The Garden Atonement and the Mormon Cross Taboo

Michael Reed's 2012 book Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo sets out an excellent account of the uncomfortable relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the core symbol of Christianity: the cross. Reed persuasively demonstrates that the taboo was a late development in Latter-day Saint history and locates much of the taboo's roots in anti-Catholicism of the early to mid-twentieth century.This article presents a modest contribution to Reed's scholarship by accounting for the role of the distinctive Latter-day Saint belief about the Garden of Gethsemane in Christ's atonement and its relationship to the cross taboo. As taught in the Church's official Guide to the Scriptures, Jesus “suffered in Gethsemane for the sins of mankind.”1 We can refer to this belief as the “garden atonement.” That belief is distinctive in and of itself, but many articulations of the doctrine also place the garden over and above Jesus's crucifixion. Thus, as described by the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which in turn is quoting multiple twentieth-century church leaders, “for Latter-day Saints, Gethsemane was the scene of Jesus's greatest agony, even surpassing that which he suffered on the cross.”2 According to this view, Jesus “suffered ‘the pains of all men . . . principally in Gethsemane.”3 Yet, much like the cross taboo, the garden atonement is not a founding-era Latter-day Saint belief, but one based on teachings of “modern Church leaders.”4 Specifically, it is a later theological innovation that largely coincided with the cross taboo's rise and formalization (from around 1916 to the mid-1950s), and for the same reasons—reliance on anti-Catholic polemics and a desire for Mormon distinctiveness amid the assimilation into Protestant America that came with the demise of polygamy in Mormon theology.Reed's work persuasively establishes that the Mormon cross taboo “emerged . . . at the grass-roots level around the turn of the twentieth century and became institutionalized mid-century under the direction of David O. McKay.”5 Reed's historical evidence all but compels the conclusion that early Latter-day Saints had no discernible aversion to the cross. To the contrary, Latter-day Saints made substantial use of the cross in a variety of religious contexts, some of which would likely make some Latter-day Saints today uncomfortable, from the belongings of early Church leaders, to sacred architecture (including the Cardston, Alberta temple, the Laie Hawaii temple, and the Salt Lake Assembly Hall), floral arrangements for deceased presidents of the Church displayed at their funerals, Latter-day Saint marriage certificates, decorations hanging in Latter-day Saint temples, stained glass windows of church buildings, jewelry of both men and women, and cross-stitch art and quilt designs by the Relief Society.6A turning point began in 1915–16. The Church (through presiding bishop Charles W. Nibley) petitioned the Salt Lake City Council to build a large cement Latin cross on the top of Ensign Peak. Its proponents, including Nibley and B. H. Roberts, took a broad ecumenical defense of it as “the symbol of Christianity” that should be used to honor both “the ‘Mormon’ pioneers,’” who entered the valley in 1847, as well as “the Catholic church,” who should “be given the credit” of arriving “seventy years before” and contributing to the settling of the area.7 But significant opposition arose from numerous sides, both LDS and non-LDS, united at least in part by a desire not to project the impression that Utah was “a Catholic State.”8 Apostle Orson F. Whitney publicly spoke out against the Ensign Peak cross as a symbol “of the Catholic Church,” saying it should not be associated with the Mormon pioneers.9 This provoked a series of private exchanges between Nibley and Whitney, each claiming he had the backing of higher Church authorities for his position.10 Whitney's correspondence with other Church leaders feature polemics against devotional use of the cross, raising the point that if one's friend were unjustly killed on a gibbet, you would not hang it in your house as a reminder.11 Numerous people accused Nibley of unwittingly or otherwise acting as an agent of Rome, and ultimately the Ensign Peak proposal was dropped.12Division over personal and public use of the cross still existed for some decades among high-ranking Church leaders.13 But one opinion that would prove formative on the matter was that of David O. McKay, future Church president. His experiences with Catholicism had soured him on it, causing him to vent in his diary in 1923, “O what a Godless farce that organization is!”14 And he and other Church leaders feuded with the Utah Catholic hierarchy.15 Although some evidence suggests he may have toned down these feelings later in life, as president of the Church in the 1950s, he publicly declared the “Catholic Church” to be one of the “two great anti-Christs in the world” alongside communism.16 It is thus rather unsurprising that in 1957, McKay effectively cemented the cross taboo in place in a letter response to a Latter-day Saint bishop who inquired about the propriety of “L.D.S. girls . . . purchas[ing] crosses to wear,” to which McKay responded: “This is purely Catholic and Latter-day Saint girls should not purchase and wear them. I stated that this was a Catholic form of worship. They use images, crosses, etc. Our worship should be in our hearts.”17 Other