In recent years Mormon apologists have begun to challenge what many researchers, myself included, long regarded as obvious: the Book of Mormon’s reflection of the cultural milieu of early nineteenth-century America, particularly the anti-Masonic controversy that pervaded western New York during the last 1820s. if the similarities between Masonry and the secret societies described in the book are not apparent to some modern readers, they were to its first readers, Mormon and non-Mormon, who almost immediately associated its warnings of latter-day “secret combinations” with the dreaded Masons. Despite the book’s use of the term “secret combinations”—a favorite anti-Masonic epithet—several scholars now, for various reasons, object to the connection and, in some instances, offer alternative interpretations.

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CONCLUSION

Despite the efforts of Bushman, Ostler, Quinn, and Peterson, anti-Masonry remains the probable source of inspiration for the Book of Mormon’s Gadianton bands. The declarations of some apologists—for example, William J. Hamblin’s statement that the “supposed Gadianton-Masonry connection has been debunked,” or John Gee’s assertion that the anti-Masonic thesis has been “conclusively demonstrated to be a mirage”—are premature and naive.

For those interested in the historical and literary anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, a search through Joseph Smith’s cultural environment for possible influences is a profitable enterprise. For those of us so engaged, the apologetic demand for an exact correspondence between Masonry and Gadianton bands is unnecessary and irrelevant. The parallels are so striking that any reasonable person should acknowledge them, whatever their subsequent interpretation of their significance may be. The question is no longer whether Joseph Smith used Masonic and anti-Masonic elements from his environment to create something both similar and unique in the Book of Mormon, but rather to what extent. Nothing the apologists have suggested thus far has rendered unlikely the conclusion that Joseph Smith clearly intended the Book of Mormon to adopt an anti-Masonic posture.