How did Catholic scholar Cristina Rosetti get interested in Mormon Fundamentalism? Did she really attend an LDS Young Single Adult Ward? We’ll find out more about her background, as well as the TLC Church, and her feelings about Under the Banner of Heaven. Did she like it? Check out our conversation…

Intro to Polygamists

GT  01:04  How did you learn about this [polygamy]?

Cristina  01:07  Reading Mike Quinn, reading, just scholars who had [expertise in Mormon polygamy.] Reading Brian Hales, reading Craig Foster reading just more and more.

GT  01:14  Because Brian’s got a lot of stuff on fundamentalism.

Cristina  01:16  Right. And also, Craig Foster, and Newell Bringhurst and Brian Hales had done a lot of work on post manifesto, polygamy. And that was a fairly new idea for me because I had heard in Institute especially that polygamy ends in 1890.

GT  01:29  It’s probably news for most people who sit in the pews too.

Cristina  01:33  And I’ve heard some strange justifications for polygamy in Institute. One woman told me the story that so many men died crossing the plains, but polygamy starts before that.

GT  01:45  Right.

Cristina  01:48  So I was like, wait a minute. I heard it started in Nauvoo. So just that was kind of interesting to me.

GT  01:58  It just to take care of the widows. {sarcastically}

Cristina  02:03  Yes. There was not that no such thing as the anointed quorum, none of that. And then I continued to like read through these brilliant people and the documents realizing it doesn’t under 1904, either.

GT  02:18  After the Reed Smoot Hearings.

Cristina  02:20  A lot of scholars have written a lot about that. And that was interesting to me. And as I’m kind of learning about post manifesto, polygamy, I meet Mormon fundamentalists.

GT  02:30  You meet them?

Cristina  02:31  Yeah.

GT  02:32  At Sunstone?

Cristina  02:33  At Sunstone, at MHA, at the Church History Library.

GT  02:39  They come to MHA? I’ve never seen them with MHA.

Cristina  02:45  Fundamentalists come in MHA. Craig Foster’s co-author Marianne Watson is a Mormon fundamentalist.

GT  02:50  Oh yeah, I forgot about her. Okay.

Cristina  02:53  She’s brilliant. She wrote (I think) one of the greatest essays.

Under the Banner of Heaven

GT  39:05  The detective was a fictional detective. The critique I heard was, he was to represent a faith crisis guy. They invented him. He was like a composite character.

Cristina  39:18  He was based on someone not related to the story, but he was based on a person who was a police officer. I liked it. Again, I’m not LDS. I’m not connected to the story.

GT  39:31  You went to a Young Single Adult Ward.

Cristina  39:33  I went to a YSA Ward.

GT  39:34  But you’re not quite into the culture enough would you say?

Cristina  39:37  I mean, I’m not connected to the story enough for it to have had to look really strong opinion about it. I stopped listening to true crime. I used to really like My Favorite Murder, and then I stopped listening to true crime a couple of years ago. But, I mean, I liked it. The part that I thought was so interesting about it, there’s a scene in the second to last episode I believe, where Ron goes to Oregon. And he is at a ranch. And there’s frolicking and wine. And then he’s baptized by this man who kisses them. And a lot of people were really scandalized. And they were like, “What is happening?”

Cristina  40:18  But one of the interesting things about that was someone, a fundamentalist man was consulted for that scene, because that was a real group in Oregon that Ron Lafferty looked into for a while.

GT  40:32  The Bundy’s?

Cristina  40:32  No. [He] looked into for oil that had a lot of these kinds of really controversial practices, and had a lot of sexual practices in their tradition. And so I thought, like some of those little[details were good.] I think in the grand story arc, there were a lot of big criticisms. But I thought those little things were really interesting because they reflected these little known parts of fundamentalist history that I thought were interesting. A lot of people were really quick to criticize its representation of the LDS Church. One of the interesting things was it wasn’t quick. No one was really kind of quick to criticize its representation of fundamentalism.

