Mark W. Cannon

February 28, 2002

This is a “big picture” approach to some key historic developments that contributed to the restored Church subsequently rising “out of obscurity.”, and to George Q. Cannon’s role in those developments,.

The following themes will be explored:

1) Despite historic reviling of the Mormons, the LDS Church is being recognized as a “new world religion”.

2) How did George Q. Cannon’s Hawaiian Mission help lay the base for the remarkable world expansion of the Church?

3) Might Utah statehood have never come about?

4) How was attaining Utah statehood, partially through George Q. Cannon’s strategic leadership, critical to building a new world religion?

5) What other of his qualities helped build foundations for the emergence of the international Church?

6) Concluding summary.

1) Despite historic reviling of the restored Church, it is increasingly recognized as a “new world religion”.

As prophesied, the restored Church is coming “out of obscurity”, and moving toward being taught to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.

A leading religious sociologist, Rodney Stark, inaugurated a national conference of religious researchers with the startling declaration that they had the unique opportunity to see the emergence of the first new world religion since Mohammed rode out into the desert some 1600 years ago.

Renowned Yale literature professor Harold Bloom calls himself agnostic, yet he declared in his book, The American Religion: “I…do not find it possible to doubt that Joseph Smith was an authentic prophet. Where in all of American history can we find his match?”

Bloom asserts: “Mormonism…may prove decisive for this nation, and for more than this nation alone. He writes: “No other American religious movement is so ambitious, and no rival even remotely approaches the spiritual audacity that drives endlessly toward accomplishing a titanic design.” He projects hundreds of millions of Mormons in the new century.

Another evidence of the Church coming “out of obscurity” is Joel Kotkin’s book on Tribes. As ethnic ties have emerged as powerful in the global economy, he focuses on five major tribes: the Jews, the British, the Japanese, the Chinese and the Indians. These groups have in common a sense of mutual dependence, emphasis on family structure, a global network based on tribal trust that allows the group to function collectively, a passion for technology and a belief in scientific progress.

Kotkin sees “Mormon models of thrift, sobriety and family values as more effective than traditional faiths” for upward mobile people in developing countries.

Assuming Mormons maintain coherence and growth, they “could conceivably emerge as the next great global tribe, fulfilling as they believe, the prophecies of ancient and modern prophets.”

It is monumentally important that the Mormons would become the first multi-ethnic tribe – the first group that could bring vast numbers of ethnically diverse peoples into harmonious living with common constructive values.

One more indication of the emergence of the Church occurred when I was at a seminar with Peter Drucker at Harvard in 1989. This institutional analyst, with gigantic stature, said: “The Mormons are the only Utopia that ever worked”.

Shifting to the mass media, the full color cover Sesquicentennial feature in Time concluded: “The Church represents a combination of virtues that may make it the religion of America’s future.”

That all this emerged from a youth with little formal education (which astounds Harold Bloom) one and three quarters centuries ago is miraculous. We can ask what laid the basis to produce this miracle.

2) How did George Q. Cannon’s Hawaiian Mission help lay the base for the remarkable world expansion of the Church?

George Q. Cannon’s Hawaiian Mission was in some ways comparable to Peter’s history-changing vision that the Gospel was to go beyond the House of Israel to all people. Though five other missionaries quit because Caucasians rejected the message, it was revealed to Elder Cannon that he should bring the Gospel to the Hawaiians. He was a major force in some 4,000 baptisms, translating the Book of Mormon and making sure that Hawaiians held the Priesthood and became effective Church leaders.

How was the successful Hawaiian mission a launching pad for the international Church? First, together with Tahitians, Hawaiians were the first large group of non-Caucasians to come into the Church, thereby implanting in the minds and hearts of Church members — early in their history — that the Gospel was for distant and different people who responded to the spirit.

Second, the Hawaiian experience, which shaped George Q. Cannon’s life, embedded in him the deep conviction that all human beings are God’s children and must have our love and sympathetic understanding.

One historic incident displayed George Q. Cannon’s instantaneous loving outreach.

Elders William Hansen and Harvey Carlisle started proselyting in Lillington, North Carolina in 1897. They were arrested, imprisoned, and denied food and water unless they denounced their religion. They refused and were told they would die. Later, a group came to their cell, led by a tall, well-educated Black man, Postmaster Williams. He asked: “Do you know a man in Utah by the name of George Q. Cannon?” The elders responded that they did and that Mr. Cannon was a member of the First Presidency of the Church. “With that the colored man turned to the city officials and said, ‘Turn these men loose!’” He then took the Elders to dinner and told them this story:

Several years ago, while I was walking in the Nation’s “Capitol a door was opened very suddenly which knocked my silk hat off my head and it fell to the floor. A gentleman picked up my hat, took his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the dust off, and in a very polite manner handed me my hat. I said to this gentleman, ‘May I ask your name, and where you are from, and who taught you such manners as to stoop and pick up a colored man’s hat?’

The man informed me that his name was George Q. Cannon, that he was there representing…Utah, and that the Church of which he was a member taught…that we should respect all men, no matter what color or creed…, as we are all children of God”. Mr. Williams promised to return the favor to other Mormons if the opportunity arose.

According to Asian scholar and former Korean Temple President, Spencer Palmer, George Q. Cannon was decades ahead of his time in the breadth of his vision of a world wide Church for all people.

Elder Cannon’s understanding that God loves and is involved with the entire human race is evidenced by his comments on the universality of revelation:

“…there is no…[one] upon the face of the earth who has not the right and who has not obtained…revelations from God …. Plato, Socrates, Confucius…received important truths from Him…

George Q. believed that “Mahomet…was a man raised up by the Almighty and inspired to a certain extent by Him…. [Mahomet] attacked idolatry and restored the great and crowning idea that there is but one God.”

“God has given great light and knowledge…to Luther and Calvin…and John Wesley…. But this is the superiority that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ possesses. Its great Teacher is the Redeemer of the world.”

This remarkable breadth of George Q.’s vision of God’s involvement with every race and tribe influenced Church members because of President Cannon’s high level of service. He was a counselor to Brigham Young, and the First Counselor to Presidents John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff and Lorenzo Snow. Orson Whitney in his History of Utah concluded that “no man in Utah after the passing of Brigham Young wielded with all classes so great an influence as President George Q. Cannon.”

The third implication of the Hawaiian Mission was to create an LDS bastion in the heart of the Pacific. Diverse Asians came to Hawaii and some, or their descendants, joined the Church. The first Temple outside the continental U.S. made all ordinances available to people of the Pacific. When Asian missions were opened after World War II, Hawaii provided missionaries who could understand the cultures of Asian countries, and sometimes their languages. BYU Hawaii provided educational opportunities for Pacific Basin peoples to grow spiritually together, marry and build families within the Church, and create lasting friendship networks.

3) Why might Utah statehood never have come about?

Many people today cannot imagine the intensity of political animosity toward the Mormons in the later decades of the 1800s. A few facts show what a steep uphill battle it was to win statehood.

o In 1862, the Morrill Act provided a $500 fine and up to five years in prison for any married person in U.S. territory that married another person. It also prohibited the Church from owning more than $50,000 worth of property.

o Fearing that Church property would be taken, Brigham Young transferred much of it to his estate. Such writers as Irving Stone in Men to Match My Mountains imply that by leaving an estate of some $3 million, Brigham had exploited the Saints that he led. However, George Q. Cannon was the Chief Executor of Brigham’s estate and suffered prison for three weeks rather than give up control over the estate, thereby protecting what belonged to the Church. Less than a tenth went to Brigham’s numerous heirs.

o The propaganda war against the Mormons portrayed the Church as an “imperium in imperio….as un-American in character; un-American in membership; insubordinate to the authority of the United States Government; flagrant in violating the anti-polygamy law.”

The intensity of the war against the Mormons was shown by use of such epithets as “inoculation of evil”, “poison”, “leprosy”, “pollution”, “stain”, “blot”, “virus”, and “cancer”. The Mormon “impurity” had to be “obliterated”, “extirpated”, “destroyed”, “blotted out”, “crushed” or “blown out of existence”.

o The crusade against the Mormons drew such large crowds that former U.S. Vice President Schuyler Colfax (a beneficiary of the Credit Mobilier scandal) could denounce the Mormons to an audience of 50,000 people.

o Elections of Mormons to be Territorial Delegate were frequently contested in Congress by the loser, beginning in 1867 when William McGroarty with 105 votes contested the election of William Hooper with 15,074 votes.

o George Q. Cannon was elected to Congress in 1872. He and his Congressional friends derailed most anti-Mormon legislation. However, the Poland Bill, after being stripped of its worst features by Senator Aaron Sargeant of California, was enacted in 1874. It largely turned the Utah courts over to non-Mormons.

o Although Mormons contended that the Biblical practice of polygamy was allowed under Constitutional freedom of religion, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1879 decided the contrary. Chief Justice Waite paid little homage to religious action — as against opinion — that violated law, and paid no attention to the way polygamy was actually practiced and its positive eugenic results.

o The Supreme Court decision encouraged anti-Mormon crusaders, which led to passage of the Edmunds Act of 1882, a powerful blow against the Saints. This act:

-punished Mormon cohabitation;

-excluded believers in polygamy from juries;

-disqualified polygamists and cohabitors from voting or holding public office;

-controlled Utah elections.

