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Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy

Terryl Givens, University of Richmond. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 6x9.25" hardbound, 205 pages, 17 photos.

Nineteenth-century American writers frequently cast the Mormon as a stock villain in such fictional genres as mysteries, westerns, and popular romances. The Mormons were depicted as a violent and perverse people--the "viper on the hearth"--who sought to violate the domestic sphere of the mainstream. While other critics have mined the socio-political sources of anti-Mormonism, Givens is the first to reveal how popular fiction, in its attempt to deal with the sources and nature of this conflict, constructed an image of the Mormon as a religious and social "Other." 1838: "The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state..."--Missouri Govenor Lilburn Boggs, in a signed executive order to the commander of the Missouri Militia [emphasis in original]

1860: "The yellow, sunken, cadaverous visage; the greenish-colored eyes, the thick, protuberant lips; the low forehead; the light, yellowish hair, and the lank, angular person, constitute an appearance so characteristic of the new [Mormon] race...as to distinguish them at a glance." --from a "statistical" report issued by the Surgeon General's Office.

1882: "The Chinese may stay but the Mormons must go." --Rev. Thomas De Wit, in a sermon on immigration.

1914: "They ain't whites...They're Mormons." --Jack London, Star Rover.

Review Excerpts:

"Ever since Harold Bloom's brilliant The American Religion (1992) was published, a difficult stalemate in Mormon studies has at least been partially broken. . . . Bloom's great insight was to examine Mormonism as a rhetorical system -- critically examining the doctrine as an intellectual construct within the context of American culture. He (and eventually many others) were surprised by just how attractive, encouraging, and quintessentially American Mormon doctrine really is. (And maybe this surprise will have the side effect of inducing sympathetic outsiders to take our truth claims more seriously.)

Other scholars are beginning to follow Bloom's lead. Terryl L. Givens' The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, myths, and the Construction of Heresy is a small gem of Mormon historiography and cultural criticism. The first half of the book is a tour-de-force recounting of Mormonism's eruption into 19th-century American consciousness. Because Jackson-era Americans were unable to admit they could not tolerate a new, home-grown religion (because of American constitutional doctrine of official religious tolerance), Givens says they recast their conflict with the upstart Mormons by stereotyping members of the new church as sinister, "Oriental" despots The second half of the book documents the construction of this image of Mormon heresy through 75 years of anti-Mormon fiction. These books were very successful commercially and in molding public opinion, Givens says, because of the newness of the "novel" as a genre and a new, vastly expanding reading audience willing to be sexually titillated by lurid tales of polygamy. (Many of these novels sound similar to the sensational made-for-TV movies that glut television network schedules. The more things change . . .)

Here we meet the lustful, cunning Mormon elder with his hypnotic powers (Americans were unable to admit that anyone, especially women, would join the church of their own free will: they had to be Mesmerized.) Some of us have seen the camp, amusing old silent movie "Trapped by the Mormons" at the Tower Theater in Salt Lake. The evil missionary "Isoldi Keene" comes straight out of these anti-Mormon novels. The movie is pretty funny by today's standards: only later, after it's over do you reflect how similar this stigmatizing of Mormons as "the Other" is to anti-Semitism.

The final chapter details the Mormon public image in the 20th century. Occasionally you will find traces of the old stereotype, like the infamous 1993 episode of the CBS television series "Picket Fences" where a Mormon splinter group engages in polygamy with young girls. Givens points out how this gives the creators of the show the opportunity to strut their lofty liberal tolerance, while at the same time once again appealing to the prurient interests of the audience. But nowadays, Mormons appear in the work of Cleo James, Tony Kushner and John le Carre mostly as repressed, intolerant nerds -- this time displaying too much conformity, rather than too little as in the past.

What makes Givens' book so fascinating is the contrast between Mormon and ant-Mormon rhetorical style. While critics of the church engaged in slander and vituperation (a U.S. Senator seriously discussed on the Senate floor the human sacrifices he said went on in the temples), the Mormons tried to model themselves on what they considered original Christianity. Givens cites Truman Madsen and Hugh Nibley (how odd and refreshing to find them in a scholarly work published by a non-Mormon press) in explaining how fruitless and hypocritical the charge of "heresy" was and is. The only thing that separated Joseph Smith and St. Paul was that Smith was a contemporary of his critics and not cushioned by 1800 years of historical distance. As Tom Wolfe once said, "A cult is a religion without political power." And in the case of the Mormons, newness combined with relative powerlessness attracted enemies.

This is a stimulating and original book. It has certain functionalist/postmodern elements, like Bloom, but Givens keeps the jargon to a minimum and retains great readability." --R.W. Rasband, Utah, 1997

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"The Viper on the Hearth is an important new contribution to the study of Mormonism and its detractors. Its great strength lies in its ability to refocus our attention on Mormonism as a religion rather than as a social movement, a political dilemma, or a peculiar economic system. Not since Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism or Lawrence Foster's Religion and Sexuality has Mormonism been taken so seriously as a religion by scholars. If Mormonism can be taken seriously as a religion, then anti-Mormonism must be seen for what it is: cruel and repugnant intolerance masquerading as overzealous patriotism or moral crusading. Terryl Givens's book reminds us what "a great scholar" once told Orson F. Whitney:

You Mormons are all ignoramuses. You don't even know the strength of your own position. It is so strong that there is only one other tenable in the whole Christian world, and that is the position of the Catholic Church. The issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. If we are right, you are wrong; if you are right we are wrong; and that's all there is to it. The Protestants haven't a leg to stand on. For if we are wrong, they are wrong with us, since they were a part of us and went out from us; while if we are right, they are apostates whom we cut off long ago. If we have the apostolic succession from St. Peter, as we claim, there was no need of Joseph Smith and Mormonism; but if we have not that succession, then such a man as Joseph Smith was necessary, and Mormonism's attitude is the only consistent one. It is either the perpetuation of the Gospel from ancient times, or the restoration of the Gospel in latter days.

And that, as Givens so carefully presents, is the essential ground of all orthodox persecution of Mormons. That, as Whitney wrote so long ago, is the 'Strength of the 'Mormon' Position.'" --Neal W. Kraemer, FARMS Review of Books

The FARMS Review of Books and BYU Studies issue below both contain review of this book.

Title: Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy

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