Unfair Judgments and Labels

Maybe it is just me, but after Christmas and New Year's, I am done with the cold and I am ready for the spring.  Before Christmas and New Years, the snow and wintery weather remind me that it is time to be with family and to celebrate the holidays.  After those holidays, however, I want it to be warm again.  I feel this way now more than ever, perhaps because warm weather means a return home and a chance to be close to loved ones again.  Forgive my complaining, but February in Texas is supposed to be like late March in Utah, and this past week it has been bitter cold instead of warm, moving toward spring.  Oh well, things could be much worse.  :)

Anti-Catholic and Anti-Mormon Political Cartoon, Circa 1880

As I've been working on my dissertation, I've been struck by the language and judgments that we often make about others who are different than ourselves.  As I've been working on my dissertation, I've come across a number of letters and newspaper articles that made such claims about Mormons during the 1800s.

In 1848, as many of the Saints were starving at Winter Quarters, Colonel Thomas L. Kane a friendly non-Mormon took it upon himself to raise awareness of their plight in the East, hoping to secure funds to ease their suffering.  Kane held a meeting in New York City in early March for just such a purpose.  Reporting this meeting, the editor of the New York Herald wrote, "These Mormons have cut a great figure during the last few years; but their present destitute condition has sprung from their ignorance and fanaticism.  By the practice of common sense, and common decency, they might have continued to live in the Western United States [remember this is 1848] up to the day of judgment.  They were, however, led astray by vanity and fanaticism" ("The Mormon Meeting," New York Herald, 4 March 1848).  In Brigham Young's correspondence for 1850, I came across a letter from an anonymous citizen of California who wrote that he "did not think the civilized part of the world could produce such a mass of base, disreputable, ignorant, ill-looking, and licentious people" as the Saints.  In the political cartoon above, the cartoonist depicted Roman Catholicism and Mormonism as "foreign reptiles" that posed a grave threat to American liberty.

Consider the assumptions and meanness that these kind of statements required.  To have blamed the plight of the pioneers at Winter Quarters on themselves is hardly a fair assessment of the circumstances.    I'm a historian, and I fully acknowledge the fact that Latter-day Saints have not always been and are not always perfect.  Sometimes unwise people made bad situations worse by saying or doing things that ought not to have been said or done.  Sometimes we used labels and words that made judgments as unfair about non-Mormons as the ones they made about us.  But regardless of this, people were starving and dying at Winter Quarters.  Was that really the time to make such a statement?

For the man from California, who clearly had not enjoyed his short time traveling through Utah to California's gold fields, were those words really necessary?  Surely whatever may have been said or done did not merit the judgments he cast upon the body of the Saints.  And finally for the cartoonist who saw Catholics and Mormons as less than human, as reptiles, could he not see that these people were his brothers and sisters?

Perhaps we don't write such editorials or letters, or publish such cartoons.  But how often do we make statements about others that are utterly unfair and ungenerous toward them?  How often do we let our hatred or anger or political opinions or whatever else get in the way of our ability to see those who are different from us as our brothers and sisters?  I'm afraid that I am guilty of such thoughts far too often.  In my arrogance, I forget that other people may be going through great difficulties and may be having experiences that are beyond their control.  The things I blame them for may not be entirely their fault.  And even if I am right about the wrongness of their behavior or whatever, my being right never entitles me to make the kind of judgments that call into question their divine nature and their humanity.  Rather, I have a continued responsibility to love and serve them and to refrain from making unkind and unfair judgments about those who are different.

May we all strive to be a little kinder, a little more patient, a little more loving.  For surely, in our own struggles, we wish for others to grant us those same allowances and mercies.

Brett