Zion, Militias and Public Lands

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_Maksutov
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Zion, Militias and Public Lands

Post by _Maksutov »

https://www.cityweekly.net/utah/zion-mi ... id=6820680

From the article:

Zion, Armed Insurrection and Public Lands

Academic research on Mormon history, theology and the Mormon migration to the Great Basin to create what the early western settlers called the promised land of Zion in the mid-19th century provides a framework for understanding the Bundy family's refusal to accept federal authority over public lands.

The militia-supported Bundy aggressions in Bunkerville, Burns and Malheur—while often not Mormon themselves—can be traced to early Mormon religious and political beliefs that have contributed to modern-day right-wing extremism, says Betsy Gaines Quammen, a professor of world religions and culture at the Yellowstone Theological Institute, whose 2017 doctoral dissertation at Montana State University was titled "American Zion: Mormon Perspectives on Landscape, from Zion National Park to the Bundy Family War."

"I can tell you with great confidence that Zion is part of this public-land issue and that the militia has been part of the Mormon world view since the very beginning," Quammen says.

The roots date back to long before the Civil War. After the 1844 murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith by a mob in Carthage, Ill., his successor, Brigham Young, led the faithful to Salt Lake Valley in 1847. There they would establish Zion in the Great Basin that encompassed most of present-day Utah and Nevada.

In Mormon doctrine, Zion refers to the place where people "pure of heart" will live together. Also known as the New Jerusalem, Zion is supposed to be built on the American continent, with Independence, Mo., identified as the specific location. But conflict in Missouri and Illinois, along with divine inspiration, led Brigham Young to move the Mormons to the Salt Lake Valley.

..........

Discussion of Skousen, Benson and others later in the article.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_deacon blues
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Re: Zion, Militias and Public Lands

Post by _deacon blues »

I wonder if Ezra Benson thought about the encouragement he was giving to people like the Bundy’s when he was espousing his political views
_Dr Exiled
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Re: Zion, Militias and Public Lands

Post by _Dr Exiled »

An ideology based on failed prophecies of zion seems to be one of those wrong roads where god sends some unfortunate souls ...
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen 
_Maksutov
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Re: Zion, Militias and Public Lands

Post by _Maksutov »

deacon blues wrote:I wonder if Ezra Benson thought about the encouragement he was giving to people like the Bundy’s when he was espousing his political views

Of course he did. That's why he did it. Just remember what a moderate he was...

Image

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1504889

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1 ... sg-1142572

Steve Benson's comments:

--Efforts by Mormon Apologists to Explain Away Ezra Taft Benson's Racist Attitudes and Teachings

Members of my own family--when confronted with the incontrovertible evidence that ETB personally held, religiously believed and publicly espoused racist notions against African-Americans--have nonetheless attempted to give him a pass by arguing that he was merely a product of his racist times in a society where prejudice and bigotry against Blacks was common and accepted.

That argument is an essential admission that:

a) Ezra Taft Benson was an uninspired, high-ranking, racist leader of the Mormon Church;

b) the Mormon God was himself a racist; and/or

c) the Mormon God tolerated/condoned contemporary societal racism by allowing his "prophets, seers and revelators" to spew bigoted racial hate without divinely intervening to stop it.

Such desperation pretezeled positioning in defense of rank racism is both absurd and unprincipled--and I have told my family that when they've resorted to such a tactic.

Other Mormons (this time outside of Benson family circles), have also vainly tried to rationalize away ETB's racist views, even while essentially admitting that he harbored problematic attitudes toward Blacks. For example, on a website dealing with the life and times of Ezra Taft Benson, I discovered one poster trying (rather ineffectively, as the record will show) to defend my grandfather's stridently racist views by striving to minimize them, while at the same time accusing me of evidencing a bad attitude when it comes to laying out the actual historical record. This apologist starts out promisingly, but quickly turns defensive on the indefensible (corrected fof misspellings):

“[It's] [h]ard to believe that such a 'respected' religious leader would write the foreword to a book like this [The poster then links to a grossly racist book for which my grandfather wrote the forword. For the image of its patently racist cover, see: http://www.affirmation.org/images/cover ... hammer.gif] Ugh.”

Despite such graphic evidence, the poster then seeks to dismiss it as any proof of racism on Ezra Taft Benson's part:

“Regardless of the shock value of the cover, the text of the foreward seems to be unavailable anywhere. A cursory search for the above shows that the person making the biggest deal of this was Benson's grandson, Steve Benson--who (reading his other writings) seems to have quite the chip on his shoulder regarding his grandfather. He advertises his stance against the LDS Church and just about anything associated with it.

..........................

Here you can find a copy of The Black Hammer, foreword by ETB.

https://hotk.files.wordpress.com/2016/…/the-black-hammer.pdf.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_Gaelan_Ainsworth
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Re: Zion, Militias and Public Lands

Post by _Gaelan_Ainsworth »

Maksutov wrote:Here you can find a copy of The Black Hammer, foreword by ETB.

https://hotk.files.wordpress.com/2016/…/the-black-hammer.pdf.

This looks like an interesting read. The board seems to have parsed the URl into oblivion though.

https://hotk.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/the-black-hammer.pdf
Mormon 9:9 For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing

D&C 29:34 Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given you a law which was temporal[...]
_Maksutov
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Re: Zion, Militias and Public Lands

Post by _Maksutov »

Gaelan_Ainsworth wrote:
Maksutov wrote:Here you can find a copy of The Black Hammer, foreword by ETB.

https://hotk.files.wordpress.com/2016/…/the-black-hammer.pdf.

This looks like an interesting read. The board seems to have parsed the URl into oblivion though.

https://hotk.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/the-black-hammer.pdf

Thanks for the fix. :wink:
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_Choyo Chagas
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Re: Zion, Militias and Public Lands

Post by _Choyo Chagas »

Gaelan_Ainsworth wrote:
Maksutov wrote:Here you can find a copy of The Black Hammer, foreword by ETB.

https://hotk.files.wordpress.com/2016/…/the-black-hammer.pdf.

This looks like an interesting read. The board seems to have parsed the URl into oblivion though.

https://hotk.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/the-black-hammer.pdf

marking an url with the "url" attribute does the healing
another way is close the url between special marks, such as "- link -"
for example:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGK8IC-bGnU -
(16 sec only...)

this cover outlasts the quoting of the comment, even in last line
Choyo Chagas is Chairman of the Big Four, the ruler of the planet from "The Bull's Hour" ( Russian: Час Быка), a social science fiction novel written by Soviet author and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov in 1968.
Six months after its publication Soviet authorities banned the book and attempted to remove it from libraries and bookshops.
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