prominent Church leaders, although sometimes with differing rationales, espoused the same view about the cross, including J. Reuben Clark Jr., Mark E. Peterson, Bruce R. McConkie, and future presidents of the Church Joseph Fielding Smith and Gordon B. Hinckley.18 From there, the cross taboo took the form its holds within Latter-day Saint devotion and belief today.To understand the connection between the cross taboo and the belief in the garden atonement, it is first important to understand that the latter, like the former, is a late theological development.19 It is a doctrine that was likely not believed or taught by the Latter-day Saints or their leaders until near the end of the nineteenth century. That conclusion follows from a review of the available teachings of Joseph Smith, other early Latter-day Saint leaders, catechisms and treatises, hymns, and scriptural texts.As recent scholarly commentary notes, “Joseph Smith never presented a systematic view of Atonement.”20 The corpus of his publicly available teachings never shows him teaching the garden atonement. Hilton and Barringer conclude, “Joseph Smith did not provide any teachings regarding Gethsemane.”21 What little exists suggests what one would expect someone who had a Protestant background to believe about the relationship between the cross and the Atonement in that period. Searches for “Gethsemane” in the currently available Joseph Smith Papers Project online yield only two results. One is an original manuscript of one of Joseph Smith's revisions of the New Testament but contains nothing of import on the subject,22 and the second is a letter from Orson Hyde, discussed further below. But that is it. Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible made no alterations to the text of Luke 22:44. When Joseph Smith did speak about the Atonement, his views align with a cross-centric understanding of it: “It must be shedding the blood of the Only Begotten to atone for man, for this was the plan of redemption, and without the shedding of blood was no remission” of sins.23 In his 1830 revision of the Bible, when describing visions given to Enoch regarding the future coming of the Messiah, whose mission is to redeem mankind from their sins, he does not write about Jesus in the garden, but of “the Son of man lifted upon the cross.”24The teachings of Latter-day Saint leaders from the early Church period through most of the nineteenth century similarly espouse views of the Atonement that identify it with Jesus's suffering on the cross. Moreover, not only do these leaders not teach that Jesus suffered for sins in Gethsemane, but they teach that he suffered agony in the garden in anticipation of the crucifixion.There are 208 references to “atonement” in the Journal of Discourses. A qualitative review of each shows that in no case did anyone teach that Christ suffered in an expiatory manner in the garden. Public statements and teachings of Brigham Young,25 Wilford Woodruff,26 George Q. Cannon,27 Daniel H. Wells,28 Orson Pratt,29 Heber C. Kimball,30 Charles W. Penrose,31 and others,32 consistently teach that the Atonement occurred on the cross and make no mention of Gethsemane in this regard. References to the garden of Gethsemane in speeches are the twentieth But when the suffering in the garden is it is for a that later Church leaders would to that Jesus's suffering in the garden was his in of his and with this point in and in their review of and the Journal of point to only one their is They that Gethsemane with Christ's suffering for our in They that made this connection he taught that Jesus to atone for the of . . . in Gethsemane, he was and great was the are he as it great of never made any connection in that as the in Hilton and The a of in Jesus's life, a connection an between Gethsemane and the Atonement The text that Christ came to atone for the of at the as the of It was that he should have a like and be made to all the of the the should be upon and that he should be like other in Gethsemane, he was and great was the that are he as it great of In the great when he was about to his life, he through all and when he you through these and he to to with It was that he should this for is the of and the of the and Barringer that is that the to Christ for the of men the but to teachings of some years later in and Atonement to that was teaching a garden atonement in the from the text not the the a of teachings that does not to and Atonement, publicly taught that the Atonement of “the shedding of the blood of the of upon Hilton and work by is some of the evidence of the of any belief in the garden atonement the end of the nineteenth and treatises, in LDS were important of Latter-day Saint belief in the systematic of belief similarly that the garden atonement was not taught early was well within for his for first in was in for years in multiple was in and in The in its was a from the of the The His only who no to for the sins of the and thus the of This same was in the and as R. also a Bible and for which had a series of and Jesus's suffering in the garden, but did not teach a garden atonement. Jesus to . . . the from The did Jesus by the to which the was and without any that it was His great agony, did large of E. of the of which an based on the article of believe that through the atonement of all mankind may be by to the and of the no mention of the garden at for in doctrine by all of of “the of The of “the great . . . on the is a systematic of Latter-day Saint in no mention