The Meaning of Martyrdom
Nicole Kelley, in this number of Church History (75/4: 723ff), argues that early Christian martyr texts were designed as philosophical exercises intended to prepare Christians for their own deaths, even though most of them were quite safe from the lions of the Coliseum. Kelley’s interpretation set me to thinking about the use of Joseph Smith’s Martyrdom by Saints no longer under threat of mob violence or privation during forced migrations.
Some revisionists, joining Mormon critics of the last 150 years or so, have suggested that we ought to call a fish a fish and admit that Smith was lynched, executed by vigilantes who saw him as a threat to their way of life. No martyr would ever die with a pistol in his hand, Smith had no idea he was going to his death, and while the vigilantes crossed the line, they were not acting without cause. Mormonism’s martyr complex has been criticized as vehemently as the Christian martyr complex. Some have even had the revisionist impulse to suggest that martyrdom is a late sanitization of Mormon history, an attempt to eradicate from the first phase of the Restoration its grisly and painful aspects.
Others believe that Joseph Smith cannot be understood except as a martyr. In this view, espoused almost immediately after Joseph’s death by some of his closest followers, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”[1] I am interested to understand how current Latter-day Saints understand his martyrdom. To frame the debate, I’ll list some basic facts about the last days of his life and then a few of the prior models.
 First the facts:
- Joseph was seen as a martyr immediately (certain)
- Joseph strongly suspected, at least two days before his death, that he would die at Carthage (likely though not certain)
- Joseph fought back, shooting some of the mobbers (certain)
- Joseph pled for mercy, calling out a well-accepted Masonic distress signal used by Revolutionary Soldiers to protect themselves as British prisoners of war (fairly certain)
- Joseph received a state funeral; thousands of grieving Saints attended his viewing at the Mansion House (certain)
- Many Latter-day Saints felt that their world had been horribly perhaps terminally disrupted by his death, some even suggesting that Nature itself mourned his passing (certain)
- Many Latter-day Saints swore oaths of vengeance against the attackers; others later imagined that his murderers rotted alive as a punishment (certain)
- Many Latter-day Saints compared his death at Carthage to Jesus’s death at Golgotha (certain)
There were several ways to interpret the martyrdom (this is by no means an exhaustive list; each of them was proposed by antebellum Mormons)
- Joseph was called beyond the veil to prepare the way for his followers
- Joseph had to seal his testimony with his blood to make it binding on his generation
- Joseph’s death proved the moral bankruptcy of the United States of America
- Joseph’s death overcame any foibles he may have suffered from, ensuring his place in heaven
- Joseph death placed him firmly among the apostles, prophets, even the Savior
- Joseph showed his followers the way of martyrdom (Heber Kimball even called himself a living martyr during the polygamy skirmishes)
- He needed to become an angel so that he could intervene on behalf of his people in the courts of Heaven.
- His death was necessary to begin Armageddon.
How do modern Mormons understand martyrdom? How do you understand martyrdom? How does the notion of martyrdom affect your experience of Mormonism?
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[1] This was a Christian commonplace for centuries, including antebellum America and dates to a translation of Tertullian
[2] Yes, Staples, there are other footnotes, but they are spiritual footnotes, only visible to the initiate (though you can find them in my martyrdom chapter when it finally comes out, and Davis Bitton’s book is a pleasant introduction to the topic)
Yes he did. He told his companions that he was going like a lamb to the slaughter.
I think this discussion depends very much on your definition of martyr. There’s Martyr, practically with a capital “M,” that seems to apply to the “dive into the lion’s mouth” variety of martyr. Then there are martyrs who are made martyrs by the actions of others. Neither Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr. sought death in the service of their causes and yet it came to them anyway. Being willing to fight against unjust death is not a commentary on someone’s devotion to their cause. Smith did know he was in danger; moreover, he and others had been in danger for some time. He did not recant in the face of that danger and even went to face it. He had been leaving when the question was raised about how it would look if he fled and what it would mean to the Saints. Then, beleaguered prophet and tortured husband and father that he was, he allowed himself to be placed in the hands of the enemy. As a result, he was martyred. It seems simple and clear to me.
Comment by Proud Daughter of Eve — February 24, 2007 @ 7:07 pm
I believe he embraced martyrdom (there is evidence of this embrace from 1843 with the Boggs extraction attempts and his habeas corpus show trial, as well as his accounts of the Missouri War particularly). The revisionist quibbles relate to a) the fact that the “lamb to slaughter” is retrospective reconstruction, b) he had not finalized succession, and c) he was making long-term plans even as he was being taken to Carthage.
Of note, the standard reconstruction of the decision to return (he was escaping to the Rockies according to some reasonable accounts when he was called back) blames Emma, who had fallen sway to the wiles of certain Nauvoo businessmen representing those outside the inner circle.