-Congressional hypocrisy and intent to punish Mormons alone was displayed when Senator Morgan (D-Alabama) moved to apply the cohabitation penalties in the territories against concubines as well as against Mormon plural wives. The amendment was rejected by forty-four votes to only seven in favor.

o After passage of the Edmunds Act, the House of Representatives denied George Q. Cannon his seat. The vote fell short of two thirds, which would have been required if the House had treated a Delegate as they would have treated a Member.

o The Church leaders became moving targets of the Judicial Crusade, operating from an underground of secret locations. President John Taylor, for example, died in an obscure home in Kaysville in 1887.

o Rewards were offered for the capture of Church leaders and several went to prison, including George Q. Cannon, where he wrote Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet.

o In 1887, the Edmunds-Tucker Act was passed. In a nation that exalts the right of private corporations, the L.D.S. Church was disincorporated. In a country that exalts the right of private property, all but $50,000 of Church property was to be escheated and used for schools. In a nation that exalts the right of citizens to vote, voting was denied to those who would not sign an anti-polygamy test oath. Gentiles soon took over the Ogden and Salt Lake City governments.

o The Territory of Idaho enacted a law that denied the vote to all Mormons by a test oath that the prospective voter was not a member of any organization teaching its devotees to commit bigamy or polygamy.

o Even worse, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Idaho statute in Davis v. Beason on February 3, 1890. Chief Justice Warren Burger once told me that Davis v. Beason, more than any other case that he had ever read, reflected the personal views and prejudices of the Justices, rather than careful constitutional reasoning.

4) How was attaining Utah statehood, partially through George Q. Cannon’s strategic leadership, critical to the foundation of building a new world religion?

Had a reconciliation not been worked out, the Church could have been in extremely dire straights. Statehood for Utah might have been indefinitely lost. Utah could have become a permanent territory and might have been treated somewhat like an Indian Reservation, but under the tight control of politically appointed carpetbaggers. Utah also could have been carved up and given to other states, so that no state had a majority LDS population.

Although polygamy was far from the most causal issue producing the anti-Mormon crusade, it was the most highly visible, and non-Mormon leaders made clear there would never be statehood and the crusade would continue until the polygamy issue was resolved. George Q. Cannon, First Counselor to President Wilford Woodruff discussed these issues frequently with him. President Woodruff, a particularly spiritual Prophet, pondered, prayed and waited for inspiration of the Lord, which came on September 20, 1890.

This led to President Woodruff’s “Official Declaration” to abide by the law forbidding plural marriages. In supporting the Manifesto at the Church Conference, George Q. Cannon explained that it had come from God because it had become necessary to yield to the demands of the country in order to save the people. George Q. pointed to scripture that if every effort were made to carry out a commandment and it was still impossible to adhere to it, the person receiving the commandment would be absolved of responsibility.

The issuance of the Manifesto alone was insufficient to obtain Utah Statehood. This was suggested in 1887 — the sixth statehood convention produced a proposed State Constitution stating that “bigamy and polygamy being considered incompatible with a republican form of government, each of them is hereby forbidden and declared a misdemeanor.” Nevertheless, that failed to produce statehood.

George Q. Cannon, sometimes referred to as “The Mormon Premier” or “The Mormon Richelieu” was the chief strategist and negotiator, for such matters as dividing Church members into political parties, persuading national political leaders that they should not offend the quarter of a million Mormons who could influence many intermountain area elections, persuading skeptical political leaders that the Church would not function as a theocracy, and negotiating with former Congressional friends such as Secretary of State James G. Blaine, a leading Republican. Decades of effort for statehood led to successful culmination in 1896. Elder B.F. Cummings described Elder Cannon as “the greatest master of practical statecraft the Church had produced.”

It would be hard to exaggerate how important Utah statehood, to which President Cannon contributed significantly, was to the growth of the Church and its ultimate emergence as a new world religion. Let us explore some of the ways this was the case.

o Back to the mission of the Church. The Church was able to refocus energy on religious objectives. For example, more than twice as many missionaries, 11,503, were set apart in the quarter century after statehood as during the quarter century preceding, 5,089.

o The lepers became leaders. With statehood, the outcast Mormons elected Members of the House and Senate, without trying to monopolize those positions. Although the election of an Apostle, Reed Smoot, to the U.S. Senate in 1902 was controversial, his emergence into a powerful and respected Senate leader, as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and his political leadership for 30 years, symbolized the transition of Mormons from pariahs to an unusual, but still acceptable, part of America.

o Smoot diligently helped many hundreds of talented Mormons obtain government positions in Washington, who, without his presence, might not have made it because of the stigma on Mormons in that era. Because Smoot’s young people performed well, he was sometimes asked to supply more of those bright young people. Many went on to influential positions in government, such as Edgar Brossard, who was appointed to the Federal Tariff Commission by five Presidents from 1925 to 1959, and long served as its chairman. Similarly, Rosel Hyde came to Washington to attend George Washington Law School at night and work for the government during the day. He served on the Federal Communications Commission from 1946 to 1969, much of that time as its chairman.

Others went on to influential positions in business. For example, Smoot’s last secretary, Isaac “Ike” Stewart, became Vice President of Union Carbide and President of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Stan McAllister, became Vice President of Lord and Taylor in New York, and helped the Church in that area.

Smoot helped an active Church member, William M. Jardine, become the first Mormon appointed to a cabinet position as Secretary of Agriculture in 1925. He subsequently became President of Kansas State University. Hal G. Smith of the New York Times, who covered Washington for nearly 40 years, attributed Smoot’s success in placing people not to a machine or any nefarious activity, but to his long service, party position, and the generally superior quality of the people he recommended.

Smoot’s demonstration that Mormons were acceptable parts of the government probably helped lay the base for the first Mormon appointed to a subcabinet position, even though that person was a Democrat and had run against Smoot for the Senate. This was James D. Moyle who became Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 1917. This may also have resulted partially from the fact that Moyle’s boss, Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo, while a law student, had been required to defend the Mormons in a successful debate. He had obtained ideas and information from Territorial Delegate George Q. Cannon and became friendly toward the Mormons while developing his case.

Incidentally, Smoot was at least equally encouraging to non-Mormons in helping them find jobs in the Capital. For example, Smoot persuaded President Harding to appoint former U.S. Senator from Utah George Sutherland, a non-Mormon graduate of BYU, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Other Mormon Senators from Utah have followed Smoot’s model. For example, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch was one of the highest Senators in placing appointees in the Reagan Administration.

The tradition of Mormons coming to Washington and often staying there, that resulted from statehood, has led to the greater Washington, D.C. area having 19 stakes. This is one of the largest concentrations of Mormons east of Utah. Mormons are in the three branches of government, law firms and associations that influence government, and think tanks that study government policies.

o Smoot focused his indefatigable energy primarily on his political role. However, when the Church needed help he gave it. For example, after World War I, Great Britain and European countries excluded Mormon missionaries, by refusing them visas. In 1919, George Albert Smith, wrote from England that the Church was being almost smothered by persecution, and the exclusion of missionaries. He questioned whether the Church could survive in Europe. Senator Smoot enlisted the U.S. Secretary of State, and they both sent many cables pressing for the granting of visas to missionaries. He also met with the British and other European ambassadors. Agreements resulted, but were only partially kept. So, in 1923 Smoot toured England, France, Germany and Scandinavia. He met with media baron Lord Beaverbrook and was pleased with published interviews in major newspapers in London and the continent. He was featured as the powerful Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He met with the highest officials of each country where he pressed for consistent granting of visas. That ended the problems.

Since then, there have been many meetings with Utah Senators and other LDS public officials and foreign ambassadors to get or to keep missionaries in foreign countries. Examples of the results include Communist Hungary’s acceptance of missionaries, the early recognition of the Church in the Soviet Union and allowing missionaries to function in Russia after a new law that could have been interpreted to exclude them (a commitment encouraged by a visit of Senator Robert Bennett to Moscow, with the approval of the U.S. State Department) and allowing missionaries into Ghana after they had been prohibited. Sometimes non-Mormon leaders have been enlisted to help.

Most Islamic countries do not permit religious missionaries. However, Mormons have developed good relations with many Islamic officials by coordinating efforts to protect traditional family values from groups pressuring the United Nations in other directions. In addition, Islamic leaders have expressed appreciation at dinners for BYU’s long term Islamic Translation Series which translate into English, for the first time, respected Islamic Texts. The first presentation to Islamic leaders from Washington embassies and, in New York, United Nations representatives was Al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Former Utah State Senate President Karl Snow handled liaison with U.N. Representatives in New York.

Beverly Campbell and Ann Santini have been liaison to ambassadors, and have brought several dozen ambassadors and high embassy officials to such events as: the annual BYU Management Society Dinner in Washington, D.C.; the annual Festival of Lights where in 1998 the Chinese Ambassador turned on more than 300,000 Christmas lights at the Temple Visitors Center and made especially positive comments about the Mormons; the annual Western Family Picnic at the Marriott Ranch in Hume, Virginia which is a virtually unique diplomatic event since ambassadors bring their families and which was attended by representatives of 53 countries with 28 ambassadors on September 25, 1999; and a presentation by the Polynesian Cultural Center on the Maryland estate of Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon which attracted 14 Pacific Basin Ambassadors the evening of June 8, 1999.

Smoot also took Church leaders such as Presidents Joseph F. Smith and Heber J. Grant to meet with Presidents of the United States at the White House, as well as introduced them to cabinet members to keep friendly relationships and encourage communication. Senator Smoot helped arrange Presidential visits. He persuaded William Howard Taft to visit Utah twice and to meet with Church leaders. Taft was the first President of the United States to speak in the Tabernacle. President Warren G. Harding and Woodrow Wilson also spoke in the Tabernacle.

During the revolution in Mexico, Smoot got protective aid to the Mormon colonies.

Elder Smoot held Church in his home on Sundays, until the 1920′s, when he helped negotiate the land for a highly visible Mormon chapel, with a gold-covered statue of Moroni on top located on 16th street, north of the White House.

o Ask yourself the question: Is it likely that there would have been even one Mormon U.S. Senator in Washington had the Church remained in New York, Ohio, Missouri or Illinois and been a small minority population? Winning the Utah statehood battle enabled 11 LDS Senators to be elected from Utah, and an additional 6 have been elected largely from neighboring states. The persecution of the Mormons, though deplorable, moved the Saints to a desolate area in which they could be a majority in what ultimately became a state — which provided the opportunity to build extraordinary political leverage. This history could not easily have been more brilliantly planned to achieve the end goal of building a strong Washington base that helped bring status and positive visibility to the Church as well as the ability to plead effectively with foreign governments to allow missionaries freedom to proselyte.