GT  41:11  Was it good? Was it a good representation of fundamentalism?

Cristina  41:14  Well, there were a couple things that I thought were really well done. The first was when Ron and Dan Lafferty go and visit Short Creek, they’re never members of the short Creek community. But I thought it would have been really easy to put all the women in Prairie dresses. But prairie dresses weren’t worn yet, at that time.

GT  41:32  That didn’t happen until like the 2000s. Right? Or even later.

Cristina  41:36  It was in like the 90s they start to get more and more looking like that. But I thought that was kind of interesting that they paid attention to that. And then secondarily, I thought the representation of Robert Crossfield was really well done.

GT  41:51  Oh, because he has his own story. Right, Robert Crossfield?

Cristina  41:57  Yes the prophet Onias, yeah.

GT  41:59  Can you talk about him? Because Steve Shields talked a little bit about him, but I don’t have a lot of detail on him other than Steve thought he was a terrible person.

Cristina  42:08  Yeah, I mean, yeah. I do think he was abusive. He was an abusive father. And an abusive man who taught doctrines that were abusive, especially to his family. But he was very similar to Jim Harmston in a lot of ways. One of the things about that time period in the 1980s, and 1990s, was really a high point and seeing people who were Sunday school teachers or were doing home meetings, and they start their own groups out of that. And Robert Crossfield was very similar to that story in that he is a Sunday school teacher. He’s starting his own home meetings. He’s starting Bible studies.

GT  42:49  Is he also in American Fork? Do you know?

Cristina  42:52  He was in the Salem area.

GT  42:54  Okay, so that’s a little farther south in Utah County.

Cristina  42:56  Yeah. And he starts slowly receive his own revelations. He ends up publishing those revelations, under the pseudonym, the prophet Onias. And he starts the School of the Prophets, which eventually is joined by the Lafferty brothers. But that group, I mean, it was always very small. But it spoke to what a lot of people in the 1980s and 1990s were looking for. I mean, the 1980s and 1990s were a time as you know, of significant change in the LDS Church. And with the significant change in the LDS Church, there was significant disenfranchisement among a lot of people, especially around the temple. And so, the Prophet Onias was one of those people that was trying to speak to people’s really disheartened feelings toward the direction the LDS Church was going. He just happened to also be, as Steve Shields noted, an abusive person.

GT  42:57  So, I mean, he wasn’t a murderer like the Laffertys’ though. Right?

Cristina  43:24  He was not.

GT  43:27  The Laffertys broke off from him, or did he kick them out? Or do you know?

Cristina  44:06  He condemned the murders soon after. Very soon after he published a statement saying no. When the Lafferty brothers came to the School of the Prophets with the revelation that they were going to commit this atrocity, The School of the Prophets did say this isn’t a revelation. So the group did immediately say, “No, this is not from God.”

GT  44:34  You’re talking about the revelation to kill Brenda Lafferty? Right?

Cristina  44:39  Yeah.

GT  44:40  I don’t remember who got [the revelation], Ron or Dan. I get them mixed up all the time.

Cristina  44:43  So, I mean, they couched it in revelation.

GT  44:45  There was a revelation to kill Brenda Lafferty.

Cristina  44:47  They brought it forth to the School of the Prophets and the school the Prophet said, “No, this is not [good.] We’re not signing on to whatever nonsense this is.”

GT  44:56  They just went and did it anyway.

Cristina  44:57  And they went and did it anyway. Unfortunately, tragically. They went and did it anyway.

GT  45:01  And killed her two year old daughter too as well.

Cristina  45:03  Unfortunately.

Bruce R McConkie is fomous for advocating that the Catholic Church is the “Great & Abominable Church” mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Is that offensive to Cristina Rosetti, a Catholic? She’ll respond to that in our next conversation. We’ll also talk about religoius violence from the Crusades to Mountain Meadows. What does she think of that? Is religion in decline, or is it readying for another upswing? Check out our conversation…

Great & Abominable Church?

