October 16, 2024 • 21 mins
What do Mormons actually believe? And how did this mega-wealthy American church gain such a foothold in New Zealand? (Please note: this is an optional episode for history lovers, so you can safely skip it without losing the thread.)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kyoda. I'm Murray Jones, and this is a short bonus
episode for their history lovers out there. It's not essential
to understand the central story we're telling in Heaven's Helpline,
but gives a whole lot more context to Mormonism in
Alterio New Zealand, which I promise is fascinating. You probably
(00:22):
already know that the Mormon faith started in the United
States with a fellow named Joseph Smith. He was a
farmer's son, born in Vermont in eighteen oh five and
raised in rural New York States. The early eighteen hundreds
was a time of great religious enthusiasm and revivalism in
the Eastern US, so you could take your pick from
(00:42):
various flavors of Christianity, as well as strands of what's
called folk religion esoteric practices like folk healing, folk medicines,
or divination. Anyway, young Joseph wasn't sure which spiritual path
to follow, but then he prayed and had some religious
visions that answer that question for him.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I was answered that I must join none of them,
for they.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Were all wrong.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Follow none of those faiths. Set up your own instead.
By the way you're hearing clips, from some of the
Mormon Church's educational film strips from the mid nineteen sixties.
The way Smith tells it, he was visited first by
God and Jesus, then later by an angel called Moroni,
and one night in eighteen twenty three, Moroni showed Joseph
(01:29):
the location of some golden plates that were hidden near
his home in New York. He also said that the
fullness of the Everlasting Gospel was contained in it. There's
a lot more to it, but essentially, those plates, believed
to resemble a ringbinder of metallic gold pages rather than
plates you eat off, contain the text of the writings
(01:49):
of ancient prophets who had moved from the Middle East
in Biblical times around two thousand BC and traveled to
the American continent.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Thou shalt constructorship, that I may carry thy people across
these waters.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So the story goes. Smith translated the plates he claimed
to have found, though he later returned them to the
angel Moroni, so we can't check his working, and those
translations became what's known as the Book of Mormon, which
functions as a partner piece to the Old and New
Testaments of the Regular Bible, and.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
It came to pass that the people waxed strong in
wickedness and abomination.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's an epic about two hundred and seventy thousand words
all up, and is full of astonishing tales. In the middle,
there's the claim that after his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus
himself appeared many times in the Americas. Joseph Smith's new
religion was a hit and spread quickly. Individual followers were
called Saints. The faith itself was the Church of Jesus
(02:49):
Christ of Latter day Saints, but given the importance of
this new Book of Mormon, they called themselves Mormons. A
lot of followers headed west, setting up communities in Ohio, Missouri,
and Illinois, and right from the start, Joseph Smith had
a knack of making himself unpopular with those outside the church.
(03:13):
Most controversial was his practice of polygamy, men having multiple wives,
and if you know one thing about Mormons, it might
be that it wasn't the done thing at the time,
and Smith knew it. He married many of his thirty
plus wives in secret, either behind his first wife's back
(03:34):
or because his brides were oftentimes already married to other men.
In eighteen forty four, though, things went horribly wrong for
Joseph Smith. He announced he was running for US president,
and though it's unlikely he would have won, it raised
his profile enough that opponents set up a newspaper criticizing
his polygamy and leadership. Smith, who was mayor of his
(03:58):
town by the Way, ordered the printing pressed to be destroyed.
Things got out of hand and in the resulting chaos,
Smith hired a militia for this. He was arrested for
treason Smith, and while in jail, a mob stormed in
and murdered Joseph Smith. Smith's successor at the head of
(04:18):
the Mormon Church was a man called Brigham Young. Young
was another pretty keen polygamist. He'd married fifty six women
by the time he died. In eighteen seventy seven. He
decided there was so much heat on the church, largely
because of its views on polygamy, that they'd be better
off outside the United States. So in eighteen forty seven,
(04:39):
thousands of Mormons joined him in a great relocation.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
He gazed at the vast expanse of desert and malhams
and declared, this is.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
The right place.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The right place was Salt Lake Valley, in Utah, which
at that time was still part of Mexico and occupied
by indigenous trial tbes. The very next year, though Mexico
handed over these territories to the US. It gets complicated
around here. Some Mormons fled to other countries, others were jailed.