My close observation of the Mormon political community since the 1950′s indicates that Utah’s statehood not only produced Mormon Senators, but they became role models for many young Mormons who entered politics in States outside of Utah. Also, Mormon Senators made it acceptable in many people’s minds for Mormons to hold high elective positions. This led to the election of active LDS Senators Harry Reid from Nevada (currently Senate Majority Whip), Gordon Smith from Oregon, and Michael Crapo of Idaho, and previously, Paula Hawkins from Florida. Incidentally, she was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate who was neither the wife nor the daughter of a politician. There was also a near miss by Dick Swett in New Hampshire. It led to there being 11 current LDS Members of the House of Representatives, including Delegate Eni Faleomavaega of American Samoa, and George Q. Cannon’s great grandson, Christopher B. Cannon from Utah.

o The fact that an Apostle served in the Senate for thirty years set a precedent that facilitated the naming of a later Apostle, Ezra Taft Benson, as Secretary of Agriculture for eight years. He accomplished the seemingly impossible — moving much of American agriculture from regimentation toward free markets.

o Utah Statehood has also led to there being over 200 LDS staff members in the Congress. This makes at least a modest contribution to Congressional defense of legitimate LDS needs. For example, when religious extremists in Israel were threatening to stop the development of the strikingly beautiful BYU Center in Jerusalem, Congressman Tom Lantos was persuaded by LDS Congressman Wayne Owens to be a leader in a drive that obtained some 200 signatures of House Members on a petition that helped make sure that the BYU center was allowed to be completed and to function. Senator Orrin Hatch and his assistant, Frank Madsen, led the fight in the Senate. For Congressman Lantos, a Jewish Democratic Congressman from California, this fit his ideological commitments to freedom of the mind, and the free exchange of ideas. However, it did not hurt that his wife was a convert to the Church and his Administrative Assistant, BYU alumnus Robert King, is LDS.

5) How else did George Q. Cannon help build the foundation for the emergence of the international Church.

We will mention a few of the other ways that George Q. Cannon contributed to foundations for future Church growth.

First, he articulated positions of the Church eloquently and persuasively in speeches and writings. As Editor of the Deseret News, he converted it into a daily newspaper. He wrote over 1000 editorials for the Juvenile Instructor which he founded and edited for 35 years. He wrote many hundreds of editorials in the Western Standard, Millennial Star and Deseret News. More than 300 of his discourses were printed. President Gordon B. Hinckley has said “I don’t know of a man, really, who had a better understanding of the doctrine, of the government, of the principles of the Church than did George Q. Cannon. Among the three or four books outside the Standard Works to which I turn most frequently, is the volume Gospel Truth containing the statements of George Q. Cannon.”

Second, he made friends for the Church wherever he went. It was after interviewing him and seeing the boatload of British Mormons that he was supervising that Charles Dickens called the Mormons, much to his surprise, “the pick and flower of England.”

Third, with little formal schooling, he became highly educated through relentless reading and he strongly encouraged education among the Saints to build their knowledge and skills. He promoted the creation of centers of education. He offered the dedicatory prayer for the Brigham Young Academy lower campus education building (1892) whose facade is now preserved while the inside has been made into an ultra-modern library, which exhibits his photo, bio and dedicatory prayer. He was chairman of its Board of Trustees from 1897 until he died in 1901. He strongly supported education for both sexes and initiated and edited the Juvenile Instructor, the first children’s magazine in the Intermountain West (1866). He helped organize and was the first General Superintendent of the Sunday School Union of the Church (1867). President Heber J. Grant wrote “there has been no other man in Utah who has shown such marked ability in so many different ways as has he…the broad educational views held by President Cannon entitle him to be ranked as one of the foremost men from an educational standpoint that Utah has ever produced.” The Church’s promotion of education and science that George Q. Cannon’s activities represented contributed to Utah regularly producing more scientists and Ph.D.s than any other state in relation to population.

Fourth, he married talented wives and replenished the earth with descendants who served missions and tried to represent the Gospel in their professions. Those helped into the Church by the descendants of George Q. and of his brothers and sisters, and the chains of people that those new members helped convert may well exceed a quarter of a million people. Probably the closest single parallel in subsequent Church history to the massive baptisms performed in Hawaii by Elder Cannon and his associates was done by his grandson Ted Cannon and Rendall Mabey, who baptized about 1,700 people in opening up the West African Mission in the 1970s. A great grandson of George Q. Cannon played a role in the baptism of a Nigerian pastor who aspires to bring his congregations of thousands into the Church.

President Gordon Hinckley said: “Perhaps no man in the history of the Church has produced a family such as the descendants of George Q. Cannon. They have been Church leaders, yes, but there have been Cannons who have served with distinction in almost every walk of life…. They have made a tremendous contribution to the Church, and to the society in which they have been a part.”

5) Concluding Summary.

In conclusion, the Mormons have gone through a remarkable transformation from being viewed predominantly as a strange, tiny, authoritarian, narrowminded group to becoming increasingly recognized by intellectual observers as an unusual, tightly organized, significant, dynamic world religion, which helps resolve many human problems.

Two important factors that helped make this transformation possible are the early successful Hawaiian Mission and the achievement of statehood for Utah.

George Q. Cannon’s successful Hawaiian mission, with Hawaiians being ordained to the Priesthood and becoming spiritual leaders led to feelings of community and brotherhood by the Utah Saints with people from very different racial and cultural backgrounds, This helped Mormons sustain future expansion of the Church into other racial and cultural groups. It also embedded in George Q. the conviction that all of God’s children are important, can and do receive revelation and should be reached by the Gospel. Not only was he universally minded, but his strong leadership and speaking and writing responsibilities educated Church members with his universal emphases. Furthermore, the successful Hawaiian Mission created a stronghold that helped expand the Church into Asian countries after World War II.

Another major rocket launcher for the emergence of a new world religion was winning, with George Q. Cannon’s strategic leadership, the seemingly impossible battle for Utah statehood. This had a cascading effect. Statehood itself produced some degree of acceptability. The election of Mormon Senators and Representatives shifted Mormons from being excluded to entering into positions of policy and political influence, brought further acceptance of Church members, and helped many other LDS gain positions in Washington that ultimately led to their obtaining political and economic leadership.

These role models stimulated many other Mormons to enter politics and seek and sometimes obtain positions of influence, and helped attract a very large LDS population, many of whom are influential, in or near the nation’s capitol. All of this has led to the election of five current Mormon Senators and 12 previous ones, as well as 11 current Mormon members of the House of Representatives and 46 previous ones. This strong Mormon presence, much of which would never have existed without winning the battle of statehood for Utah, facilitated positive and effective communication with foreign ambassadors and leaders which helps keep the missionaries in most countries in the world and helps protect against persecution of members in most countries where they live. This is important for the future since efforts are growing in many countries to restrict the rights of non-traditional churches.

This strong Mormon presence in the most powerful capital in the world also promotes a flow of cosmopolitan perceptions and information back to Salt Lake City. These influential Washington based Mormons also facilitate positive communications and images in the national and foreign media, and create connections with many powerful decision makers. One thing that facilitates Mormon influence is that unlike many interest groups, Mormons are not soliciting Federal subsidies, but are seeking the freedom to worship and share their views in the market place of ideas — both of which are central to the American constitutional ethos. All of these factors have been important to the emergence of the new world religion.

Many millions of people have been killed by ethnic hatreds and wars. Thus, the LDS emergence as a well-functioning multi-ethnic religion (though not without adjustment problems) with a dwindling proportion of Caucasian members, is noteworthy. If it continues to succeed in the challenge of harmonizing such diverse cultures as it continues to grow, other institutions may wish to examine that model.

ENDNOTES

. Mark Cannon received his Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University where he wrote a prize winning dissertation on “The Mormon Issue in Congress 1872-1882: Drawing on the Experience of Territorial Delegate George Q. Cannon”. He has served as Staff Director, Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution; Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice of the United States; Director, Institute of Public Administration, New York; Chairman, BYU Department of Political Science; Legislative Assistant to Senator Wallace Bennett; Administrative Assistant to Congressman Henry Aldous Dixon. He was also a founding owner of Geneva Steel.
. Doctrine and Covenants 1:30.
. Keynote address to the joint convention of the Religious Research Association and Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, in Salt Lake City, October 27, 1989.
. “The prophet Joseph has proved again that economic and social forces do not determine human destiny.” The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation, (Simon and Schuster, 1992), p.95.
. Ibid. p. 97.
6. Ibid. p.94. More recently, Bloom observed — in the early pages where it was most likely to be read: “Perhaps…in the twenty-first century, when Mormonism has become the dominant religion of at least the American West, those who come after us will experience a….shock when they encounter the daring of the authentic American prophet Joseph Smith in his definitive visions, The Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants.” Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, (Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 6. In his new book on Angels, Bloom attributes much of the contemporary popular interest in Angels to the impact of the Angel Moroni on American thinking. He prefers Joseph Smith’s concept that Angels can only help us with things that we cannot do for ourselves. He again broadly praises Joseph Smith. Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams and Resurrection, (Riverhead Books, 1997), p.224.
.Joel Kotkin, Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 248

