THE DOCTRINE OF BLOOD ATONEMENT
There were, however, certain new factors in the equation to which
attention must be directed. The Reformation Movement of the previous winter,
instituted for the moral and spiritual betterment of the Mormon society,
provoked considerable discussion of the theological doctrine of blood
atonement, a constantly reoccurring theme in biblical lore and Christian
controversy. Psychologists have observed that repentance-from-sin drives, while
conductive to betterment from a church viewpoint, invite to excesses those of
unstable mentality.
One of Mormonism’s foundation stones is that the Savior went to
the cross as a voluntary to atone for the sins of mankind, the second of their
Articles of Faith, reading: “”We believe that through the atonement of Christ
all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the
Gospel.” The third runs: “We believe that men will be punished for their own
sins and not for Adam’s transgression.” Furthermore, doctrinal dissertations
establish a category known as “unpardonable” sins, and yet again sins that are
so serious that they may be expiated only by the voluntary sacrifice of one’s
own blood. Reasonings such as these gave rise to the popular designation of
blood as “innocent” or “guilty.”
These preachments indicate that a sinner, whose would was in the
balance, the scales of which seemed to be tipping hell-ward rather than
heavenward, might rescue himself from dread perdition by a sacrificial offering
of his life-blood. This theological concept should be differentiated sharply
from suicide, a means of escape from mortality by self-destruction and annihilation,
based on a philosophy of despair. Notice that in dooming himself to die, the
blood atonist was motivated by aspiration to measurably square the mistakes of
mortality, and make provision for futurity or eternal life by the supreme
sacrifice. In the achievement of this sacrificial act, it was permissible for
the self-judged guilty person to secure the cooperation of relatives or
friends. However, the proposition was purely a theoretical consideration as men
are indisposed to surrender voluntarily earth existence to expiate crime. Quite
foreign to this theological concept was the idea that a man of his volition
might weight another individual in the balance, adjudge him guilty, and
administer the death penalty. Such a deed would properly constitute an act of
murder.
Whereas the mental psychology of the Mormons of this storm and
stress period was verbally to damn Gentile enemies for time and eternity rather
than to save them, it is obviously a perversion and distortion of their
theology to argue or insist that the Mountain Meadows Massacre had its origin
in an orthodox conception of the doctrine of blood atonement. Muddled thought
often, however, leads to the perpetration of dark deeds. Misconceptions in this
instance may temporarily have blinded some to the path of rectitude and honor.
No worth-while correlation exists between the theological doctrine of
self-imposed blood atonement and the crime of murder, except in the distorted
imagination of hostile-minded, loose-thinking critics, and the addled brain of
John D. Lee who, like other criminals, sought desperately for a -pretext which
would seem to explain and justify the wanton killing of countrymen. (Andrew
Love Neff, History of Utah: 1847 to 1869, ed. Leland Hargrave Creer [Salt
Lake City: The Deseret News Press, 1948], 412-14)