Cristina  01:33  Aren’t I also the greatest of abominables.

GT  01:40  Oh, we haven’t gone there, have we?

Cristina  01:43  The great whore of Babylon.

GT  01:45  Do you have any thoughts on the Book of Mormon there, and the Catholic Church?

Cristina  01:48  Of that particular part?

GT  01:50  Yes.

Cristina  01:50  No. Not really. No. I mean, Bruce R. McConkie said it to me/my people.

GT  02:01  And you weren’t offended?

Cristina  02:04  He’s allowed to think that. I mean, here’s the thing. It’s not like the Catholic Church has high views of the LDS Church. Right? It’s not like we’ve been just so kind to LDS people that like…

GT  02:22  A little blowback is okay.

Cristina  02:23  Yeah, it’s fine. I’ll take it. It’s fine. I mean, the Catholic Church has historically had a very strong opinion about Mormonism. So, of course, the LDS Church would have a strong opinion about Catholicism. The one reason I do think it’s a little strange that they butted heads so ardently, Is because Mormons and Catholics were both viewed very negatively in the 19th century.

GT  02:27  Oh yeah, absolutely.

Cristina  02:28  Do you know, that that great picture of the Capitol. And there’s a crocodile and alligator and one is the Mormons and ones says like “Romanist.” It doesn’t say Catholic. Maybe it does say Catholic. But we’re the Papists. And you’re the Mormons. Both were hated so vehemently by Protestant America. The fact that they couldn’t get along either, you’d think that they would have been like, “Well…”

Addressing Religious Violence

GT  04:40  So one other question for you, and then I’ll let you go because I know I’ve kept you long time. And it’s going to be another Catholic question. Earlier in the conversation you were talking about how the Reformation kind of offended you.

Cristina  04:56  I wouldn’t say offend. I was just [surprised.] I think I was Hot. I think from learning about generic history, I had a very different vision of what it was. Then it was a lot more violent than you expected. Yeah, I just learned someone nailed something to a door, which later I find out, probably didn’t happen. He just gave it to his bishop, like, Here you go.

GT  05:25 That’s just anti-Lutheran propaganda. {joking}

Cristina  05:27  This anti-Lutheran literature. I had just been told like, there’s this guy named Luther. I don’t think I really learned about John Calvin. I certainly didn’t hear about Zwingli. And so, I think it was just a very stark like, Wait a minute. This is not what I thought this was. And I mean, every religious group was violent. This is not to say that Catholics weren’t, of course. But I think I had been kind of portrayed or given a kind of more…

GT  06:00  Well the Catholic churches were the ones who persecuted Luther. Luther, he was fine.

Cristina  06:07  I don’t know if he was fine with his very antisemitic documents that he wrote, I don’t think he was fine. But I just been given kind of a particular picture of what the Reformation was. And turns out that’s not what it was.

GT  06:20  Right. Well, my question was tying it back to Catholics, when you looked into the Crusades, did you feel the same way?

Cristina  06:31  Well, I mean, I don’t love violence, religious violence. Just like I wasn’t here to justify or make excuses for the sex abuse crisis. I’m not going to make excuses for the attempted territorial expansion that cost the lives of 1000s of people. I’m just not. In general, I’m just not interested in trying to excuse violence, in the name of religion. I’m just not here for that. And I 100% recognize that a lot of people do leave religious traditions over the history. And I think this is something that the LDS Church also deals with all the time of people being uncomfortable with the history, of being uncomfortable with the past and leaving. That’s absolutely something that happens in Catholicism as well. And so, I do think religious traditions generally need to talk about it and need to have very transparent, honest conversations about the aspects of the faith that have caused great harm. I think that’s really the only way forward.

GT  07:43  Okay. You know, and I mean, our conference we [attended], it’s the Juanita Brooks Conference. Her big claim to fame is a Mountain Meadows Massacre. So, I mean, you would never excuse any religious violence, Mormon, Catholic, Reformation. Protestant.

