In 1860, the great British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton traveled to New York and Washington, D.C., then made his way across the continent to Utah. The book he wrote about his journey, “City of the Saints,” is a rambling collection of observations and interviews by a man who had explored unknown corners of Africa and the Orient, studying languages, customs and faiths wherever he traveled. Now he wanted to know what Mormons and Mormonism were all about.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was, by then, not quite 30 years old. But it had already attracted many followers, including growing numbers of zealots from northern Europe. Its believers had faced persecution and vitriolic vilification – the kind of libels that have persisted so long that the question might be posed even now about whether “people are still suspicious” of Mormonism. The United States was on the eve of its great Civil War, and there seemed a real possibility that the Mormon territory of Utah might break away on its own. “Having read and heard much about Utah as it is said to be,” Burton told the Mormon leader Brigham Young, “I was anxious to see Utah as it is.”
Burton was generally skeptical about the religions he studied, and tended to put them in historical and social contexts that many of the faithful would find offensive. He traced the origins of the Mormon religion to the Methodism of Rev. John Wesley and George Whitfield that had won over many Americans on the frontier in the 18th and early 19th centuries:
“Falling among uneducated men, the doctrine, both in England and the colonies, was received with a bewilderment of enthusiasm, and it soon produced the usual fruits of such phrensy [sic] – prophecies that fixed the end of the world for the 28th of February, 1763, miraculous discernment of angels and devils, mighty comings of the power of God and outpourings of the Spirit, rhapsodies and prophecies, dreams and visions, accompanied by rollings, jerks, and barks, roarings and convulsions, syncope, catalepsy, and the other hysterical affections and obscure disorders of the brain, forming the characteristic symptoms of religious mania.”
“In that mysticism and marvel-love, which are the columns and corner-stones of religion,” wrote Burton, “Mormonism thus easily arose.”
And yet – Burton admired Brigham Young tremendously. “The first impression left upon my mind,” Burton wrote, “was that the Prophet [Young] is no common man, and that he has none of the weakness and vanity which characterize the common uncommon man.”
After much study and three weeks in Salt Lake City, Burton felt confident dismissing the many scurrilous diatribes written about the Mormons by zealous bigots and profiteering opportunists playing to widespread prejudice. Burton concluded as a quite independent observer in 1860 that the Mormons were “a peaceful, industrious and law-abiding people, whose whole history has been a course of cruel persecution.”
If there is any slight inkling of such intolerance left in American society, it is long past the time – 150 years past the time, at least – when it should be put aside and Mormons assured (if they need it, which I rather doubt) that they are in the mainstream of America’s marvelously varied religious life.
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