Lesson 34: Faith in Every Footstep (...or my title: Pioneers Would Hate Pedestals)

Reading: Section 136. Brigham's only section. 

I am not a pioneer expert, by any means. I focus on the Joseph Smith era and then the last half of the nineteenth century in Utah. I consistently skip across the plains. In Utah, my least favorite Sunday of the year was consistently the Sunday (either before or after) the 24th of July. I once told a Sunday School class I didn't care about the pioneers. That isn't exactly true, but useful hyperbole. I am not a fan of putting the pioneers (or anyone for that matter) on pedestals. Pedestals are just made for admiring, not action; real individuals do not last on pedestals. 

In the introduction to the second edition of Mormon Sisters (UK link), Claudia Bushman writes this: "As I read the documents now, I find many fiesty and accomplished women, but I would no longer use words like heroism and sacrifice. I find many women doggedly doing their duty, much wishful thinking about home industry, much effort to rise above difficult situations, and much heavy rhetoric about gentility and refinement. I find women who are strong of necessity, who did as they had to do, rising to the opportunities and challenges that beset them, but women who are very much like their great-granddaughters today. This is not a master race of foremothers set apart by their nobility; these are our own sisters. In their place, we would have done so well." Though I would argue that normal life sometimes requires sacrifice and heroism, those qualities are not something that should divide us from our spiritual forbearers--they should connect us to them. They are our sisters and brothers through faith. Pioneer stories should not make them seem perfect and inaccessible, they struggled as we do. Reportedly, Elder Bruce R. McConkie argued that many of the Saints today would have a difficult time accepting the pioneers beacuse we expect something different. (the source here is a former bishop who heard Elder McConkie teaching this during a stake conference somewhere near Ohio State in the early 1980s. I'm sorry I can't pin it down any more than that and fully acknowledge that some liberties have possibly been taken with his original statement, but I believe the sentiment. I'd just say it myself, but that would be stealing.) I think for the most part we have a very sanitized version of the pioneers in our heads. 


Someone else can give you logistical specifics of mid-nineteenth century Mormon pioneer travel, not me. If you're really interested perhaps start with the Mormon Pioneer Overland Trail Database here. One tidbit of interest is the original list of suggestions to those Saints preparing to leave Nauvoo in 1845 .(See the image above--coffee & tea?!?!? cayenne pepper??) The image is from this 29 October 1845 issue of the Nauvoo Neighbor--page three. (Note all the pleas for peace and affidavits of the chaos in Nauvoo at the time.)

The Church History website is really producing some fantastic materials (which I desperately hope will continue to expand). Read the recently published lost sermon of Heber C. Kimball on the Trials of the Pioneers here. Note his focus on covenants. Read of Pioneers in Every Land here. Some really great stories: a futbol player in Argentina, a German POW finding refuge in a British ward, missionaries fleeing a Liberian civil war in 1989. Fantastic.