Mormonism has a long, complicated history of conflict with the federal government, and that history is deeply informing the actions of the militia members and ranchers who took over a government building Saturday.
Protesters affiliated with the Bundy family are seen in Nevada on April 12, 2014.
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
God told Ammon Bundy to fight back against the government.
One day before Bundy would become the public face of a group of ranchers and militia members who seized a government building in Harney County, Oregon, he posted a video to YouTube. The video explains why Bundy became involved in the Harney County protest, beginning with the time that he felt an "overwhelming urge" to find out more about a pair of Oregon ranchers facing prison for burning land.
In response to his urge to learn more, Bundy studied through the night, then finally prayed about what to do. God answered.
"I began to understand how the Lord felt about Harney County and about this country, and I clearly understood that the Lord was not pleased with what was happening to the Hammonds," Bundy says in the video, referring to the Oregon ranchers. "What was happening to them, if it was not corrected, would be a type and a shadow of what would happen to the rest of the people across this country."
It's a curious story, but also an extremely telling one; the Bundys and some of those involved in the Oregon standoff are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormons, and their rhetoric is deeply colored by Mormon history.
Though they don't, by a long shot, represent the majority of the Utah-based religion's members, their conflict is in many ways an outgrowth of their church's history, a latest chapter in a story about conflict and persecution. And so to understand what's happening, it's useful to understand Mormonism's complicated, often-fraught relationship with the government.
Mormonism was founded in 1830 in upstate New York, and quickly ran into hostility. The hostility arose for a variety of reasons — theological disagreements, political tension, eventually polygamy — but led the early Mormons to head west, setting up bases in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois.
There are too many specific instances of violence during this time to mention them all here, but the period between 1831 and 1839 has sometimes been referred to as the Missouri Conflict or the "Mormon War" thanks to the many clashes that took place. In one particularly well-remembered incident, a Missouri militia attacked and killed Mormon settlers in what became known as the Hauns Mill Massacre.
Later, the governor of Missouri issued an "extermination order" calling for the Mormons to be driven away or killed.
The Mormons responded to some of this violence by trying to defend themselves; in Illinois, they created the Nauvoo Legion, a local militia designed to protect their community, and the religion's founder, Joseph Smith, appeared in public wearing military clothing and brandishing a sword.
A painting of Joseph Smith.
The Joseph Smith Papers / Via josephsmithpapers.org
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