Latter-Day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ of

LATTER-DAY SAINTS, CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF

LATTER-DAY SAINTS, CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF. The Mormon Church traces its origins to founder Joseph Smith's vision of 1820, which upheld the view that no existing church had "right" doctrine. Mormonism avowed a belief in the Trinity but denied original sin. It stressed faith in Jesus Christ, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Spirit. While it accepted the Bible as the word of God, Smith's discovery of an alternative scripture, the Book of Mormon, provided an account

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of an Israelite prophet, Lehi, who was commanded by God in 600 b.c. to lead a small group of people to the American continent. It also recorded the appearance of Christ, after his Resurrection, to the people in America. Early Mormonism held that there would be a literal gathering of Israel to the United States and that Zion would be built upon the American continent. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) was organized on 6 April 1830.

The Early Years

The new Church settled in Ohio, where it fostered a communitarian lifestyle, created a collective religious leadership, and launched the first mission to England in 1837. It then moved to Missouri, where political and religious controversy led to the Mormon War of 1838. The Saints withdrew to Illinois where they established the new city of Nauvoo in 1840, an agricultural rather than a commercial center. At Nauvoo, the Relief Society was established in 1842 to improve community morals. During this period, Joseph Smith also received a revelation, enjoining members of the Church to practice plural marriage (polygamy), based on precedents from the Old Testament.

Nauvoo and the Migration

While the Mormons engaged in Illinois politics, sympathy for the idea of a Mormon kingdom in the West increased during the early 1840s. After the governor of Illinois ordered a trial of the Church leadership for the destruction of the press of a newspaper critical to Mormonism, Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered in Carthage, Illinois, on 27 June 1844. The state legislature revoked the Nauvoo charter in January 1845 and the Church announced plans for removal in September 1845. In 1846, 12,000 Saints left Illinois, dedicating the Nauvoo Temple before their departure, and the Pioneer Company reached the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847. The state of Deseret was established in January 1849 as the civil government of the territory.

Settling Utah

In 1850, LDS Church President Brigham Young sought statehood within the United States, but this was blocked in Congress, and territorial status was accepted in 1851. Young encouraged colonization to the south of Salt Lake City and along the Wasatch Front, where communities were organized to encourage community life and religious activity, with common pastures and the cooperative raising of grain. Missionaries were sent to Latin America and Europe, and the notion of the Gathering of Zion (the migration of converts to Utah) was fostered by means of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund in the late 1850s. Given the Church's political dominance, tensions soon arose with federally appointed officials. President James Buchanan sent a force to Utah in 1857, in the face of protests about Brigham Young's dictatorial rule. Young recalled distant colonists, declared martial law, and forbade the entry of federal troops and in June 1858 a peace formula was negotiated.

The Church in the Nineteenth Century

During the Civil War the Latter-day Saints remained generally loyal to the Union. After the war, mining and cotton production developed in southern Utah and railroad connections in 1869 broke down the territory's isolation. A new Mormon cooperative system discouraged trade with outsiders, and after the depression of 1873, an effort was made to foster strongly collectivist cooperative organizations, called the United Orders, but these did not endure. A movement to Arizona and Wyoming took place in the late 1870s, and Mormons settled in Mexico in 1886. By 1880, the Church had 134,000 members, 80 percent of whom lived in Utah. Missionary work was pursued in Mexico, Polynesia, and the domestic United States, though Mormons faced violent reprisals in the American South. Missions increased between 1890 and 1900, as 6,125 missionaries were sent out, but immigration to Utah was discouraged after 1890.

The War Against Polygamy

In the late 1860s, a war against polygamy was unleashed in Utah Territory and other parts of the West inhabited by Latter-day Saints. The anti-Mormon Liberal Party was formed in Utah in 1870 to oppose LDS political and economic dominance, while James McKean, chief justice of Utah Territory, launched a campaign to prosecute those who practiced polygamy, including Brigham Young. In Reynolds v. United States (1879) the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862. Non-Mormons in Utah called for resolute action on polygamy and the Edmunds Act of 1882 assured penalties for polygamy and disenfranchised twelve thousand Saints. Over one thousand men were sent to jail in Utah, and similar prosecutions took place in Idaho and Arizona. Five years later, the Edmunds-Tucker Act threatened to destroy the Church by dissolving it as a legal corporation, a move upheld by the Supreme Court in 1890. Fearful that all members of the Church would be disenfranchised, President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto against polygamy in 1890, accepted willingly by most Mormons, and a new understanding was reached with the federal authorities.

