Those Crafty Mormons — Beware of Their Eyes!
By Davis Bitton

Your cousin, your sibling, or your child has joined the Mormons.  You are horrified.  How do you explain this to your friends?  You don’t want to give credit to a religion that is so disgusting that you would not allow yourself to look into it. 

Having read the screeds of the anti-Mormons, you consider yourself informed.  They certainly wouldn’t mislead you, for they are objective and clear-sighted, not prejudiced like those outrageous Mormons.  You don’t want to suggest that your loved one is lacking in intelligence or character.  That might even reflect on you.  What do you say?

Why, what could be more obvious?  You say that the Mormons have employed hypnotism.  By one word you have explained behavior that otherwise seems disconnected.  This mysterious power explains why people otherwise apparently normal and of good character are attracted to this religion.  Your relative, now a Mormon, simply didn’t realize what he or she was doing.  The fault, dear Brutus, was not in them but in this mysterious power.  Surely they will snap out of it.

In the nineteenth century, hypnotism was called animal magnetism or, more commonly, mesmerism, after Franz Anton Mesmer, who popularized the practice in the previous century.  Viewed primarily as a curiosity, the subject was widely discussed by Joseph Smith’s time.

As early as 1842, we find the following in the New York Weekly Herald: “Joe believes himself divinely inspired and a worker of miracles.  He cures the sick of diseases — so it is said — and although Joe is not aware of the fact we have been informed by a medical man that his influence over nervous disorders, arises from a powerful magnetic influence — that Joe is a magnet in a large way, which he calls a power or spirit from heaven.”

Maria Ward, whose anti-Mormon book went through many editions, had some explaining to do.  Joseph Smith, she wrote, “was one of the earliest practitioners in Animal Magnetism.”  One of his dramatic miracles, raising a young lady from the dead, was explained by saying he had earlier mesmerized her to simulate death.  Maria accepted the marriage proposal of a Mormon elder.  “I was like a fluttering bird before the gaze of the serpent-charmer,” she wrote.

Fanny Stenhouse, who apostatized from the Church and then cashed in by giving lectures and publishing books about her former faith, told how her parents were “led astray by the fascinations” of the new religion. A minister warned her about the strange power of the missionaries “that fascinates the people and draws them into their meshes in spite of themselves.”

Looking back over the years of her life as a Mormon, she wrote: “I knew nothing then of that peculiar magnetic power which scientific men now have proved belongs to certain constitutions and can be used for curative purposes.”  Voila!  She is absolved from responsibility.

Now seeing clearly, she can denounce Mormonism.  Previously, you see, she had been a helpless victim in the clutches of a mysterious force beyond her control.

One of the popular silent movies early in the twentieth century was Trapped by the Mormons.  Most viewers now find it hilarious.  The missionary exerts his force on the helpless maiden through his eyes.  Camera close-ups repeatedly show the powerful, transfixing stare of the seducer. 

Helpless, the maiden swoons and allows herself to be carried away.  This would be funnier if we didn’t realize that the movie was part of the anti-Mormon publicity of the time and was taken quite seriously by many people.

The Latter-day Saint Perspective

It is instructive to ask what the actual attitude of the Latter-day Saints was toward hypnotism.  Several references to it appear in the early church newspapers, all of them cautious and skeptical if not condemning. When John Taylor addressed the subject in 1846, he conceded that there was power in mesmerism but attributed it to Satan.  He wished “to guard the Saints against the frauds and impositions of men, and the power and influence of Satan.”

Brigham Young offered a nuanced judgment in 1856.  When he had seen people emerge from a hypnotic trance at camp meetings earlier in his life, he asked them what they had learned.   When they said “Nothing,” he was unimpressed.  Mesmerism had been “invented by the power of the devil” and was employed by “evil men.”  Playing with the power, he warned, had led people right out of the church.

Apostle Francis M. Lyman addressed the question directly in 1903.  “I should advise you not to practice hypnotism,” he said.  “For my own part I could never consent to being hypnotized or allowing one of my children to be.  The free agency that the Lord has given us is the choicest gift we have.  As soon, however, as we permit another mind to control us, as that mind controls its own body and functions, we have completely surrendered our free agency to another ...  Hypnotism is very much like the plan that Satan desired the Father to accept before this earth was peopled ...  The Savior, on the other hand, proposed to give free agency to all, and save those who would accept salvation.”

In other words, the church that was supposedly rife with hypnotism, exploiting it for its own purposes, simply did not encourage it.  On the contrary, it repeatedly warned against it.  Incidentally, throughout most of its history hypnotism was also repeatedly condemned by scientists.  The opposition of Mormon leaders to this poorly understood practice placed them, if anything, squarely in the camp of most scientists.

Where Are We Now?

A century has passed since Elder Lyman’s statement.  Where are we now?   In the Church, recreational hypnotism is discouraged, but medical hypnosis “under competent, professional supervision for the treatment of disease” — a different matter entirely — is considered a “wholly medical question.” (Priesthood Bulletin, August 1972, cited in Lester E. Bush, Jr., Health and Medicine Among the Latter-day Saints, 103). Still fundamental to our gospel understanding are human agency and responsibility.

Meanwhile, the course for outgoing missionaries in the Missionary Training Center does not include instruction in hypnotizing potential converts.  It never has.

But among our critics don’t count on such a useful explanation to go away.  Anti-Mormons are still faced with the simple fact that people join up with Mormonism and remain faithful to it.  How, ask these critics of towering intellect, can people be so stupid?  Aha!  The Saints must have been hypnotized. 

Even some journalists and historians writing about Joseph Smith and the early converts occasionally dust off and reuse this tiresome, antiquated “explanation.”  The beauty of it, you see, is that it requires no proof.  Some things never change.

I think I’ll finish my home teaching for this month.  Having been mesmerized by my priesthood leaders, I consider it an obligation.  It is also an opportunity to feed the Lord’s sheep and lambs.  Funny, isn’t it, how Peter, James, John and others in New Testament times allowed themselves to be brainwashed and mesmerized?

Return to Top of Article

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.

Davis Bitton, a long-time contributor to Meridian, passed away in early 2007. In memory and tribute to his fine work, we are reprinting his columns. He was a University of Utah history professor. After serving a mission in France, he graduated from BYU and then received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. For ten years he was assistant Church historian. His most recent books are "Images of the Prophet Joseph Smith" and "George Q. Cannon: A Biography."