A couple of years ago a French journalist interviewed me in my home for some article she was writing about Mormonism. The interview went nowhere, and ended practically before it had begun.
Her first question was whether I truly, sincerely, really, actually believed that an angel had delivered gold plates to Joseph Smith from which he had translated the Book of Mormon. When I said I did believe that, she didn’t know what to say next. She just stared at me, not exactly with scorn, but with a look of disbelief and puzzlement and consternation. I could almost read her thoughts: I didn’t look insane, but obviously there was something wrong with me, something so wrong that there could be no meaningful communication between us. I might as well have been a caveman, or an elf, or a South Sea islander claiming a right to the throne of France. She asked a few general questions about Mormonism, then left as quickly as she could.
It might have been funny, if it hadn’t been the second time in two weeks that a journalist had asked me the same question and greeted my “yes” with incomprehension – but at least that other journalist, a British man with a delightful accent, recovered his wits and went on to do a decent interview. He and I are Facebook friends now, and while I’m sure he remains as blankly puzzled by religious belief as he was during that interview, at least he’s seen enough on Facebook to know that I’m an honest believer and a reasonably sane woman, even if he still doesn’t know what to make of that.
One of the delightful aspects of reading the words of Mormons from earlier generations is the recognition that they, too, believed in the reality of gods and angels and a world beyond this one perceivable by physical senses. The ancient world of the scriptures flowed seamlessly into this one, in ways that even many of us in this generation, believers though we may be, still find primitive or naive. (And honestly, I don’t mean anything negative by that evaluation – I’m searching for words to express the utter erasure of any distinction between the poetic and the literal, between the sacred and the mundane.)
Take Thomas Condie (1842-1921). Thomas was born in Clackmannan, Scotland, to parents who converted to Mormonism in 1848 and migrated to Council Bluffs in 1849. Under the circumstances, Thomas had little to no formal education – his descendants say he had “a few weeks [schooling] during two winters.” But he had a sharp mind and took advantage of lectures and other opportunities that came his way. He was also clever with his hands, possessing blacksmithing and woodcarving skills and a native talent for engineering and invention. He pioneered Morgan County northeast of Salt Lake, and built his home and a new community from the ground up.
Thomas also read the Bible, evidently taking literally what he read there. He read Isaiah 42, part of a long poem where the prophet comforts Judah with the promise that the people will go out of Babylonian captivity and rebuild Jerusalem.
Do not fear, for I am with you,
Do not be afraid, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. …Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you insect Israel!
I will help you, says the Lord;
Your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
Now, I will make of you a threshing sledge,
Sharp, new, and having teeth;
You shall thresh the mountains and crush them,
And you shall make the hills like chaff.
You shall winnow them and the wind shall carry them away,
And the tempest shall scatter them.
Then you shall rejoice in the Lord;
In the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.(Isaiah 41:10, 13-16)
Who knows what Thomas made of the “worm” and the “insect”? But “threshing sledges” and “winnowing” were concepts he understood … and he knew how to make implements with sharp, new teeth …
Somehow the image of the “threshing sled” that could crush mountains worked on Thomas’s imagination. Was he not in the mountains, and were his people not fulfilling other prophecies?
“I concived the Ideia that I could make the Instrument,” he wrote, “So I wrote letters to Some of our leding Elders conserning It. and I Kind of Promist to make it and I was agoing to turn it over to one of our Leading Elders when Made.”
Sometime during Wilford Woodruff’s administration (1889-1898), Thomas gave his word that he would build this “Instrument.” Who knows what he saw in his mind’s eye, or how he thought he could accomplish his task, “but I learned after that I did not have the Power to make it nor to bring it forth.”
His inability to keep his promise seems to have bothered him, to the point that in 1904 he felt obliged to retract his promise. He chose Anthon H. Lund, in Lund’s role as Church Historian, to notify.
“I am under the Nesety to call back the Promis that I made to that Leading Elder or revoke the Promis that I made to him that I would make it and turn it over to him So this will End the Promis I made to him … With Kind Regards to All the Holy Priesthood I remain your Brother in the covenant.”
If I smile at Thomas’s promise and his letter recalling it, it is a smile of affection, and of recognition of his complete sincerity and unquestioned confidence that ancient prophecy would be fulfilled – and that he, Thomas Condie, of Croydon, Utah, a farmer and blacksmith, might play a role in that fulfillment.