of suffering in the garden of the garden at but when of the of a that came to . . . and in suffered that the of be One would not the garden atonement from Latter-day Saint evidence that the garden of Gethsemane was not as it would later to Christ's on the cross in their worship the The of contains no that the a or view of the The contains one in the but it would at an to the garden, given that all at a of Jesus on statements from the cross Christ's on the His his The one about the garden, but never that the atonement occurred and is rather in of the cross when of Christ's The is similarly in its on like the . . . on and it is these that and speak for the Atonement is a significant of early LDS scriptural the of Mormon and what would later be the and The of when of the Atonement, it with Christ's and suffering on the cross, and the garden is given if When the into the and speak of Christ's atonement, they do not on the but speak of the Atonement through Christ's that the shedding of his It is to the of blood to refer to as the not This is important for understanding the two on which LDS leaders would later in the garden and and a it he and of and even man can it be for blood from great be his for the and the of his The mention of Christ's for the and of his people as that Christ for in the garden, causing him to But the of the and the of other references to atonement this In this is a about Christ's suffering in the garden, that it is “for the and of his but the text nothing expiatory about that suffering in the and taught by LDS leaders does not the atonement at all for a book that the “atonement” by numerous is an of in but it is Christ's and in and as of the Atonement is out of with the of the of which atonement with in the of the under the and like but at a The it an for a distinctive doctrine in an And in their review of LDS scriptural Hilton and Barringer that is a of scriptural teachings regarding and that and does not it that when it of Christ it is a recent work Joseph Smith's of Luke and its on the LDS Church's a both and and and that Joseph Smith an on the atonement in the garden of upon the shows that a view was not and suggests that numerous of the and have Smith was to or that other may have a garden atonement but is to the conclusion that Smith does not any from Smith of the of Mormon and and when about Smith's views on the is a for although it is no to is no that are many references to the in the of and the and he that and and should be given the most they Jesus's references to “atonement” are to the cross, not the is no connection in LDS between the garden and the Atonement to the rise of the numerous high-ranking LDS leaders Smith's Hilton and Barringer that LDS leaders, from to Mark E. the of blood in and to the not the to have as well in A of the evidence suggests that the late in the theological of the garden atonement was not taught in early Mormonism, it the of when and did it a and distinctive doctrine for Latter-day This that that the doctrine came about as part of the Mormon for distinctiveness the period of that occurred with the demise of polygamy around the turn of the nineteenth century and was the same period in which the cross taboo and that around 1916 and in the as a to Catholicism of was a significant in this first of the that Christ suffered for in the garden is likely in and Atonement, to with the garden scene and the this is no to any connection between the garden atonement and an aversion to the cross or anti-Catholic of with the Catholic Church his in are “a of not the Catholicism that but which by which he not well by the And he “Catholic as and their Protestant as well as . . . the upon which their church is and to upon the that “the have many of alongside “the the and about the garden in to have references about blood as associated with the But it In B. H. and it as the garden. the of the on the of the of suffering of pains and from a of development of this him the view of the garden the view espoused by years that was . . . in the suffering of the the the and of personal but stated by the late Christ suffered “the the and the of the sins of all B. H. views to the cross taboo and its is for someone like the one was one of the most prominent and first of the Ensign Peak cross an ecumenical in that and was even a cross was also well to and his on In his of he a account of on the as many it into but as a for the “the of to make the cross an of the cross with the that in of the this first the garden atonement view, the role of and their connection to the cross would for the garden was likely the of E. book Jesus the Christ in with an in the same that the Ensign Peak and the of the cross to the As views on the atonement in were the the Jesus the important had of the to polygamy in and as a even in the a of The that had was under in turning their to . . . a of among other including in and This period was theological of and a role in it, the doctrine of for the In this in part to the assimilation into Protestant the Church was to the in which it was from and Catholicism became a and for in its including The at upon polemics of Protestant as well as as and on the of the most in the . . . the and . . . Church of no or belief his the Catholic belief in the of Christ in the was and a and was “a of the early of as a view of and and that the early as the began to teach it was an of to and when by that the of the church be that “the Church” “the of its and it with and among other the of with and and