Twenty-Five (1830)(^11) This phrase is often used in touting church announcements and statistics: “The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints currently operates over 350 missions in 162 nations.” (“LDS Mission
Network™”, Mission.net, 2011, LDSMN, 19 May 2011 http://www.mission.net/.
“The LDS Church, with more than 14 million members worldwide, currently operates 134
temples (“New LDS temples for Idaho, Colorado, Canada,” The Salt Lake Tribune, 4 Apr. 2011.)
“The LDS Church currently operates 17 elementary and secondary schools serving about 6,000
students in Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Kiribati.” “School of Education; ITEP Program in 2001–2002,”
BYU–Hawaii, 2010, Brigham Young University—Hawaii, 19 May 2011
http://soe.byuh.edu/itep_history/program01_02.
“Besides its flagship Provo Missionary Training Center in Utah, the LDS Church currently
operates 14 international MTCs worldwide (previous MTCs in Tokyo and Seoul, Korea, have since
been closed).” “The 14 international Missionary Training Centers [MTCs],” comp. Scott Taylor,
Deseret News, 2011, Deseret Media Companies, 22 May 2011
http://www.deseretnews.com/top/131/The-14-international-MIssionary-Training-Centers-MTCs.html.
(^12) “Oath of Office” United States Senate, Secretary of the Senate, 20 May 2011
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Oath_Office.htm.
(^13) U.S. Const., art. 1, sec. 2, cl. 3, which reads: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be
apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to
their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of Persons,
including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three
fifths of all other Persons.”
And U.S. Const., art. 4, sec. 2, cl. 3, which reads: “No person held to Service or Labour in one
State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in Consequence of any Law or Regulation
therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to
whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
(^14) Zinn, 80–2, 89–91 (emphasis added); “About 10 percent of the white population [were]
large landholders and merchants [and] owned nearly half the wealth of the country and held as
slaves one-seventh of the country’s people. The Continental Congress, which governed the colonies
through the war, was dominated by rich men, linked together in factions and compacts by business
and family connections. ...In Maryland, for instance, ...90 percent of the population were excluded
from holding office [because of their lack of property and money]. ...[Thomas] Jefferson [was] a
slaveowner throughout his life. ...[Charles] Beard studie[d] the economic backgrounds and political
ideas of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution. He
found that a majority of them were lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in
land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping. ...Thus, Beard found that most of the makers of the
Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the
manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to
pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners
needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able
to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off these bonds. Four groups, Beard noted, were not
represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, [and] men
without property.”
(^15) TSP, 23:65–7; 26:21–3.
(^16) TSP, 79:13–31.
(^17) This is a typical LDS American’s perspective. For example, “I want you who are the best
trained, the best educated, who have been given these great advantages here in America to literally
become the conscience of America and the molders of its destiny and future.” L. Tom Perry, “God’s
Hand in the Founding of America,” Ensign, Jul. 1976: 45 (emphasis added);
“America is a great land, Blessed above all others.” Vanja Y. Watkins, “Blessed America,”
Friend, July 1976, 13;