Sterling McMurrin famously described his departure point from Mormonism as tied his realization at a young age that “that you don’t get books from angels and translate them by miracles.” My response to that is: “Why not?” And that’s not a flip response; it’s a serious one, because it uncovers the unvoiced assumptions behind such a statement, e.g., there are no angels, and even if there were, they would never do anything as physically crude as leading a human being to an actual set of buried metal plates.
Two things strike me about this post and Condie. First, he was from Clackmannan, Scotland, where my maternal grandfather’s people came (Hunter by surname).
Second, what a scripture to latch on to, with such vivid imagery that I can almost feel the thought of “If I can see this, can I build it?” coming into his mind. Also, a great example of integrity, of someone who wanted to keep his promises, up to the point of realizing that despite his efforts, he could not do it.
It is hard to believe, but I really think they thought you were going to say that you didn’t take the Joseph Smith testimony literally. Reminds me of an experience in the LTM (1980). It was in a general class and the teacher played the part of the tractee at the door of his house and one of the missionaries played the part of the missionary knocking on the door. The teacher, after the missionaries introduced themselves, said “I know who you are and your people are good people but I don’t know how you can believe in gold plates, prophets, angels with wings.” The missionary, obviously forewarned by a friend who had been in the LTM earlier and had the same class, said “Sir, we don’t believe it either. We just add those parts of the story just to see how much you can take.”
It took quite a while for the laughter to die down for the class to continue.
That’s it, bfwebster, the blindness of the assumption of the nonexistence of another existence, or at best the insistence that the two cannot possibly interact in a concrete way, contrasted with our integration of those two worlds.
And maybe “integrity” is the word I’ve been fishing for, to label that seamlessness between worlds and Thomas’s need to withdraw rather than abandon his promise. I mean, if it didn’t matter, if Thomas couldn’t step from the mundane world into sacred time and assume a tangible role in both, there would be no need to cancel the promise, because it would have been meaningless in the first place.
Ha! Good for the elder, David!
Yes, I think both journalists expected me to say I didn’t believe it, or at least that I believed it in nothing but a poetic, symbolic way. That’s the only rational response in a logical world, after all. When I demonstrated that I didn’t share their rational world view, they didn’t know how to respond.
The Condies from Clackmannan are also President Monson’s ancestors, I think.
After 3+ decades in this church I feel more strongly than every that for my conversion to be complete I must study ALL the scriptures to know my place in them, I must envision the literal and the symbolic to understand the messages brought forth through Prophetic council and personal revelation, and I must be prepared to act on the knowledge I have been blessed to receive. This responsibility is a serious burden that I shoulder with sincere intent and youthful exuberance. Thomas Condie seems like minded in his desire to know the word and do the work. If a straight line leads from vision to purpose to fulfillment of prophesy then I think I know my path. PS this is not a post just to qualify for a book but the life and story of this Saint strikes a note with this keepaninny lurker.
My earliest experience with the Book of Mormon was as a twelve-year-old staying at the Marriott in Salt Lake City. I had picked up the book out of curiosity, and read little more than the testimonies and the history at the beginning of it. I was shocked that anyone could believe such a story. I asked my mother “Do people really believe this?” Now I know they do because I do.
“You shall thresh the mountains and crush them”
I wonder what Condie would have made of the tunnel-boring machines in use today for things like subway tunnels. If anything today resembles a machine that could “thresh the mountains and crush them”, a tunnel-bore fits the bill.
Not that Isaiah actually meant such a machine…
My standard question for the bfwebsters and other skeptics is now this:
What alternative do you offer me for my salvation? What assurance can comfort me, what wisdom can guide me as well, what power is there at work?
If you cannot offer as much assurance, wisdom and power, you ought not question the source of mine.
I love this post, Ardis, because it shows what many of my ancestors and others’ ancestors sacrificed so much for – and it wasn’t a “myth” but a profound testimony borne of faith and prayer of the truth of the gospel.
This is what will be required for all of us to obtain to stand in this world (and of course the next.)
Thanks, Allison. As I wrote, I love that connection between what I know now and what I recognize my ancestors knew then, and I enjoy seeing that same recognition in you and others.
bfwebster isn’t a skeptic, though; I think he’s been misread. He is saying that those like McMurrin (and the journalists who interviewed me) think they’re being so neutral and unbiased, yet they take it for granted — without ever seeming to realize what they’re taking for granted — that there AREN’T angels, and that they DON’T deliver books on plates. He asks why that should be the default position, when he — and I and you — accept it in our basic worldview that there ARE angels who DO do such things. Why is one normal and the other an aberation? bfwebster agrees with you and me.