The church split into rival factions, and the Mormon leaders
(05:14):
in Utah were still at odds with the United States,
which passed anti polygamy laws. A few decades passed and
Utah Mormons wanted statehood within the United States, but the
federal government wasn't happy with the way that Mormon settlers
in Utah ran their communities with almost complete autonomy and
that everything, even the law, was subservient to their religious beliefs.
(05:37):
In eighteen ninety, the leader of the Mormons was inspired
by God to abandon the practice of polygamy, just as
the church was being threatened by the government with the
confiscation of their temples and a clamp down on basic
civil rights for Mormons. So how does Altero and New
Zealand fit into this history? It turns out the Sewe
(06:00):
connection was forged really early on.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It was an eighteen fifty four that New Zealand first
bad himI to missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter day Saints.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
At first, the American missionaries focused on converting Europeans, and
there were some winds, but most of these new converts
had a habit of heading off to the Promised Land
of Utah. In the eighteen eighties, though, missionaries turned their
attention towards Maui and it went incredibly well. In fact,
Mormonism was being taken up pretty enthusiastically throughout the Pacific
(06:33):
at this point in New Zealand history. There were loads
of churches tussling for the souls of Tangata Fenoa, but
they were mostly from Europe Anglicans, Protestants and Wesleyans from England,
Presbyterians from Scotland, Catholics from France. But here were these
people carrying the Book of.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Mormon, Americans who were just a bit exotic and different
from the British missionaries.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
That's historian Professor Peter Lane. Seriously, if there's anything about
Altai Roa's religious history that he doesn't know, it's not
worth knowing. And Professor Linham says Mormon missionaries were especially
successful in the parts of New Zealand where Mari landloss
was the most severe.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
These Americans had the very opposite experience from normal colonists
who came to New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
To some Mari, Mormons were a refreshing alternative to the
British missionaries, who sometimes seem nothing more than the religious
wing of the British Crown's land grab.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
And so it's quite clear that it's an anti colonial
move by Mauri. They're responding to specific abuses and misuse
of resources by the Anglican Church, and so there's a
very real sense in which it's a protest move.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
These American missionaries, they weren't aligned with the Crown. Also,
because of the way the Mormon missions worked with visits
of fixed duration, these guys had no real plans to
stay in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Well.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Actually, apart from this, there was one sliding doors moment
in eighteen eighty six when things were getting too hot
for Mormons in Utah that a plan was hatched for
everyone to flee en mass to New Zealand, where they
thought the population would be more friendly to their polygamous ways.
According to a rapport in Wellington's Evening Post, two senior Mormons,
(08:22):
Elder Doolan and Elder Sorenson even met with the Waikator
leader and second Mari King, Tarfio, with a proposal to
buy half a million pounds worth of land in the
king country. The paper reported that Tafio was quite keen
on the plan, but the Mormon elders obviously couldn't quite
sell it back in Utah. So it shall forever remain
(08:44):
a tantalizing historical what if. But the bigger point remains
that there was an impressive level of connection between Maori
and the Mormon missionaries in this country from early on,
and it wasn't purely about land and anti colonial fis.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Their Book of Mormon was translated here into Tarrio in
eighteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
This is doctor Robert Joseph. He's a law professor at
Waikato University and a practicing Mormon. He's tai Nui to
faraitoa Nati Khanyunu, Rangitane and Naitahu Dtr Joseph says, Mari
appreciated the efforts the Mormon missionaries made with the language.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
They came down to the Waikatzel and they learned to
speak Maori here.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
In general, says doctor Joseph, The Mormon missionaries went further
than others to meet Marii. Where they were, they preached
to the people.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
They called it a Maori. They lived with the people.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Other things sat comfortably too. Both Mormon and Maori traditions
contained similar stories of migrations across great distances under divine guidance.
Mormons taught mari that they were descendants of key figures
in the Book of Mormon, and that collectively they were
one of the Lost tribes of Israel. And yeah, there
(10:02):
were some uncomfortable beliefs nestled within those stories, like the
fact that, just like the indigenous Americans, their dark skin
originated as a curse put upon their ancestors, the Lamanites,
and that whiter skin was attainable if Mari took up
a more righteous way of living. For Mari, fuckerpuppa. Your
(10:24):
line of descent from your ancestors and ultimately the gods
that preceded them, is central to your cultural and personal identity.