. Ibid, p. 249.
9. As just one example, many Blacks have joined the Church in the Menlo Park Stake. One Black convert, Aaron Johnson, who teaches the High Priests in his ward, has said that the LDS Church has less race prejudice than any other organization he has ever observed. He believes the only way racial reconciliation will come is through the Church. The Stake has taken on the commitment of making sure that no student in the Stake is deprived of higher education or training because of financial need. Based on Gospel values, LDS businessmen created and funded Beechwood, an elementary school for underprivileged students. The school requires parents to take a parenting class and work regularly with their children. Despite alarmingly low high school graduation rates in the area, the first class to have completed preschool through the eighth grade are now high school graduates, and almost all of the Beechwood alumni will graduate from high school. Many will go on to higher education. One present and one recent Bishop in this Stake are married to Asians. Stanford Ward operates a thriving tutoring program where Stanford students interact with Samoan children twice a week. Interviews with Mary Finlayson, September 8, 1997 and September 21, 1999, and Stake President Boyd Smith, November 1 and 3, 1997, and Aaron Johnson, November 3, 1997.
. This statement was confirmed and its publication was approved in exchange of correspondence between Mark W. Cannon and Peter Drucker, May 18, 1989 and July 5, 1989.
. David Van Biema, “Mormons, Inc.” Time, August 4, 1997, pp. 50-57.
. Even such noted historians as Morison and Commager, in a history text used until after World War II, dismissed Mormons as having remained near to the low “cultural level from which they were recruited” and as being “barren in the arts” and “too autocratic for wholesome civic life.” Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), 1:473. The historic outpour of anti-Mormon writing prevented even many historians who thought themselves objective from seeing Mormonism realistically until recent decades. Describing anti-Mormon’s statements about the Mormons, Hubert Howe Bancroft noted that in all his historical writing, he had never encountered such a “mass of mendacity”. He generally attributed accuracy to what Mormons wrote. History of Utah 1540 to 1887, (San Francisco, The History Company, 1890), preface.
. Joel G. Hancock, Strengthened by the Storm: The coming of the Mormons to Harkers Island, N.C., 1897 – 1909. pp. 29-31.
. Interview, September 20, 1997.

. Jerreld L. Newquist, ed. Gospel Truth: Discourses and Writings of George Q. Cannon. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1987, p.238, citing Journal of Discourses 21, 74-77.
. Gospel Truth, p.242, citing Journal of Discourses, 24:371.
. Gospel Truth, p. 241, citing Journal of Discourses, 12:30.
. (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons Company Publishers, 1904), VI, 663.
. See Leonard J. Arrington, “Settlement of the Brigham Young Estate, 1877-79,” Pacific History Review, 21:1-20, February, 1952.
. Mark W. Cannon, “The Mormon Issue In Congress 1872 -1882: Drawing On The Experience Of Territorial Delegate George Q. Cannon”, Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1960, p. 176.
. Ibid, p.217.
. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 166 (1878).
. U. S. Statutes at Large, 47th Congress, 1881-83, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883), p. 31.
. Congressional Record, 47th Congress, First Session, February 15, 1882, p. 1215.
25. President Cannon agreed to turn himself in and go to prison in exchange for President Grover Cleveland appointing moderate judges.
. (Deseret Book Company, 1986.) President Ezra Taft Benson told me that he liked this biography so much that he asked Deseret Book to republish it. (July, 1985)
. 133 U. S. 333 (1890).
. Doctrine and Covenants, p. 291-93.
. Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 49 and forward.
. John M. Coyner, (ed.) Handbook on Mormonism, (Salt Lake City: Handbook Publishing Co., 1882), p.47, reprinting C. C. Goodwin, “The Mormon Situation”, Harper’s, LXIII, (October, 1881), 756-63.
. Arthur S. Street, “The Mormon Richelieu”, Ainslee’s Magazine, IV (January, 1990), pp. 699-706.
. Leo Lyman points out that after losing his seat in Congress, George Q. Cannon “did, however, remain a frequent visitor at the nation’s capital. Besides assisting his replacement, John T. Caine, a monogamist Mormon, he would still directly manage several of the steps toward eventual statehood.” Op. Cit., pp. 23, 30. Lyman describes Cannon as a “great statesman”. p. 282.
. The Contributor, 16:118-132.

. This takes the 25 years prior to the enabling act for statehood of 1894, compared to the 25 years after statehood in 1896. Church Almanac 1997-98, p. 532.
. In the early period Utah elected non-Mormons Tom Kearns and George Sutherland to the U.S. Senate, and elected one of America’s first Jewish Governors, Simon Bamberger.
. M.R. Merrill, Reed Smoot: Utah Politician, (Utah State Agricultural College, Monograph Series, April, 1953), p. 53.
. Mark W. Cannon, The Innovative Heritage of Mormonism, Co.mmissioner’s Lecture Series, Church Education System, Brigham Young University Press, 1974, p. 9.
. Smoot was accused by some Mormons of giving a majority of jobs to Gentiles even though they were only about one third of the Utah population. Ibid. p. 15.
. Interviews with Harvard Heath, Curator of the Utah and American West Archives, BYU, who researched these actions of Senator Smoot, September 17 and October 2, 1997.
. After Smoot’s wife died, he married, in 1930, Alice Taylor Sheets, the widowed mother of J. Willard Marriott’s wife. This did not damage the remarkable growth of the Marriott Hot Shoppes. For rich information on Smoot, see Milton R. Merrill, Reed Smoot: Apostle in Politics, (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1990).
41. See comprehensive study of “Mormons in Congress, 1851-2000” by Robert R. King and Kay Atkinson King in Journal of Mormon History, Fall 2000.
42. Mark W. Cannon, “New George Q. Cannon Building at BYU”, 1958, p. 4.
. Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, Address at funeral service of Adrian W. Cannon, June 11, 1991.
. Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveler, (Boston: Dana Estes and Company, 1964), p.303.
. Fund raising has been led by former BYU engineering Dean Doug Smoot, who is, appropriately, the great grandson of A. O. Smoot, who funded the Brigham Young Academy in its early years.

46. The Young Women’s Journal, 12:243-5.

47. This was shown by nine studies over more than half a century that are summarized in Mark W. Cannon, “Latter-day Saints and Science” Meridian Magazine (online) 5/19/2002.

.
48.Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, Address at funeral service of Adrian W. Cannon, June 11, 1991. President Hinckley also made similar comments at the unveiling of the statue of George Q. Cannon and Napela in front of the George Q. Cannon Activities Center at BYU Hawaii October 10, 1997: “George Q. Cannon has for a long time been one of my favorites among the stalwart brethren of the Church…. He served as counselor to four presidents of the Church. His published teachings are a literal gold mine of the doctrine of this Church. He had remarkable capacity for saying things in a way that made them very easy to understand. His testimony was strong and secure…. He communed with the Lord Jesus Christ, and it had a wonderful pattern upon his life…I’ve said it as a non-Cannon, that I think perhaps the George Q. Cannon family has produced more men and women of talents and ability and capacity than any other family in the Church. They have literally produced generals, ambassadors, architects, lawyers, doctors, merchants…. I have admired them for a long long time and the tremendous contribution which they made to the Church and significantly most of them have kept the faith and made a great contribution to this Church and moved this work forward in the world. Thanks to the Cannon family.”

After traveling to Hawaii, Elders McKay and Cannon inspected the Church school at Laie and then visited the other islands. Elder Cannon particularly requested they visit Pulehu on Maui where his father, George Q. Cannon, had baptized the first Hawaiian in July 1851. Thirty-four years later, President McKay recalled the events of their visit to Maui.

“So we came up here, and this is where I was [pointing to a spot where a pepper tree had been], and as we looked at an old frame house that stood there then, he said, ‘That is probably the old chapel.’ It seemed to me it was over in the distance. Nothing else was here. We said ‘Well, probably that is the place. We are probably standing on the spot upon which your father, George Q. Cannon, and Judge Napela addressed those people.’ We became very much impressed with the surroundings, association, and spiritual significance of the occasion; as we had also been with the manifestations we had had on our trip to the Orient and thus far in Hawaii. I said, ‘I think we should have a word of prayer.’ . . .

“I offered the prayer. We all had our eyes closed, and it was a very inspirational gathering. As we started to walk away at the conclusion of the prayer, Brother Keola Kailimai took Brother E. Wesley Smith to the side and very earnestly began talking to him in Hawaiian. As we walked along, the rest of us dropped back. They continued walking, and Brother Kailimai very seriously told in Hawaiian what he had seen during the prayer. They stopped right over there [pointing a short distance away] and Brother E. Wesley Smith said, ‘Brother McKay, do you know what Brother Kailimai has told me?’ I answered, ‘No.’ ‘Brother Kailimai said that while you were praying, and we all had our eyes closed, he saw two men who he thought were Hugh J. Cannon and E. Wesley Smith step out of line in front of us and shake hands with someone, and he wondered why Brother Cannon and Brother Smith were shaking hands while we were praying. He opened his eyes and there stood those two men still in line, with their eyes closed just as they had been. He quickly closed his eyes because he knew he had seen a vision.’

“Now Brother Hugh J. Cannon greatly resembled Brother George Q. Cannon, his father. I spoke during the trip of his resemblance. Of course, E. Wesley Smith has the Smith attribute just as President Joseph Fielding Smith has it. Naturally, Brother Keola Kailimai would think that these two men were there. I said, ‘I think it was George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith, two former missionaries to Hawaii, whom that spiritual-minded man saw.’

“We walked a few steps farther and I said, ‘Brother Kailimai, I do not understand the significance of your vision, but I do know that the veil between us and those former missionaries was very thin.’ Brother Hugh J. Cannon who was by my side, with tears rolling down his cheeks, said ‘ Brother McKay, there was no veil. ’” 10

10. David O. McKay, Cherished Experiences. Rev. and enl. Compiled by Clare Middlemiss (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), pp. 115–16.

Prayer under a Pepper Tree: Sixteen Accounts of a Spiritual Manifestation
By Lavina Fielding Anderson

Records reveal vivid information from personal points of view, about a spiritual experience shared by five in Hawaii in 1921.

In 1920-21, David O. McKay, then a forty-seven-year-old Apostle, toured the worldwide missions of the Church, beginning with Japan and Korea. He dedicated the land of China for the preaching of the gospel, visited Hawaii, returned briefly to Salt Lake City for the funeral of President Anthon H. Lund, and then continued through the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Europe. He was accompanied on this arduous year-long tour by Hugh J. Cannon, president of Liberty Stake in Salt Lake City and a member of the Deseret Union Sunday School General Board, of which President McKay was general superintendent.

