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“Undaunted” is now available for streaming at no charge!

“Undaunted” is now available for streaming at no charge!

Last updated on: January 19, 2025 at 5:28 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Undaunted” is now available for streaming at no charge! 2025-01-19T17:28:01-07:00 Dan Peterson

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Cover art (created by Ryan Knowlton) for the 2022 Interpreter Foundation docudrama “Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon”

I’m very pleased to announce here that the Interpreter Foundation has chosen to make its 2022 docudrama, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, available online at no charge. Undaunted was created to accompany the Foundation’s 2021 dramatic theatrical film, Witnesses. We hope that you will take advantage of this offering and that you will call it to the attention of others who may also be interested. Please help us to spread the word. We want it to be seen! That’s why we made it!

Our timing for this release is not coincidental: During the month of February, the Come, Follow Me curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will turn to the translation of the Book of Mormon and to the Three and Eight Witnesses to the gold plates. We believe that both students and teachers of Come, Follow Me will find value in this film, which features dramatic recreations of the experiences of the Book of Mormon witnesses as well as expert commentary from scholars.

You can access Undaunted via this new Interpreter Foundation website: The Witnesses Initiative. I’m grateful to the donors, as well as to the volunteer and professional workers, who have made this all (and much else) possible.

A nineteenth-century conception of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

It’s probably time for another illustration of human folly. This one is drawn from my reading in a new book, by the Catholic New Testament scholar Brant Pitre, that is entitled Jesus and Divine Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2024):

As with the other epiphanic acts of Jesus, the transfiguration has a remarkable history of rationalistic exegesis that makes it necessary to begin by emphasizing what the gospel accounts do not say. For example, they do not say that Peter, James, and John fell asleep and (somehow collectively) “dreamed that Moses and Elijah were present and that Jesus conversed with them” until the “illusion” was dispelled by “the first confused moments after their awakening.” Nor do they say that the three disciples awoke and saw Jesus talking with “two strangers” who were “illuminated by the beams of the rising sun,” so that “their drowsiness, and the clouds which in an autumnal sunrise float to and fro over those mountains,” left them with “the vague undefined impression of having been in contact with apparitions from a higher sphere.” Finally, the Gospels certainly do not say anything about Jesus’s face being “lit up” when, “in a flash of insight,” he suddenly realized his death was going to be salvific. (88, omitting footnote references)

Okay. So you don’t want to accept the gospel accounts of Christ’s glorious transfiguration. I get it. And I can understand simply rejecting them as invented fictions. But such attempts as those mentioned above, to preserve the story while explaining it away, strike me as quite simply ridiculous.

Earlier in the week, I shared some entertaining attempts, gathered by Professor Pitre, to rationalize the New Testament stories of Jesus walking on the water. (See “Strolling On The Ice Floes Of The Galilee?”) They reminded me of a tale recounted by Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945], 84:

It seems that, at one point in his life of deceptive yarn-spinning and self-glorification, Joseph Smith decided to demonstrate his prophetic status and power by walking on water. He planned the event very carefully: Somehow almost completely unseen and unsuspected by any passersby, he built a wooden platform out into a local lake. He constructed the platform just under the surface of the water, so that nobody could know that it was there. Alas, though, for the crafty pseudo-prophet, one person had seen him building the platform and had immediately grasped Joseph’s fiendish plan. Accordingly, after Joseph had finished his work and had gone home for the night, ready (as he imagined) for the phony miracle that he intended to perform the next day, the meddling cynic stealthily went out and removed several of the wooden planks that made up the secret platform. The following day, Joseph emerged triumphantly before an eager and credulous crowd. At first, the miracle seemed to be really happening, right before their eyes. But then, suddenly, he fell through the hole in his wooden platform down into the lake. Everybody but the embarrassed Joseph Smith was edified and highly amused.

The story about Joseph pretending to walk on water is acknowledged even by critics and enemies of the Restoration as bogus. It never happened. Nothing like it ever happened. Still, Fawn Brodie included it in her reductionist biography of the Prophet. “Baseless though this story may be,” she wrote, “it is none the less symbolic.” But, inquiring minds want to know, of what, exactly, is it “symbolic“? It’s just false. It’s not true. So why include it? Presumably because it fit the image of Joseph Smith that Mrs. Brodie was attempting to create in the minds of her readers, and indeed perhaps in her own mind. There is no other adequate reason. (For further background on the non-incident, see Stanley J. Thayne, “Walking on Water: Nineteenth Century Prophets and a Legend of Religious Imposture,” Journal of Mormon History 36:2 [Spring 2010]: 160.)

The principal memorial at the site of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Immediately after I posted my first links here to critical comments about the current Netflix hit miniseries, American Primeval, The Usual Suspects mocked and faulted me for my supposed hatred and fear of anything about my faith that isn’t sanitized and hagiographic propaganda. But the negative responses to American Primeval have been mounting up, and I’m not actually the author of any of them:

Barbara Jones Brown, Religion News Service: “What ‘American Primeval’ gets wrong about Mormon — and American — history: The show’s depiction of hood-wearing, sinister Mormons slaughtering emigrants, US Army troops and Shoshone people all within a few days is a sensationalized fabrication intended to ‘entertain.'”

Barbara Jones Brown is the co-author, with Richard E. Turley, of Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath (Oxford University Press, 2023). “What does the popular new Netflix series, “American Primeval,” get wrong about the Utah War? Just about everything.”

Matt Grow, Deseret News: “What the tired tropes of ‘American Primeval’ get wrong about Brigham Young, early Latter-day Saints: The Netflix miniseries is a false depiction that draws on negative stereotypes, writes the managing director of church history for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”

Matt Grow (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is a trained academic historian.

