Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Blood, soil, faith - The SPLC on the Nay Book


Under the guise of their Hate Watch, the Southern Poverty Law Center proffers their take on the Nay Book:

...To see a flag of Mormon faith blowing in the winds of the American West is not surprising for the Bundy family, which has frequently infused their actions with undertones of their faith. But as the trial has progressed, there have been stories spread by word-of-mouth of a book seen by few outside a tight circle of family supporters: The Nay Book.  Compiled by Keith Allen Nay, a Bundy friend and fellow rancher, the book is a scrapbook mix of letters, founding documents of both the United States and the Church of Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ mixed with ideas that have existed in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement for decades. Seen by few outside a tight circle of family supporters, the book lays out a religious justification for resisting the federal management of public lands. Last week, Melissa Laughter, a one-time supporter of the Bundy family, began distributing the The Nay Book. In describing the book at the time, The Washington Post reported that it "appears to lay a religious foundation for the rancher’s strong and consistent views that the federal government has been trampling his rights.”...The book lays out that duty, annotated against Mormon scripture: to defend the Constitution with strict interpretation in what the family sees as a conflict between heaven and hell over the future of a Constitutional republic. The book also suggests the Bundy’s fight with the federal government is more than a highly polarizing issue of public lands, more than even a culture war or a paramilitary conflict that spread across the antigovernment “Patriot” movement. For the family and a group of supporters, the fight for public lands is a religious war. “They’re not just talking about property rights,” said Matthew Bowman, a professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and author of The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith. “They’re talking about this sort of deeply moral notion of the freedom to choose. Which, for them, is very much bound in their ability to follow God and to do what God wants to do. I think it’s very much a religious struggle.”



For more on the SPLC, see 7 Things You Need To Know About The Southern Poverty Law Center

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