Sports in Zion

Mormon Recreation, 1890-1940

Richard Ian Kimball

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780252076367, 9780252028571
• eBook ISBN: 9780252091612
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

If a religion cannot attract and instruct young people, it will struggle to survive, which is why recreational programs were second only to theological questions in the development of twentieth-century Mormonism. In this book, Richard Ian Kimball explores how Mormon leaders used recreational programs to ameliorate the problems of urbanization and industrialization and to inculcate morals and values in LDS youth. As well as promoting sports as a means of physical and spiritual excellence, Progressive Era Mormons established a variety of institutions such as the Deseret Gymnasium and camps for girls and boys, all designed to compete with more "worldly" attractions and to socialize adolescents into the faith.

Kimball employs a wealth of source material including periodicals, diaries, journals, personal papers, and institutional records to illuminate this hitherto underexplored aspect of the LDS church. In addition to uncovering the historical roots of many Mormon institutions still visible today, Sports in Zion is a detailed look at the broader functions of recreation in society.

CHAPTER ONE

“NOT PLAYING WITHOUT A PURPOSE”

The Construction of a Mormon Recreation Ideology

It is my play, in my leisure hours,

That I burst my bands and divert my powers;

It is there that I enter false or true,

To match my good or my bad with you;

It is there that I score for pride or shame,

As I tally square or foul the game,

My best, my worst is released and free,

And I play debased or gloriously!

—BERTHA A. KLEINMAN, “In My Play” (1927)

To understand the hardscrabble early years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a focus on recreation, merrymaking, and amusements might seem completely out of place. Compared with the organization’s need to find new members, forge a hierarchical structure, and create settlements in the frontier West, the desire to have fun and relax paled in necessity and importance. Or so it would seem. Mormon leaders, however, beginning with Joseph Smith, recognized that recreation and wholesome amusements were not only necessary but beneficial. To create communities, whether religious bodies or frontier settlements, Mormon leaders stressed the positive aspects of uplifting diversions. By encompassing all aspects of life—including body, mind, and spirit—Mormonism represented a “new religious movement” that evinced a new religious attitude toward recreation.¹

With the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, Joseph Smith announced to the world a bold departure from traditional Christianity. Relating the story of a group of Old World Jews that settled in the New World around 600 B.C.E., the book of scripture contains revelations, divine directives, and historical narrative. The highlight occurs near the book’s conclusion, when a resurrected Jesus Christ visits the American continent and preaches many of the messages found in the Bible. This new scripture was the foundation on which Smith declared his prophetic calling and represented the earliest theological statements of the emerging religion. Not only did the book attempt to reorient the historical traditions of Christianity, it pronounced the attitude of the new religion toward pleasure. In fact, the Book of Mormon placed human happiness at the center of existence. In a crucial passage near the beginning of the book, the ancient prophet Lehi (the man in charge of the original group of immigrants in 600 b.c.e.) succinctly states the purpose of life: “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”² The kernel of life, the very crux of creation, was human happiness. Religion, which provided for the ritual worship of God, was the critical element in the Mormon quest for “joy”; recreation, though secondary, would likewise help church members find religious joy. Religious recreation, even in the nineteenth century, played an integral role in the formation of the LDS Church and proved important to early church leaders.

The Prophet Joseph Smith fits more comfortably in the tradition of the rugged outdoorsman of the frontier than the retiring religious cleric of Puritan fame. Fond of jokes and quick with a laugh, the jocular prophet’s muscular physique seemed more suited to frontier fields than to urbane divinity schools. His religion suited his personality. Convinced, as an 1832 revelation detailed, that “the spirit and the body are the soul of man,” Smith set out to nourish both halves of his eternal soul.³ So much for the Western religious supposition pitting spirit against body; in fact, in Smith’s formulation, to find redemption for the soul, the spirit and body have to work together. It follows that what is good for the body is good for the soul.