the of “the of images, and This point would prove B. H. was to the of of the cross, the of his his the of the and the that made the cross the of a Church that Thus, that the cross was a of an of and this view of Catholicism and the it is to in Jesus the a theological that from the cross, and Christianity: the suffering of the cross to the suffering in the garden, this the first any Latter-day Saint did to the teachings of Latter-day Saint leaders that “the that suffered through of the is Jesus and under a as no other who on even as It was not that to as to an of blood from but a agony of as only was of . . . In some and to man the took upon the of the sins of mankind from to the end of the that “the further of the and the that on the to in the of the cross, not the through which had in the later on the that that from the cross have a second suffering of the pains of the Atonement, but it as an “It that in to the suffering to the agony of Gethsemane had to at this it is the garden, not the cross, in which Christ “the with the of the on the Atonement within the LDS it that in this period would be an in this with the cross of and when be made to Mormon and and to the garden atonement. The was in no by “a desire to from the Catholic and the evidence suggests that the garden atonement into this in important Mormon would make the connection between the cross and the on the one and the garden and the atonement as on the even Fielding Smith was a on the within whose a of the and of and According to he was of the most important and the most of second and any other Mormon His in the the same the cross taboo was were in the the of the cross and belief that the Atonement occurred upon it, and the belief that the Atonement in the garden. As he taught in of A great many people have an that when he was on the cross, and were into his and that was his great His great suffering was he was upon the cross. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that the blood from the of his suffering even the greatest of to of and to at and to both and would that I not the and of an to the belief in the Church that the Atonement occurred on the cross that and was by some as to on the Smith, quoting and was not when he was on the that was in the Smith taught this in as early as And Smith also taught in one book with an to of the that upon as an to be of the that our upon is to of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day As with and Smith, that the of the of the given to but that a is and to the worship of our that may be that if our had killed with a or with a it would have if religious people this would have a by and it it was by a that our was to Reed Smith as a in the of the cross taboo within the R. also on this and his theological is well the Catholic Church as the of the of in the of taught that the Church the of crosses in the architecture of their and as all a and further that “the that the of and suffering was on the view which they by the use of the cross as a religious when in “the great of the Atonement were in the Garden of the first of Mormon which is in under the for of the it of the of the cross it be that is with “the on the Atonement, of The atonement was one he had teaching in for even when it was not in one he taught that the Garden of Gethsemane . . . took upon the sins of the even that Joseph was still the teaching in the Garden of Gethsemane, suffered and in anticipation of the that was about to that Reed as important in the including Orson and J. Reuben Clark both have to teaching the garden atonement in the early twentieth century when it was a still with the David O. against Catholicism is well and he may well have a of the garden one can the rise of “Gethsemane” in which in in the when Jesus the Christ and the Ensign Peak first of devotional use of the cross into in the Mormon evidence suggests that the garden belief not or taught by Latter-day Saints until late in the nineteenth and not taught until the of the to and alongside the cross taboo and for the same As polygamy began to under at the turn of the as well as assimilation into the all to this period of theological from anti-Catholic Protestant and Catholicism as a to and the cross as a of the same Mormon leaders began teaching that Jesus's suffering occurred not on the cross, as but in the garden of Gethsemane, and they also began to a devotional use of the cross, it as a Catholic symbol an The two to have largely and likely to one of this is to that today Latter-day Saints on to the garden atonement doctrine and their with the cross of any But these views have had on Mormon belief and Latter-day Saint devotional art Jesus's atonement with the garden of Gethsemane and largely the In the Church a the garden atonement as “the that was the greatest that was the that was The Church's in which an of the the by similarly LDS with the cross and its to the In the of the was to that it the that symbol should to as have the with the statements have an if second the teachings of Gordon B. the cross is the symbol of the our is a of the cross the of His the to the of R. his at the to do not use the of the including that it is a that are . . . a whose and . . . the of and Jesus's and Gordon B. teaching that “the of our people must . . . the symbol of our As recent scholarship views to have significant on church who to of the and for of that likely to for the future and likely the belief in the garden atonement

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