Comment by smb — February 24, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
Then there are martyrs who are made martyrs by the actions of others. Neither Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr. sought death in the service of their causes and yet it came to them anyway.
I don’t think JS was seeking out death, but I do believe he knew it was coming.
On that note, most certainly Martin Luther King Jr. knew he was in danger. Any outspoken african-american was in danger during the civil rights movement, and knew they were in danger. Death (in the south especially) was all around them. I fail to see how knowing you are in danger alone can define martyrdom.
Comment by mami — February 24, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
the word “martyr” has been so diluted that to try and say someone might not fit a “set definition” of a martyr when that person’s followers believe it in their hearts seems pretty fruitless efforts. It’s like the word “hero.” So overused that we don’t have an accurate understanding of the original or most commonly used meaning of the word. In fact, these days we have to add the superlative “super” before “hero” to accurately describe “hero.”
As for me, I believe strongly in this gospel. Right now the gospel of Jesus Christ requires my life. If someday it requires my death, then so be it. I personally don’t add any extra mythical layer to anyone who dies for their cause. It is easy to die for one’s cause. It is much harder to LIVE for one’s cause. That requires far more effort than the few moments of pain before life extinguishes. I think no more, nor any less of Joseph Smith because he was murdered (or martyred) because of his beliefs. The sun shines and the rain pours on both good martyrs and bad martyrs.
Comment by Dan — February 24, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
I’ve come to see Joseph’s death as the tragic outcome of multiple building tensions that I don’t think can be simply divided into good vs. bad. I don’t think it was necessary, but perhaps it was inevitable given the circumstances. That he fought back is not a black mark against him in my eyes, and I am not against applying the label ‘martyr’ (with the understanding that it was a complicated situation.)
Comment by Jared* — February 24, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
smb,
I seem to recall certain murmurings that Joseph’s death was an act of God because he was thinking of denouncing polygamy? Ever heard that one?
As for martyrdom… Note how the church has gone beyond martyrdom to Joseph’s “ascension.” The new Joseph Smith movie has him falling out of the window but never reaching the ground. Instead, his perspective shifts to the heavens and he says “oh Lord, my God” not as a masonic cry of distress, but as words of adulation before God.
Any notion in early Christianity that martyrdom had to be accepted willingly?
Comment by Ronan — February 25, 2007 @ 1:01 am
Taking on one aspect of the question, I myself continue to be mystified by the idea of “sealing his testimony with his blood.” Does one’s willingness to face death without recanting their beliefs mean that those beliefs are validated as being true? If so, well…the list of those who have died for their beliefs whose names were not “Joseph Smith” is almost too long to even begin. And wrongheaded ideas? Plenty of “martyrs” for those too. And those that are willing to kill themselves for their beliefs? Does that make their convictions that much more true? Conversely, does the witness not “sealed with blood” become somehow less true? Again, that creates a long list of names, but this time we would be downgrading the credibility of those who did not die violent deaths. So Adam, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Israel, Joshua ben-Nun, and–skipping ahead–John the brother of James, are not as believable? Methinks John Taylor’s romantically poetic eulogy, now canonized in the Doctrine and Convenants, has been taken a little too much to heart by generations of LDS.
Comment by John — February 25, 2007 @ 1:09 am
Definitions of “martyr” in several dictionaries I consulted contain the word “willingly” e.g.: “martyr: A person who willingly suffers death rather than renounce his or her religion.” To me this means a person who is being subjected to death by others because of his or her religion. Therefore, suicides don’t count, IMHO. By this definition, Stephen (Acts 7) is clearly a martyr. There could be a reasonable dispute about whether Joseph fits the definition since the mob may have been motivated by factors other than his religion, but that seems like hair-splitting.
Ultimately, whether Joseph was a “martyr” or whether he “sealed his testimony with his blood” are not of critical importance. The facts of his death show, to me, that he was wiling to die for his beliefs. This reinforces his testimony but, as John points out, that is also true of many misguided or even disturbed people. Therefore, while the details of his death, (or even the details of his life) are interesting, fascinating even, what matters more to me is the value of the things the Lord restored to us through him.
Comment by MCQ — February 25, 2007 @ 2:18 am
Knowing that God sees the end from the beginning and shares that knowledge with his prophets is a major factor in judging Joseph’s martyrdom. Did not the Lord speak in D&C 132:60 the price Joseph would pay?
Perhaps on another note Joseph’s final plead wasn’t for mercy, but like the Savior’s cry of:
There is strong evidence he was bearing his final testimony. See Psalm 22 to make the connect. A leap of faith from doubt and despair to a true witness to those round about it was all foretold and written. Can you see the paradigm shift?