Cristina  08:00  No! Why would I?

GT  08:01  Yeah. A lot of people [feel like they have] got to defend the faith at all costs.

Cristina  08:05  Well, no. I mean, not here to [do that.] No. We’re not going to do that. I’m not going to do that.

GT  08:14  Do you think that some people use (and I’ll just pick multiple examples) Mountain Meadows, Crusades; even let’s go with Islam a little bit with the jihad. [Do people use these events] as just a club to bash religion?

Cristina  08:32  I mean, that is one of the interesting things is that the Crusades were empires. This was the Ottoman Empire versus Christendom. These were terrible wars over territorial expansion. And so I mean, that’s also definitely part of the conversation. But continue your story, your question.

GT  08:51  Do people use that as a club unfairly against religion?

Cristina  08:57  I mean, maybe. But also, in those stories, there was a literal club. People died. I mean, in general, I’m really interested in talking to people who have disagreements about the theology or the doctrine. But if someone is hurt or harmed by the fact that people were murdered, I can’t take that away. That happened. You know?

GT  09:26  I heard a joke by John Hamer recently. He said, there’s a story [that some people say.] “I want a church that ordains women and is gay friendly, and progressive and all these things.”

GT  09:42  He’s like, “Check, check, check. Well, you should join the Community of Christ.”

GT  09:47  They’re like, “No, I just want to bash religion.”

Cristina  09:51  I mean, people have been harmed by religion. That’s also very much a thing. That’s just a reality. I think. that two things that Catholicism has that Mormonism doesn’t, not in terms of being right or wrong, but just in terms of like how we look at the history. The first is historical distance. That’s a big thing that Catholicism has that the LDS Church doesn’t. Mountain Meadows Massacre happened very recently, in the grand scheme of history. The Crusades happened a long time ago. And granted, they’re still talked about. They’re still history, but the historical distance is something that the LDS Church has not received the benefit of.

GT  10:33  200 versus 2000 years.

Cristina  10:34  Yes. That’s different. The second is, a lot of people don’t learn about Mountain Meadows Massacre. Juanita Brooks didn’t learn about the real history of it when she was young. A lot of people don’t learn about that. I learned about the Crusades in Western Civ. So it wasn’t ever a surprise. So, I know, there’s a lot of talk about informed consent in ex-Mormon circles, and about that whole conversation, which I think is really an important conversation to have. I do feel like I joined Catholicism, with informed consent. I joined it in the middle of the sex abuse crisis. So that was not being hid from me. I mean, I couldn’t get away from that news. I had learned about the crusades in Western Civ. Spiritual formation I like did in my six months of catechism. I do think that that is something that is crucial.

GT  11:32  So give us 1800 more years, and we’ll be okay.

Cristina  11:34  Well, yes. But I think there’s a difference between (and this just gets into like how churches operate, I guess.) But I think there’s a difference between convert numbers, and convert retention. And I think Orthodoxy is having its own moment. Right now, a lot of people are joining orthodoxy. To do a plug, there’s a great book by Sarah Riccardi Schwartz, who wrote Between Heaven and Russia, about all the people converting to Orthodoxy right now in the United States. I think Catholicism and Orthodoxy get less adult converts. I don’t know the difference in retention, but I would wager the retention is pretty good among people who convert as adults to those two traditions. I’m not sure what the retention rate is for LDS people. But I think there’s a [difference.] I’m sure the LDS gets more converts globally, among adults. And so I think there’s a difference with that, too. And I think it comes with learning the history and being told upfront, and having full knowledge of what you’re getting into lends to higher retention, ultimately, as well. So, all that to say, I think there is a benefit to saying this is what the Mountain Meadows Massacre was. This is what happened. And just being upfront with that history and having those hard conversations upfront.

What are your thoughts? Are Mormons too sensitive to criticism? Are critics too critical of religion general?