Peter McAuslan heeded Mormon missionaries spreading the faith in
his native Scotland in the mid-1840s. The uncertainty his family
faced in a rapidly industrializing economy, the political turmoil
erupting across Europe, the welter of competing religions--all were
signs of the imminent end of time, the missionaries warned. For
those who would journey to a new Zion in the American West,
opportunity and spiritual redemption awaited. When McAuslan
converted in 1848, he believed he had a found a faith that would
give his life meaning.
A few years later, McAuslan and his family left Scotland for
Utah, but soon after he arrived, his doubts grew about the
religious community he had joined so wholeheartedly. Historian
Polly Aird tells the story of how McAuslan first embraced, then
came to question, and ultimately renounced the Mormon faith and
left Utah. It would be the most courageous act of his life.
In "Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector," Aird tells of Scottish
emigrants who endured a harrowing transatlantic and
transcontinental journey to join their brethren in the valley of
the Great Salt Lake. But to McAuslan and others like him, the
Promised Land of Salt Lake City turned out to be quite different
from what was promised: droughts and plagues of locusts destroyed
crops and brought on famine, and U.S. Army troops threatened on the
borders. Mormon leaders responded with fiery sermons attributing
their trials to divine retribution for backsliding and sin. When
the leaders countenanced violence and demanded absolute obedience,
Peter McAuslan decided to abandon his adopted faith. With his
family, and escorted by a U.S. Army detachment for protection, he
fled to California.
"Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector "reveals the tumultuous 1850s
in Utah and the West in vivid detail. Drawing on McAuslan's
writings and other archival sources, Aird offers a rare interior
portrait of a man in whom religious fervor warred with indignation
at absolutist religious authorities and fear for the consequences
of dissension. In so doing, she brings to life a dramatic but
little-known period of American history.
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