The Exorcism of Isaac Russell: Diabolism and Nineteenth-Century Mormon Identity Formation* Christopher Blythe / Brigham Young University In the summer of 1837, a small contingent of Mormon missionaries had taken up residence in a boardinghouse located at 21 Wilfrid Street in Preston, England. It was there, on the night of July 30, that a frightened missionary charged up the steps to the third floor where the leaders of the group slept and begged them to cast out the evil spirits possessing him. By the end of the evening, the men had performed two exorcisms—one for the original victim, Isaac Russell, and, after his liberation, another for his exorcist, Heber C. Kimball. Reports of the evening’s supernatural activities varied. Some accounts referred to the horrific sounds the missionaries heard as their unseen opponents “foamed and gnashed their teeth upon us.”1 Other sources recounted a vision shared by two of the missionaries who saw into the “infernal world”2 for a total of ninety minutes—timed by the pocket watch of another missionary present.3 Mormons believed that Victorian England was filled with demons and evil spirits, invisible to the naked eye, but present all the same. Missionaries often fell victim to supernatural assault. Their journals and correspondence described sleep paralysis, beds shaking, levitation, unseen attackers, sudden jolts of fear, and sensing evil spirits in the hearts of their critics. The demonic seemed intimately connected to even mundane efforts to thwart the missionaries’ progress. The devil influenced members of the clergy who united against the missionaries’ preaching. His reach extended to the wide range of * I would like to express appreciation to Jeannie Thomas at Utah State University, as well as John Corrigan and Matthew Goff at Florida State University, for their insights and encouragement on early drafts of this article. 1 R. B. Thompson, Journal of Heber C. Kimball: an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . . . (Nauvoo, IL: Robinson & Smith, 1840), 19. 2 Heber C. Kimball, “Elders Called to Go on Missions—Existence of Good and Evil Spirits, and of Holy Angels,” discourse, March 2, 1856, in Journal of Discourses, vol. 3 (London: Latterday Saints’ Book Depot, 1856), 229. 3 Orson F. Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball, An Apostle; The Father and Founder of the British Mission (Salt Lake City, UT: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1888), 144. © 2018 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/2018/9803-0001$10.00 305 The Journal of Religion alternative religious sects, some of them with messages that seemed uncomfortably similar to that of Mormonism itself. Mormons saw supernatural and natural persecution through a common diabolical lens—they were the product of the same adversarial force. Diabolism was part of a larger dualism—a sense that the world is divided between righteous and wicked4—by which Mormons understood themselves in relationship to the spaces they inhabited and the peoples with whom they interacted. Many religious figures have seen themselves as besieged—the targets of intense persecution—but what set Joseph Smith apart, in the words of religion scholar Terryl Givens, “was how he effectively imbued an entire people with this same sense of hostile separation from the world.”5 This lens was first articulated in the Book of Mormon, which declared “there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil” (1 Nephi 14:10). Here I examine how diabolism was deployed and propagated on the ground. Through a diabolic lens, Mormons established boundaries between themselves and their nineteenth-century opponents—be they religious competitors or secular forces. Scholars have commonly focused on how Mormons defined themselves via a sense of victimhood6 or the profession of a chosen status;7 similarly, this article examines identity formation but through a different emphasis, examining how Mormons portrayed others and thereby defined their identity against their religious competitors. As Regina Schwartz has noted, “the activity of people defining themselves as a group is negative, they are by virtue of who they are not.”8 Diabolism strengthened resolve in the face of contest. At the same time, while stories of exorcism or demonic encounters were naturally frightening, their purpose was to relieve anxieties already present rather than to create or fester them. Mormons were anxious over seeming similarities between theirs and other religious communities in the nineteenth century; however, by drawing on demonic tropes, a boundary was forged and the concern was (it is hoped) relieved. Likewise, while Mormons dreaded physical violence and persecution, stories of thwarted invisible satanic enemies promised divine intervention and real-world protection. In order to examine this diabolical worldview in early Mormonism, this article documents the reception history and multiple uses of the exorcism 4 Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 42– 46. 5 Terryl Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 54. 6 R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 7 Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 58. 8 Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 5. 306 Mormon Diabolism of Isaac Russell narrative, a particularly influential supernatural assault tradition/narrative (to borrow a term from the work of folklorist David Hufford).9 While the Mormon construction of dualism first appeared in the Book of Mormon, as this narrative suggests, Mormonism’s pervasive diabolism was forged in the experience of the mission field, circulated through word of mouth, and was popularized in Mormon publications. This article traces the development of this story as it spread from a few missionaries to others, was published in church periodicals, and became the subject of midcentury sermons. Until the present time, this nineteenth-century exorcism remains the best known supernatural assault narrative (outside of Joseph Smith’s well-known experiences10) among Latter-day Saints. In fact, it continues to be deployed as an example of diabolic oppression in Churchwide sermons and informal religious instruction, and even in England where “Mormons highlight it for new members” and include the site on popular historical tours, despite a de-emphasis on diabolism in the twentieth century.11 In its initial forms, interpretations of the narrative built on Mormon understandings that linked demonic presences with the nature of a place and its inhabitants. In the twentieth century, these understandings dissipated, and as a result the narrative was able to be used for a more general application that did not seek to establish Mormon identity at the expense of living individuals or institutions. DIABOLISM AND THE MORMON THEOLOGY OF PLACE Diabolism was tied into Mormonism’s dualistic cultural geography. As missionaries encouraged converts to leave the lands of their nativity to relocate to Mormon settlements, they used the rhetoric of “fleeing Babylon” and “gathering to Zion.” The practice conjured a mental map that divided the world into two distinctive spaces: Zion, the home of the righteous, a place of safety and prosperity; and Babylon, the province of the wicked, a 9 See David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Narratives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1982). 10 In 1838, Joseph Smith recorded a lengthy account of a vision he experienced when as an adolescent he prayed to know which church he should join. After his prayer, he “was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me and had such astonishing influence over me that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.” He credited the phenomenon to “some actual being from the unseen world who had such a marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being.” Karen Lynn Davidson, David J. Whittaker, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers: Histories, vol. 1, Joseph Smith Histories, 1832–1844 (Salt Lake City, UT: Church Historian’s Press, 2012), 212–14. 