There is a stereotype in some crime dramas and Westerns that suggests that Mormonism promotes violence. This stereotype began in the nineteenth century adventure stories, gained lasting influence through A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887) and Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (1912) continued in the silent film era through works like A Mormon Maid (1917) and Trapped by the Mormons (1922), and continues today in murder mystery novels and dramatized true crime stories.
This is not to say that all murder mysteries that involve Mormons are stereotypical, nor is all fiction that criticizes Mormonism. Some stories subvert or avoid this stereotype. But there are many examples that follow the stereotype.
Stereotypes have variations and change in time. I will list the variations. Aspects of the stereotype that I have only seen in earlier works (pre-1950) will be in italics, while aspects of the stereotype that I have only seen in later works (post-1950) will have a star.*
Prerequisites: None.
Originally Written: April 2022.
Confidence Level: There are multiple scholarly works describing this stereotype. I’m not sure if there is enough evidence for this to reach scholarly consensus. There are only a handful of scholars who work on this. The best scholarship on this topic that I know of is by Michael Austin (1998), Terryl Givens (1995), and Richard Alan Nelson (1975). A more complete bibliography is at the end.[1-7]
The Stereotype
(A) Violence. This is the core of the stereotype.
(A1) Explicit warning against the dangers posed by Mormonism, outside of the narrative itself.
(A2) Explanation of blood atonement …
(A3) … even when irrelevant to the plot.
The most gratuitous attempt to sensationalize blood atonement, though, occurs in Jack Olsen’s Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (1989). Olsen, in chronicling the true story of an anti-Mormon doctor who raped dozens of Mormon women in his examining room, manages to work in a full explanation of Mormon blood atonement – in a scene about a Mormon father who, upon discovering that the family dog had bitten an innocent child, “exacted his blood atonement on the dog.” [1]
(A4) Temple rituals that promote murder.
(A5) Human sacrifice in the temple.
(A6) Latter-day Danites, in Utah or later.
(A7) Utah is described as a vast prison-state.
(A8) Mormons continue to hunt dissenters after they’ve left Utah.
(A9) Refusing polygamy is punishable by death.
(A10) Comparison to much worse religious violence in Europe.
The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description. Not the Inquisition of Seville, nor the German Vehmgericht, nor the secret societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the Territory of Utah. [A Study in Scarlet]
(A11)* Explicit statement that this is not just a few extremists: it’s systematic to the religion as a whole.
(A12)* Church security can flagrantly violate the law.
(A13)* Conspiracy between the Church and the FBI or John Birch Society or another right-wing political entity.
(A-) Descriptions of the Mountain Meadows Massacre are also common in this genre. I am not including this as part of the stereotype because I think that this is a legitimate criticism, if the story attempts to be historically accurate.
(B) Otherness. This is the more subtle, but one of the more distinctive parts of the stereotype.
(B1) This is not a foreign Other. It is an Other that originated from and continues to recruit from Our People. This requires more introspection than the classic “foreigners are scary” stereotype.
(B2) Extensive use of flashbacks to contrast the civilized world with the barbarism of early Mormonism.
(B3) Descriptions of Mormons using racist terminology, most often portraying them as Oriental.
The yellow, sunken, cadaverous visage; the greenish-colored eye; the thick, protuberant lips; the low forehead; the light, yellowish hair; and the lank, angular person, constitute an appearance so characteristic of the new race, the production of polygamy, as to distinguish them at a glance. The older men and women present all the physical peculiarities of the nationalities to which they belong; but these peculiarities are not propagated and continued in the new race; they are lost in the prevailing type. [8. This is supposed to be science, not fiction.]
(B4) Explicitly describes Mormons as pagan.
(C) Gender.
(C1) Explicit description of how Mormon ideas about gender are backward …
(C2) … compared with Victorian “ideal” gender norms.
(C3) The main character and the main villain are male, the main victim is female.
(C4) Women are kidnapped.
In the early days of the West it was customary for the Mormons to attack wagon trains, in order to secure new wives in the practice of their polygamous belief. [The Mormon (1912)]
(C5) Women are hypnotized.
(C6) Explicit description of how Mormons believe that women don’t have agency.
(C7)* Polygamy continues to be accepted in the Church, after 1950.
(C8)* Mormonism is going to reinstate polygamy as soon as it is legal.
(D) The main victim.
(D1) Is threatened with a polygamist marriage.
(D2) Was raised Mormon, but is trying to escape Utah …
(D3) … because she wants to marry a non-Mormon.
(D4) She is murdered.
(D5) Her lover is murdered.
(D6) She dies of a broken heart, or suicide, because of her polygamist marriage.
(D7) Plot twist ! The murders are done by anti-Mormons, but they are justified by the end.
(E) The main character.
(E1) Is a detective.
(E2) Is a cowboy.
(F) The main villain.
(F1) Is a Mormon missionary.
(F2) Is a polygamist.
(F3) Is a Danite.
(F4) Is a leader in the Church, Bishop or higher.
(F5) Is Brigham Young or Joseph Smith.
(G) Miscellaneous.
