I never properly wrote up my sojourn in Utah back in October. But Teresa Nielsen Hayden just linked to this fascinating interview with Grant Palmer, a Mormon historian who has published a book challenging the received version of the early history of the Latter Day Saints – at least as it is taught to them – and that has reminded me to put down my own impressions .

First of all, the physical landscape of Utah is just amazing; the two lakes nestling in valleys under the craggy mountains; the Great Salt Lake itself appeared to have mineral deposits crystallising on the water, glinting in the sunset glow as we landed. The people are hospitable, and tolerant of outsiders’ barbaric quirks like wanting to drink wine, or coffee. On the second evening we went for a lovely dinner at the Sundance Village, owned by Robert Redford. The university students to whom I lectured – both at the businesslike Utah Valley State College and at the more rarefied Brigham Young University – were intelligent and asked tough but courteous questions. One of them offered an opening prayer before my second lecture, invoking God to help the audience profit intellectually from my words, which I am selfish enough to find rather gratifying (even if they were just being polite).

Brigham Young University markets itself on the fact that all students have signed up to its “Honor Code“, whereby they agree to behave well in general, including dressing modestly and abstaining from drinks, drugs, and premarital sex – a friend of mine snorted on hearing this, “So what reasons does that leave for going to university?” But I can see that for a lot of people, not necessarily Mormons, attending college in a relatively sheltered environment like that may well be a positive choice. (I would note, however, that the ban on premarital sex does seem to encourage students to marry young, which is not necesarily a good thing.)

The great project of building a new society in the wilderness, the trail that tens of thousands followed across the continent in the mid-19th century for the sake of an idea, is I think a tremendous human story. Of course there were crimes committed, evil deeds done by leaders who cared more about themselves than their ideals; so it’s rather like Communism, or indeed any great philosophical ideal which people have tried to build a society around – one can, I think, admire the spirit of endeavour and idealism while also deploring the bad stuff that came with it, and indeed while disagreeing with the ideals themselves.

Because the fundamental thing is that the LDS beliefs are pretty difficult to take seriously, even by the standards of Western Christianity which I was brought up in and to which I largely still subscribe. I have a copy of the Book of Mormon, given to us by an optimistic LDS chimney sweep many years ago in Belfast, and basically it loses all credibility in the very first few pages. Where are the golden plates, folks? What happened to the special scrying stone through which the prophet was able to translate them? And why have no documents written in “Reformed Egyptian” ever been located in, er, Egypt?

I guess I will never know.

Later edit: Just came across ‘s own story.