Among the many spiritual manifestations that occurred during this world tour came a remarkable event during the thirty-six hours they spent on Maui. President McKay and Brother Cannon docked at Maui at 4:30 A.M. February 9, 1921, held a meeting at mission headquarters in the morning, and held another for members in the evening; during the afternoon they visited the sites where Hugh J. Cannon’s father, George Q. Cannon, had met Jonatana H. Napela, resulting in the first baptism in Maul and the organization of the first branch of the Church in Hawaii, and where George Q. Cannon had also received intense spiritual manifestations. Accompanying the party were E. Wesley Smith, Hawaiian Mission president and a son of Joseph F. Smith, who had also served as a Hawaiian missionary; Samuel Harris Hurst, Jr., a missionary of mature years from Idaho who was then president of the Central Maul Conference; and David Keola Kailimai, a Hawaiian missionary, also of mature years, who owned the little Ford in which the party traveled.

Hugh J. Cannon was greatly touched by visiting the sites associated with his father, and on the grounds of the little chapel at Pulehu, President McKay felt inspired to offer a prayer of thanksgiving. During that prayer, all five men were deeply stirred spiritually, and Brother Kailimai, speaking in Hawaiian to President Smith, said he had seen a vision. President McKay, after President Smith translated Brother Kailimai’s words, did not interpret the vision but confirmed its divine origins by affirming that “the veil was very thin.” Hugh J. Cannon, who had been most profoundly affected during the experience, testified that, at least for him, there had been no veil.

What was the manifestation called forth by the combination of faith and filial love of these five Church leaders? How did the five experience it and how did they describe it, both then and later? What message does it have about the nature of spiritual experience for readers who learn of it through the more distant witness of the written record?

Thanks largely to the kindness of many members of the families involved, I have found sixteen separate accounts of this event, all but four of them unpublished. This essay examines these accounts in chronological order and in the context of the participants’ lives, as an exploration of the dynamics of memory, faith, love, and spirituality.
Samuel Harris Hurst’s Account
Of the five participants, only David Kailimai, the man who saw the vision, left no personal account, either at the time or later. Abigail Kahanu Kailimai Kailimai, who is both David’s niece and his daughter-in-law, does not recall an earlier oral version or, in fact, ever hearing this experience from Elder Kailimai. However, Samuel Harris Hurst, Jr., kept a daily diary and recorded the event within hours of its occurrence. Elder Hurst was then thirty-six, a native of Cache Valley, and a widower. His wife had died a lingering death from heart disease shortly before, leaving him with a ten-year-old daughter, Inez. He had had grave doubts about serving a mission under such circumstances but had accepted the calling, at least partly because of his child’s faith, even though he had to sell his farm to pay his expenses. His diary and his autobiography, written in 1958, breathe a solid, simple faithfulness that is very moving. He confesses that being called to Hawaii was “quite a test to my faith.” His patriarchal blessing had told him he would “go to the land of my forefathers,” which did not seem to be possible. He thought he would be too old to learn Hawaiian fluently and adds with humility, “I had desires to be a good speaker, and I could not see any development for me if simple natives were to be my audience.” He wrestled with his doubts about whether his call had been inspired “all the way to Hawaii.” But when he saw Wesley Smith, the mission president, waiting for him on the dock, he recognized him as the man with whom he had labored as a missionary in a dream seen two years earlier. This dream had occurred a year before Smith had been called as mission president. “With this,” recorded Elder Hurst, “I knew that some power other than that of man was having something to do with it.” Elder Hurst also knew that he would be assigned to some island other than Oahu before President Smith made the assignments.
Elder Hurst’s diary for February 8, 1921, records the prayer under the pepper tree in simple prose but eloquent detail:
Elder McKay, Pros. Smith and Cannon Elder Keola and myself drove . . . out to Pulehu where Pres. Geo. Q. Cannon had his wonderful experience in the conversion of so many of the natives and the first to join the church. As we sat in the little Ford in front of the meeting house there, Pres. Smith related to us the story of how Pres. Cannon in 1850 or 51 had delivered his wonderful discourse in a little church which then stood on the ground we were then on. At this meeting he appeared to be standing in the air with a hallow of light around his head. At the same time all but three of the over hundred persons there present were transfigured before him. Bro. Hugh J. Cannon being a son of Pres. Cannon was very deeply effected [sic] more so than any one I have ever saw before. We then alighted from the car and walked around the grounds. At the rear of the old church on the grounds now in the shade of an old tree, Elder McKay said: “Brethren I feel impressed that we should render our thanks to the Lord for the labors of this great man and his co-laborer Pres. Joseph F. Smith whose sons arc represented here today.” At this we bowed in humble reverence in prayer to God and then I listened to one of the grandest prayers it has ever been my privilege to listen to. At its close Elder Keola testified he saw a hand and arm extended to me in an attitude of shaking hands. In speaking of this later Bro. McKay said “Bro. Keola, I do not know the significance of the hand you saw, but I know this that the veil between us and the other world was very thin.” Bro. Cannon then said

Pulehu Chapel, Maui, Hawaii. In 1921, under the pepper tree seen on the right, Apostle David O. McKay offered a prayer of thanksgiving on behalf of himself and his companions, Hugh J. Cannon, E. Wesley Smith, Samuel Harris Hurst, Jr., and David Keola Kailimai. During the prayer, the party received a spiritual manifestation that moved them profoundly. Courtesy of BYU-Hawaii Archives.
“There was no veil at all” at which the apostle cast a penetrating look at him for he as well as we seemed to be in doubt as to whether Bro. Cannon had beheld a vision or not but no more was said at that time. In closing his remarks in a general meeting held at Wailuku tonight Elder McKay made mention of this again and with tears in the eyes of both men he turned to Bro. Cannon and staping [sic] on the shoulder said, “My Brother, you have been closer to your Father today than you have ever been before.”
Because Elder Hurst spoke Hawaiian, he probably heard Elder Kailimai’s testimony to President Smith as it was uttered. Neither here, on the very day that the event occurred, nor later, did Elder Hurst speculate on the possible meaning of this experience. He simply recorded Elder Kailimai’s words, President McKay’s response, and the powerful emotional and physical effect the manifestation had on Brother Cannon, along with Brother Cannon’s testimony of the temporary parting of the veil that separated him from his deceased father. Two of Elder Hurst’s daughters confirm that he did not interpret the story in telling it to them in later years. One of the daughters, Cleo Hurst Bailey, comments, “I have some personal feelings about it. All of those particular people–especially Hugh J. Cannon, E. Wesley Smith, and my father–had ancestors who took part in opening the islands to missionary work. I think all of those ancestors were there, and they knew it. It was a personal occasion, a quiet way of confirming that it was appropriate that my father be there.”
The ancestor of Elder Hurst who had assisted in nineteenth-century missionary efforts was his grandfather, Frederick William Hurst, whose diary includes moving accounts of visions, inspirational dreams, and answered prayers. He had been born on the Isle of Jersey; his family then emigrated to New Zealand, and as a young man in the goldfields of Australia, he joined the Church with his younger brother, Charles Clement Hurst. As a result, his angry mother disowned him and marked his name out of the family Bible. On April 27, 1855, he and his brother emigrated with seventy-two Saints aboard the Tarquinia. The ship was leaking so badly by the time they reached Honolulu that, after repairs and an attempt to continue, they returned to Honolulu where the ship was eventually condemned. Fred W. contributed all of his savings–a thousand dollars in nuggets sewn into his clothing–to send the other members, mostly families, on to California. He accepted a mission call from President Silas Smith and almost immediately went to Molokai, where he served from August 1855 to October 1856. Gifted with an irrepressible cheerfulness, he learned Hawaiian quickly and met poverty undaunted. Often he walked barefoot. For a long period of time, food was very scanty. On February 8, 1856, he recorded thankfully, “We had three meals today for the first time for I will not venture to say how long. We fasted about three days this week.”
After his mission, Fred Hurst worked his passage to northern California, where he voluntarily served another mission. When he was forty-two and living in Cache Valley with his wife and seven children, he was called to serve another mission, this time in New Zealand. He responded promptly though his eight-year-old daughter died three days before he left and his wife had six-month-old twins to care for in addition to five older children. In 1892-93, he worked as a painter on the Salt Lake Temple; he also served for many years as stake Sunday School superintendent in Cache Stake and served two stake missions. Throughout many years of poverty, sacrifice, and sorrow, he maintained a merry heart and strong faith. This was the man whose grandson joined in a prayer of thanksgiving with the sons of George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith under the pepper tree at Pulehu and to whose grandson Elder Kailimai saw extended a hand and arm in the “attitude of shaking hands.”
David O. McKay’s Early Accounts
The next account is President McKay’s detailed journal of his world tour, which remains unpublished except in excerpts. It is the most comprehensive source of the thirty-six hours the men spent on Maul. The mission history, although it records the young apostle’s visit, does not mention the incident at Pulehu. President McKay describes their visit to the George Q. Cannon sites, then gives this account of the prayer under the pepper tree:
It seemed to me . . . that we were treading on sacred ground; for surely the Lord was the close companion and guide of that intrepid and faithful missionary [George Q. Cannon].
We offered a united prayer on the ground, during which Bro. Keola seemed to see two men shaking hands. He thought Hugh J. was shaking hands with Elder Hurst, and was surprised when he opened his eyes to see Brother Cannon standing with bowed head and closed eyes! I do not

cKay party, February 1921, Maui, Hawaii. (vid O. McKay probably used the notebook seen in his hand for jotting down details of his journey. Pictured are Samuel Harris Hurst (on the left and wearing glasses), Elder McKay (in the center), David Keola Kailimai (behind and to the right of Elder McKay), E. Wesley Smith (with bow tie), and Hugh J. Cannon (wearing a Panama hat with a light band). Courtesy of Cleo Hurst Bailey, who owns the original, and the Church Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The 10 Mormon missionaries who opened up the “Sandwich Islands” included George Quayle Cannon, a former editor of the Deseret News.