11 Correspondence with David Michael Morris, December 11, 2015. In 1987, Gordon B. Hinckley, then a member of the Church’s first presidency, recalled that he had learned about “the location of the house on Wilfred Street, where they [the early missionaries] stayed and had a terrible experience with evil spirits,” while serving as a missionary in the area in the 1930s. Gordon B. Hinckley, “Taking the Gospel to Great Britain,” Ensign, July 1987, http:// www.lds.org (accessed October 1, 2016). 307 The Journal of Religion place where Saints could expect persecution and violence and that would, in the near future, be subject to divine judgment. While this theology of place was present in Mormon scripture, it was through stories told by former missionaries or gathering converts that embedded these positive and negative ideas in time and space. As missionaries dispersed throughout the world, they observed and reported an informal geography of the infernal. Benjamin Brown described Colchester, England, as “an old place and much troubled by evil spirits.”12 George Q. Cannon remembered feeling the presence of evil spirits “on the old battle grounds on the Sandwich Islands,” where he had served a mission.13 Joseph Smith was said to have identified “places in the Mississippi Valley where the influence or the presence of invisible spirits are very perceptibly felt. He said that numbers had been slain there in war, and that there were evil influences or spirits which affect the spirits of those who have tabernacles on the earth.”14 After 1847, when Mormons gathered in the mountain West and southern Utah deserts, legends of malevolent Native American spirits inhabiting the land flourished.15 Identifying specific places as infested with the demonic categorized location as wicked, hinting at the nature of their current human populations. This demonization of Mormonism’s opponents was further strengthened by the Saints’ understanding of the otherworldly. Mormons believed the inhabitants of the invisible world consisted of people already deceased or not yet born. Human beings originated as spirits, were embodied at mortal birth, and die and continue to live as spirit beings on the earth until they finally are resurrected with immortal bodies.16 Mankind, spirits, and angels were all one species. This singular Mormon angelology allowed for Mormons to identify evil spirits as either spirits who will never be born into mortality or spirits of deceased evil men and women. This first group, supporters of the angel Lucifer, were, according to a Mormon revelation, “thrust down from the presence of God and his son” to the Earth where they “maketh war with the saints of God, and encompasseth them round about.”17 Their anger toward humankind and the 12 Benjamin Brown, journal, September 1852–January 1855, Benjamin Brown Family Collection, 1819–2002, LDS Church History Library (CHL), box 1, folder 1, p. 28. 13 George Q. Cannon, “Blessings of the People of God.—Power of Evil and Unseen Influences.—Ministration of Angels.—Faith Necessary First as a Preparation for Greater Things.— Holy Spirit Necessary for the Right Performance of Temporal Duties,” discourse, November 13, 1864, in Journal of Discourses, vol. 11 (London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1867), 30. 14 Ibid. 15 See W. Paul Reeve, “‘As Ugly as Evil’ and ‘As Wicked as Hell’: Gadianton Robbers and the Legend Process among the Mormons,” in Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore, ed. W. Paul Reeve and Michael Scott Van Wagenen (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011), 40–65. 16 See Orson Pratt, “Mormon Philosophy, Angels,” New York Messenger, October 18, 1845. 17 “Vision, 16 February 1832,” in The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents, vol. 2, July 1831–January 1833, ed. Matthew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley (Salt Lake City, UT: Church Historian’s Press, 2013), 186. 308 Mormon Diabolism rationale of possession is in part based on their jealousy over physical bodies. Joseph Smith explained that “the great principle of happiness consists in having a body,” whereas, “the Devil has no body, and herein is his punishment.” Like other evil spirits, “he is pleased when he can obtain the tabernacle of man and when cast out by the Savior he asked to go into the herd of swine showing that he would prefer a swines [sic] body to having none.”18 Nineteenth-century Mormonism also equated the perpetrators of possession and supernatural assault with those who had died and remained “in lonely wretchedness about the earth, and in the air, and especially about their ancient homesteads, and the places rendered dear to them by the memory of former scenes.”19 Evil spirits longed to continue in the flesh in order to feed their ongoing drive to sin. Both these disembodied wicked spirits and those which were never embodied appeared in narratives of external assaults (sometimes called obsession). At other times, they appeared in full-blown possession experiences in which the bodies of the Saints became the vehicles of infernal personalities. Significantly, in early Mormonism, individuals were more likely to identify evil spirits as the spirits of the deceased. This rendered the Saints’ living opponents associated with supernatural evil through their ancestry. P O S S E S S I O N I N T H E C O N T E X T O F T H E S E C O N D G R E AT AW A K E N I N G In 1855, nearly a decade after the Preston experience, Parley Pratt’s influential Key to the Science of Theology addressed Mormonism’s rich demonology. Pratt recounted the internal symptoms of possession, including emotional distress, nightmares, and temptations. Of the latter, Pratt wrote, “some of these spirits are adulterous, and suggest to the mind all manner of lasciviousness, all kinds of evil thoughts and temptations.”20 He also explained that demoniacs had observable physical symptoms such as “hysterics, fever, &c. They will also deform them in body and in features, by convulsions, cramps, contortions, &c.” The afflicted were compelled “to utter blasphemies, horrible curses, and even words of other languages.”21 A person “virtuous and modest so long as they possessed their own agency” would succumb to “awful instances of the spirit of lust, and of bawdy and abominable words and actions.”22 In addition to sinful deeds, blasphemy, and infernal xenoglossia, one could detect the possessed by smell or by sight. The odor of the possessed 18 Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Centers, 1980), 60. 19 Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology (London: L. D. Saints’ Book Depot, 1855), 110. 20 Ibid., 115–16. 21 Ibid., 115. 22 Ibid., 116. 309 The Journal of Religion would remain “even though the person thus afflicted should be washed and change[d] every few minutes.” If one were to look a demoniac in the eye, he would “feel a shock—a nervous feeling, which will, as it were, make his hair stand on end, in short, a shock resembling that produced in a nervous system by the sight of a serpent.”23 As Pratt’s descriptions suggest, by the 1850s, Mormons had very clear ideas on what the possessed experienced, what they did, what they said, what it was like to be in their presence, and even how they smelled, but it would seem these ideas did not originate from within the faith. First-generation Mormons witnessed and experienced firsthand the phenomenon of possession and obsession among recent converts, who brought into the new faith a vibrant cultural script already in play on the fringes of the Second Great Awakening. Mormons were able to understand exorcism and possession through their common reading of the Bible. This process was clear in the earliest example of a Mormon exorcism performed on April 11, 1830, only five days after the Church of Christ, later renamed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was organized. Newel Knight, a local Universalist who had attended the Saints’ meetings, called for Joseph Smith to