Comment by Emma's Son — February 25, 2007 @ 3:42 am
Ronan, yes, there was that strand. I didn’t put it in the initial post because I thought it was inflammatory. This was a view taken by several who ultimately sided with the Reorganization. The argument is that Smith was taken because he was perverting the Gospel with polygamy. What still amazes me is how Woodruff’s pronouncement that God would kill the prophet misleading his people managed to stick in the Utah church when Smith was killed over polygamy.
And the Christian martyrology did encompass the embrace of death, Ronan, at least as they constructed the prior experiences (martyrdom per se was rare among those who were actively revering the martyrs whose writings remain).
And regarding the ascension, I actually quibbled with someone in Sunstone about this being a change or extension. I think the current movie is quite true to the original sentiments, as immediate ascension was at the core of martyrdom.
I think one reason for the disconnect is that our modern death culture is such an anemic version of prior ones. Our difficulty responding to the “blood of martyrs” and the possible sacred meaning of premature death related to religious belief speaks volumes about our current estrangement from our historically fairly robust death culture.
Comment by Sam MB — February 25, 2007 @ 7:23 am
I’ve been reviewing Pres. Hinckley’s Oct. 2006 talk “The Faith to Move Mountains” in preparation for this morning’s Relief Society lesson. He lists points in Joseph Smith’s life for which he (GBH) is grateful. I’m struck by how each of those points demonstrates a conscious action on the part of Joseph Smith: “I am grateful for the faith that took him into the grove to pray … to translate and publish the Book of Mormon … that he went to the Lord in prayer … that … he organized the Church and set it on its course …”
The last point he mentions is: “I thank him for the gift of his life as a testimony to the truth of this work.”
In keeping with the pattern of the earlier items, it would seem that GBH considers Joseph a willing martyr (he *gave* his life) and also that it was given as a testimony. I suppose that could refer either to Joseph Smith’s death, or to the way he conducted his life. Either way, it was a willing, conscious gift for the benefit of others more than in his own self-interest.
It was a martyrdom.
Comment by Ardis Parshall — February 25, 2007 @ 10:11 am
Wasn’t he climbing out of a second story window when he was shot? Isn’t that an issue in anti-Mormon literature
Comment by Norbert — February 25, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
The big question is whether he was going to the window to call for brother Masons to protect him, or to jump out to safety, or simply in a panic. he was shot in the window and toppled out to the ground below, where he was shot again by most accounts (and by one embellished and fanciful account was protected from beheading by an angelic burst of light).
Comment by smb — February 25, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
As some have said, you could easily suggest that his moment of accepting martyrdom was when he responded to the accusations of desertion and crossed back over his Rubicon to head to Carthage. he felt that he would be safe among the displaced Indians of the Mexican West and doubted that he would survive imprisonment in Carthage. he’d been fearing that since the Missouri debacle
Comment by smb — February 25, 2007 @ 1:10 pm
smb — Thanks for the recommendation of Bitton’s book. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a few years and it is a pleasant introduction to this topic. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on visual art. It is interesting to me that one would never (rarely?) see an artistic interpretation of the martyrdom in a ward meetinghouse. We have a picture of pioneers burying the dead in our building’s hall, but certainly none of Joseph and Hyrum’s death. The book maintains that this is a matter of taste, or a reflection of the fact that Latter-day Saints are not “obsessed” with the martyrdom. Thoughts on this?
Comment by kris — February 25, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
Great post (and excellent footnotes). I would think that some the earliest Mormon martyr images would be that of those who did not defend themselves from the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon and Abinadi.
As to Joseph’s last years, I am fascinated by the talk he gives to the RS a week before revealing the first of the Nauvoo temple ordinances:
To be fair though, is it accurate to say that many “swore oaths of vengeance against the attackers”? I haven’t studied this beyond the Smoot hearings transcripts, but those indicate a different type of oath.
Lastly, one of the first things that came to my mind was an exchange that was recorded in Brigham Young’s office Journal:
Comment by J. Stapley — February 25, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
I haven’t looked at art from the early period, when I would think they would have emphasized depictions of the Smith brothers. I see Mormon martyrology as having been amplified by the Smith martyrdom but taken thence into the martyrology of the greater church body, as represented very specifically by those dead on the Exodus. Young lists “thousands” of Mormon martyrs, while John Taylor was acclaimed a martyr when he died in hiding, a part of the martyrology of those imprisoned under anti-bigamy laws. A long way of saying that I think the Exodus dead reflect the martyrdom.
The other strand I think is ritual fear of the corpse, which became quite robust in the late nineteenth century, and a depiction of the Smith martyrdom would necessarily involve a bullet-riddled body, while Exodus martyr art could show merely the symbolic but sanitized gravemarker and the bereavement of the survivors. The mounting late twentieth-century cinematic obsession with a corpse seems to be an attempt to engage the corpse again while still wrestling with that potent fear of mortal remains.
