Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Complete)

The following paper was prepared by the writer for presentation at the Parliament of Religions, held at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not invited to participate in the proceedings of that Parliament, although Mormonism is the most distinctively American religious movement yet developed in our country; and as such the position and doctrine of the Church should have been of special interest in such a gathering as the Parliament purported to be. Learning that the Church would not be invited to the Parliament, under a sense of duty to make known the faith and message to the world, her presiding authorities sought opportunity for a hearing from the Parliament platform. After much solicitation and persistent urging as to the right of the Church to a hearing in such a gathering, a reluctant consent was finally given for a presentation of the following paper. But after this consent was given, a very unworthy effort was made by the President and chairman of the Parliament to side-track the paper by asking the representative of the Church to read it in one of the auxiliary departments of the Parliament,—namely, the Scientific Department, which meetings were held in a room capable of accommodating about fifty hearers, and presided over by Mr. Mervin Marie Snell. In response to that suggestion the writer, who had the honor to the representative of the Church to the Parliament, replied that such a hearing as could be had in Hall III (Scientific Department of the Parliament) was not the kind of hearing the Mormon Church had asked for or could accept. She had asked to speak from the same platform from which the great religious faiths had spoken—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism—from the platform of Columbus Hall, where her position and principles could be compared and contrasted with the viewpoint and doctrines of other religions, by the enlightened thought of the age. The officers in charge of the Parliament, however, refused to change the terms on which a hearing could be obtained for Mormonism, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had the distinction of being refused a hearing in the World's Parliament of Religions.