visit him at his home. When Smith arrived, according to an account drafted by his clerks in 1838, he “found him [Knight] suffering very much in his mind, and his body acted upon in a very strange manner. His visage and limbs were distorted and twisted in every shape and appearance possible to imagine; and finally he was caught up off the floor of the apartment and tossed about most fearfully.” An audience of eight or nine neighbors arrived to witness the affliction. The demoniac begged Smith to exorcise him, and Smith “almost unconsciously . . . rebuked the devil; and commanded him in the name of Jesus Christ to depart from him; when immediately Newel spoke out and said that he could see the devil leave him and vanish from his sight.” The 1838 church history pronounced this event the church’s “first miracle.”24 Wherever Mormon missionaries traveled, they encountered those who suffered demonic assault and influences. Possession was rarely a homegrown malady. For example, Parley Pratt’s description of possession may have been based on his firsthand encounter with a Mrs. Whitney while on a mission in Toronto in 1836. Not unlike Smith’s description of Newel Knight’s affliction, Pratt recalled that Whitney “would be prostrated by some power invisible to those about her, and, in an agony of distress indescribable, she would be drawn and twisted in every limb and joint, and would almost, in fact, be pulled out of joint.” The affliction left her “bruised, cramped and pinched, while she would groan, scream, froth at the mouth, etc.” As with most demo23 Ibid. Joseph Smith, “History [Manuscript history of the Church],” 1838–56, vol. A-1, p. 40, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. 24 310 Mormon Diabolism niacs, only Whitney could see her assailants, “two devils in human form, who were thus operating upon her.” Pratt described the manifestation of these symptoms as “spells” that occurred daily, although he also noted that after a spell Whitney was so beaten and bruised she could not “even sit up, for some weeks.”25 Neighbors held a twenty-four-hour watch over her. Pratt visited the community on a two-week circuit, where he would preach in one of the local homes. Hearing that he was in town, Mrs. Whitney fought her way out of the room in order to “find the man of God.” She barged into the meeting while Pratt was midsermon “and when the thing was explained the eyes of the whole multitude were upon her.” Pratt laid his hands on her and quoted a passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew, “Sister, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven, thy faith hath made thee whole; and, in the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke the devils and unclean spirits, and command them to trouble thee no more.” The ailment never returned, and Pratt recalled that Whitney’s neighbors came to see her recovery as a sign of Mormonism’s truthfulness and subsequently joined the Church.26 The experience of supernatural affliction prospered within the context of nineteenth-century American revivalism. The devil was active in the dramatic world of Methodist-style conversion. As preachers urged sinners to “explore, regularly and relentlessly, the darkest recesses of their hearts, experience overwhelming guilt and remorse, and search their souls for signs of repentance,” the initiate often stumbled across Satan before he found redemption in the new birth.27 Under the influence of the devil, the wouldbe convert was resistant to salvation, and an internal struggle ensued. Many revivalists actively discouraged the more elaborate symptoms of possession, although it was not uncommon for a proselyte to “get the jerks.” This otherworldly seizure was, like the spasms of traditional possession, seen as evidence of spiritual warfare occurring within the victim’s body. In contrast, some Americans continued to believe that their bodies were hosts to evil spirits.28 For a subset of these demoniacs, possession was not a passing malady but a persistent affliction that engulfed their lives. I S A A C R U S S E L L , A M E T H O D I S T- T U R N E D - M O R M O N D E M O N I A C On the cusp of thirty, Isaac Russell, who would later serve as one of the first missionaries to England, had already been “grievously afflicted” for years be25 Parley P. Pratt, The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, ed. Parley P. Pratt Jr. (New York: Russell Brothers, 1874), 167. 26 Ibid., 168; for comparison, see Matt. 9:2; 9:22. 27 Christine Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (New York: Knopf, 1997), 33. 28 A common example is the preacher William Glendenning, whose own obsession experience was recorded in his autobiographical account, The Life of William Glendenning, Preacher of the Gospel (Philadelphia, 1795). Glendenning’s case is discussed in both Heyrman, Southern Cross, and Jeffrey Williams, Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism: Taking the Kingdom by Force (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). 311 The Journal of Religion fore his 1836 conversion to Mormonism. Russell belonged to a study group of Toronto Methodists nicknamed “the Dissenters” for their rejection of the local Methodist congregation in favor of a more charismatic faith. Several members of this body converted to Mormonism during Parley Pratt’s 1836 mission to upper Canada.29 Another Dissenter turned Mormon convert, Joseph Fielding recalled that there were times that Russell, then his neighbor, “was not fit to be left alone.” He struggled to stay employed, perhaps due to his tendency to miss work. Fielding noted that he had “twice [been] called to leave my work and seek [Russell] him in the Woods.” When he was discovered, “he was much grieved at my requiring him to go home, [and] would kneel down on the wet Ground in the Attitude of Prayer.”30 Russell frequently told others about his demonic encounters and predicted his own death. Fielding recalled that Russell would invite friends to visit him at specific times when he was set to die. When the time passed without tragedy, Russell would announce that God had once again offered him a short reprieve, before scheduling another date. The symptoms of Russell’s affliction extended beyond abnormalities in behavior. His demons left physical marks: “The evil Spirits would sometimes press him, sometimes as if they would scratch him, etc.” He was subject to nighttime terrors, as well, in which “while in his Sleep [demons would] present to his Mind various figures, sometimes to tempt him, sometimes to alarm him, and sometimes as a Combatant. He got but little Sleep, and became bowed down.”31 Fielding’s account of Russell’s affliction offers a view into nineteenthcentury reactions to such behavior. On one hand, there were purely supernatural interpretations and reactions. Russell sought the assistance of friends who “came from a distance” to meet for prayer on his behalf. Fielding, who was part of this circle, remembered that their efforts were ineffective. On the other hand, the more accepted explanation of the era was that Russell suffered from a mental disorder. His mother “at one time proposed putting on him a strait waistcoat.”32 Both the idea that Russell might need to be restrained and Fielding’s statement that Russell was unfit to be alone suggest that they saw the man as a danger to himself.33 Indeed, one prominent perspective held that the devil actively attempted to drive his victims insane. Thus, insanity came as the result of demonic obsession. Fielding expressed such views when recording his memoirs of Russell’s affliction—he remembered wrestling with the nature of his friend’s ail29 Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, Parle y P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 83–85. 30 Joseph Fielding Journals, 1837–59, MS 1567, CHL, folder 1, pp. 19–20. 31 Ibid., 21. 32 Ibid., 20. 33 Their reactions reflected the medicalization of possession, a process that already had a long history. See Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in SeventeenthCentury England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 312 Mormon Diabolism ment. He doubted Russell was actually possessed as he claimed, because he often seemed “spirited and quite rational.” However, Fielding was sure that the devil sought to drive Russell mad. He thought this might be accomplished through the method that Russell had worked out to rid himself of devils. The formula was to sit in a chair and “put his hands under his feet, with his Head as low as he could get it.” Fielding saw this as “a Stratagem of the Devil, if possible, to deprive [him] of his Senses.”34 Like the Canadian Dissenters, Mormons also questioned Russell’s strange demeanor and claim of satanic conflict. One Latter-day Saint recalled accompanying Russell aboard a steamship shortly after his baptism, during which time “that man walked the steamer almost day and night, moaning and groaning.”35 Russell’s case was all the more puzzling because, unlike other demoniacs, he was not healed upon his introduction to the faith. Russell continued to face his demons even after entering the ministry himself— even after he crossed the ocean under the direction of a nineteenth-century apostle to preach in England. T H E E X O R C I S M O F I S A A C R U S S E L L : T H E O R I G I N O F A N A R R AT I V E The Church’s mission to England was a foundational moment in early Mormonism. Under the direction of apostle Heber C. Kimball, seven missionaries (including Kimball) departed on the Garrick to preach Mormonism’s gospel for the first time outside of the New World. The small group consisted of three Americans (Orson Hyde, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards) and four Canadian converts ( Joseph Fielding, Isaac Russell, John Goodson, and John Snyder). Spiritual adversaries were already present as the newly minted missionaries sailed on the Garrick toward England. On July 20, the day they would disembark the ship, Richards awoke with a feeling of “utmost horror. It appeared to me that evil Spirits or devils had fastened on every muscle of my body pinching it so severely as completely to stop the circulation of the fluids & Satan himself held me so close by the throat that I was gasping for the last time. Doubtless it would have gratified the prince of the power of the air if he could have strangled me, but the Lord suffered him not.” Richards believed God delivered him because of his long-held desire to “be the first (next to the Twelve) to set my feet on a foreign Shore to carry the fullness of the everlasting Gospel, to the honest in heart.”36 That is, God had interfered to protect His servant. Richards obtained his desire later that day. 34 Joseph Fielding Journals, 20. Wilford Woodruff, discourse, October 5, 1896, in Collected Discourses, 5 vols., ed. Brian H. Stuy (Burbank, CA: B. H. S. Publishing, 1987–92), 5:198. 36 Willard Richards Diary, Leonard Arrington Papers, Utah State University Special Collections, series IX, box 15, folder 1, pp. 6 –7. The symptoms described in Richards’s journal entry match the description of the cross-cultural experience associated with sleep paralysis that 35 313 The Journal of Religion Much of the Mormons’ success in proselytizing can be attributed to their ability to locate independent congregations, sometimes loosely aligned with Methodism or groups of religious seekers, which shared similar views on the corruption of contemporary Christianity. These working-class peoples were already attracted to radical forms of dissenting religion, which shared the Mormon emphasis on charismatic spirituality and millenarian expectations. When the missionaries arrived in England, they had already contacted the head of one such congregation, led by Joseph Fielding’s brother, Reverend James Fielding. With his permission, the missionaries preached in his chapel in Preston and met with individual members of his congregation. When nine of these parishioners agreed to the missionaries’ invitation of baptism, Fielding forbade the Mormons from returning to his chapel and from baptizing his flock. Kimball would often recall this scene when the missionaries were rejected by their former host turned critic: “[He] shut his doors against us and would suffer us to preach no more in his chapel, and for an excuse, said that we had preached the doctrine of baptism for the remission of sins, contrary to our arrangement with him.”37 Kimball denied that he had made such an agreement, and, of course, the Mormons would not be dissuaded from their plans. That evening Kimball and Hyde retired to their room with excitement, eagerly awaiting the next day’s baptismal service. At sunrise, Russell interrupted their slumber, shouting into their room, “Brother Kimball, I want you should get up and pray for me that I may be delivered from the evil spirits that are tormenting me to such a degree that I feel I cannot live long, unless I obtain relief.”38 Russell kneeled by the side of the bed with Kimball standing above him and Hyde sitting up in bed. According to Hyde’s journal entry from that date, the two laid their hands on Russell’s head, “and brother Kimball rebuked and prayed for him but just before he had finished his prayer his voice faltered, and his mouth was shut, and he began to tremble and reel to and fro, and fell on the floor like a dead man, and uttered a deep groan, I immediately seized him by the shoulder and lifted him up.”39 As Russell was freed from his own contest, Kimball became the demon’s prey. Russell and Hyde laid their hands on Kimball’s head and “rebuked the evil spirits, in the name of Jesus Christ.” Kimball, now folklorist David Hufford has referred to as the “Old Hag.” During such an experience, an individual awakens, hears or sees “something come into the room and approach the bed,” and feels that they are “being pressed on the chest or strangled,” and finally is unable “to move or cry out” (10–11). He borrows the term “Old Hag” from a common name for the phenomenon in Newfoundland. David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An ExperienceCentered Study of Supernatural Assault Narratives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1982). 37 Ibid., 17. 38 Ibid. 39 Elder’s Journal 1, no. 1 (October 1837). 314 Mormon Diabolism drenched in sweat, lifted himself from the floor. He would remain in a weakened condition for a “day or two after.”40 Over the years, as the event became legendary among Latter-day Saint believers, Kimball, Hyde, and others provided numerous accounts of what occurred in Preston. Each time the story was narrated, new details and new significances amassed, while older renderings disappeared. Most noticeably, the initial account included no mention of a vision and instead referenced only the cacophonous noises of the demonic. Hyde described the experience of “very sensibly hear[ing] the evil spirits rage and foam out their shame.”41 A month later, Kimball also neglected to include any mention of the vision in a letter he drafted to his wife. After copying Hyde’s account, he explained, “We had a great struggle to deliver ourselves from his hands; when they left Br. Russel they pitched upon me, and when they left me they fell upon Br. Hyde; for we could hear them gnash their teeth upon us.”42 There was still no vision—only audible rage. A third account was produced the following month after Orson Hyde shared the story with his fellow missionary Joseph Fielding. Hyde reported the above events but went on to tell Fielding about a second demonic encounter that occurred on July 30, the evening following the baptisms. Russell again petitioned Hyde and Kimball to aid him to overcome a supernatural disturbance, and although Fielding did not recall “whether it was before or after” this request, at some point during the evening the two apostles began to see a vision.43 They “saw as it were a host of those foul Spirits not on the Floor, but as it were in the Midst of the Room, in various Shapes and Forms; some like naked Women, misshapen, and ugly, some like Cats with half a head, etc., and others half of one Creature and half another, the most miserable and disgusting appearances one could possibly imagine.”44 Unlike the aural horror of Saturday, July 29, on Sunday, July 30, they saw their actual attackers. In later accounts, Willard Richards was said to have timed Hyde and Kimball’s vision of hell and found that the experience lasted a total of ninety minutes.45 These demonic experiences were first broadcast to a wider body of the Saints after Kimball’s September 2, 1837, letter to his wife Vilate arrived in Kirtland, Ohio. Word of its contents prompted Joseph Smith to ask Vilate for a copy of the letter, which he pronounced “a choice jewel, and a testimony that the Gospel was planted in a strange land.”46 In October, the letter was included in the Church’s periodical, The Elder’s Journal, through which many 40 Ibid. Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Fielding confessed he was uncertain “whether it was before or after” they came to Fielding’s room. Joseph Fielding Journals, 23. 44 Ibid. 45 Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball, 144. 46 Kimball, “Elders Called to Go on Missions,” 229. 41 315 The Journal of Religion of the Saints presumably became familiar with the events of July 29, 1837. In 1840, the Journal of Heber C. Kimball, a booklet “giving an account of the commencement of the work of the Lord in Great Britain,” would further publicize the demonic contest.47 Robert B. Thompson wrote the volume after Kimball recounted the events of his mission “from memory, not having [his] journal with me.”48 In this publication, the narrative took on a new form. Events that transpired over two days, according to the earliest accounts, were amalgamated into one occurrence taking place on July 29, 1837, the night before the first baptisms. With only one reference to how Kimball narrated the story to Thompson—that is, without the benefit of a written journal—it is uncertain whether it was Kimball or Thompson who conflated the events. However, Kimball followed the lead of this published version in future tellings. The blending of the two days’ events led to major inconsistencies in how the story was told, including the sequence of events, location, and persons involved. Nevertheless, the Journal of Heber C. Kimball provided the exorcism of Isaac Russell narrative with a canonized language and official channel of distribution. According to this version, Hyde and Russell laid Kimball on the bed, after which he dropped to his knees in prayer and finally sat back on the bed. At this point, Kimball and Hyde “could distinctly see the evil spirits who foamed and gnashed their teeth upon us. We gazed upon them about an hour and a half, and I shall never forget the horror and malignity depicted on the countenances of these foul spirits, and any attempt to paint the scene which then presented itself; or portray the malice and enmity depicted in their countenances would be vain.”49 This variant also described Kimball consciously learning from the experience. “I learned the power of the adversary, his enmity against the servants of God, and got some understanding of the invisible world.”50 Fully scripted, the narrative could now be used by commentators, including Kimball, to make sense of the Mormon experience. DIABOLISM AND THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES IN MORMONISM In England, as had been the case in the United States, Mormon missionaries found their enemies among the religious. Their idealistic hope that they could easily befriend the nation’s clergy was short-lived. The debate over baptism severed the missionaries’ relationship with James Fielding, who had hosted them during their first week in England. Afterward, he preached 47 “Just Published,” Times and Seasons 2 ( January 1, 1841): 271. Quoted in Stanley B. Kimball, ed., On the Potter’s Wheel: The Diaries of Heber C. Kimball (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1987), xii. 49 Thompson, Journal of Heber C. Kimball, 19. 50 Ibid., 13–14. 48 316 Mormon Diabolism against the missionaries and warned other Preston church leaders of the Mormons. He was only the first of many clergymen in England to resist the missionaries’ efforts to instruct their flock, but this initial conflict was important for how Mormons would tell the story of the mission to England. Fielding’s hostility featured prominently, providing the context for the story of Russell’s exorcism. Each time Kimball told the story, he included mention of Fielding’s betrayal. In an 1856 account, Kimball even detailed the demonic conflict before noting that “previous to this, Mr. Fielding, came and forbid my baptizing those persons who had come forward.”51 Kimball believed the evil spirits’ motive was the same as Fielding’s. In 1837, Kimball explained, “The devil was mad because I was a going to baptize, and he wanted to destroy me, that I should not do these things the Lord sent me to do.”52 The implication was clear in each account; both Fielding and the evil spirits had the same agenda—to prevent the next day’s baptisms and the establishment of Christ’s church in England. Kimball linked the evil spirits with living persecutors in Preston, when he identified the former as “the spirits of the wicked, who have died for thousands of years past.”53 They were not a distinct race of demons but were England’s deceased still present in the location of their mortal sojourn and now knowingly in league with the devil. As to be expected, Fielding was not the only religious figure to be associated with personified evil. In October, the missionaries spent a day in “fasting and Prayer, that we may obtain more Influence over the Powers of Darkness, They are all exerted to darken our Minds and to hinder the Work. . . . There is not a society in Preston or about it, as we are informed, but what is opposing us and complaining of our influence in their churches.”54 When Willard Richards wrote in his journal that he had “been moved by the Spirit for a week to attack Satan in his strong hold,” he meant that he was going to spend the afternoon preaching outside of Bedford’s St. Paul’s Church.55 The demonic framed the ongoing conflict between Mormonism and their religious Other. Diabolism also serves to alleviate the problem of ambiguity.56 Indeed, in Mormonism, references to the diabolic often constructed distinctions between Latter-day Saints and other religious communities whose differences seemed superficial. A good example of the role of this nineteenth-century demonic framing for seemingly similar communities was illustrated in a public debate between Mormon Albert Carrington and Swedenborgian 51 Kimball, “Elders Called to Go on Missions,” 229. Elder’s Journal 1, no. 1 (October 1837). 53 Kimball, “Elders Called to Go on Missions,” 229. 54 Joseph Fielding Journals, 37. 55 “History of Willard Richards,” Millennial Star 27 (March 11, 1865): 150. 56 See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966; repr., London: Routledge, 2003), 38–40. 