Darren Parry, Deseret News: “‘American Primeval’: How this Native American historian reconciles hard history with the storytelling of Hollywood: Historical fiction should not be a tool to justify modern biases or to create villains or heroes; it should challenge us to see beyond the stereotypes, he writes.”

The Shoshones play a central role in the plot of American Primeval. Darren Parry is the former Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation.

Scripture Central: “Latter-day Saints Representation Done Wrong | Filmmakers Speak Out On American Primeval: A review with Latter-day Saint Filmmakers Barrett and Jessica Burgin about how Latter-day Saints (Mormons) are portrayed in the new Netflix drama American Primeval. We also discuss misrepresentation of Latter-day Saints in media and what we can expect looking forward.”

This is actually NOT a photograph of a typical nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint worship service. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Unfortunately, though, American Primeval is having an impact. (In the article to which I link above, Barbara Jones Brown cites some viewer reactions that are genuinely concerning and unfortunate. I wouldn’t be surprised if responses of this kind were to lead to violence, whether inside the United States or beyond.) To provide some rough idea of what viewers of American Primeval, and readers about it, are “learning,” I cite passages from representative recent articles about the miniseries:

ScreenRant: “Netflix’s New Western Series Becomes Global Success”

“Now, Netflix’s new Western series, which chronicles the violent origins of the American frontier, has arrived and is already making waves. . . .

“Netflix’s new Western series follows a mother and son who flee from their past and form a found family while also confronting the harsh reality of freedom and cruelty in the American frontier, including the violent conflict between the Mormon religion and culture during the Utah War in 1857.

“Now, shortly after its release on January 9, Netflix‘s new Western series has become a global success. American Primeval ranks second on Netflix’s Global Top 10 shows for this week behind Missing You with 10.4 million views and 52.4 million hours viewed. It finished above Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, Raw: 2025 on January 6, Departure season 1, Virgin River season 6, Gabriel Iglesias: Legend of Fluffy, Black Doves season 1, Departure season 2, and The Night Agent season.

“American Primeval is in the Top 10 in 68 countries around the world. . . .

“American Primeval has resonated with audiences worldwide, likely because of its unflinching portrayal of history and human nature. . . .

“[Director Peter] Berg, with his eye for historical accuracy, has helped elevate the series beyond typical Western fare. This meticulous care put into crafting the series has provided American Primeval with an authenticity that appeals to a wide audience, even in a market saturated with more mainstream shows.”

And this is the, umm, historical accuracy that viewers of American Primeval are being given:

Klein Felt, The Direct: “Here’s What Mormons Think of American Primeval on Netflix (They’re Not Happy): Some viewers are not happy with how their community is portrayed in the new Netflix series.”

“The series’ version of the real-life religious leader [Brigham Young] is portrayed as largely evil, helping perpetrate the devastating Mountain Meadows Massacre.”

Klein Felt, The Direct: “American Primeval: Was Brigham Young Evil? Netflix Portrayal Vs. Real-Life Details: Netflix’s hit new mini-series sets itself in the real-world story of the fight for Utah and America’s West.”

“In the series, Young (played by Kim Coates) is portrayed as a mainly evil presence, serving as the primary antagonist of the show’s ongoing conflict. . . . While Young is depicted in the series as the mastermind behind this bloody affair, that is not necessarily the case in real life.”

The Telegraph (United Kingdom): “American Primeval and the bloody truth about the Mormon massacre of 1857: It’s one of the most harrowing scenes in Netflix’s grim Western. But is its depiction of the Mountain Meadows atrocities accurate?”

“After Smith’s death, one of his deputies, Brigham Young, assumed command of the Mormon faith. Young was a wildly different character to Smith, possessed of an authoritarian streak that tipped into a dictatorial zeal. He wished to avoid any threat to his leadership [no mention of persecutions?], and so determined to lead his order into the Salt Lake Valley, which had originally been part of Mexico but had recently come under American control. It was a remote, barren area, a considerable way from any major settlement, and therefore easier to operate with a degree of autonomy. By the time that he arrived in Salt Lake valley in 1850, he was so powerful that he held complete sway over his followers.

“As the judge John Cradlebaugh would later remark to Congress of Young, “The mind of one man permeates the whole mass of the people, and subjects to its unrelenting tyranny the souls and bodies of all. It reigns supreme in Church and State, in morals, and even in the minutest domestic and social arrangements. Brigham’s house is at once tabernacle, capital, and harem; and Brigham himself is king, priest, lawgiver, and chief polygamist.”

“Young himself refused to acknowledge any authority other than the Almighty’s . . . In 1857, Young’s control over his domain was such that the federal officials in Utah fled, believing that they would be killed if they failed to follow his instructions. . . .

“the religious fanaticism that Young was stoking with the Mormons at the time. . . . the febrile and paranoid atmosphere of the time – stoked by Young . . . Young’s right-hand man John D Lee . . . near-hysteria amongst the faithful . . . Young died in 1877, with his complicity in the massacre remaining as mysterious as it does today. . . . Whether or not its presentation of Young is fair – and in Kim Coates’s clearly villainous portrayal of him as a religious bigot, there is little room for ambiguity – the show pulls no punches when it comes to its horrors. . . .

“America is a violent country, and always has been, and Mormonism, a relatively new religion based on charisma and revelation, shares its DNA with the place where it came into being. For all the jokes about The Book of Mormon and temple garments, this unsettling and visceral reminder of man’s inhumanity to man is all too contemporary.”

It’s not just a little bit amusing, in a black sort of way, to see the comments of Judge Cradlebaugh and the fleeing federal officials of 1857 taken at what appears to be face value. But such is the history that Netflix is currently teaching to a large, global audience. I hope that nobody is hurt because of it. I hope that our chapels and temples aren’t targeted for vandalism.

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