Cannon — along with President Hiram Clark and Elders Henry Bigler, Hiram Blackwell, John Dixon, William Farrer, James Hawkins, James Keeler, Thomas Morris and Thomas Whittle — arrived in Oahu on Dec. 12, 1850. Cannon was 22.

The next day, they climbed a hill that overlooked Honolulu, where they constructed a stone altar and dedicated the land.

The work was challenging. The Hawaiian governor refused to let them meet freely, and Protestant ministers preached loudly against the “Mormon sinners.”

Cannon and the others were often ill and homesick. They ran out of money. The language barrier was frustrating.

But citing inspiration to do so, he focused his energy on the native islanders rather than the few white men and slowly made progress.

His journal entries — excerpted in Davis Bitton’s biography of Cannon — reflect his great love for the people.

When five of his disheartened companions decided to leave, he said, “This left me in this situation either to stay here and be blessed or to go home under condemnation.”

He was determined to see to the Lord’s work.
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“In fact, every time I had prayed to the Lord that there might be a good work done here, I had felt my bosom warm and felt the spirit continually whispering to me if I should persevere, I should be blest.”

When he could no longer pay the $10 demanded to rent a house, a woman by the name of Nalimanui offered him her hut and later her mat and blanket when he fell ill crossing the sea to Oahu.

Determined to get out among the people, Cannon visited Maui on foot, with the natives often carrying him on their backs across the island streams.

One day, crossing a swollen stream, he fell in the water, and a hospitable native and chief, Judge Jonathana Napela, took him in. Napela told him he’d had a vision of a minister of the gospel coming his way. He told Cannon, “My house, land and horses are all yours” and later painstakingly helped Cannon translate the Book of Mormon to Ka Buke a Moramona.

Elders Cannon and Keeler organized the first branch at Kealahou, the Pulehu Branch, in August 1851, in Kula on the island of Maui.

William Kauaiwiulaokalani Wallace III, a former director of BYU-Hawaii Hawaiian Studies, called Cannon one of the “great pioneer people” who brought light and truth to the islands.

Roy G. Bauer, director of the Hilo institute of religion, relates a story told by Abbie Kailimai’s father-in-law, who was with President David O. McKay in 1921 giving a prayer of thanksgiving in Pulehu.

“(President) McKay said, ‘I feel certain that President George Q. Cannon and President Joseph F. Smith are near, for the veil is very thin.’” His son Hugh J. Cannon said in a choked voice, “There is no veil.”

After leaving the islands, Cannon started a weekly newspaper in San Francisco — The Western Standard — that served as a forum for defending the church. Later, he worked for the Deseret News and was editor from 1867 to 1874. Before serving in the islands, he worked for the Times and Seasons in Nauvoo, Ill.

At age 33, Cannon became an apostle. He served as a counselor to Presidents Brigham Young, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow and Wilford Woodruff. He died on April 13, 1901.

Register of the
HILO COAST PROCESSING COMPANY
(PEPEEKEO SUGAR COMPANY)
Pepeekeo, Hawaii
1889-1946

Accession: 84-04
11.5 cubic feet
February 1990

Processed by
Susan M. Campbell
Patricia M. Ogburn

PEPEEKEO SUGAR COMPANY HISTORY

Pepeekeo Sugar Company, located on the windward side of the island of Hawaii between Onomea and Honomu, held the majority of its land in fee simple. The plantation occupied approximately four miles along the ocean cliffs and extended from three to 18 miles mauka to 1600 feet in elevation on the slopes of Mauna Kea.

The company, called the Metcalf Plantation, was started at Kaupakuea in 1857 by Theophilus Metcalf and the first crop was harvested in 1859. Mr. Metcalf’s was the first factory in Hawaii to use the vacuum pan in 1863.

In 1874, after Mr. Metcalf’s death, the plantation was purchased by Messrs. Afong and Achuck and the name changed to Pepeekeo Sugar Company. By 1881 the crop was estimated at 1800 tons and the factory was constructed of corrugated iron buildings with machinery manufactured by Honolulu Iron Works.

In 1882, Mr. Akana became the plantation manager and Mr. C. Afong was the company owner as well as the agent. 1886 saw a new mill from Honolulu Iron Works in place and in 1888, Mr. Wong Tuck became the new manager.

Mr. H. Deacon and Mr. Alexander Young, manager of Honolulu Iron Works, purchased Pepeekeo Sugar in 1889. The Company was incorporated on October 14, 1889, with Mr. Deacon as manager and H. Hackfeld & Co. as agents. T.H. Davies & Co. served as agents from 1892 to 1904, when C. Brewer & Co. purchased control from Mr. Young, who used the funds to build the Alexander Young Hotel on Bishop Street in Honolulu.

By 1910 the annual yield was 8,000 tons processed by a 9-roller mill with a capacity to grind 60 tons of cane per day. The warehouse could store 24,000 bags of sugar, which were loaded onto interisland steamers by steel cables from the sea cliff. Plantation fields were connected by good dirt roads and the harvested cane was delivered to the mill by railroad cars and 15 miles of stationary flumes.

There were 700 employees at Pepeekeo Sugar, all of whom worked on the day labor system, there being no contract laborers at the plantation. By 1914, homesteaders were using 625 acres to grow cane that was processed at the company mill.

Manager James Webster had become noted for his farming methods; in 1904 he initiated plowing under cane trash for fertilizer instead of burning it off. The improvement in soil prompted HSPA to take up the method and expand it to other plantations. Another innovation, made during mill improvements, was to place the grinding machinery some 60 feet below the boiling house. This facilitated the delivery of cane by flume and the flume water was used extensively in the mill. The Gartley clarification system, developed by Brewer engineer A.A. Gartley, was also an innovation at Pepeekeo Sugar.

By 1923 Mr. Webster’s good farming practices had increased the yield from 3.1 tons to 4.6 tons per acre in 15 years. Most of the cane of the plantation was Yellow Caledonia and Pepeekeo Sugar kept some ratoon crops for as long as 12 to 18 years. The soil was improved annually with 50,000 tons of Waianae coral sand as well as bone meal and guano. Eucalyptus trees were planted as windbreaks, protecting the fields near the ohia forests.

Water sources at Waiaama Stream and Kauku Hill provided clear water form natural filter beds for all plantation uses including turning a water wheel to generate power. Cultivation inventions included the Webster’s careful farming dictated deep plowing at 18-20 inches, which improved the soil each year. The manager continued to live in the old Afong residence just above the mill.

In 1930, machinery was installed to dry, sift, and sack bagasse from the mill to be used for livestock feed. The product was sold in Los Angeles through Grace Brothers in Honolulu.

Because the land was bumpy with many winding gulches, road improvement was ongoing, using a rock crusher brought from Scotland in the 1890s. There were 120 mules and 25 horses used on the plantation in 1932, providing transport for the fields split by ridges and gulches. Tractors with caterpillar tracks were used for plowing and trucks now hauled mud press, stable manure, and lime to the fields. 20 miles of permanent flumes brought cane to the mill.

At age 80, after 32 years at Pepeekeo manager, Mr. Webster retired in 1936 and Mr. Andrew T. Spalding, manager at Honomu Sugar, succeeded as manager of Pepeekeo on January 1, 1937.

In 1941, harvested cane was trucked to the mill for the first time, due to a shortage of water for fluming. Though water shortages continued for the next two years, a record crop was produced in 1944.

March 1946 saw Hanomu Sugar Co. merged with Pepeekeo and Mr. A. Douglas Ednie became manager of the combined plantations. M r. Ednie had a difficult year, however, as Pepeekeo Sugar showed a loss of $141,430, the first loss in 10 years. An industry-wide strike, higher labor costs, unfavorable weather, and the April tidal wave that destroyed the railroad and terminals in Hilo added to the problems of 1946.

In 1947, the Pepeekeo mill was shut down for extensive modernization to accommodate the addition of the cane from the Honomu fields. Reconstruction of over $2,000,000 required an agency overdraft and a loan from Bank of Hawaii in 1948.

In the early 1950s a number of lots and houses on the plantation were sold to residents, as was the Honomu company store. Due to the increase in mechanical harvesting, the labor force of 460 was reduced to 400 in 1956. The late 1950s brought numerous union slowdowns, walkouts, and shutdowns to Pepeekeo.

Mr. Ednie retired as manager in 1960, replace by Mr. L.S. McLane from Hilo Sugar Co. The merger of Pepeekeo and Hakalau sugar companies was affected in 1963, with Mr. Herbert M. Gomez becoming manager of the combined company. 1963 was also the year in which the Hilo office of C. Brewer & Co. instituted a computer system to service plantation automotive equipment.

In 1971 Wainaku, Hakalau, Pepeekeo, and Papaikou sugar companies were consolidated in a processing cooperative that also included independent cane growers. Two years later, Pepeekeo Sugar merged with Mauna Kea Sugar to form Mauna Kea Sugar Co., Inc., the state’s fourth largest sugar company with 18,000 acres of cane. The mills at Wainaku and Hakalau were closed as the Pepeekeo mill was modernized to double its capacity by 1974.