52 317 The Journal of Religion Lucius Lyon held in Salt Lake City in 1850. At the end of the debate, both parties conceded that their traditions shared many beliefs in common. Lyon acknowledged “he thought much better than before of Mormonism” after discovering their commonalities. Carrington refused a truce and resolutely declared that “the Devil has given Swedenborg the Revelations & mixed just truth enough with the erroneous, & gives a new Key to the Bible, makes it very palatable.”57 It made sense in a nineteenth-century Mormon worldview that the similarity between Swedenborg’s doctrine and that of Joseph Smith’s would be best explained as a cunning ruse of the devil. In August 1837, when Orson Hyde communicated the events surrounding Russell’s exorcism to another set of missionaries, including Joseph Fielding, the narrative became a means to explain similarities between Mormonism and other traditions. Fielding believed that the monstrous vision had more to do with other charismatic churches in England than it did with his brother’s church. He thought that “the confusion and disorder of these Creatures identifys [sic] them with the Spirit that inspired the famous French Prophets, and as I believe the same Spirit has deceived, not perhaps Mr. Irving, but his followers, and (the) reason why Men had been deceived by it, is they have not properly understood the Operation of the Spirit of God.”58 Fielding further noted the “considerable instruction” about “the maneuvers of the devil” that came with this experience. While “the spirit of the devil produces Confusion Disorder and Misery, the spirit of God produces calmness, order, and happiness.”59 Fielding’s targets, the French Prophets, an eighteenth-century sect, and the growing contemporary Irvingite tradition, were two alternative charismatic Christian communities that critics compared to Mormonism. Most strikingly, they shared with Mormonism the practice of glossolalia and prophecy. Of course, the claim that spiritual gifts continued into the present was one of Mormonism’s most championed traits. Tongue-speaking, dreams, and visions proved that the Latter-day Saints belonged—and that they alone belonged—to Christ’s one true church. As Parley Pratt would argue, where these gifts existed “is the Church of Christ henceforth and forever.”60 Perhaps this was a reasonable argument when Mormonism was compared to cessationist Christian denominations, but when placed next to the French Prophets or Irvingites, this distinction disappeared. Anti-Mormon literature quickly capitalized on such comparisons. For instance, in 1831, the Painesville Telegraph published an article criticizing Mormon enthusiasm with a section 57 J. W. Gunnison, incomplete letter, ca. 1850, in Brigham D. Madsen, ed., Exploring the Great Salt Lake: The Stansbury Expedition of 1849–50 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), 273. 58 Joseph Fielding Journals, 23 –24. 59 Joseph Fielding Journals, August 9, 1837. 60 Parley P. Pratt, A Reply to Mr. Thomas Taylor’s “Complete Failure,” &. (Manchester: W. R. Thomas, 1840), 9. 318 Mormon Diabolism discussing the French Prophets, declaring “The old maxim, therefore, that ‘there’s nothing new under the sun,’ still holds good.”61 The Irvingites also shared institutional similarities with Mormonism. Both communities were primitivist-minded churches that had established modern-day apostles and emphasized an imminent apocalypse.62 Critical Protestants commonly compared these movements, emphasizing their common dissent from mainstream theology and practice. In 1838, a representative newspaper article grouped the three together under the label of “delusion” based on “family likeness.”63 Not surprisingly, missionaries found such comparisons disconcerting. For example, while a missionary in Canada, Parley Pratt expressed frustration when some who had heard both his own preaching and an Irvingite minister concluded “that both systems were one and would run together.”64 Fielding himself even credited, in addition to his own reading of scripture, Edward Irving’s writings for his interest “in the subject of the millennium, etc.”65 The tension between Mormonism and these two sects was not solely based on the fear that outsiders might see these groups as similar, but from the fact that Mormons themselves recognized such similarities. It diminished the exclusivity of their message. Thus, Mormons sought to differentiate themselves from these denominations by declaring them counterfeits whose similarities were stimulated by evil influences rather than a holy one. Fielding claimed that a view into the supernatural world afforded Hyde and Kimball the knowledge that the “spirit of the devil produces Confusion Disorder and Misery,” whereas the Holy Spirit would “produce calmness, order, and happiness.”66 While the uninitiated might be unable to discern differences between Mormon glossolalia and that of their competitors, the performances differed drastically in nature. An editorial in the Times and Seasons, published while Joseph Smith was editor, argued similarly that “the [French] prophets are subject to the spirit, and falling down, have twitchings, tumblings, and faintings through the influence of that spirit, being entirely under its control,” while Mormons’ spiritual gifts were to be measured, expressing clear messages.67 EVIL SPIRITS AND THE FEAR OF VIOLENCE Over time, the story of Russell’s exorcism was adapted to address evolving Mormon anxieties. While its use as a missionary story was to frame religious 61 “Mormonism,” Painesville Telegraph, February 15, 1831. For a comparative discussion, see Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism, 134–38. 63 Le Roy Sunderland, “Mormonism,” Zion’s Watchman, January 20, 1838. 64 Pratt, Autobiography, 174. 65 Joseph Fielding Journals, 23–24. 66 Joseph Fielding Journals, August 9, 1837. 67 “Try the Spirits,” Millennial Star 3, April 1, 1842, 745. 62 319 The Journal of Religion conflict and distinguish Mormonism from similar movements, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the narrative came to be used more extensively as a means to ease fears of physical violence. This was not an imagined threat. Mormons fled to the Great Basin after the 1844 assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Over the next two years, active mob harassment compelled their departure from Nauvoo, the city they had built along the Mississippi River. While in Illinois and earlier in Missouri, Mormons experienced regional persecution but only federal disregard. In the Great Basin, they perceived a new enemy in the arrival of federal troops. In August 1854, 325 men arrived in Salt Lake City under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Edward Steptoe. This was not the first encounter with federal troops but the encounter that most devastated relations between the Saints and the military. Mormons were concerned with the soldiers’ drunkenness, brawls, and misadventures with Mormon women. In response, Mormons began to shun the troops.68 Increasing tensions resulted in a riot on December 25, 1854. When the troops eventually left Salt Lake City in April and May 1855, they escorted as many as one hundred women to California—a great affront to the Church’s leadership.69 That summer, Brigham Young fumed over the men’s conduct and warned the Saints that they may respond militarily in the event that the troops returned.70 These tensions would eventually erupt into the 1857 Utah War, but in the meantime, Mormons responded by deploying demonic tropes. For example, Kimball began to narrate the story of Isaac Russell’s exorcism with increasingly militaristic descriptions. In a sermon delivered on June 29, 1856, he recalled, “I have seen in vision the invisible enemies of God, and they were organized and arranged in battle against one or two men, simply because those men were going to proclaim the Gospel to the nations, and the devil did not like it.”71 Kimball spoke of the vision without contextualizing it within the larger narrative of the British mission, allowing implicit ties with the Saints’ apprehension of returning violence. In these 1856 accounts, Kimball also introduced a new set of characters present during the experience—unseen angelic protectors. During his March 2, 1856, sermon, he reasoned, “If evil spirits could come to me, cannot ministering spirits and angels also come from God? Of course they can, and there are thousands of them, and I wish you to understand this, and that they can rush as an army going to battle, for the evil spirits came upon me 68 William P. MacKinnon, “Sex, Subalterns, and Steptoe: Army Behavior, Mormon Rage, and Utah War Anxieties,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76 (Summer 2008): 232 69 Ibid., 237. 70 John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Belknap, 2012), 245–46; Journal of Discourses, vol. 2 (London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1855), 309–17. 