Smith’s penchant for the physical marked him as a new breed of religious leader. Wilford Woodruff’s first contact with the prophet demonstrated Smith’s unique approach to religion. Woodruff, who would later become the fourth president of the LDS Church, wrote of that initial meeting in his journal: “‘Here for the first time in my life I met and had an interview with our beloved Prophet Joseph Smith. … My first introduction was not of a kind to satisfy the preconceived notions of the sectarian mind as to what a prophet ought to be, and how he should appear. It might have shocked the faith of some men. I found him and his brother Hyrum out shooting at a mark with a brace of pistols.’”⁴ Perhaps even Woodruff himself was a little “shocked” at Smith’s behavior. Such activities were not unusual for the prophet, however. Stories about him pulling sticks, wrestling, reading, and riding are legion in the lore and the history of the church. One account from Smith’s History evinces the array of activities that filled a typical day. On 8 February 1843 the prophet recorded: “This morning, I read German, and visited with a brother and sister from Michigan, who thought that ‘a prophet is always a prophet’; but I told them that a prophet was a prophet only when he was acting as such. After dinner Brother Parley P. Pratt came in: we had conversation on various subjects. At four in the afternoon, I went out with my little Frederick, to exercise myself by sliding on the ice.”⁵ Intellectual, spiritual, and physical exercise filled the prophet’s day and comprised the major elements of Mormon cultural and spiritual life. As Smith’s journal describes, there were no clear-cut boundaries separating spiritual, mental, and physical health. Mormonism combined all of the elements of life—just as the soul combined the spirit and the body.

Joseph Smith’s belief in the positive power of play continued to influence the church after his death in June 1844. Brigham Young, who assumed authority as the head of the church after Smith’s assassination, followed in the prophet’s footsteps by extolling the virtue of wholesome recreation. Not athletic like his predecessor, Young pursued pleasure through drama and dance. Although amusements were curtailed for a time after the prophet’s death (Young counseled the Saints in October 1844 that “it is not now a time for dancing or frolics but a time of mourning and of humiliation and prayer”), it did not take long for dancing and merrymaking to be renewed.⁶ Childhood religious strictures regarding recreation had not inured the young Brigham to pleasure seeking; rather, they had increased his desire to join in appropriate activities as he matured. Looking back on his youth, Young recognized that forbidding fun was anathema to a religion that required both body and spirit:

When I was young, I was kept within very strict bounds, and was not allowed to walk more than half-an-hour on Sunday for exercise. The proper and necessary gambols of youth having been denied me, makes me want active exercise and amusement now. I had not a chance to dance when I was young, and never heard the enchanting tones of the violin, until I was eleven years of age; and then I thought I was on the high way to hell, if I suffered myself to linger and listen to it. I shall not subject my little children to such a course of unnatural training, but they shall go to the dance, study music, read novels, and do anything else that will tend to expand their frames, add fire to their spirits, improve their minds, and make them feel free and untrammeled in body and mind. Let everything come in its season, place everything in the place designed for it, and do everything in its right time.⁷

Young feared that children who were not allowed to indulge in play were “more fit for companions to devils,” because without the diversion offered by recreation, their “duty becomes loathsome to them.”⁸ Everything, including uplifting and wholesome recreation, had a proper time and place. Susa Young Gates recorded that her father’s motto was, “Eight hours work, eight hours sleep, eight hours recreation.”⁹ All too familiar with the effects of proscribing recreational activities, Young made sure that church members were allowed to enjoy themselves.

Brigham Young’s first revelation to the church, given at Winter Quarters in January 1847, instructed the Saints not to forget the important role of recreation. Despite the poverty and deprivation that overflowed the streets and shacks of their winter resting place on the central plains, the new prophet reminded the migrating Mormons: “If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.”¹⁰ The ability to pray and to play helped the Saints cope with the treacherous conditions at Winter Quarters.¹¹

To Brigham Young, the key to recreation was found in the word itself—diversionary pleasures actually re-created individuals, making them more fit for their daily labors. When asked why he permitted fiddling and dancing, Young replied, “that my body may keep pace with my mind. My mind labors like a man logging, all the time; and this is the reason why I am fond of these pastimes—they give me a privilege to throw every thing off, and shake myself, that my body may exercise, and my mind rest. What for? To get strength, and be renewed and quickened, and enlivened, and animated, so that my mind may not wear out.”¹² On another occasion, Young advised, “Recreation and diversion are as necessary to our well-being as the more serious pursuits of life. There is not a man in the world but what, if kept at any one branch of business or study, will become like a machine. Our pursuits should be so diversified as to develop every trait of character and diversity of talent.” Ironically, men and women needed recreation so that they could concentrate on the “more serious pursuits of life.”¹³

