Massacre site service focuses on forgiveness

MOUNTAIN MEADOWS, Washington County — The lilting melody of a lone bagpipe and a Christian sermon on forgiveness echoed across this small mountain valley Saturday, as did the names of 120 men, women and children who were massacred here.

Their memory is a solemn warning about the dangers of inflammatory rhetoric, peer pressure and myth disguised as fact, according to Western historian and author David Bigler.

Members of the Mountain Meadows Association and others whose ancestors were either killed or did the killing on Sept. 11, 1857, joined in a memorial service — and later, a dinner meeting — to honor those who were members of the Fancher-Baker wagon train headed through southern Utah 150 years ago.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre, carried out by Mormon militiamen led by local Latter-day Saint leaders in the Cedar City area, is a tragic chapter in the long history of human conflict that began when Cain slew his brother Abel, said a local pastor.

The Rev. Buddy Harrington of Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church told more than 300 people gathered for the memorial service that faith in Jesus Christ liberates all from the burden of sin and bitterness.

When one man who was angry about the lack of historical detail surrounding the massacre told him "the truth will set us free," the Rev. Harrington replied that Christ's declaration of himself as "the truth and the life" is the ultimate liberty, "even more than the facts as interpreted by the best historians."

"There are three kinds of people in this world: those who need to be forgiven, those who need to be forgiving, and the largest group, those who need both," he said.

A choir joined with the congregation in singing Christian hymns before MMA President Terry Fancher read the name and age of each of the 120 massacre victims. Many in the crowd dabbed at tears. Most were struck by the fact that so many of those murdered were children.

Flowers were placed at the large rock memorial here, constructed in 1999 by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns about 125 acres at the site and has erected two separate memorials about a mile apart. Fancher told reporters after the service that each of the monuments "has been an attempt at reconciliation" among the descendants of both victims and perpetrators. Noting the continued angst the event has generated among some, he said, "I guess we have to keep doing monuments until we get reconciliation."