71 Heber C. Kimball, “The Saints Should Prepare for Future Emergencies—Evil Spirits— Their Power and Organization—The Chain of the Priesthood—Angels and Ministering Spirits,” discourse, June 29, 1856, in Journal of Discourses, vol. 4 (London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1856), 5. 320 Mormon Diabolism and brother Hyde in that way.”72 Continuing in this vein again on June 29, 1856, Kimball stated: Legions of disembodied evil spirits came against me, organized in companies that they might have more power, but they had not power over me to any great extent, because of the power that was in and sustaining me. I had the Priesthood, and the power of it was upon me. I saw the invisible world of the condemned spirits, those who were opposed to me and to this work, and to the lifting up of the standard of Christ in that country. Did I at the same time see or have a vision of the angels of God—of His legions? No, I did not; though they were there and stood in defence of me and my brethren, and I knew it. And all this not that there was any very great virtue in me, but there was virtue in the Priesthood and Apostleship which I held, and God would and did defend; and the evil spirits were dispersed by the power of God.73 The theme of warrior angels defeating satanic legions appeared in other sermons of the period as well. A year previous, Brigham Young had preached a discourse devoted to angelic warfare. He spoke of the threat stemming from the Gentile masses, who seemed to state, “are you not afraid that we can muster our thousands, and destroy every one of you?”74 He asked the assembly rhetorically, “Are the people going to fear? If fear is in the hearts of any of you, it is because you do not pray often enough; or when you do pray you are not sufficiently humble before the Lord.”75 There was no cause to be frightened. Young described a single angel’s slaughter of 185,000 sleeping Assyrians.76 Then, he referenced Elisha’s servant’s vision of chariots of fire arrayed against the encroaching army and Elisha’s statement that “they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”77 God would defend the Saints by “invisible beings . . . millions and millions more than the inhabitants of this earth, they can fight your battles.”78 Kimball may have seen connections between the experience of Elisha’s servant momentarily seeing angelic warriors and his own awareness of those protecting him in 1837. His angels, with Brigham Young’s and the figures from 1 Kings, shared a common purpose of alleviating the fear of persecution from God’s opponents. Kimball’s narrative, including the detailed description of infernal beings arrayed for battle, could only fulfill its intended function if it relieved the tension that it produced in its listener. Thus, defending invisible angelic masses served to assure the sermon’s audience of God’s power over the threat of military enemies. 72 Kimball, “Elders Called to Go on Missions,” 229. Kimball, “The Saints Should Prepare,” 2. 74 Brigham Young, “Faithfulness and Apostasy,” discourse, April 6, 1855, in Journal of Discourses (1855), 2:251. 75 Ibid. 76 2 Kings 19:35. 77 2 Kings 6:14 –17. 78 Brigham Young, “Faithfulness and Apostasy,” 2:251. 73 321 The Journal of Religion In the late 1870s and 1880s, Mormons still dreaded a military invasion in Utah Territory, but instead violence toward Mormons would materialize through persecution of missionaries in the American South. On July 21, 1879, in Georgia, hostile locals murdered Joseph Standing, a twenty-sixyear-old missionary.79 On August 10, 1884, in Lewis County, Tennessee, another vigilante mob took the lives of two missionaries and two local Mormons.80 There were nonfatal assaults and church burnings as well. Mormons blamed this growing opposition on ministers and the anti-Mormon press who had “sent forth their hellish falsehoods” against the church.81 After Standing’s death, one commentator wrote, “the mob killed Brother Standing; but lies and prejudice filled the mob with the spirit of murder. This is always the spirit of the evil one.”82 Historian Patrick Mason observed that Mormons believed that southern hostility had less to do with regional religious competition than it did with a nationwide “Satanic conspiracy against the Godly truth.”83 The Latter-day Saint press responded to growing fears about the dangers of missionary work by publishing a steady flow of missionary-related publications extolling the Saints’ efforts in the field, documenting miracles, and relaying persecutions. Not surprisingly, demonic-encounter literature also thrived during the period. Russell’s exorcism was recounted in two major publications. In 1882, the original 1840 Journal of Heber C. Kimball was expanded in a new edition entitled President Heber C. Kimball’s Journal.84 Six years later, Kimball’s grandson wrote a biography, The Life of Heber C. Kimball, which included an expanded account of Russell’s exorcism with prose unrealized in earlier versions of the legend.85 New supernatural assault narratives multiplied during the period. The genre was always firsthand memoir from a convert, a church leader, or, as was frequently the case, a missionary. One author got at the heart of the literature’s intent when, after describing an infernal encounter, he wrote, “I have written this experience for the benefit of the young Elders who are now abroad on missions, and for the benefit of the boys who may hereafter be called on to take missions.”86 As was the case five decades earlier, Mormon missionaries were pointed to the possibility of a satanic assault or third-party exorcism as a rite of passage. 79 John Nicholson, The Martyrdom of Joseph Standing (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret News Company, 1886). 80 Patrick Q. Mason, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 23–25. 81 Quoted in ibid., 29. 82 “Death of Joseph Standing,” Juvenile Instructor, August 15, 1879. 83 Mason, The Mormon Menace, 167. 84 President Heber C. Kimball’s Journal (Salt Lake City, UT: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1882). 85 Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball. 86 H. G. B., “The Savior’s Promise to Believers,” Juvenile Instructor 17 (1882): 181. 322 Mormon Diabolism The apostle Wilford Woodruff publicized an experience from his mission to London in 1840. While he had contemporaneously written of the attack in his journal, he did not divulge it publicly until a booklet, Leaves from My Journal, appeared in 1881.87 According to this account, Woodruff and George A. Smith had been aware of “evil spirits gathered for our destruction” since their arrival in the city. One night after falling asleep, “it seemed as if a legion of devils made war with us, to destroy us, and we were struggling for our lives in the midst of this warfare of evil spirits until we were nearly choked to death.”88 In response to a panicked prayer, “three personages entered the room, clothed in white and encircled in light.” The angels placed their hands on the suffering missionaries, “and we were instantly delivered.” Woodruff recalled that evil spirits no longer bothered them in London.89 He repeated this story three times in extant public addresses, each time referencing its similarities with, as well as his audience’s knowledge of, Kimball’s account of Russell’s exorcism.90 On one occasion, he even suggested the evil spirits that attacked him and George A. Smith were the same as those who had previously attacked Russell and Kimball in Preston.91 There were a variety of other examples of supernatural assault narratives first publicized in the era, although only one other—that of Joseph Smith’s own demonic encounter experienced as part of his first vision—obtained the same longevity and influence as Kimball and Woodruff’s. Smith’s encounter had been recorded in 1838 and published in 1842 but did not obtain scriptural status until 1880 when the Pearl of Great Price was added to the Mormon canon.92 Yet, the 1880s seem to be the last decade in which these types of stories were able to attract the same level of interest or be produced in the same numbers. DIABOLISM AFTER THE “PERIOD OF TRANSITION” A number of historical changes have resulted in demons no longer playing a dominant theme in official Mormon discourse. In the twentieth century, this sort of instruction seemed unnecessary. In 1937, Mormon prophet Heber J. Grant pronounced “the day of persecution and of slander and of 87 Wilford Woodruff, Leaves from My Journal (Salt Lake City, UT: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1881). The first printing of 4,000 copies was sold within the first nine months, resulting in a second edition published in 1882. According to Woodruff’s journal, the original experience occurred on October 18, 1840 (532). 