Mormons are hugely interested in ancestry too. It ties in
with their practice of baptizing the dead. This is the
practice not of baptizing corpses, but of a living proxy,
baptizing a soul of a dead person into the church.
(10:46):
To do that, you need to know their names, which
is why the Mormon Church is famous for holding some
of the most detailed genealogical records on the planet. And
if you've ever used FamilySearch or ancestry dot Com to
look up your own family, that's thanks in part to
Mormon volunteers digitizing historical records. They also perhaps connected on polygamy,
(11:09):
men taking multiple wives here in Altairoa, Maori had a
history of being pretty relaxed about plural marriage. And then
there were the prophecies. According to Mormon scholars, from the
eighteen thirties three to the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
A number of Maudi Mataquito prophets a propheside of a
new church coming. It's the church for Maudi.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
One Langatira in the Waira Rapa Paa te Potangaroa of Nati,
Kahanunu and Raangatane described the tohu or signs that would
mark this new church.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
And he said that the new church will come from
the east where the sun rises.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, Americans do come from the east, while European missionaries
generally arrived from the west. So check they will travel
in two's Mormons do that.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
Check, They'll teach us in their language.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Check.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
And he said they will live with our people, They'll
eat our food and sleep in their buddies.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Check, check, and check. Whatever the specific reasons, though, the
fact is Mormonism became really big in Marydom. By eighteen ninety,
about three thousand mary or one in every twelve, belonged
to the Mormon Church. At the same time, though, Mormons
bringing the message to New Zealand cities and to Pakia
(12:36):
seem to have a tougher time of it. There are
old newspaper reports from nineteen oh one of Mormon missionaries
in Dunedin being heckled and chased.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
By hooting crowds of about five hundred people.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
No one was hurt, but the paper does report that
the mayor of Dunedin.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Appealed to them to behave themselves, whereupon he was rushed
and his high hat knocked off.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So Dunneden nightlife circa nineteen oh one has anything much
changed anyway? The thing is, for the longest time the
New Zealand Mormon Church was strongly Maori, and according to Lyinum,
this means the church here was really quite different from
the church back at base in Utah.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
The type of Mormonism that developed to New Zealand until
the nineteen forties was in fact a highly antypical Mormonism.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
But then in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Quite deliberately, there was a change of policy.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
From this time on, leaders back in Utah decided the
worldwide Church needed to be more uniform, more conservative. This
meant that in New Zealand there'd be less tolerance of
traditional Maori practices such as open caskets at Tonguey for
Mormon members, whether Hueta or national meetings in Alta Roa
used to be held at Morai. That changed the use
(13:59):
of terreo mari was dialed right back as well.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Yeah, there was those challenges about not being able to
speak Marii in church, which was a real blow to
a lot of our Marti saints.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
To be frank, make no mistake, there was still a
uniquely Maori character to the church in New Zealand.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
Churches became marie and the temple became this pinnacle, this
place in which family, past, prison and future were all
bound together.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
This is doctor Gina Colvin of Nati Perot and Napuhi
she grew up in a multi generational Mormon family. She's
a scholar and a public critic of the church, which
she's only left very recently.
