Jack Mormons
Jack Mormon once meant something else
The Salt Lake Tribune
01/13/2008
While rooting around in old Tribune files, Robert Kirby came upon this
little gem and forwarded it to me. I pass it on to you.
"A gentleman writing us from
Boise, asks us, 'What is a jack-Mormon?' It is a nondescript between a Gentile
and Mormon; in the animal kingdom known as the mule. In some countries it is
better known as the What-is-it, and is without gender. In Utah it does the dirty
work for the Mormon Priesthood, who first grease it, then pat it, and finally
kick it because it has no friends. Tom Fitch, of Nevada, ex-Governor Fuller, of
New Jersey, George Seizer, of Michigan, are all fair samples of the jack-Mormon.
Others, fresh from the green pastures of the East, are traveling the same road.
The jack is a dirty animal . . . ."
The Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 17, 1875.
The gentlemen mentioned in the article were "gentiles" on good terms with
the LDS Church.
I always thought a Jack
Mormon was a nominal member of the LDS Church who had outsourced his or her
moral compass to hard-partying secular humanists. But the Tribune's
definition from 123 years ago makes it clear it used to mean something quite
different.
Sometime between then and now, "Jack Mormon" was transformed in popular usage from a non-Mormon who was friendly to Mormons, to a Mormon who is way too casual with regard to his church's values.
Several people think the term
denotes Mormons with a fondness for Jack Daniel's. Actually, it goes back to
early meanings of "Jack."
As early as the 14th century,
the poet Geoffrey Chaucer used the term "Jakke fool." Jack of beanstalk fame was
a gullible dimwit who traded the family cow for half a handful of beans. And, of
course, there are jackasses of animal and human origin.
On the early frontier, "Jack
Mormon" couldn't mean anything other than a dupe with some connection to Joseph
Smith's new religion.
The Story of The
Latter-day Saints explains, "Because of their friendliness toward the
beleaguered Saints, the helpful citizens of Clay and other counties were
criticized by hostile elements in Jackson County and dubbed 'Jack Mormons,' a
term applied widely in the 19th century to friendly non-Mormons."
The first use of the term is
credited to Thomas C. Sharpe, a ferocious anti-Mormon from Illinois. Sharpe
lobbed verbal bombshells at nearby Mormon Nauvoo, Ill., from his newspaper, the
Warsaw Signal. In 1846 the following item appeared in his paper:
"A certain Jack-mormon of
Hancock county, we won't call him big-head, (but the Saints used to) is in the
habit of shaving the hair off his forehead, in order to give it an intellectual
appearance."-'Warsaw (Ill.) Signal,' 6 Feb., page 3/1.
Somewhere in the early 20th
century, Jack Mormon came to its current meaning. LDS author Preston Nibley used
the term, in its turned-on-its-head incarnation, in the 1940s. Since then, Jack
Mormon is another term for those straddlers who, in LDS theology, fence-sat
during the War in Heaven.
Jack Mormon is mildly
derogatory, and can carry a sense of shame with it. The lapsed LDS fighter Jack
Dempsey reportedly wrote, "I'm proud to be a Mormon. And ashamed to be the Jack
Mormon that I am."
It is also a kind of war wound, proudly worn by many who are still technically "in" the dominant culture, but not "of" it.