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Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore
Cain wanders the frontier as a Bigfoot-like hairy beast and confronts an early Mormon apostle. An evil band of murderers from Mormon scripture, known as the Gadianton robbers, provides an excuse for the failure of a desert town. Stories of children raised from the dead with decayed bodies and damaged minds help draw boundaries between the proper spheres of human and divine action. Mormons who observe UFOs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries find ways to explain them in relation to the church’s cosmology. The millenarian dimension of that belief system induces church members to invest in the Dream Mine, a hidden treasure that a would-be heir to Joseph Smith wraps in prophecy of the end times. A Utah version of Nessie haunts a large mountain lake. Non-Mormons attempt to discredit Joseph Smith with tales that he had tried and failed to walk on water. Mormons gave distinctive meanings to supernatural legends and events, but their narratives incorporated motifs found in many cultures. Many such historical legends and beliefs found adherents down to the present. This collection employs folklore to illuminate the cultural and religious history of a people.
253 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2011
2 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
W. Paul Reeve
10 books24 followersW. Paul Reeve is Chair of the History Department and Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U.S. West. His book, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, (Oxford, 2015) received the Mormon History Association’s Best Book Award, the John Whitmer Historical Association’s Smith-Pettit Best Book Award, and the Utah State Historical Society’s Francis Armstrong Madsen Best History Book Award. In 2023, Deseret Book published his Let's Talk about Race and Priesthood, with a foreword by Darius Gray. He is the recipient of the Utah Council for the Social Studies’ University Teacher of the Year award. He is Project Manager and General Editor of a digital database, Century of Black Mormons, designed to identify all known Black Latter-day Saints baptized between 1830 and 1930. The database is live at http://centuryofblackmormons.org
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July 20, 2018
"The interesting thing we discovered about the Latter-day-Saint fascination with UFOs and modern day monsters is that it predates the popularization of these phenomena in mid-twentieth century. Prominent members of the Church began witnessing these things as far back as the early 1830's. (...) Big Foot was believed to be Cain (...) UFO's were believed to be the Second Coming of Jesus (...). (...) close encounters during the 1950's, the interpretation of the UFO's evolved to become evidence of life on other planets."
in "Interview: W. Paul Reeve and Michael Scott Van Wagenen on the supernatural world in the Mormon history and culture"
in: Paranthropology Vol 6 No. 1 (January 2015)
February 8, 2012
When I was a pup, I remember being out on a hike with my troop of Boy Scouts. It was the late 1980's, and we were in the high Uintas, a mountain range in Eastern Utah. I was growing tired of my comrades, and lagged behind enough that I could hear myself think...and suddenly felt like I was being watched. "Cain," I thought, and ran until I was back with my group. At some point in my life, I had learned the bit of Mormon folklore that Cain, son of Adam and Eve and the first murderer on our shiny new planet, was still alive, having been cursed to wander the Earth all his days. And that he was, for whatever reason, roaming around, and was the source of the Bigfoot legends in modern times.
I got over that fright, and in later years I've come to laugh it off, but was really spooked for a while. This and other brands of Mormon Folklore are the basis of the 2011 book Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore. A collection of essays analyzing the intersection between the Supernatural and how it's interpreted by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the book is edited by W. Paul Reeve and Michael Scott Van Wagenen. I've taken classes from Dr. Reeve before, and it was after reading another of his books and searching for more that I found this volume. In his class, I was impressed with his ability to took at the often complicated history of Mormons in Utah with a balanced view; too often what you get in Utah History classes is either so pro-Mormon (faith-building homilies) or so anti-Mormon (discounting any contributions any Mormons ever made) that they're impossible to take seriously. Dr. Reeve's unique ability is to expose his students to both perspectives, and build on a middle ground that feels closer to historic "truth" than anything I've experienced before. With that gushy caveat about my own history with one of the editors, I'll keep going.
There are seven pieces of folklore/legend/history presented in Between Pulpit and Pew, and growing up as a Latter-Day Saint in Utah, I had heard six of the seven before. They include the Cain-as-Bigfoot story, a "cursed land" story explaining the failure of certain Mormon settlements, the Mormon belief in miracles, UFOs, a mythical gold mine, a lake monster similiar to the Loch Ness Monster, and a story about Joseph Smith walking on water. Each story gets a chapter of roughly thirty pages with copious footnotes, and each essay is presented with more academic rigor than I may have been expecting when I picked it up. That said, it was a very enlightening and enjoyable read.
