That said, there are some striking parallels. How can seemingly good people be distorted into ministers of death?

I do think your final questions are cogent. Mormon accommodation (economic, practical and doctrinal), to the ire of fundamentalists, is the reason we enjoy normal status in the US and many places in the world. I believe that Wahabism cannot coexist peacefully with the world and must accommodate for peace. I hope that none of us holds Islam, in general, as responsible for the 9/11.

According to what I’ve seen, the existing evidence suggests that the people who did the Mountain Meadows killings thought they were acting under orders from Brigham Young. Hence, they thought they were replicating Nephi’s God-ordered murder of Laban from the beginning of the Book of Mormon. I think J. Stapley is right in pointing out that the parallels shouldn’t be exaggerated. But the underlying doctrine that anything is right if God wills it certainly did drive both Mountain Meadows and the hijackers.

You mean Timothy McVeigh doesn’t count somehow?

I think Krakauer, for all of his mistakes, is worth considering for this point. What is it about religious belief that seems to drive some people to destructive behavior, even if that behavior tramples other aspects of their religion? While the number of Mormons who have been driven to violence because of their faith is a tiny number, what about other behaviors? The parents who reject their gay child, or the people who become fundamentalists, even leaving their current families to do so, for example.

A recent Newsweek poll concluded the vast, vast majority of religious people stay or return to the faith of their parents. What makes us, regardless of our faith, so confident about the correctness of our worldview that we tell other people they have to join our faith, or they might be going to hell, or even to have online arguments over religion? Mormons aren’t the only ones so sure of themselves that they proselytize, debate, and claim the truth lies with them. I see the behavior in myself, but don’t appreciate where it stems from.

There could have been a Mormon Massacre of 1857. That there wasn’t shows the difference between the organized military forces of the US Army that marched on Salt Lake City (which had a tight chain of command and disciplined troops) and the paramilitary militia forces that the Mormons put in the field, the weekend warriors of their day. Throw in a contingent of militant Native Americans (who followed their own leaders and who had their own scores to settle) and you get Mountain Meadows. If you want parallels, maybe Kent State (May 4, 1970) is closer than Sept. 11, 2001. Four dead in Ohio; 120 dead at Mountain Meadows.

The greatest violence perpetrated in humanity was a result of secular communism. I think the question is that most important asks what in the good religion failed to prevent any violence associated with it (in the case that the religion is not death cult).

I think the problem comes when people wholeheartedly accept a certain belief system (whatever it may be), to the point that their morality consists of whatever that belief system tells them to do, rather than continuing to apply their own internal moral compass to what they’re asked to do. I think that stems from the part of human nature that wants easy answers to difficult questions, and wants to hand moral responsibility off to someone or something else. “Jesus wants me to do X” or “the prophet has asked us to do Y” or “Chairman Mao said to do Z” can cause people to do Good Things without having fully thought them through, which usually doesn’t lead to major problems. But in certain situations, where the things that the authority figure says to do are more morally ambiguous, those reflexes of doing whatever is asked can become ways for people to avoid tackling with thorny moral and ethical questions themselves. Or even to avoid tackling issues that are pretty straightforward in terms of right and wrong, but difficult when it comes to actually choosing and implementing the right.

I thought it was healing for the descendants of the survivors, but maybe not.

The Muslims I know are extrememly thoughtful, faithful, peaceful people–and are hurt by the extremist practitioners in their faith. To a certain extent, I think that LDS people are bothered and troubled (or at least embarrassed) by the Mormon fundamentalist extremists. I think that there is much to be learned by a study of the relationship between mainstream and fundamentalist practictioners within a certain religious group, and how mainstream practitioners can exert a moderating power.

Of course, most journalists and writers are not interested in that kind of study because it lacks the exoticism and tabloid quality of reports on “extremism” that blur the distinction with mainstream practitioners of the religion.

Very well said. Why do humans cling, desperately it seems, to their beliefs – religious or otherwise?