My presentation at last week’s Mormon History Association concerned the investigation made by Winston Churchill into the operations of Mormon missionaries in 1910-1911. I wrote about that investigation seven years ago here at Keepa, when I reported the questions asked by Members of Parliament and the responses made by Churchill as Great Britain’s Home Secretary.

In the years between, I have located documents that give us a much clearer view into the investigation than those Parliamentary questions do, and I both evaluated the contents of those documents and announced my forthcoming publication of the transcribed, annotated records. I did not intend to make a detailed public disclosure of my findings for several reasons, not the least of which is that I trust my MHA colleagues to respect my prior claim to those records while I cannot count on the same professional courtesy from strangers who might take shortcuts and claim my research as their own by a quick and dirty online publication. My book will be published soon enough.

But my hand has been forced and I feel obliged to correct the distorted public report of my conclusions regarding that investigation: Peggy Fletcher Stack interviewed me and posted a brief but accurate account of my findings for the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday. Later in the day, an unidentified “reporter” for LDSLiving rewrote Peggy’s article, picked up a few lines from that seven-year-old Keepa post, and, without interviewing me or in any way justifying his or her action, plugged in some conclusions that are false and in fact are the polar opposite of the conclusions I drew in the MHA paper. I feel obliged to respond lest someone attribute LDSLiving’s glaringly inaccurate conclusions to me.

First, Parliament did not “appoint” Winston Churchill “to head up the investigation” into Mormonism. Churchill was Secretary of the Home Department, meaning that it was his established governmental responsibility to oversee law and order within Great Britain, including matters of immigration; the Mormon investigation fell within both of those categories. To say that Parliament “appointed” him to make an investigation would be like claiming that the United States House of Representatives appointed the United States Attorney General to investigate civil rights abuses in the 1960s. That does not compute. This is an egregious lack of understanding of British government that lies with LDSLiving, not with me. If nothing else, I am capable of using Google to get the faintest bit of background into that matter.

To fill his mandated duties as Home Secretary, Churchill investigated allegations that Mormon missionaries were breaking British law by fraudulently persuading thousands of young girls to emigrate from Britain every year, going to Utah where they were supposedly inducted into the licentious harems of the Mormon missionaries who had come to England solely to recruit wives. To determine whether Mormon elders were breaking British law, Churchill directed an investigation of Mormon proselyting methods and whether they preached emigration or polygamy. He investigated every case he could find where a young Mormon woman had emigrated to Utah without parents or husband. He received, but apparently did not take seriously, unsolicited input from professional anti-Mormon writers, admittedly uninformed non-Mormon British clergymen, and the almost incoherent cries from angry and ignorant people calling for “casteration” of “white slaver Mormons.” He sought input from British diplomats qualified to present the positions of the German and American governments.

After gathering relevant information, Churchill concluded “that no ground for action had been found.” Mormon teachings might be foolish or repugnant or objectionable on any number of grounds, but no British law had been broken, and no legal action against Mormon missionary activity could or should or would be taken.

As I reported to MHA, Churchill’s investigation and conclusion were “a jewel of an illustration of British commitment to the rule of law.” Period. The law had not been broken by the Mormons; the law would not be broken by the government to take illegal action against the Mormons.

I also told my listeners – a statement unavailable to LDSLiving, because they did not ask – that had Churchill published a formal report of his investigation, it “would have provided greater clarity for modern scholarly understanding.” I noted that the Church’s Institute manual for its Church history course claims that “Young Winston Churchill, displaying great courage, helped the Church’s cause by invoking the right of religious freedom.” Churchill did no such thing! Nowhere does he or any other participant in the investigation invoke the right of religious freedom. Churchill did not defend the Church against a hostile Parliament seeking to abrogate our religious freedom; he investigated our actions to discover whether we were breaking the law. The two are in no wise identical, or even related – had we been breaking the law, we could have been expelled without its infringing on religious liberty in any way, because we would have been expelled for criminal action, not belief or protected practice.

Similarly, when LDSLiving characterizes Churchill as having “stood up for the Saints,” and states that missionaries were not expelled from England “thanks [to] efforts of Winston Church,” they are badly misstating the facts. Churchill did not do us a courageous favor, he did not stand up for us, he made no effort in our behalf. He stood for the rule of law.

The world does not revolve around us; supporting the law is not a favor when it works to our liking, nor is it persecution when it does not suit us, as long as the law is applied evenly. I repeat: There is nothing in the record to support the warm-and-fuzzy supposition that Churchill took any positive action to defend us or to appeal to religious freedom or toleration. Churchill stood for the rule of law. That is all. That is enough.

This may be too subtle a point for LDSLiving and many Latter-day Saints to grasp, but it is an important point to an analytical historian, and I do not appreciate my conclusions being misrepresented.