Speaker 6 (14:44):
Because of colonization, people kind of went away from their homelands,
so we lost a sense about EEI identification.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Gina's talking here about the urban drift in the mid
twentieth century here in Altera Roa, where over a couple
of decades the vast majority of Mary moved from rural
areas to cities looking for work.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
And then Mormonism came by and said, that's okay because
you're of the tribe of Israel and this is your EWI,
And you know, suddenly there was a oh, I belong
to something.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Many Mary were able to look past the white supremacist
subtext in the Book of Mormon and the clearly racist
rhetoric coming out of the church at the time, like
the fact you couldn't be a priesthood holder if you
were black.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
And while Mini Mary here liked to say, oh, that
was just a black American thing, the underside of that
story is actually that made a huge impact. This was
the push to whiten the church and to make it
look ib and professional so the suits and entire thing
that never used to be, and it was kind of
an evolution of image. These brown people, we can now
(15:46):
act like white people.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
By the nineteen sixties, over sixty percent of the membership
of the LDS Church was Mardy. Here's how one church
leader explained it during a TV interview in nineteen sixty
eight while standing outside church college.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Why do you have so many Polynesians.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It has something to do with the fact that in
the doctrines and the belief of the Mormon Church, we
have something that attracts a Mari because of the fact
that we can explain his history to him. Vetter, we
do teach the islander to speak correct English. We teach
him industry. A great deal of emphasis is put on
good citizenship. We teach a young polonies.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Along with the racist paternalism, there were some other religious
concepts that well didn't sit easy. Remember the curse of
the Lamanites I mentioned earlier. This said that darker skinned
people would get lighter over time if they were faithful
to the doctrines.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
By being obedient, we will become a fear and delightsome people.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Here's an interview from nineteen eighty with Church College teacher
Maui Fang.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
I could be call probably dark that I've married into
a line which is three quarters English, and my children,
if I can say this, I certainly fair and delight them.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
So yeah, maybe Mormonism caused a fair bit of internalized racism,
though to be fair, things got a little better over time.
The following year nineteen eighty one, the wording in the
Book of Mormon changed. Instead of talking about followers becoming
fair or white, it says just pure. Through the nineteen eighties,
as Maria Cross alter Roa began something of a cultural revival,
(17:26):
this racist stuff caused some gritted teeth, but in some
other ways, the American style optimism of the LDS Church
really did offer something to Mary. For a while it
was a heyday, this is Gina again.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
So that kind of American relationship with Mary Mormonism was
a huge boone in terms of social mobility, the building
of confidence and that swag than Americans have, like you know,
we can do it. So there was this huge possibility
that this partnership between Marii and the elm Is Church
(18:01):
would raise this amazing generation, according to that American spirit
of possibility, to be these enlightened leaders.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Growing up in the nineteen eighties in the church.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
As a working class brown kid, Gina.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Was super aware of the hypocrisies and inconsistencies around identity
in the Mormon Church. Gina recalls the time as a
child when some American mission presidents visited her church.
Speaker 6 (18:27):
I think they were in the jewelry business, and the
woman was just dripping with diamonds. You know, you could
see them sparkling as she grabbed the podium, and she
was busy telling us that, you know, we could be
like her, if we just kept to the principles of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we could have all of this.
And I just looked at these people who I loved
(18:48):
so deeply, working class park Your families and Mardy families.
I'm thinking, as a nine year old, I'm thinking, this
doesn't seem right. She shouldn't be here sharing that story.
Even at that age, I don't feel very Christian. The white,
rich people from America who're dripping with jewels have almost
no Christian message to share with brown indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You can maybe hear why Gina's got in trouble with
the church over the years. Anyhow, when members ask themselves,
am I a Mary Mormon or a Mormon Mary. The
answer wasn't easy.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
What the church wanted for you was to say that
I am a Mary Mormon, and the hierarchy of ideological
or theological frameworks you were supposed to situate the church
there with the greatest authority, and your identity as Marty
was required to be structured or reconciled around that primary
(19:44):
identity as woman.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
But as the Mary Renaissance became stronger during the eighties,
more began to push back at this idea. Gina tells
me about another moment at church in her teens that
she remembers well, a conversation a relief society for women.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
My foster mother said to this woman, she said, well,
of course, Darlane, you're Mormon first before your MANI. And
I remember this beautiful, fierce Maori woman rose up and
all of her wheh and her ihi and said, I
am Maori first, and I am Mormon next. And I
thought it was just glorious.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
All those church reforms that started in the nineteen fifties,
coupled with a return of Mari language, culture, and customs
in wider society, eventually led to a change in the
membership of the church here.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
While there's the striking demographic decline of and aging of
Maori Mormons.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
This is historian Peter Linham.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Again, there is very, very strikingly the emergence of large
numbers of Samoan and Tongan Mormons, who are now far
and away the most prominent and active members of the church.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Just under half the membership of the LDS Church here
now is pacifica people, and that number continues to grow.
So it's no coincidence that New Zealand's second temple is
being built in what some refer to as the biggest polonies,
in city Manaco in the south of Auckland. So there
you go, Mormon history and Altero one oh one. If
(21:27):
you've listened to this immediately after episode one, you're now
extra ready to get on with episode two and rejoin
the main story of Heaven's Helpline, the six part investigation
into the Mormon Church in New Zealand.
