Eliason. However, even some of the more antiwar essays often either omit references to the belligerent actions of these men or seek to justify or reinterpret them in order to fit these examples within their pacifist moral structures. For example, in his essay casting the Book of Mormon as a “comprehensive pacifist injunction,” Duran outlines a useful “conflict-morality grid,” wherein a two-by-two grid is characterized by morality on the vertical axis and conflict on the horizontal axis (64). He then proceeds to identify examples from the Book of Mormon of behavior in each of the four cells. However, Duran’s interpretive argument seems strained when he argues that there are no examples of “Cell 1” behavior (moral war) in the Book of Mormon. When the author insists that “the highly moral always avoid conflict” in Book of Mormon narratives (70), the reader is left wondering how he would classify the behavior of the Nephites who defended the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi or the sons of those converted Lamanites who in turn came to the defense of both their people and the Nephites.
2. Similar arguments are also made by Duran, who articulates a holistic vision of the Book of Mormon as a “pacifist manifesto” (57), and Rees, who provides a moving literary-dramatic interpretation of Third Nephi as an “archetypal conflict between the forces of darkness/war and light/peace” (42).
3. Various essayists gave somewhat more attention to this question’s corollary: What, if anything, could ever make killing morally right, or at least permissible? Defense of the lives and religious and civil liberties of oneself and one’s family were the most commonly cited rationales, with several essays pointing to Captain Moroni’s title of liberty speech from the Book of Mormon. Some of the more strictly pacifist essays did not look kindly on such rationales and seemed to argue that there is never any justification for violence.
4. The authors mention the Mountain Meadows massacre in an endnote, referring the reader to the excellent LDS Church—commissioned study by Walker, Turley, and Leonard. However, rather than using the massacre as an example of inexcusable violence perpetrated by a group of Latter-day Saints contrary to the tenets of their faith, as does the study they cite, they instead objectionably herald the incident as an example of how Latter-day Saints “responded violently only when … they believed they were under imminent threat” (241). While perhaps true in some general sense, such an excuse belies the evil complexities of the massacre (and of violence and mass atrocities in general), the main event of which was ordered by local Church leaders who felt ensnared in a commitment trap that made them think it necessary to cover up two murders and other violence that had already been visibly perpetrated by white Mormon men (as the study by Walker et al. explains).
5. Lindell suggests that conceptions of Native Americans during the Joseph Smith era were unambiguously positive, omitting any reference to the Book of Mormon’s racially inflected description of latter-day descendants of Lehi as “a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people” (Mormon 5:15). Such terminology could have reflected preexistent attitudes in Smith’s (and his fellow Mormons‘) cultural background, indicating that the racist shift she describes in the early Young era may not have been such a stark reversal from the Smith era. In fact, such language in the Book of Mormon could have even fanned the flames of the Brigham Young-era racism that she decries. Moreover, it is possible that the shift in racial perceptions she describes was a consequence of the Mormon settlers’ heightened sense of threat from Native Americans due to increasing competition for resources, rather than a cause of that heightened competition and violence.
6. Yorgason ultimately concludes that “each person comprehends war and peace in significant measure through their own national background” (113), observing that the Korean Mormon interviewees “did not turn quickly to specifically Mormon scriptural war narratives” (108). However, it was not entirely clear that Yorgason fully accounted for each member’s degree of identification with the LDS Church (for example, level of activity, intensity of belief, time since conversion, and LDS genealogical heritage). Such a factor could influence, in particular, the likelihood that a member would see Mormonism as relevant to questions of war and peace, and even a member’s familiarity with or understanding of LDS teachings on the subject.
7. For instance, Deane gives some examples of the deterrent methods employed by Book of Mormon peoples, though he inappropriately conf lates offensive tactics used in the context of an ongoing military conflict (which he highlights in the Book of Mormon’s war chapters) with preemptive war and the broader Bush Doctrine. Deane also argues that weapons of mass destruction create an even more compelling justification for preemptive offensive military action than was present in Book of Mormon times. On this same topic, Henshaw et al. summarize several ways in which some LDS national security professionals have reconciled their work in America’s nuclear armaments sector with their moral beliefs, including by justifying the U.S. nuclear capacity in defensive deterrent terms.
8. LDS tradition is not without resources for examining this subject, as evident in the Book of Mormon example of Nephites defending the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, whose sons in turn defend the Nephites. (See Alma 27:23; 53:10–12, 16–17.) However, this issue goes largely unaddressed in this volume—particularly by the more pacifist essayists.
9. The implications of the modern military industrial state for civil liberties and collective societal morality could potentially be another topic to analyze in the context of LDS thought and culture, particularly in light of the First Presidency message by Spencer W. Kimball, “The False Gods We Worship,” published in the Ensign in June 1976 and referenced by several of the authors.
Copyright 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
2013