Living History: Mormonism’s ‘9/11 mosque moment’ came in 1903
Before a proposed mosque in Manhattan focused the nation’s attention on “terroristic” tendencies of everyday Muslims, Mormons faced the same scrutiny.
The Mormon “9/11 Mosque” moment happened more than 100 years earlier. In 1903, the Utah Legislature elected LDS Apostle Reed Smoot as U.S. senator from Utah (this was before the 17th Amendment, which provided for election to the Senate by popular vote). The vote in the Legislature broke along party lines: 46 for Republican Smoot, 16 for his Democratic rival.
The nation nearly had kittens.
Pent-up suspicion and venom against Mormons erupted in furious broadsides by Christian ministers, politicians and self-appointed committees of public and moral safety. About 3,100 petitions arrived in Washington demanding that Congress not seat the Mormon from Utah.
Historian Kathleen Flake noted, “What remains of these public petitions fills 11 feet of shelf space, the largest such collection in the National Archives.”
The Senate, led by that body’s most upright Protestants, blocked Smoot from taking his seat. A committee headed by Sen. Julius Caesar Burrows of Michigan was appointed to look into the charges against him. Allegations of Smoot’s being a polygamist were false, but the real problem was his apostleship.
With its long history of recalcitrance, obstruction and outright disobedience to the United States government over polygamy, the LDS Church’s loyalty was doubted by patriotic Americans. Over the years public opinion had been formed by anti-Mormon exposés such as, “An Exposition; The Doctrines, Rites and Ceremonies of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, Exposed; showing from their Own Books, &c., That They are, without Exception, the Most Depraved, Immoral, Blasphemous, and Ridiculous Sect that Ever Polluted this Earth.” Allowing one of the leaders of that same sect into the Senate would be like inviting a viper into the very bosom of American democracy.
Since this is about a Mormon in the US Senate… Reid more