MANAGERS

Theophilus Metcalf 1857 – 1874
Mr. Akana 1882 – ?
Wong Tuck 1888 – 1889
H. Deacon 1889 – 1904
James Webster 1904 – 1937
Andrew Spalding 1937 – 1941
A. Douglas Ednie 1941 – 1960
L. S. McLane 1960 – 1963
Herbert M. Gomez 1963

Emily and Will Lydgate, owners of Steelgrass Farm, are the great-grandchildren of John Mortimer Lydgate, founder of the family’s Kauai branch, who arrived in Hawaii as a small boy in the 1860’s. Living first in Laupahoehoe on the Big Island, where he learned to speak fluent Hawaiian, John Mortimer, or JM as he is remembered, was more interested in education and the world of ideas than in acquiring property or making money in the sugar industry. As a teenager he was employed by the physician and botanist William Hillebrand to assist him on his expeditions into Hawaii’s forests to collect local plants, few of which had been systematically catalogued or given Western scientific names. These expeditions resulted in the publication in 1887 of Hillebrand’s The Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, the first and still a standard reference work on Hawaiian plants. The book begins with a dedicatory note to JM, and to this day, there are over a dozen native Hawaiian plants, many of them rare and endangered, whose botanical names include the term lydgatei, in recognition of the boy who was the first to bring them to the attention of the scientific community.

JM’s interest in education led him to spend as much time as he could going to school, first at Oahu College in Honolulu, since renamed Punahou School, then the Universities of Toronto, Heldelberg, and Edinburgh, from which he earned his M.A., and later Yale Divinity School. At Punahou, JM became a favorite student of William Dewitt Alexander, who was later appointed the school’s Headmaster, and eventually became Surveyor-General of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Alexander taught the young man surveying, and while JM was still in his late teens, he got the job to lay out the road from Hilo to the town of Volcano on the Big Island, a route that everyone headed that way still drives today.

Following his Divinity School experience, JM was ordained as a Minister in the Congregational Church, and by the beginning of 1896 was ready to take up his first church post, serving a congregation in a small coastal town in the state of Washington. Just before that, however, he went on a long-planned trip to Hawaii to visit his mother, then still living at Laupahoehoe on the Big Island. After the visit, JM returned by steamer from Hilo to Honolulu, only to find that the boat that would carry him back to the Mainland was unexpectedly delayed, and would not sail for another week. This allowed time for what JM thought would be a quick side trip to Kauai to visit old friends from his Punahou days.

One of those friends was Dr. Jared Smith, at the time the sole Western-educated doctor on the entire Island. Smith was concerned about the long-unmet need for a minister who could serve both Kauai’s Hawaiian people and its newly-arrived English-speaking residents. Ordained ministers fluent in the Hawaiian language who also possessed extensive first-hand experience of the islands and their peoples were an extremely rare commodity, and Dr. Smith seized the opportunity to present JM with a simple but compelling argument: there are many candidates who can minister to the fine people of the state of Washington, he said, but you are the only one with what it takes to serve here on Kauai.

Family lore doesn’t record how JM extricated himself from his obligations in Washington, but we know he did, because church records indicate that he gave his first sermon on Kauai on the first Sunday in May 1896. According to Bill “Peacher” Lydgate, JM’s youngest son and Emily and Will’s Grandfather, JM would conduct the service for the English-speaking congregation at the church in Lihue in the morning. Then Peacher and his three older brothers would hitch up the horse cart and drive Father from Lihue to Koloa, where he preached an afternoon sermon in Hawaiian. Occasionally after the service, while JM socialized with his parishioners, there was time for the Minister’s four boys to ride the horse cart down the dirt roads to a great bodysurfing spot at Poipu, now called Brennecke’s, which was then a broad sandy beach with an excellent left.

JM’s interest in the literary and other non-material aspects of existence led him to change the spelling of his last name from Lidgate, as it was written on his birth certificate, to Lydgate, in honor of a family ancestor, the Fifteenth-Century English poet John Lydgate. This change also served to distinguish JM from his siblings, who retained the original Lidgate spelling, and who went on to acquire considerable wealth through the sugar industry. As a further distinguishing characteristic, JM renounced his original citizenship, and had himself made a naturalized subject of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Perhaps most significant of all, throughout his life JM elected never to purchase real estate, believing that he could not serve his community to the fullest if he were in thrall to the self-interest of active membership in the landowner class. As a result, when he died at the age of 68 in 1922, he left neither money nor property, and his widow, Helen Elwell Lydgate, was obliged to move away from Kauai to live with her grown sons and their families on the Mainland.

What JM did leave, however, was a lasting legacy of community building and stewardship of the ‘aina. He was a founder and an early supporter of the YMCA, the Garden Island Newspaper, the Kauai Historical Society and the Public Library. Although it took many years, before the end of his life he fulfilled one of the first goals he set for his ministry when he moved to Kauai: to visit every dwelling, and to get to know every single family, on the entire island. As a small-town minister, and one of the very few Kauai residents not of Hawaiian blood who was completely fluent in the Hawaiian language, JM’s was an important voice for inclusion and tolerance, as well as for the protection and preservation of Hawaiian lands and culture. Continuing his surveying work, JM laid out a number of critical routes on Kauai, including the Wainiha Power Line on the North Shore, but his survey discoveries in the area of the Wailua River in Kapa’a were his most significant.

JM was the first in the English-speaking community to recognize and map the chain of heiau, ancient Hawaiian temples, that stretches inland from the Wailua river’s mouth. Beginning with a sanctuary or “City of Refuge” adjacent to the beach, this progression of linked sacred areas culminates in Hikini A Ka La, at the summit of the hill across from Opaeka’a Falls, one of the most culturally significant sites in the entire Hawaiian Islands. JM’s dedication to preserving these sites placed him at odds with his neighbors in Kauai’s influential sugar industry, however: in that era, few recent arrivals viewed Hawaiian culture as a thing of value. Despite the fact that they were sacred to the Hawaiian people, the only valuable thing most people saw in heiau was a large quantity of stone, ideal for cane field irrigation ditches, that was free for the taking. Best of all, the stone was conveniently piled right next to the road.

In retrospect it seems remarkable that through the moral force of his presence, JM was able to influence enough people, inside church and out, to prevent wholesale destruction of these sites. Nonetheless he succeeded, and in the 1930’s the Territory of Hawaii dedicated a large area of land at the mouth of the Wailua River as Lydgate Park, in grateful recognition for JM’s work to preserve and honor Hawaiian culture, as well as to enrich the lives of all Kauaians.

Accession: 84-09
55 cu. ft.
March 1988

Processed by
Deborah A. Saito
Susan M. Campbell

LAUPAHOEHOE SUGAR COMPANY HISTORY

Laupahoehoe Sugar Company was located at Laupahoehoe on the Hamakua Coast of the island of Hawaii. The coastline, from Hilo Bay to Niulii, is bordered by sea cliffs and cut by steep gulches. The plantation fields extended approximately 10 miles along the coast and rose to 1850 feet above sea level. Ending in high sea cliffs, 22 gulches divided the company land.

In 1880, Theophilus H. Davies and William Lidgate formed a partnership and established the Laupahoehoe Sugar Company. The new plantation employed 70 men, 50 mules and 70 oxen. Mr. J.M. Lydgate became Laupahoehoe’s first manager and Theo. H. Davies & Co. served as its agency. At the time of this writing, the relationship between William Lidgate and J.M. Lydgate is not clear.

Honolulu Iron Works was chosen to manufacture a 15-ton mill, which was erected in 1881 at the shoreline site near a high bluff two miles south of Laupahoehoe. Cane was flumed down the bluff to the mill from fields as far as four miles away. An excellent landing for interisland ships was one of the advantages of the site.

In 1882, a severe storm badly damaged the new mill, causing part of the bluff to fall into the factory. The mill was repaired and sugar continued to be manufactured there until 1890.

The Laupahoehoe Sugar Company was incorporated in 1883 and in the following year the Kaiwilahilahi Sugar Company joined with Laupahoehoe. The records indicate that at least two mills were operating at Laupahoehoe Sugar Company during the 1880s, one of which was the Kaiwilahilahi mill and the other was the Laupahoehoe mill. Mr. Lydgate had a third mill built for the Company, this one at Papaaloa. The records are not clear as to exactly when this mill was erected, though the mid-1880s seem likely. Both the Laupahoehoe mill and the Kaiwilahilahi mill closed in 1890 and all Laupahoehoe Sugar Company cane was ground at the Papaaloa mill.

Laupahoehoe Sugar boasted a unique transportation system to supply the factory with cane. A steam hoist lifted cane-loaded cars up 1100 feet by cable at Maulu Gulch. At the top, the cane was dumped into flumes and traveled to the mill about a mile distant.

In 1909, an area of 360 acres was set aside for homesteads and in 1914 another 950 acres were so designated under the Homestead Act. The homesteaders grew cane under contract which they sol to Laupahoehoe Sugar. The Company purchased cane from adherent planters holding various kinds of contracts. Some planters were independent, some were homesteaders and some were members of contract gangs.

By 1920, about half the original cane land was planted and harvested by homesteaders and the other half was cultivated by Laupahoehoe Sugar Company. In 1918, the annual yield was 12000 tons of sugar.

The plantation was noted for having model plantation camps. The camp houses were surrounded by garden space, and playgrounds and concrete bathhouses were provided. In 1918, 12 plantation camps housed the 900 laborers employed by Laupahoehoe Sugar.

Because of the extensive gulches in the plantation fields, flumes were used instead of railways to transport the harvested cane to the mill. In 1922, a new high life pump was installed to move two million gallons of water a day out of Kaawalii Gulch up to the head of the main flume at the 750-foot level. The main flume carried 30 tons of cane per hour to the mill. Laupahoehoe Sugar was the first plantation in Hawaii to lift water for fluming as high as 750 feet.

Contour plowing and planting were used to prevent erosion on the uneven terrain and, while he was manager, Mr. Lydgate introduced the practice of planting his fallow fields to blue lupine for erosion control and to plow under as green manure.

In 1937, there were about 6400 acres of cane land at Laupahoehoe Sugar Company, some being cultivated by homesteaders and planters and some by the Company. A total of 881 people worked at Laupahoehoe, 60% of who came from the Philippines. American citizens comprised 25% of the Company employees and 75% were citizens of other countries.

