The people

The Persecution Story

Real atrocities happened. So did the parts that got left out.

Concede all of this first

Do not skip this. It is the reason the rest will be heard.

The Extermination Order, October 27, 1838. Governor Boggs ordered that Latter-day Saints "must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State." Church page
Haun's Mill, October 30, 1838. Missouri militiamen killed 17 men and boys, some as young as nine. Church page
Carthage. Joseph and Hyrum murdered while held under the governor's personal promise of protection.

The Church's own essay makes the two sided framing itself: some members "participated in deplorable violence," and "while historical context can help shed light on these acts of violence, it does not excuse them." Source

Six days in October 1838

The sequence taught in Sunday School usually begins on the 27th. Here is what came two days before it.

October 1838

Latter-day Saints raid and burn homes and stores in Gallatin and Millport, per the Church's own history page.

October 25

Battle of Crooked River. Mormon forces engage Missouri state militia in the field. One Missourian and two Church members are killed.

October 27

Governor Boggs issues the Extermination Order, based on reports reaching him from Crooked River.

October 30

Haun's Mill. Seventeen men and boys are killed. The Church's own page notes the attackers may have been unaware of the order, and that the massacre was "perhaps in retaliation for Latter-day Saint raids in Daviess County."

Sources: Church History Topics, Mormon-Missouri War of 1838, Extermination Order, and Hawn's Mill Massacre

This does not make killing nine year olds defensible. It does mean the order was not issued out of nowhere, and that is a fact from the Church's own website.

Kirtland: it started with a bank

The Kirtland Safety Society, 1836. Ohio refused to charter it, so they operated it anyway. It collapsed within months. Members lost their savings. Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were tried and fined for illegally circulating notes, and Joseph left Kirtland in January 1838. Church page

What else gets left out

Bloc voting, named by the Church's own historians: "The Saints' bloc voting patterns alarmed politicians, and many Americans distrusted how Joseph Smith and Brigham Young merged religious and political authority." Church page
The Danites. A real oath bound paramilitary group formed in 1838 which "intimidated Church dissenters" and conducted raids "burning homes and stealing goods." Church page

Utah: the massacre

September 1857, Mountain Meadows. A militia "composed entirely of Latter-day Saints, along with some American Indians they recruited" besieged an emigrant wagon train, then "lured the emigrants from their circled wagons with a false flag of truce" and killed them.

Mountain Meadows, September 1857

The Church calls it "the most tragic episode in the history of the Church."

120

men, women, and children killed after surrendering

children spared, those too young to describe what happened

person ever convicted and executed for it

Source: Church History Topics, Mountain Meadows Massacre

The logic problem

Persecution is taught as evidence the Church is true. It cannot be, because it proves too much. Early Christians were persecuted by Rome. Quakers were executed in colonial Massachusetts. Jehovah's Witnesses have been imprisoned in dozens of countries. If persecution validated truth claims, all of these contradictory religions would be true at once.

This page is part of a 76-topic library. Every claim links to its source, most of them the Church’s own. Read it on the full site or browse every topic.