This article
is more properly headed “How Theorists Deal With Opposing Views,” as found on
the “Book of Mormon Wars” Website. That is, when something is said, printed, or
described in the scriptural record or Church publications, or said by Church
Leaders that one does not agree with or does not support one’s Land of Promise
model, we have a very recent example of how theorists deal with such a problem—specifically
Great Lakes theorists.
Consider this
exchange on Book of Mormon Wars website
Thursday, June 9, 2016:
Article: “July
19, 1840: Joseph teaches that the Land of Zion consists of North and South
America....[Joseph Smith said:] “speaking of
the Land of Zion, It consists of
all N[orth] & S[outh] America but that any place where the
Saints gather is Zion which every righteous man will build up for a place of
safety for his children...The
redemption of Zion is the redemption of all N[orth] &; S[outh] America."
(Martha Jane Knowlton Coray, [edited by Dean C.
Jessee], "Joseph Smith's July 19, 1840 Discourse," Brigham Young
University Studies 19 no. 3, Spring 1979, 392)
[Now since this runs
contrary to the Great Lakes theorists and to the Book of Mormon Wars website, their counter-comment was stated as:]
Article: “This
account was the first sermon recorded by 19-year-old Martha Jane Knowlton
Coray. It is the subject of a separate blog post, but when read in context,
Joseph most likely was referring to North and South America meaning North and
South United States, not the continents. It has been misconstrued ever since.”
Response: Amazing. Does anyone really think that Joseph Smith did not
mean what he said even though someone recorded his words? Yet, according to the
theorists, he actually meant something else entirely. In the swoop of an
unsupported statement, provided by nothing Joseph Smith said regarding the difference
between North and South America and North and South United States, the
latter being a term never used by the Prophet nor anyone else describing Zion,
the Church, or anything else like this, is simply the way a theorist disingenuously
discredits and tries to eliminate a statement Joseph Smith made that so very
obviously meant just the opposite of what the theorist claims—he said and meant North and South America,
not North and South United States—a term that was never applied to this
country or this continent throughout history.
In addition, when Joseph’s statement is
compared against those similar statements made by several Church Presidents and
leaders on this very subject, his statement of North and South America is
consistent, not North and South United States.
Prior to 1860, and common during the
1830s and Joseph Smith’s lifetime, the South was referred to as the Southern
United States, but more commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or
simply the South.
In 1860 when South Carolina seceded, or
left the United States, they called themselves and their new nation the
Confederate States of America, and within four months six other states seceded
and joined them (Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana). The
South referred to themselves as the Confederacy throughout the separation and
war, never “the South United States.”
In fact, at no time were any of these
states called or referred to as the South United States. Nor was the term North
United States used for the rest of the country in the north, always referred to as "The North," or "The Union," during this period. President Abraham Lincoln, the Union government, and everyone else
called the South the southern states, but never South United States. It is not
only a term Joseph Smith would not have used, it was a term no one used.
It should also be noted that from 1820
to 1854, thanks to the Missouri Compromise, the nation had a balance of
political power, especially during Joseph Smith’s time and for the first 15
years after the organization of the Church. Not until ten years after Joseph
Smith’s death, in 1854, did problems between North and South start to rise as
the problem of slavery escalated in separating the agricultural south from the
industrial north, which finally came to a head in Kansas in 1855 leading to a
slavery-anti-slavery war in November in Missouri, which escalated and lasted
until 1861 and called “Bleeding Kansas.”
Prior to that time, the U.S. industry
as a nation was almost non-existent on a world scale. As an example, in 1820,
the percent of world GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the U.S. was the smallest
by far of the world’s top eight nations, with China, India, France, Britain,
Germany, Japan, and Italy, all far greater percentage in that order than the
U.S. After the Civil War, and by 1870, the U.S. and Britain were about equal,
after China and India, followed closely by France, Germany and then Italy, with
Japan far behind.
The point is, there was no reason
between 1820 and 1854, that Joseph or anyone else would have referred to North
United States or South United States. Beginning on July 2, 1776 when a
resolution by Richard Henry Lee, that had been presented to Congress on June 7
created the name by stating “that these
United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States…” and
then on September 9, 1776, the term United States of America replaced the
earlier term United Colonies which had been in general use before July, now
becoming the official name of this nation.
Originally, of course, the term America
denoted all of the New World, which was generally referred to as the Americas
(Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, Columbia
University Press. New York, 1993, pp27–28).
Initially, the name America was coined by Martin Waldeseemuller from Americus
Vespucius, the Latinized version of the name of Amerigo Vespuci
(1454–1512), the Italian explorer who mapped South America's east coast and the
Caribbean Sea in the early 16th century. Later, Vespucci's published letters
were the basis of Waldseemuller’s 1507 map, which is the first usage of America.
The adjective American subsequently denoted the New World.
16th-century European usage of American
denoted the native inhabitants of the New World. The earliest recorded use of
this term in English is in Thomas Hacket’s 1568 translation of Andre Thévet’s
book France Antartique, Thévet
himself had referred to the natives as Ameriques. In the following century,
the term was extended to European settlers and their descendants in the
Americas. The earliest recorded use of this term in English dates to 1648, in
Thomas Gage’s The English-American: A New Survey of the West Indies.
The Old
Catholic Encyclopedia’s usage of America is as "the Western
Continent or the New World." It discusses American republics, ranging from
the U.S. to the republic of Mexico, the Central American republics of
Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Leon, and Panama; the
Antillian republics of Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Cuba, and the South American
republics of Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, the
Argentine, and Chile” (Kevin Knight, America,
Catholic Encyclopedia
In
fact, The entry for
"America" in The New York Times
Manual of Style and Usage from 1999 reads: “[the] terms
"America", "American(s)" and "Americas" refer not
only to the United States, but to all of North America and South America. They
may be used in any of their senses, including references to just the United
States, if the context is clear. The countries of the Western Hemisphere are
collectively “the Americas” (The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's
Most Authoritative Newspaper is a style
guide created in 1950 by editors at the newspaper and revised in 1974, 1999,
and 2002 by Allen M. Siegal and William G. Connolly).
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