A plantation hospital was completed in 1937, giving plantation workers the latest in medical care. Continuing to improve living condition on the plantation, large expenditures were also made in 1938. Water was piped to every dwelling, villages were modernized, clubhouses, parks, the gymnasium and community halls were remodeled or built for the benefit of the laborers. In 1941, the plantation office was air-conditioned and new homes of the bungalow type were built.

In 1943, the historic Maulu Gulch hoist was destroyed when the brake on a loaded can car snapped and the car crashed down the 1100-foot incline.

Laupahoehoe Sugar Company aided the war effort and the U.S. armed forces by providing men for guard duty and to drive trucks. Housing and recreational facilities were leased to the Army for the duration of the war.

The managers of Laupahoehoe Sugar Company during the time covered by this brief history include:
J. M. Lydgate, 1880-1888,
Colin McLennan, 1889-1914,
Robert A. Hutchison, 1915-1944
Andrew Walker, 1944-

Jun. 28, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
HUMAN MATTERS: Thoughtful encounter leads to musings about love
STEVEN KALAS
Human Matters
I hear her shout the man’s name, and I look up from my convenience store gasoline pump to see a young woman running down the sidewalk toward the bus stop, clutching a paper bag. The man looks up and grins a million dollar smile, shaking his head the way you do when you realize a foolish oversight.
He motions to the driver to wait. The woman closes the distance and hands him the bag. They embrace. Kiss. He whops her on the butt as she turns, and he steps onto the bus. The door closes. She waves, and retraces her steps in the direction whence she came.
Methinks somebody forgot his lunch. But he won’t be condemned to eating fat, salt and preservatives from a vending machine today, because this woman caught the mistake and ran to him.
I tell myself this young couple doesn’t have a working car between them. Indeed, the woman is walking back toward a neighborhood of economically depressed apartments. I imagine they are only rich in love.
It’s an amazing thing when somebody loves you. That is, if you will allow yourself to be amazed. I mean, on the one hand, it’s such an ordinary part of the human experience. And the ordinariness of it sometimes keeps us from noticing it. Being astonished by it.
It seems to me that if someone is in love with you, that fact should regularly wallop you. Give you pause. Nail your feet to the floor. Fill you with wonder and gratitude. Which in turn will make it less likely that you will ever take that love for granted. Ever become blasé. Ever become entitled.
People who live consciously are quite clear that quality love relationships don’t fall daily out of trees. Love isn’t earned or deserved. And while this or that attribute might have initially attracted your lover — hair, eyes, gait, carriage, physique, political views, humor, etc. — in the end the gift of love is so much more than a mere reaction to attributes.
I’m saying that if your lover can provide perfunctory answers x, y and z to the question “Why do you love me?” then I would wonder about said love. Because love is a happening. Not an equation. The correct answer is a provocative smile, shrug of the shoulders and “I just do.”
I’m reminded of the fictional college professor Dr. Harry Wolper, played by Peter O’Toole in the 1985 movie “Creator.” His student assistant, Boris, is sweet on a girl. Boris asks the eccentric Dr. Wolper how he would know if he were in love. I paraphrase the professor’s response: “Well, you can always apply the Wolper Love Formula, whereby you calculate the number of times each day you think about her. Then you compare that number to the number of times each day you think about yourself. If the first number is greater than the second, there’s an excellent chance that you’re in love.”
Which, in turn, reminds me of my all-time favorite definition of love. Favorite because of its purity. Simplicity. It was penned by Richard Bach in the book “Illusions”: “Love is a wish for someone’s happiness.”
Yet, I feel the need to tinker with Bach’s definition. I would say it’s more than a wish. It’s a wish, yes, but also the evident and consistent willingness to participate toward the end of your beloved’s happiness. You’re willing to work for it. You’re intentional. You make someone else’s deepest happiness the source of your deepest happiness. Yes, sometimes bringing happiness to your mate is a spontaneous, easy joy. Other times you make sacrifices.
You run like the wind, for example — hair askew, without makeup or decorum — to your neighborhood bus stop, clutching a lunch bag and shouting your beloved’s name.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing” (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.

Nov. 08, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
HUMAN MATTERS: Life’s journey includes pain of suffering
STEVEN KALAS
Human Matters
Suffering is a profound mystery. If you ever meet anyone who can explain it to you, all neat and tidy, run away. Especially if they are trying to sell you CDs and a workbook in an infomercial.
Authentic spirituality doesn’t explain suffering. It courageously acknowledges it. “Life is suffering,” said the Buddha (The Four Noble Truths). “Pick up your cross and follow me,” said Jesus. “If I make my bed in hell, thou art there,” said the Hebrew psalmist. And once acknowledged, serious religious practice proceeds to encounter suffering in a way that leads to hope and meaning.
The Romans gave us two words for suffering: patior, which means “to endure, to allow,” and suffero, or “to bear up.” The Greeks gave us pascho, or “to experience.” It intrigues me that none of these three words bespeak of pain, per se. All three words have in common an intention and willingness to be radically open and present to life as life is — joyous or sorrowful, delightful or painful.
Yet, most of us commonly associate the word “suffering” with something unpleasant, painful or even agonizing.
The central thing we suffer is not physical or emotional pain, but loss. In the midst of illness, tragedy, death — in the midst of life! — meaning is threatened, along with our sense of hope, safety and security. Our belief in a well-ordered and benevolent universe is challenged by deadly weather, accidents, evil and DNA molecules run amok. Saints and scoundrels alike experience absurd, chaotic, inexplicable suffering.
We don’t get to choose whether we suffer, or always what we must suffer. But, thankfully, we do have some freedom to choose how we suffer, and to what end.
Ego suffering refers to the pain and problems resulting from the ego’s refusal to acknowledge pain and problems. We cannot encounter suffering creatively, precisely because the ego will not encounter suffering at all. Oh, the ego will bemoan it. Wail and dramatize. But not encounter.
Indeed, most of what we call suffering comes into our lives as a consequence of our refusal to suffer. We suffer estrangement and isolation because we refuse to suffer the joys and the pains of intimacy. We suffer addictions to avoid suffering the pain within our souls. We suffer depression because we cannot suffer our anger or grief. We suffer guilt because we will not suffer the humility of asking for and accepting forgiveness.
We suffer because we refuse to suffer.
Transformative suffering refers to a conscious encounter with pain powered by the hope of emerging meaning and human transformation. It must be emphasized that the difference between ego suffering and transformative suffering is not found in the suffering itself, but in our relationship to the suffering. In how we suffer. In and of itself, pain is neither a moral good nor moral evil. That we are in pain does not necessarily indicate anything about us. At all. What we do with and in our pain: This may point to character.
Do you have some suffering to do? Here are a few things to remember:
Let the mystery of suffering be the mystery.
Our temptation is to reduce the suffering to something less chaotic and more intellectually manageable. “There must be a reason,” we protest. And so we construct reasons. Often the reasons make us even more miserable.
Share the suffering.
The opportunity to tell the story of our suffering to a compassionate and skillful listener is helpful beyond measure. Simply in the telling and retelling, we begin to shift perspective, to put a healing distance between us and the pain.
Turn to the wisdom of symbol and ritual.
Medals of honor, funerals, statues and monuments, ritual mourning, legacy, keepsakes — we are symbolic creatures, and our symbols help us to embrace and transcend our suffering.
Discover redemptive mission.
Many people discover meaning in suffering as they work to redeem their suffering in service to the world. And so the alcoholic becomes an AA sponsor. The mother whose child is killed by a drunken driver becomes an activist with Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The mercenary becomes a naturalist. The victim of child abuse becomes a marriage and family counselor. And so it goes.
Turn suffering to witness.
Sometimes we suffer as a testimony against injustice. We decide to suffer as a way of absorbing the cost of hatred and bearing witness against the insanity of revenge. Or sometimes we willingly suffer for the sake of endurance alone. That is, as a witness to the goodness of life.
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.

Today’s “money is god” profiteers [subprime mortgages] are reminiscent

of older generation pillagers like T. Boone Pickens/Harry Weinberg [corporate

raiders] & frumpy John D. MacArthur [Florida real estate speculator/Chicago

insurance mogul], all of whom didn’t want IRS raiding their fortunes, so they

posthumously endowed foundations [that immortalized their names]. Even at

KTA, Mountain Apple brand is but another name for spiked fist, where imaginative

individual makers of food products are not identified except under the KTA Mountain

Apple brand. For absolutely delicious products by entrepreneurs like Mr. Ed’s

Bakery of Honomu [Dean Edmoundson], subsuming invisibly under KTA’s Mountain

Apple brand do nothing but promote KTA. Such superior products like Mr. Ed’s

cookies/pastries/fruit preserves are better off being sold by Dean Edmoundson

himself. Impelled by the spiked fist of capitalism. –Curt

Earl Nakasato born 1942 asks what about Larry Mehau & Yoshito Takamine’s

so-called friendship? Nothing more than political expediency. Yoshito a bull

like Mehau, different spheres [Yoshito unionism-politics/Mehau security guard

services-alleged underworld contacts]. Marriage of convenience, smelting of

mountainous egos. Actually a passable fit/match, so to speak. Look at Ariyoshi’s

foes, none fit the bill for the ravenous [for retention of powers] ILWU. Naturally,

Mehau’s support of Ariyoshi merged w/ILWU’s endorsement of Ariyoshi. Remember

that Ariyoshi’s utter insecurity [inferiority complex -- a J_p is a J_p, no matter

how you cut it] resulted in Ariyoshi waiting interminably for Mehau to show up

at Hilo Airport lounge for strategy go [incl. Haw'n protestors at airport], &

Ariyoshi actually carried Mehau’s bags on the golf course. Yikes!! Chief

executive behavior?! No, only Ariyoshi’s behavior. Yoshito Takamine did

world of good/wonders for Yoshito’s voters. Larry did world of good for Larry

& whoever could benefit Larry. Night/day in impact/legacies. Love, –Curt