Kyoda. I'm Murray Jones, and this is a short bonus
episode for their history lovers out there. It's not essential
to understand the central story we're telling in Heaven's Helpline,
but gives a whole lot more context to Mormonism in
Alterio New Zealand, which I promise is fascinating. You probably
(00:22):
already know that the Mormon faith started in the United
States with a fellow named Joseph Smith. He was a
farmer's son, born in Vermont in eighteen oh five and
raised in rural New York States. The early eighteen hundreds
was a time of great religious enthusiasm and revivalism in
the Eastern US, so you could take your pick from
(00:42):
various flavors of Christianity, as well as strands of what's
called folk religion esoteric practices like folk healing, folk medicines,
or divination. Anyway, young Joseph wasn't sure which spiritual path
to follow, but then he prayed and had some religious
visions that answer that question for him.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I was answered that I must join none of them,
for they.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Were all wrong.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Follow none of those faiths. Set up your own instead.
By the way you're hearing clips, from some of the
Mormon Church's educational film strips from the mid nineteen sixties.
The way Smith tells it, he was visited first by
God and Jesus, then later by an angel called Moroni,
and one night in eighteen twenty three, Moroni showed Joseph
(01:29):
the location of some golden plates that were hidden near
his home in New York. He also said that the
fullness of the Everlasting Gospel was contained in it. There's
a lot more to it, but essentially, those plates, believed
to resemble a ringbinder of metallic gold pages rather than
plates you eat off, contain the text of the writings
(01:49):
of ancient prophets who had moved from the Middle East
in Biblical times around two thousand BC and traveled to
the American continent.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Thou shalt constructorship, that I may carry thy people across
these waters.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So the story goes. Smith translated the plates he claimed
to have found, though he later returned them to the
angel Moroni, so we can't check his working, and those
translations became what's known as the Book of Mormon, which
functions as a partner piece to the Old and New
Testaments of the Regular Bible, and.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
It came to pass that the people waxed strong in
wickedness and abomination.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's an epic about two hundred and seventy thousand words
all up, and is full of astonishing tales. In the middle,
there's the claim that after his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus
himself appeared many times in the Americas. Joseph Smith's new
religion was a hit and spread quickly. Individual followers were
called Saints. The faith itself was the Church of Jesus
(02:49):
Christ of Latter day Saints, but given the importance of
this new Book of Mormon, they called themselves Mormons. A
lot of followers headed west, setting up communities in Ohio, Missouri,
and Illinois, and right from the start, Joseph Smith had
a knack of making himself unpopular with those outside the church.
(03:13):
Most controversial was his practice of polygamy, men having multiple wives,
and if you know one thing about Mormons, it might
be that it wasn't the done thing at the time,
and Smith knew it. He married many of his thirty
plus wives in secret, either behind his first wife's back
(03:34):
or because his brides were oftentimes already married to other men.
In eighteen forty four, though, things went horribly wrong for
Joseph Smith. He announced he was running for US president,
and though it's unlikely he would have won, it raised
his profile enough that opponents set up a newspaper criticizing
his polygamy and leadership. Smith, who was mayor of his
(03:58):
town by the Way, ordered the printing pressed to be destroyed.
Things got out of hand and in the resulting chaos,
Smith hired a militia for this. He was arrested for
treason Smith, and while in jail, a mob stormed in
and murdered Joseph Smith. Smith's successor at the head of
(04:18):
the Mormon Church was a man called Brigham Young. Young
was another pretty keen polygamist. He'd married fifty six women
by the time he died. In eighteen seventy seven. He
decided there was so much heat on the church, largely
because of its views on polygamy, that they'd be better
off outside the United States. So in eighteen forty seven,
(04:39):
thousands of Mormons joined him in a great relocation.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
He gazed at the vast expanse of desert and malhams
and declared, this is.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
The right place.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The right place was Salt Lake Valley, in Utah, which
at that time was still part of Mexico and occupied
by indigenous trial tbes. The very next year, though Mexico
handed over these territories to the US. It gets complicated
around here. Some Mormons fled to other countries, others were jailed.
The church split into rival factions, and the Mormon leaders
(05:14):
in Utah were still at odds with the United States,
which passed anti polygamy laws. A few decades passed and
Utah Mormons wanted statehood within the United States, but the
federal government wasn't happy with the way that Mormon settlers
in Utah ran their communities with almost complete autonomy and
that everything, even the law, was subservient to their religious beliefs.
(05:37):
In eighteen ninety, the leader of the Mormons was inspired
by God to abandon the practice of polygamy, just as
the church was being threatened by the government with the
confiscation of their temples and a clamp down on basic
civil rights for Mormons. So how does Altero and New
Zealand fit into this history? It turns out the Sewe
(06:00):
connection was forged really early on.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It was an eighteen fifty four that New Zealand first
bad himI to missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter day Saints.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
At first, the American missionaries focused on converting Europeans, and
there were some winds, but most of these new converts
had a habit of heading off to the Promised Land
of Utah. In the eighteen eighties, though, missionaries turned their
attention towards Maui and it went incredibly well. In fact,
Mormonism was being taken up pretty enthusiastically throughout the Pacific
(06:33):
at this point in New Zealand history. There were loads
of churches tussling for the souls of Tangata Fenoa, but
they were mostly from Europe Anglicans, Protestants and Wesleyans from England,
Presbyterians from Scotland, Catholics from France. But here were these
people carrying the Book of.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Mormon, Americans who were just a bit exotic and different
from the British missionaries.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
That's historian Professor Peter Lane. Seriously, if there's anything about
Altai Roa's religious history that he doesn't know, it's not
worth knowing. And Professor Linham says Mormon missionaries were especially
successful in the parts of New Zealand where Mari landloss
was the most severe.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
These Americans had the very opposite experience from normal colonists
who came to New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
To some Mari, Mormons were a refreshing alternative to the
British missionaries, who sometimes seem nothing more than the religious
wing of the British Crown's land grab.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
And so it's quite clear that it's an anti colonial
move by Mauri. They're responding to specific abuses and misuse
of resources by the Anglican Church, and so there's a
very real sense in which it's a protest move.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
These American missionaries, they weren't aligned with the Crown. Also,
because of the way the Mormon missions worked with visits
of fixed duration, these guys had no real plans to
stay in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Well.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Actually, apart from this, there was one sliding doors moment
in eighteen eighty six when things were getting too hot
for Mormons in Utah that a plan was hatched for
everyone to flee en mass to New Zealand, where they
thought the population would be more friendly to their polygamous ways.
According to a rapport in Wellington's Evening Post, two senior Mormons,
(08:22):
Elder Doolan and Elder Sorenson even met with the Waikator
leader and second Mari King, Tarfio, with a proposal to
buy half a million pounds worth of land in the
king country. The paper reported that Tafio was quite keen
on the plan, but the Mormon elders obviously couldn't quite
sell it back in Utah. So it shall forever remain
(08:44):
a tantalizing historical what if. But the bigger point remains
that there was an impressive level of connection between Maori
and the Mormon missionaries in this country from early on,
and it wasn't purely about land and anti colonial fis.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Their Book of Mormon was translated here into Tarrio in
eighteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
This is doctor Robert Joseph. He's a law professor at
Waikato University and a practicing Mormon. He's tai Nui to
faraitoa Nati Khanyunu, Rangitane and Naitahu Dtr Joseph says, Mari
appreciated the efforts the Mormon missionaries made with the language.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
They came down to the Waikatzel and they learned to
speak Maori here.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
In general, says doctor Joseph, The Mormon missionaries went further
than others to meet Marii. Where they were, they preached
to the people.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
They called it a Maori. They lived with the people.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Other things sat comfortably too. Both Mormon and Maori traditions
contained similar stories of migrations across great distances under divine guidance.
Mormons taught mari that they were descendants of key figures
in the Book of Mormon, and that collectively they were
one of the Lost tribes of Israel. And yeah, there
(10:02):
were some uncomfortable beliefs nestled within those stories, like the
fact that, just like the indigenous Americans, their dark skin
originated as a curse put upon their ancestors, the Lamanites,
and that whiter skin was attainable if Mari took up
a more righteous way of living. For Mari, fuckerpuppa. Your
(10:24):
line of descent from your ancestors and ultimately the gods
that preceded them, is central to your cultural and personal identity.
Mormons are hugely interested in ancestry too. It ties in
with their practice of baptizing the dead. This is the
practice not of baptizing corpses, but of a living proxy,
baptizing a soul of a dead person into the church.
(10:46):
To do that, you need to know their names, which
is why the Mormon Church is famous for holding some
of the most detailed genealogical records on the planet. And
if you've ever used FamilySearch or ancestry dot Com to
look up your own family, that's thanks in part to
Mormon volunteers digitizing historical records. They also perhaps connected on polygamy,
(11:09):
men taking multiple wives here in Altairoa, Maori had a
history of being pretty relaxed about plural marriage. And then
there were the prophecies. According to Mormon scholars, from the
eighteen thirties three to the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
A number of Maudi Mataquito prophets a propheside of a
new church coming. It's the church for Maudi.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
One Langatira in the Waira Rapa Paa te Potangaroa of Nati,
Kahanunu and Raangatane described the tohu or signs that would
mark this new church.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
And he said that the new church will come from
the east where the sun rises.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, Americans do come from the east, while European missionaries
generally arrived from the west. So check they will travel
in two's Mormons do that.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
Check, They'll teach us in their language.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Check.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
And he said they will live with our people, They'll
eat our food and sleep in their buddies.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Check, check, and check. Whatever the specific reasons, though, the
fact is Mormonism became really big in Marydom. By eighteen ninety,
about three thousand mary or one in every twelve, belonged
to the Mormon Church. At the same time, though, Mormons
bringing the message to New Zealand cities and to Pakia
(12:36):
seem to have a tougher time of it. There are
old newspaper reports from nineteen oh one of Mormon missionaries
in Dunedin being heckled and chased.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
By hooting crowds of about five hundred people.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
No one was hurt, but the paper does report that
the mayor of Dunedin.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Appealed to them to behave themselves, whereupon he was rushed
and his high hat knocked off.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So Dunneden nightlife circa nineteen oh one has anything much
changed anyway? The thing is, for the longest time the
New Zealand Mormon Church was strongly Maori, and according to Lyinum,
this means the church here was really quite different from
the church back at base in Utah.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
The type of Mormonism that developed to New Zealand until
the nineteen forties was in fact a highly antypical Mormonism.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
But then in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Quite deliberately, there was a change of policy.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
From this time on, leaders back in Utah decided the
worldwide Church needed to be more uniform, more conservative. This
meant that in New Zealand there'd be less tolerance of
traditional Maori practices such as open caskets at Tonguey for
Mormon members, whether Hueta or national meetings in Alta Roa
used to be held at Morai. That changed the use
(13:59):
of terreo mari was dialed right back as well.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Yeah, there was those challenges about not being able to
speak Marii in church, which was a real blow to
a lot of our Marti saints.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
To be frank, make no mistake, there was still a
uniquely Maori character to the church in New Zealand.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
Churches became marie and the temple became this pinnacle, this
place in which family, past, prison and future were all
bound together.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
This is doctor Gina Colvin of Nati Perot and Napuhi
she grew up in a multi generational Mormon family. She's
a scholar and a public critic of the church, which
she's only left very recently.
Speaker 6 (14:44):
Because of colonization, people kind of went away from their homelands,
so we lost a sense about EEI identification.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Gina's talking here about the urban drift in the mid
twentieth century here in Altera Roa, where over a couple
of decades the vast majority of Mary moved from rural
areas to cities looking for work.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
And then Mormonism came by and said, that's okay because
you're of the tribe of Israel and this is your EWI,
And you know, suddenly there was a oh, I belong
to something.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Many Mary were able to look past the white supremacist
subtext in the Book of Mormon and the clearly racist
rhetoric coming out of the church at the time, like
the fact you couldn't be a priesthood holder if you
were black.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
And while Mini Mary here liked to say, oh, that
was just a black American thing, the underside of that
story is actually that made a huge impact. This was
the push to whiten the church and to make it
look ib and professional so the suits and entire thing
that never used to be, and it was kind of
an evolution of image. These brown people, we can now
(15:46):
act like white people.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
By the nineteen sixties, over sixty percent of the membership
of the LDS Church was Mardy. Here's how one church
leader explained it during a TV interview in nineteen sixty
eight while standing outside church college.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Why do you have so many Polynesians.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It has something to do with the fact that in
the doctrines and the belief of the Mormon Church, we
have something that attracts a Mari because of the fact
that we can explain his history to him. Vetter, we
do teach the islander to speak correct English. We teach
him industry. A great deal of emphasis is put on
good citizenship. We teach a young polonies.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Along with the racist paternalism, there were some other religious
concepts that well didn't sit easy. Remember the curse of
the Lamanites I mentioned earlier. This said that darker skinned
people would get lighter over time if they were faithful
to the doctrines.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
By being obedient, we will become a fear and delightsome people.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Here's an interview from nineteen eighty with Church College teacher
Maui Fang.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
I could be call probably dark that I've married into
a line which is three quarters English, and my children,
if I can say this, I certainly fair and delight them.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
So yeah, maybe Mormonism caused a fair bit of internalized racism,
though to be fair, things got a little better over time.
