The Intellectual Integrity of John Turner (Presbyterian)

While I do not always agree with him, John Turner is one of the better non-LDS commentators on “Mormonism.” Unlike many of his fellow Protestant co-religionists, he demonstrates intellectual honesty and integrity. For instance, in his essay interacting with the Gospel Topics Essay Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints Turner noted the following about its treatment of the Danites and Mountain Meadows Massacre:

 

“Peace and Violence” reaches plausible if not definitive conclusions about the Danites and the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The essay states that “Joseph Smith approved of the Danites but that he was probably not briefed on all their plans and likely did not sanction the full range of their activities.” In its discussion of the September 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, the essay summarizes the conclusions of LDS historians Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard that while fiery preaching “contributed to a climate of hostility,” Brigham Young “did not order the massacre.” Local church leaders planned and executed the mass murder. More broadly, the essay correctly asserts that at least the heart of Mormondom was anything but a hotbed of violence. Partly because the Latter-day Saints had quickly established the forms of civilized morality ostensibly lacking in many frontier communities, there were few popular demands for extralegal violence. According to Richard Maxwell Brown, in comparison to other western states and territories Utah was remarkable for its lack of organized vigilante activity (See Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism [New York: Oxford University Press, 1975], chap. 4, esp. 101-104). (John G. Turner, “’Things Are So Dark and Mysterious’: The Thomas Lewis Case and Violence in Early LDS Utah,” in Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst, eds., The LDS Gospel Topics Series: A Scholarly Engagement [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2000], 163-95, here, p. 165, emphasis in bold added)

 

Further, unlike many of his fellow Calvinists, Turner admits that Calvin sanctioned the murder of Servetus:

 

My Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has its own heritage of troublesome history and doctrine. For example, John Calvin, the single largest theological influence on early Presbyterianism, sanctioned the death of the alleged heretic Michael Servetus. (Ibid., 192; for a book-length study, see Stanford Rives, Did Calvin Murder Servetus?)

 

On the topic of Calvin’s view of the spiritual nature of infants, Turner is forced to admit that Latter-day Saint theology is much more attractive:

 

“Even Infants,” Calvin wrote in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “are guilty not of another’s fault but of their own.” Even if those infants had not yet sinned, “their nature is a seed of sin; hence it can be only hateful and abhorrent to God” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chap. I, sec. 8). For Calvin, this was not cruelty on God’s part, but justice and equity. God treated perishing infants precisely as he treated all other human beings. Despite its theological consistency, the doctrine itself is abhorrent. How much more attractive are the words of Moroni 8:17 that God loves “little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and partakers of salvation.” The Book of Mormon defines a good number of Calvin’s beliefs as abominable, sometimes for good reason. (Ibid., 192-93; emphasis added. On more problems with Calvinism, see An Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed Theology)

 

Finally, unlike many Protestant critics of the Church, he admits that it is not Latter-day Saint doctrine that our leaders are infallible:

 

. . . it is not LDS doctrine that those leaders are infallible. For example, the Gospel Topics essay on “Race and the Priesthood” suggests that the decision of Joseph Smith’s successors to withhold the priesthood and temple blessings from black members rested on the sinful foundation of nineteenth-century American racism. Human beings, Latter-day Saints and otherwise, respond imperfectly to the circumstances in which they find themselves.

 

In the end, then, Latter-day Saints maintain that their leaders are both fallible (and therefore make mistakes) and that they will not lead the church astray. It is the basic paradox of the church as articulated by Tillich. It is a paradox that remains all Christians to place their faith in Jesus Christ rather than in institutions and individuals. This paradox, moreover, might help church members make better sense of the “dark and mysterious” aspects of their nineteenth-century history. (Ibid., 195)