(G1) Emphasis on desolate natural landscape.
(G2) Other major anachronisms. (Joseph Smith in Utah, “Council of Four”, LDS Church offered apostleship to an RLDS renegade in the 1970s, …)
Some Examples
I have not read or watched a lot of these, so I’m relying on their descriptions in the scholarship. There are dozens of more examples that I did include described in [1-3].
Monsieur Violet by Frederick Marryat (1843).
First time Mormons appeared in fiction.
Stereotypes: A7, A10
The Mormoness by John Russell (1853).
Stereotypes: B1, C3, F1
Also criticizes anti-Mormon violence. Part of the horror is that the main character is converted to Mormonism in the end.
The Wild Huntress by Captain Mayne Reid (1861).
Stereotypes: A6, B3, C3, D1, F1, F2, F3
Six more villainous-looking individuals I had never beheld. There was no sign of the angelic, neither in their eyes nor features – not a trace; but, on the contrary, each might have passed for an impersonation of the opposite character – a very ‘devil incarnate’!
The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883).
Possibly a parody of other anti-Mormon literature. The young woman becomes an anarchist & the Danite also escapes Brigham Young.
Stereotypes: A6, A8, A9, B2, C1, C2, D1, D2, E1, F3, G1
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887).
Sherlock Holmes’s debut. The most influential story on this list.
Stereotypes: A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, B1, B2, C1, C2, C3, D2, D3, D6, D7, E1, F2, F3, G1, G2
Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) and The Rainbow Trail (1915) by Zane Grey.
The most popular Western novel of all time.
Stereotypes: A7, A8, A9, C1, C3, C4, D1, D2, D3, E2, F2, F4, G1
A Victim of the Mormons (1911).
First anti-Mormon silent film. One of eight anti-Mormon films produced in the US, UK, or Denmark in 1911-1912.
Stereotypes: A1, C3, C4, C5, D1, F1, F2
A Mormon Maid (1917).
Silent film. Drew heavily from A Birth of a Nation (1915), but with a twist: this time, the people in Klan robes are evil. It has a more complicated plot line, with parallel horrors inflicted on both a father and daughter.
Stereotypes: A2, A6, A7, A8, A9, D1, D2, D3, D6, F2, F3, F4, F5
Trapped by the Mormons (1922).
Silent film. Remade in 2005.
Stereotypes: A7, A9, C3, C4, D1, E1, F1, F2
The Avenging Angel by Rex Burns (1983).
Fifth book in a popular detective series.
Stereotypes: A2, A6, C8, E1, F2, F3
The Tenth Virgin by Gary Stewart (1983).
Written by a Mormon.
Stereotypes: A2, B1, C7, E1, F2, F4
Alley Kat Blues by Karen Kijewski (1995).
Sixth book in a popular detective series.
Stereotypes: A2, A8, A9, C1, C8, E1, F2
Moroni Traveler series by Robert Irvine (1988-95).
An eight book series about a non-Mormon detective, named Moroni Traveler, solving crimes in Utah.
Stereotypes: A2, A4, A5, A6, A8, A12, A13, B1, C1, C3, C4, C7, D1, D2, D4, D7, E1, F1, F2, F3, F4
[HIGH SCORE]
True-Crime Novels
Because of its murky position between fiction and journalism, the true-crime novel has proven to be an excellent tool for the revival of nineteenth-century anti-Mormon stereotypes. … Authors are free to create dialogue, guess at motivations, and invent as much narrative detail as they require to keep the story moving. When it comes to bringing in contextual information, authors are free to choose selectively from any and all available materials; all sources are equal to the author who doesn’t have to cite them. … Yet because these books have presented themselves as “true”, they have become “research” for other authors of detective fiction and have contributed significantly to the wholesale resurrection of nineteenth-century Mormon stereotypes that has occurred in contemporary fiction during the last twenty years.[1]
These stereotypes do not just appear in fiction. They are also important to true-crime novels. One of the genre’s foundational texts, The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer (1979), has as its setting “the Mormon Kingdom of Deseret”.
I do not want to criticize reporting on actual crimes, but there is a difference between detailed reporting on a crime and using a particular crime as a springboard for sensationalistic criticisms of Mormonism in general. Salamander by Linda Sillitoe and Alan Roberts (1988) and Prophet of Blood by Ben Bradlee Jr. and Dale Van Atta (1981) are examples of good true-crime stories involving Mormonism; The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith (1988) and The Four O’Clock Murders by Scott Anderson (1993) are sensationalistic criticisms of Mormonism. These later accounts draw from the nineteenth-century stereotypes I’ve described. The easiest way to distinguish the two groups is to look for A11: if the authors are explicitly characterize the crime as typical of Mormonism more generally, then they are more likely to be writing a sensationalistic stereotypical account.
As a particular current example, take Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and Dustin Lance Black (2003 & 2022). Detailed reporting on Lafferty murders might involve stereotypes A2, A4, A9, C1, D1, D4, F2 (although a careful writer could avoid some of these if she wanted to). I would not criticize this reporting. But by the time this story got turned into a TV series, it had added A11, B1, B2, C3, E1. I don’t think that this story accidentally included this much of the stereotype.
