by Simon 12 Replies latest social entertainment
Just finished season 1 on Netflix.
Holy crap, I had NO IDEA of the history of the Mormons!
I always thought they were like the JWs, or the Quakers, but they were full on fascists committing massacres.
I'm sure they are hating having more people be aware of their past, but I gotta say, it is more event-filled than the JW history.
The origins of the Mormons and the Millerites (JW, SDA, Kellogg's Corn Flakes etc) are very closely tied together, they originated in the same area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district which those religious ideas also streamed into the civil war (abolitionism) and the Oneida community (the movement that brought about utopian American communism/socialism).
These groups have had long standing disputes https://mit.irr.org/joseph-smith-william-miller-and-prophetic-speculation - I think a lot of the ACTUAL history is long dead and buried.
Simon, sort of like people think when they read the history of the Watchtower Society. All most see is the PR version.
A lot of cowboy and Western novels mention once in a while how people shouldn't travel too far out into certain "Mormon territory" lest they get "hunted down and slaughtered by those folk." The Mormon Meadow Massacres of 1857 were considered the most hideous example of the cost of human life by religious fanaticism on American soil until the attacks on 9/11.
My father's second wife was an exMormon and as a boy I got to hear stories all about the Mormon Massacres and even about the Mormon Witches!
Mormons had their own period of "fear of witches" among them and had trials so ghastly that much of it is pretty much deeply hidden. However there are people who, out of protest and rebellion within the culture, to defy and remember the innocent blood spilled, steal Mormon temple garments and practice "Mormon curses" upon LDS church members--or so my step mother told me, and do so often circling LDS homes at night (or at least once did so in the past). Her ex-husband belonged to such a priesthood/coven at one time.
There's a lot of weird Mormon history.
It wasn't until I left the JWs and stumbled upon the LDS that I realised just how fortunate we are been Ex-JWs. Well at least from a historical and theological perspective.
1800's were bonkers.
Witnesses aren't Millerites. They're a modern version of 17-19th Century British and Continental Literalism. Big difference. Much of Russellite doctrine came from what was then called "age to come." That's not Adventism. That's Literalism. See my mom's introduction to Separate Identity, vol 2.
In my 3rd Great Grandmother's autobiography, she tells of warnings against Mormon violence as she and her family crossed the plains in 1854. Also she mentions something about Mormon violence in California. Interesting, but I've never followed up on it.
@vienne: Witnesses are a third schism sect descendent from Bible Students which themselves claim to be Russell’s Watch Tower who was initially an adherent of and heavily influenced by Miller, but after the Great Disappointment he came up with his own dates.
Miller was in direct competition with Joseph Smith. I read they both had many end of the world predictions and when one failed, the other would try to poach followers until the next prediction failed and then the poaching reversed.
Watch Tower International Bible Students Association (IBSA) is an extant organization claiming to be the continuation from Russell’s original vision, not part of WTBTS (Rutherford’s organization), many people seem confused as the WTBTS falsely makes claim to be IBSA.
If it wasn't for Knorr taking the religion to the world. Wtbts probably would have ended up like the bible students. A fundamentalist religion confined to the north eastern borders of the United States.