88 Woodruff, Leaves from My Journal, 95. 89 Ibid. 90 Wilford Woodruff, discourses, March 3, 1889, 1:215–20; October 5, 1896, 5:198–201; October 19, 1896, 5:233–40; all in Stuy, Collected Discourses. 91 Wilford Woodruff, discourse, October 19, 1896, in Stuy, Collected Discourses, 5:236. 92 See “History of Joseph Smith,” Times and Seasons 3, April 1, 1842, 748. The Pearl of Great Price (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1851) was a collection of key texts first published in 1851 for the Latter-day Saints in Great Britain. 323 The Journal of Religion lying [about Mormonism] has almost disappeared.”93 The following year, he expressed his gladness for “the goodwill and friendship that has developed among all classes of people at home and abroad toward the LDS church during my lifetime. In place of early-day persecution and bitterness we now enjoy high regard and happy associations with all denominations.”94 Latter-day Saint history underwent a dramatic shift during what historians have referred to as the period of transition (1890–1930). In 1890, Mormons publicly ended the practice of polygyny. In 1891, the Church dismantled its political party in the territory of Utah and urged members to participate in the American two-party system of politics.95 Having made these major steps toward Americanization, Utah obtained statehood in 1896. In the wake of these changes, the Church gradually began to discourage the practice of gathering at one central location.96 In time, the very concepts of Zion and Babylon were spiritualized and dislocated from specific places.97 As Grant’s quotes imply, Mormons became more interested in emphasizing similarities with others rather than their differences. As a result, the practice of associating outsiders with the demonic largely disappeared from their rhetoric. Mormons still insisted that Satan was an active force in the world; however, in official rhetoric his influence was largely limited to temptation and instituting the “great apostasy,” which had led to the corruption of modern Christendom. There was no longer a sense that demonic agendas influenced America or specific Christian churches. Theological changes also assisted in removing the potency from demonic encounter narratives. Early nineteenth-century supernatural assault stories often identified the demonic as the spirits of those who were once alive. In the twentieth century, such interpretations disappear entirely. When hearing a story like that of Isaac Russell’s exorcism, Mormons assume that they are speaking of traditional demons rather than ghosts. Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie explained that “appearances of spirit beings (supposed to be goblins, specters, and the like) as have actually occurred, probably, have been appearances of devils who never had a body rather than of disembodied ghosts.” He identified the troublemaking spirits as these same demons “forever denied physical bodies.”98 Ironically, positive encounters with apparitions have both historically and presently been interpreted as the 93 Heber J. Grant, “A Message to the Youth of the Church,” Improvement Era, August, 1937. Heber J. Grant, quoted in “L.D.S. Head Keeps Eye upon Future,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 22, 1938. 95 Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Knopf, 1979; repr., New York: Vintage, 1980), 247. 96 Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890 –1930 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 289–90. 97 Robert L. Millett, “The Development of the Concept of Zion in Mormon Theology” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 1983), 247– 48. 98 Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1966), 312. 94 324 Mormon Diabolism righteous spirits of the once living, usually the recipient’s relatives.99 This new interpretive lens distanced the demonic from even those whom the Saints viewed as persecutors. The disappearance of the wicked dead from such demonic narratives corresponded with a shift in Mormonism toward universalistic sentiments. The twentieth-century Church emphasized the potential for postmortal conversions and the performance of vicarious rituals on behalf of the dead (e.g., baptism for the dead).100 The image of the dead as capable of receiving redemption did not fit the contrast of the dead as inherently evil. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, new supernatural assault narratives continued in Mormon folklore. For example, Folklorist David J. Hufford credited Mormons with the “best examples of demonic or ‘evil spirit’ explanation of Old Hag attacks [i.e., sleep paralysis] that I have so far located in English-speaking North America.”101 Yet, these new accounts were never incorporated into official discourse.102 Classic demonic encounters, including Kimball’s assault in England, continued to circulate to new generations of Mormon missionaries, yet these narratives lacked the same focused implications on identity formation. Instead, the evil spirits in Preston appeared in sermons and articles in Church publications as a historical curiosity, a miracle story from the Church’s foundations, and a witness of the reality of the devil.103 CONCLUSION The sharing of supernatural assault stories served many purposes for nineteenth-century Mormons. They forged geographic barriers between Zion and Babylon in the Mormon imagination. They warned missionaries and gathering converts against the realities of persecution and dangers of the natural world. Diabolism functioned to resolve a persistent sense of anxiety present as Mormonism encountered other peoples. Just as frequently as it was a tension of persecution or environmental causes, the anxiety resolved was based on the tensions of ambiguity. Tropes of diabolism and their asso- 99 The only exception to this rule is prebirth visions, when parents see their future offspring. See Tom Mould, Still the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition (Logan: Utah State University, 2011), 271–79. 100 See Jonathan Stapley, “Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 110–11. 101 Hufford, The Terror that Comes in the Night, 222. 102 Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 295. 103 Some examples of this narrative’s popularity in the twentieth century include S. Olani Durrant, “Cliff Walking,” speech, Brigham Young University, July 10, 1984, http://speeches. byu.edu (accessed September 10, 2016); Donald W. Parry, “Angels, Chariots, and the Lord of Hosts,” speech, Brigham Young University, July 31, 2012, http://speeches.byu.edu; Edward L. Kimball and Andrew W. Kimball, Spencer W. Kimball: Twelfth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Company, 1996), 237–38. 325 The Journal of Religion ciation with others identified Mormonism against the plethora of nineteenthcentury religious denominations and ideas. In the twentieth century, demonic images and associations evolved along with lessening tensions between Mormonism and the outside world. As Mormons reenvisioned their theology of place and their ability to participate in non-Mormon circles, it would no longer do for such a broad sweeping demonic association with the majority of outsiders. However, Satan was still present in Mormon worlds. Encounters with his minions, if only sensed in the form of temptation and adversity, still exist as a rite of passage for new converts and missionaries. 326