The fact that both mystery and true-crime fiction count fundamentally Mormon texts among their distinguished ancestors has helped ensure that Mormon stereotypes will always be available to writers and audiences of both genres.[1]
I can’t read the minds of the authors, so I don’t know if this is intentionally an anti-Mormon hitpiece, amplifying the most stereotypical crime in the last 50 years, or if it merely copies other anti-Mormon literature. Either way, Under the Banner of Heaven is part of a tradition of anti-Mormon literature.
Why should we care?
Most stereotypes from the nineteenth century have been rejected by modern culture. They were used to justify violence against minority groups and so should have no place in our now more tolerant culture. This is especially the case when the stereotypes are not true.
The stereotype that Mormons are more likely to be violent is not true.
We don’t have a lot of data on this because the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not publish data on the religious affiliations of inmates. What data we do have suggests the opposite: Mormons are less likely to be criminal than other Americans, and religious extremism seems to be less common among Mormon criminals than other American criminals. The best data we have is a 2011 PEW survey of prison chaplains and a 2013 Freedom of Information Act request. The survey of chaplains includes potential bias from the mostly Protestant chaplains, while the FIA request only includes federal prisoners, so only 200,000 out of the 1,400,000 total prisoners in the US. The PEW survey indicated that 0.8% of prisoners are Mormon, while the FIA request indicated that 0.3% of prisoners are Mormon. Mormons account for about 1.5% of the total population. Fewer of the chaplains thought that Mormon religious extremism is a problem in jail than religious extremism for most other religious groups, including Protestants.[9] There are always a few people who are willing to use to violence in any religion. Mormonism has had a few, but they are less common than in most other religions in the US.
Many of the aspects of the stereotype were uncommon or nonexistent in nineteenth century Mormonism. They are even less applicable to modern Mormonism.
The most important Mormon elements in these texts – Danites, blood atonement, secret polygamy, Church security, and elaborate conspiracies against gentiles – would not even be recognized by twentieth-century Mormons as part of their religion. These are stereotypes that have been part of popular literature for more than a century, and their most recent incarnations owe much more to literary tradition than they do to any author’s direct experience with the Mormon people. … The average American mystery fan probably knows more about the Mormon “belief” in blood atonement than an average LDS stake president, and as long as this remains the case, readers will naturally assume what they are repeatedly told: that contemporary Mormons believe in, and occasionally practice, religiously sanctioned murder.[1]
This is especially problematic because most people know very little about Mormon theology. Some of the people reading or watching (or writing) detective fiction have nothing else to compare these claims to. They will accept that the extremist or fictional beliefs and practices portrayed are common among Mormons, contributing to illegitimate anti-Mormon sentiment.
We should reject and call out nineteenth century anti-Mormon stereotypes when they appear in modern stories.
Bibliography
[1] “Troped by the Mormons: The Persistence of 19th-Century Mormon Stereotypes in Contemporary Detective Fiction” by Michael Austin. Sunstone. August 1998. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/111-51-71.pdf
[2] “”Murder and Mystery Mormon Style”: Violence as Mediation in American Popular Culture” by Terryl Givens. English Faculty Publications 83. 1995. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1083&context=english-faculty-publications
[3] “A History of Latter-day Saint Screen Portrayals in the Anti-Mormon Film Era 1905-1936” by Richard Alan Nelson. Masters Thesis for BYU. 1975. https://www.proquest.com/docview/193948114?fromopenview=true&pq-origsite=gscholar
[4] “Perpetuation of a Myth: Mormon Danites in Five Western Novels, 1840-90” by Rebecca Foster Cornwall and Leonard J. Arrington. Brigham Young University Studies 23:2. Spring 1983. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43042337.pdf
[5] “A Victim of the Mormons and The Danites: Images and Relics from Early Twentieth-Century Anti-Mormon Silent Films” by Jacob W. Olmstead. Mormon Historical Studies. 2013.
[6] “From Antagonism to Acceptance: Mormons and the Silver Screen” by Richard Alan Nelson. Dialogue 10:3. April 1977. https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/dial/article/10/3/58/244455/FROM-ANTAGONISM-TO-ACCEPTANCE-MORMONS-AND-THE
[7] “The Mormon Murder Mystery Grows Up” by Michael Austin. Dialogue 48:1. Spring 2015. https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/dial/article/48/1/163/249150/The-Mormon-Murder-Mystery-Grows-Up
[8] “The Effects and Tendencies of Mormon Polygamy in the Territory of Utah” by Samuel Cartwright and C.G. Forshey. New Orleans Academy of Sciences. 1861.
[9] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-prisoners-less-likely-to-be-atheists/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/234653/religious-affiliation-of-us-prisoners/ . If this has a paywall, Google Religious Affliation of US Prisoners Statista and it should take you to a non-paywalled version.
[10] I would like to thank everyone who commented on my previous posts on Reddit who helped to improve my knowledge of this scholarship.