The Church in the Progressive Era

In the early twentieth century, the LDS Church displayed a greater readiness to become involved in the affairs of the nation. In 1903, Apostle Reed Smoot was elected to the Senate despite charges of disloyalty to the nation. The Church solved its debt problem with bond issues and curtailed its direct involvement in business ventures. Established missions were strengthened and a new training system for missionaries established. Signs of Mormon integration came with the increasing national popularity of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Church's support for national prohibition after 1916, and its contributions to

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the war effort. During World War I, twenty-four thousand Latter-day Saints enlisted in the armed forces, the Church and its auxiliaries bought $1.4 million worth of Liberty bonds, and the Relief Society sold its store of wheat to the government.

The Response to the Depression

During the 1920s, the agricultural depression drove many Saints to the cities and made them a more urban people. The Church's Relief Society created a Social Welfare Department in 1919, and the Church began to undertake more intensive studies of social problems and foster cooperation with some secular agencies. The coming of the Great Depression in 1929, therefore, did not catch the Church entirely unprepared. Although opposed to the dole, it did not condemn federal work relief. A survey of need was carried out in 1933 and local units were urged to create community enterprises. In 1936, the Church launched the Welfare Plan under Harold B. Lee, reviving the idea of the bishop's storehouse and calling on local units to establish coordinating committees. An exchange system was formed and make-work projects created where necessary, based around agriculture. This provided positive publicity for the Church, and even progressive periodicals like Time and The Nation started to reflect a more positive view of Mormon life.

An International Church

During World War II, one hundred thousand Mormons entered the armed forces, and the LDS Serviceman's Committee was organized to provide programs and guidelines for them. Missionary activity was resumed in 1946, and by 1950, there were five thousand missionaries, twelve hundred of them in Europe. A new sense of internationalism was evident, with the shift of missionaries to Asia. Efforts also were made to keep young men and women involved in church life through recreational activity, and seminary involvement grew from 28,600 to 81,400. Student wards were created in university towns, enabling students for the first time to hold church offices. A new churchwide home teaching program was begun in 1964, with priesthood holders expected to get to know the families in their charges, and the family home evening program was launched in 1965. By the end of the 1960s, the church had achieved a membership of 2.8 million, with new growth in Latin America and seventeen thousand missionaries in the field.

The Latter-day Saints Today

In politics, the Church shifted sharply to the right during the 1960s, although Apostle Hugh Brown supported some social welfare programs and was a Democratic candidate for U.S. senator. By the late 1970s, however, the Church eschewed direct political participation in favor of taking stands opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment, legalized abortion, and gambling. In 1978, LDS Church President Spencer Kimball received a revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy male believers (prior to this date, black males had been excluded from the otherwise universal male priesthood), solving the problem of the priesthood in South America and Africa as well as the United States. In 1998, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley stated that church members who practiced polygamy risked excommunication, but the Church was drawn uncomfortably into the spotlight in 2000 when Tom Green of Utah was prosecuted on charges of polygamy. The Church in the 1990s, led by President Hinckley since 1995, was an expanding force, though more outside the United States than within it, with over five million members in 1998.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Thomas G. Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1890–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Allen, James B., and Glen M. Leonard. The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Books, 1992.

Bushman, Claudia L., and Richard L. Bushman. Building the Kingdom: a History of Mormons in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Gottlieb, Robert, and Peter Wiley. America's Saints: The Rise of Mormon Power. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.

Mauss, Armand L. The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Quinn, D. Michael, ed. The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past. Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1992.

Shipps, Jan. Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985.

Jeremy Bonner

See also Mormon Battalion ; Mormon Expedition ; Mormon Trail ; Nauvoo, Mormons at .