(One could also wonder whether in the evangelical climate there has been a desire to back off the explicit parallelism of crucifixion and Smith’s death, though this is more speculative.)
Davis Bitton is a wonderful fellow and an erudite scholar. I recommend his books highly.
Comment by Sam MB — February 25, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
JS: There are sufficient truly contemporary accounts of vengeance oaths to suggest they did play an important role, though these were integrated with two other themes: the hunger for God to wreak vengeance (many Saints were praying for God to wipe out Illinois and Missouri and perhaps the wicked of the entire United States), and the belief that Smith’s martyrdom would inaugurate Armageddon, that his potent blood would finally tip the balance to force God’s hand (Smith had rather explicitly advanced Mormon martyrdom as the fulfillment of Revelation 6: 9-11, and his followers persisted in this identification). Mormons were scared that word of vengeance oaths or actual acts of vengeance might occur, and this evoked a corrective impulse which channeled vengeance into God’s operation.
Comment by Sam MB — February 25, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
PS, I wanted to share this quotation from Times and Seasons (DECEMBER 15, 1844 Vol.5, No.23, p.744):
The LDS “felt also to mourn over the bodies of their martyred chiefs, to hang their harps upon the willows, and in their overwhelming grief to cease for a while from the common avocations of life.â€
Comment by Sam MB — February 25, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
Martyrological sensibilities are apparent very early in Mormon writings, such as missionaries mentioning that they were persecuted while preaching. But it’s not until the Missouri conflicts, to a certain degree after Jackson County but especially after 1838, that we start seeing an actual discourse of persecution being articulated in Mormon narratives. Those killed at Haun’s Mill and the Battle of Crooked River are hailed as martyrs by Joseph Smith (JS and others to Edward Partridge, 20 March 1839, Times and Seasons, June 1840, 131). By the time Joseph was martyred, there was already a means of conceptualization by which the Saints could understand his death, and the implications that death held for them as Joseph’s followers.
The Missouri and Illinois persecutions remained firmly implanted in Latter-day Saint collective memory throughout the nineteenth century, largely, I would say, to motivate resistance against pressures from the U.S. government and other outsiders to make Mormons conform. Remembering the martyrs that died for the cause steeled later Latter-day Saints to continue resisting in order to maintain their culture, not unlike Mexican American efforts to maintain memories of U.S. oppression during the Mexican American War and other conflicts, or African Americans harboring memories of slavery.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the Church had decided to stop resisting, and, as Kathleen Flake argues, Missouri and Illinois ceased being sites of martyrdom and became sites of pilgrimage (Flake, The Politics of Religious Identity, 135).
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the early persecutions and Joseph Smith’s martyrdom have continued to play a significant role in our collective memory. True, we no longer hold to the memories to promote resistance to the federal government (such resistance would seem fairly strange in light of current Mormon ultrapatriotism), but we’ve ritualized the memories of the early persecutions as part of the Joseph Smith story in order to reinforce the construction that all prophets are persecuted, and eventually martyred, for the testimony of Jesus.
Comment by DWG — February 26, 2007 @ 1:39 am
I’ve always been intrigued by the fragments of historical evidence suggesting that Joseph Smith felt himself to have been instructed by the Spirit to flee Nauvoo, and that he went to his death in the belief that he was thereby defying God. The sources for this are available in D. Michael Quinn’s Mormon Hierarchy discussion of the martyrdom (and, yes, Stapley, I’ve actually looked up some of them…), and this explanation does a decent job of accounting for Smith’s behavior. He did make a sincere effort to flee, and, as we all know, only turned back when his friends — who he described as not caring whether he lived or died — asked him to stick around. He also did make various futile efforts to survive the attack, both by fighting back and by using the Masonic distress call to signal that he shouldn’t be killed. Again, these acts seem most consistent with an explanation in which Smith felt that he was supposed to survive, even though he perhaps knew that he would not.
In this interpretation, Smith remains a martyr. He is just a martyr to a different thing: not a martyr for belief in God, but rather a martyr for belief in the Mormon community.
Comment by J. Nelson-Seawright — February 26, 2007 @ 9:48 am
Great post, Sam.
Here’s a paper that addresses the side issue of whether Joseph actually killed anyone with his pepperbox and how that relates to the idea of martyrdom, if anyone is interested in that aspect of it.
Comment by Kevin Barney — February 26, 2007 @ 11:46 am
JNS, I still haven’t gotten around to Quinn’s hierarchy books, but this theme is reasonably clearly supported by early evidence. Some in fact talked about taking vengeance (or encouraging God’s vengeance) on those who had persuaded Smith to turn himself in. My best guess is that he thought he would die but did not want to. Smith so despised betrayal (even theologically), that in a sense this view is still consistent with his being a martyr to his people and his God.
Kevin–interesting paper. thanks for link.
Comment by Sam MB — February 26, 2007 @ 5:02 pm