Each of the essays establishes the source of the legend--for example, the Cain story goes back to the experience of David Patten, an LDS "apostle" who in 1835 reported running into a large hairy man, about seven feet tall while in Tennessee. Patten conversed with the man, who told him he was Cain, and "he was a very miserable craeture, that he had earnestly sought death...but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men..." Patten rebuked him, and "Cain" disappeared. From the establishment of the story, each author then follows the twisting course of these tales as they become legends through a process of transmission from generation to generation.
Most of these tales enjoy a season in the sun, where it seems like everyone both knew about and believed in the story, and then either the belief or the manner of belief changed over time. Again, using the Cain story as an example: throughout the 19th Century, it was believed that it was literally Cain, cursed son of Adam and Eve. By the late 20th Century, descriptions of Bigfoot encounters by Mormons still describe his as "Cain," but shoehorn him in with other Bigfoot sightings--he doesn't speak to them, he doesn't have an "evil" mien as much as a beastly one. They emphasize his hairiness, and he's more acting on instinct than some sort of "mission." Instead of the Cain story being taught as doctrine in Sunday School or Seminary classes, it became a campfire story, which is probably where I heard it in the 1980s. Instead of focusing on the righteousness of David Patten, using the name of Jesus Christ to rebuke the monster, the stories focus on the monster running away on his own, or being frightened off the way you would a bear or mountain lion.
This secularization is an important part of the legend-making process for these particular tales, and is also an indication of how Mormons themselves became secularized and Americanized over the last 180 years. The essay on UFOs is particularly useful understanding that process--examining not only Mormon beliefs in celestial phenomona, and their unique beliefs about life on other planets--but a broader view of other Christian sects' beliefs in signs in the skies, and how all of those changed over time. Most of the essays make the connection that Mormons generally take this folklore as an opportunity to bolster their faith--so that the belief in say, UFOs, may not be uniquely Mormon, but the way they believe in them is. From the last pages of the UFO chapter:
"By giving meaning and order to the unknown natural world, celestial marvels have ultimately assured Mormons of the correctness of their path and given them a sense of security in troubling times...While a majority of Mormons have averted their gaze from the heavens, should the need for future Latter-Day Saints to again look skyward, they will no doubt find solace by interpreting the mysteries of the natural world within the context of Smith's expansive cosmology. Indeed, this theological adaptability is a hallmark of Mormonism and remains an important component of its enduring appeal in the twenty-first century."
Really, that's the point of the entire book. Not the veracity of either these folktales or of Mormonism itself, but how a group of people have taken these stories and both shaped them and been shaped by them. It's a fascinating look at how a niche culture within the United States has used the legend-making process to build their society--and at times how these legends have drawn people into and out of that society. If you're interested in folklore, tall tales or legends, or at American History in general, Between Pulpit and Pew is a fascinating read.
I got over that fright, and in later years I've come to laugh it off, but was really spooked for a while. This and other brands of Mormon Folklore are the basis of the 2011 book Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore. A collection of essays analyzing the intersection between the Supernatural and how it's interpreted by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the book is edited by W. Paul Reeve and Michael Scott Van Wagenen. I've taken classes from Dr. Reeve before, and it was after reading another of his books and searching for more that I found this volume. In his class, I was impressed with his ability to took at the often complicated history of Mormons in Utah with a balanced view; too often what you get in Utah History classes is either so pro-Mormon (faith-building homilies) or so anti-Mormon (discounting any contributions any Mormons ever made) that they're impossible to take seriously. Dr. Reeve's unique ability is to expose his students to both perspectives, and build on a middle ground that feels closer to historic "truth" than anything I've experienced before. With that gushy caveat about my own history with one of the editors, I'll keep going.
There are seven pieces of folklore/legend/history presented in Between Pulpit and Pew, and growing up as a Latter-Day Saint in Utah, I had heard six of the seven before. They include the Cain-as-Bigfoot story, a "cursed land" story explaining the failure of certain Mormon settlements, the Mormon belief in miracles, UFOs, a mythical gold mine, a lake monster similiar to the Loch Ness Monster, and a story about Joseph Smith walking on water. Each story gets a chapter of roughly thirty pages with copious footnotes, and each essay is presented with more academic rigor than I may have been expecting when I picked it up. That said, it was a very enlightening and enjoyable read.
