About a week ago, I started re-reading Bushman’s classic Joseph Smith biography “Rough Stone Rolling.” I figured this would be a great way to get some good background for the gospel doctine lessons we will be participating in this year as we study Church history and the Doctrine & Covenants.
Re-reading “Rough Stone Rolling” is a mind-blowing experience: there are things I want to blog about on virtually every page. So, I will probably be referring to the book a lot this year. But one subject needs to be addressed right away, it seems to me: the early Saints’ view of nationalism vis-a-vis the United States. As Bushman says: “The United States figured only as one of the unnamed nations that were to suffer in the last days.” (p. 191)
It seems to me essential to get your mind around the concept that the early Saints were not what you would call, er, “nationalistic Americans.” They were all about setting up Zion, the New Jerusalem, which had nothing to do with modern-day nationalistic borders. Here’s how Bushman describes it:
For Mormons, the United States was but one country among the ‘nations of the earth,’ and like the others must hearken or face extinction. The righteous, the revelations said, would be gathered from all nations. The United States had no special part in the early millennial revelations. In the first few years, America was not even named. The only quasi-national division that mattered was the divide between Israel and the Gentiles, with America on the Gentile side. The United States government in all of its democratic glory was not the model for Zion; the value of the Constitution as the ‘law of man’ was acknowledged only later, after the Missouri persecutions.
Mormons these days are among the most patriotic Americans, so much of this language sounds foreign to us. But we ignore our own history at our peril. When Brigham Young led the Saints out of Nauvoo and to Utah, he was leaving the United States, turning his back on the country that had allowed the “extermination order” in Missouri and had refused repeated requests for justice. It was the United States that imposed itself on the Saints again and again in the late 19th century, ignoring Abraham Lincoln’s famous policy of basically ignoring the Mormons. Seen from this perspective, can you see how many early Saints saw the United States as the enemy?
Times have changed, of course, and in most ways for the better. Saints can form Zion in their homes and in their communities without being tarred and feathered and without suffering the persecution of past years.
Personally, I consider myself a patriotic American, and I love my country. Most Americans reading this probably agree. But it is important, I think, to recognize that God loves people more than nations. Zion is about God’s individual relationship with people, whom He believes have the potential to grow into Gods. National borders are a footnote in that greater relationship, which lasts for eternity.
I am aware of all of the references in the Book of Mormon and elsewhere to the Americas being special lands. I believe they are. I am also aware of the many admonitions from Joseph Smith all the way to Thomas S. Monson telling us to be good citizens. I agree that is essential, and I try to do my best to participate in the American political process as much as possible.
Personally, I think the United States has a special place right now in world history and has served as a vehicle for spreading democracy and freedom worldwide. I think of the U.S. as a latter-day Cyrus, being used by the Lord for a special purpose in preparing the world for the return of the Savior.
But as we fulfill our roles as good citizens and as we honor our country, I do think it’s important to have balance and remember our history. Our relationship with God is more important than our relationship with our country, and the early Saints understood that quite clearly.