Episode 110: The State of Deseret

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:08)
Just not doing anything for you?
What if I said... Deseret?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:14)
Okay, I was worried there for a minute. I didn't know what was happening. But I see what you're up to here.
Fine. Bees it is.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:22)
Beads?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:24)
Bees, why can't we talk tonight on this podcast?
Thanks to Joseph Smith looking into seer stones, and definitely not the Yarmouthomim, Ether Chapter 2 in the Book of Mormon introduced the word Deseret into the world. And oh boy, would later generations love it. So it's time for a game, listeners. It's simple. It's a game that Bryan came up with called Shiz or Coriantimer. And it works like this. The real companies are Coriantimer, while the bogus ones are Shiz. Ready? Lovely. Let's roll.
First one up, Deseret Armory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:04)
Armory? Seriously? Guns right out of the gate? Ugh, I'm voting Shiz here.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:09)
Oh, you'd make a bad Jaredite. That's pure Coriantimer. It's a real company.
Next one, Deseret Salted Cured Meats.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:19)
Nice try, Costanza. That one's gotta be Shiz.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:22)
Shiz it is. Okay, is this a real company?
Deseret Doodles Dogs and Cat Hills.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:29)
All right, I feel like I'm getting Curelom fished here. Okay, that one feels Shiz-y, but I'm gonna go with my gut here. Coriantimer?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:37)
Ding ding ding. Your answers have been stamped with the more sure word of promise. Congrats. It's a real company name.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:44)
Okay, let's bracket the Doodles Dogs and Cats for just a second, because we need to talk about Deseret.
Given how often that it shows up in Utah later, you figure it has to start with Joseph Smith, right? Well, no. I mean, yes, it's in the Book of Mormon, but if you go visit our good friends at the Joseph Smith papers, you're gonna find exactly zero mentions during his life. What gives? Why did Bryan Young have so many bees in his vintage bonnet?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:13)
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:15)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:17)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the everlasting hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:44)
That only you can save me, brother Brigham, brother Young. Lindsay, did you know that Lynn Whitesides and Paul Toscano wear the same size shoe?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:24)
Seriously? Wait, no, that's got to be shiz.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:29)
Fine, it's most definitely shiz.
But they do share something else in common.
In the single month of September 1993, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicated or disciplined six of its members. These six individuals, some of them intellectuals, some activists, some of them both, were soon dubbed the September Six. In the September Six and the struggle for the soul of Mormonism, Serum Patterson challenges readers to think more deeply about the events of that month and the era in which they unfolded. Patterson argues that the clever alliterative phrase, September Six, masks our ability to see what happened that month was part of a much broader, decades-long, cultural and theological debate over the nature of the church and its restoration narrative. During those decades, the institutional church invested in and policed a purity system, expecting believers to practice doctrinal, familial and bodily purity. Dissenters within the institution pushed back, imagining instead a vision of the restoration that embraced personal conscience, truth-seeking and telling, and social egalitarianism at its core. Both sides were profoundly shaped by the culture milieu that surrounded them. What happened in September 1993 continues to echo in the church today, having lasting effects on the institution, its believers and the broader culture. The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism by historian Sarah Patterson, new from Signature Books. Get it from Benchmark Books, or Boyd Packer will call your stake president.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (5:11)
Let's buzz.
From the second they arrived in the valley, as Dale Morgan points out, Mormons were a little different than other areas being colonized by white settlers in the West. Thanks to the tradition of a high council, they had made a ready form of government. In the first couple of years, they passed more than 100 ordinances. They represented the realities of the Wild West, ordinances regarding stray cattle, stealing, drunkenness, vagrancy, and, most importantly, not wiping poop on people you don't agree with. Maybe there should have been one for the last problem because that happened in Nauvoo and it clearly had to happen in Utah. Some of the ordinances smelled a lot like normal government, creating a currency, setting up a cemetery, those kinds of boring things.