Each of the essays establishes the source of the legend--for example, the Cain story goes back to the experience of David Patten, an LDS "apostle" who in 1835 reported running into a large hairy man, about seven feet tall while in Tennessee. Patten conversed with the man, who told him he was Cain, and "he was a very miserable craeture, that he had earnestly sought death...but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men..." Patten rebuked him, and "Cain" disappeared. From the establishment of the story, each author then follows the twisting course of these tales as they become legends through a process of transmission from generation to generation.
Most of these tales enjoy a season in the sun, where it seems like everyone both knew about and believed in the story, and then either the belief or the manner of belief changed over time. Again, using the Cain story as an example: throughout the 19th Century, it was believed that it was literally Cain, cursed son of Adam and Eve. By the late 20th Century, descriptions of Bigfoot encounters by Mormons still describe his as "Cain," but shoehorn him in with other Bigfoot sightings--he doesn't speak to them, he doesn't have an "evil" mien as much as a beastly one. They emphasize his hairiness, and he's more acting on instinct than some sort of "mission." Instead of the Cain story being taught as doctrine in Sunday School or Seminary classes, it became a campfire story, which is probably where I heard it in the 1980s. Instead of focusing on the righteousness of David Patten, using the name of Jesus Christ to rebuke the monster, the stories focus on the monster running away on his own, or being frightened off the way you would a bear or mountain lion.
This secularization is an important part of the legend-making process for these particular tales, and is also an indication of how Mormons themselves became secularized and Americanized over the last 180 years. The essay on UFOs is particularly useful understanding that process--examining not only Mormon beliefs in celestial phenomona, and their unique beliefs about life on other planets--but a broader view of other Christian sects' beliefs in signs in the skies, and how all of those changed over time. Most of the essays make the connection that Mormons generally take this folklore as an opportunity to bolster their faith--so that the belief in say, UFOs, may not be uniquely Mormon, but the way they believe in them is. From the last pages of the UFO chapter:
"By giving meaning and order to the unknown natural world, celestial marvels have ultimately assured Mormons of the correctness of their path and given them a sense of security in troubling times...While a majority of Mormons have averted their gaze from the heavens, should the need for future Latter-Day Saints to again look skyward, they will no doubt find solace by interpreting the mysteries of the natural world within the context of Smith's expansive cosmology. Indeed, this theological adaptability is a hallmark of Mormonism and remains an important component of its enduring appeal in the twenty-first century."
Really, that's the point of the entire book. Not the veracity of either these folktales or of Mormonism itself, but how a group of people have taken these stories and both shaped them and been shaped by them. It's a fascinating look at how a niche culture within the United States has used the legend-making process to build their society--and at times how these legends have drawn people into and out of that society. If you're interested in folklore, tall tales or legends, or at American History in general, Between Pulpit and Pew is a fascinating read.
August 13, 2023
“The stories that we tell, tell on us… narratives, shared by members of a like-minded group serve as a mirror for culture… good-versus-evil stories, told by present-day Mormons function to affirm the validity of the Mormon cause by proving that God is on Mormonism‘s side… legends are a ‘cultural language of fear’… people tell legends in order to verbalize anxieties and fears, and, by explaining these away, to free themselves from the oppressive power of their fears.”
September 3, 2014
Bigfoot and Cain, UFO's, the Bear Lake Monster, a Dream Mine for end times, walking on water, raising the dead, and Gadianton ghosts. "Between Pulpit and Pew" is a collection of essays on Mormon history and folklore. A really fun little collection--quirky, engaging, sympathetic, and academic all at once.