Not all recreational activities were equal, however. Music, dancing, holiday parties, swimming, and picnicking among the Saints all received Young’s approbation. Nonetheless, on many occasions, he warned church members against allowing innocent amusements to become illicit. Young knew from personal experience that merrymaking could quickly get out of hand. After asking, “Is there anything immoral in recreation?” he turned to his own family for a prescriptive example. “If I see my sons and daughters enjoying themselves, chatting, visiting, riding, going to a party or dance, is there anything immoral in that? I watch very closely, and if I hear a word, see a look, or a sneer at divine things or anything derogatory to a good moral character, I feel it in a moment, and I say, ‘If you follow that it will not lead to good, it is evil.’”¹⁴ Guarded carefully by the righteous, recreation could have a positive impact on the individual and society. Let loose among the wicked, however, and recreation had the potential to destroy character as well. Young seemed especially concerned that Mormons seek pleasure within the fold whenever possible. Mormon travelers far from Zion received a stern warning regarding their leisure time: “Never suffer yourselves to mingle in any of these recreations that tend to sin and iniquity, while you are away from the body of the Church, where you cannot so fully control yourselves.”¹⁵ In Young’s mind, the license to recreate was restricted by the requirement that appropriate pleasure seeking was best regulated within the church.

A belief in restricted recreation—conducted within church parameters—prevailed among Mormon leaders throughout the nineteenth century. As the twentieth century dawned, however, and secular and religious authorities perceived a need for rationalized recreation, leaders of the LDS Church pursued a recognizable, comprehensive philosophy regarding the proper use of leisure time. From 1900 to 1930 they made a conscientious effort to define a recreational ideology and to disseminate it throughout the church through workshops, pamphlets, and educational opportunities.

Rise of Rational Recreation

As the nineteenth century waned, the proper use of leisure time became a major concern not only for Mormons but for many Americans. Beset by the social problems caused by urbanization and industrialization, Progressive-Era Americans looked to rationalized recreation to counteract the destructive tendencies toward the idleness, delinquency, and exploitation fostered by city life.

According to observers, an expansion of free time was at the root of many urban problems. While it seemed that there was never enough time for farmers and their families to finish their myriad tasks, city dwellers were confronted with the opposite problem—they found themselves with too much time on their hands. A combination of industrial and social factors had freed many urban workers from the twelve- and fourteen-hour days that had been commonplace a generation earlier. Labor organizations such as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor emphasized the shortening of the workday, and in the first decade of the twentieth century state governments began to cooperate with labor groups to limit the number of hours that women and children were allowed to work. The Supreme Court, in Mueller v. Oregon (1908), validated this type of governmental regulation by upholding an Oregon law limiting maximum working hours for women. By 1920 the average work week in the United States was fifty-one hours, down from sixty hours in 1890.¹⁶

In addition to the increasing amount of time away from work, the quest for rational recreation was advanced by the rise of sociology as a respectable and scientific field of study. America’s burgeoning cities became laboratories for newly minted sociologists. Particularly attuned to the importance of environment, urban social scientists took recreation seriously and accorded it major prominence in their schemes to make urban spaces more livable. Whether it was Jacob Riis’s muckraking photographs or Jane Addams’s Hull-House, turn-of-the-century sociologists brought attention to the shame of the cities and preached wholesome, directed recreation as a form of salvation for urban dwellers, especially children.¹⁷

Settlement-house workers noticed the popularity of recreation programs and used them to attract neighborhood children. Hull-House in Chicago offered calisthenics, gymnastics, boys’ clubs, and billiard tournaments. Activities coalesced around the Hull-House gymnasium, which housed a popular women’s basketball team in addition to many other programs. Jane Addams articulated the centrality of recreational programs in the settlement-house movement but realized that volunteer reform efforts could not reach all of the needy: “The young people in our clubs are comparatively safe, but many instances come to the knowledge of Hull-House residents which make us long for the time wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Religion, Reform, and Recreation
• 1. “Not Playing without a Purpose”: The Construction of a Mormon Recreation Ideology
• 2. “A Strong Arm to the Church”: Recreation Building Boom
• 3. “For the Uplifting and the Betterment of the Youth of Israel”: Athletics, Socialization, and the “Selling of the Word of Wisdom”
• 4. “A Means of Preserving the Memory of the Mormon Pioneers”: LDS Recreation in the Great Outdoors
• 5. To Make the Most of Leisure: Recreation Responds in a Depression Decade
• Conclusion: Recreation Recedes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Illustrations