The following year nineteen eighty one, the wording in the
Book of Mormon changed. Instead of talking about followers becoming
fair or white, it says just pure. Through the nineteen eighties,
as Maria Cross alter Roa began something of a cultural revival,
(17:26):
this racist stuff caused some gritted teeth, but in some
other ways, the American style optimism of the LDS Church
really did offer something to Mary. For a while it
was a heyday, this is Gina again.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
So that kind of American relationship with Mary Mormonism was
a huge boone in terms of social mobility, the building
of confidence and that swag than Americans have, like you know,
we can do it. So there was this huge possibility
that this partnership between Marii and the elm Is Church
(18:01):
would raise this amazing generation, according to that American spirit
of possibility, to be these enlightened leaders.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Growing up in the nineteen eighties in the church.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
As a working class brown kid, Gina.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Was super aware of the hypocrisies and inconsistencies around identity
in the Mormon Church. Gina recalls the time as a
child when some American mission presidents visited her church.
Speaker 6 (18:27):
I think they were in the jewelry business, and the
woman was just dripping with diamonds. You know, you could
see them sparkling as she grabbed the podium, and she
was busy telling us that, you know, we could be
like her, if we just kept to the principles of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we could have all of this.
And I just looked at these people who I loved
(18:48):
so deeply, working class park Your families and Mardy families.
I'm thinking, as a nine year old, I'm thinking, this
doesn't seem right. She shouldn't be here sharing that story.
Even at that age, I don't feel very Christian. The white,
rich people from America who're dripping with jewels have almost
no Christian message to share with brown indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You can maybe hear why Gina's got in trouble with
the church over the years. Anyhow, when members ask themselves,
am I a Mary Mormon or a Mormon Mary. The
answer wasn't easy.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
What the church wanted for you was to say that
I am a Mary Mormon, and the hierarchy of ideological
or theological frameworks you were supposed to situate the church
there with the greatest authority, and your identity as Marty
was required to be structured or reconciled around that primary
(19:44):
identity as woman.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
But as the Mary Renaissance became stronger during the eighties,
more began to push back at this idea. Gina tells
me about another moment at church in her teens that
she remembers well, a conversation a relief society for women.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
My foster mother said to this woman, she said, well,
of course, Darlane, you're Mormon first before your MANI. And
I remember this beautiful, fierce Maori woman rose up and
all of her wheh and her ihi and said, I
am Maori first, and I am Mormon next. And I
thought it was just glorious.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
All those church reforms that started in the nineteen fifties,
coupled with a return of Mari language, culture, and customs
in wider society, eventually led to a change in the
membership of the church here.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
While there's the striking demographic decline of and aging of
Maori Mormons.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
This is historian Peter Linham.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Again, there is very, very strikingly the emergence of large
numbers of Samoan and Tongan Mormons, who are now far
and away the most prominent and active members of the church.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Just under half the membership of the LDS Church here
now is pacifica people, and that number continues to grow.
So it's no coincidence that New Zealand's second temple is
being built in what some refer to as the biggest polonies,
in city Manaco in the south of Auckland. So there
you go, Mormon history and Altero one oh one. If
(21:27):
you've listened to this immediately after episode one, you're now
extra ready to get on with episode two and rejoin
the main story of Heaven's Helpline, the six part investigation
into the Mormon Church in New Zealand.
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