April 24, 2014
3.5 stars! Utah folklore is always a treat! :D hahaha or at least I find it fascinating! :D
November 21, 2021
This is a fascinating sociological and historical study of Mormon legends. The stories and legends are fascinating enough, and this collection of professional essays emphasize the folk traditions that put them into context. The question isn't so much whether the legends are true. And there is good background on some of the origins along with context. The explanations around David Patten's Cain/Bigfoot story is good. My favorite, though, is the chapter on the Dream Mine which I have read about previously. There is also a discussion of "haunted" places (although they never use that term) in the context of Gadianton Robbers, an excellent discussion of miracles with background on Protestantism, a dissection of the Bear Lake monster, UFOs, and a debunking of stories about Joseph Smith proven a fraud in the "walking-on-water" stories. Oh, and the forward is by Elaine Thatcher, a professional folklorist who is a friend of mine!
July 25, 2025
A great resource for exploring various aspects of mormon folklore, with a decidedly academic and nuetral stance. It's not about truth, it's about the fact that these stories were told, and what that says about the tellers. I would love to own this and use it as reference for future writing projects of my own.
June 17, 2023
A collection of Mormon folklore from Mormon Bigfoot, Bear Lake Nessie, UFOs to the Dream Mine. I liked the essays in this I liked that it was pretty neutrally explored and found the tales fascinating.
December 31, 2018
A few of the essays were stellar, a few were lacking. Overall, this compilation did an excellent job at tackling a fun subject in a scholarly fashion.
August 2, 2011
The book is a collection of articles on Mormon folklore and urban legends. The beginning of the book chronicles a LDS urban legend that spread via email a few years ago. The story supposedly came from a talk by Boyd K. Packer. However, he never made the statement and the LDS Church struggled to stop the spread of the story. The author believes some of the ideas in the story may have originated from a talk given by motivational speaker Jack Marshall. The talk was mentioned in Brad Wilcox's Tips for Tackling Teenage Troubles. Someone took the hypothetical story, embroidered it, attributed it to a Church authority, passed it along via email, and watched it spread like wildfire. Another chapter details the belief among some Southern Utahns that the evil spirits of the Gadianton robbers were responsible for the difficulties experienced by some early settlers of the region. The chapter concerning how Bigfoot has been viewed in Utah and among Mormons over the years was rather interesting. The least interesting chapter of the book concerned resurrecting the dead. The stories were okay. The interpretation the author tries to put on the stories didn't work that well for me. The wildest section of the book deals with how UFOs have been viewed by Mormons over the years. In the 1800s, unexplained lights in the sky were viewed as proof of the imminent Second Coming. In the 20th and 21th Century, UFO occupants have been seen as everything from "space brothers" to "demons." Many of the characters in this chapter are far from mainstream Mormons. Did you know that the Raelian UFO cult believes that Joseph Smith was the offspring of a mortal woman and an "extraterrestrial scientist" named "Elohim?" Also, according to the Raelians, Joseph Smith is currently living in an alien spacecraft somewhere. While you meditate on that, let's move along to the next chapter. It's been some time since I read anything on John Koyle's Dream Mine. The true believers are still waiting for the mine to come in. Whether or not the mine ever comes in, Bishop Koyle's Mine is a fascinating story in Utah County history. The final chapter chronicles the Joseph Smith "walking on water" legend. In most tellings of the story, Joseph Smith tries to prove his prophetic calling by walking on water. Using a rigged platform, Smith is successful at first. However, someone has removed some of the boards or cut them. When Smith reaches that spot, he falls in and is revealed as a charlatan. According to the book, this whopper is popular among non-believers in the mid-West and the Northeast. I'd recommend this book to those interested in folklore, urban legends, and Utah/LDS history.
July 8, 2013
If you live in a predominantly Mormon area, you may have heard stories linking the biblical Cain to Bigfoot, or whispers about the Bear Lake Monster. Have you ever wanted to know more about the intersection between Mormonism and the supernatural? Where did these stories originate? Why do they perpetuate? Seven such topics are examined in this recent release from USU Press.
March 31, 2012
Each of the articles is written by a different author, so it is hard to rate the whole book. Suffice it to say, some of the articles are more entertaining than others. Not a major source of profundities, but an entertaining read that can be easily skimmed.
November 3, 2012
Not what I was expecting, but fabulous nonetheless. I thought that this book would be a straightforward telling of supernatural Mormon stories, instead, it's a academic look at how these stories developed and continue to evolve.
August 24, 2012
I enjoyed this collection of studies about some Mormon folklore. I learned a few things about my culture that I had never even heard of!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews