Mormonism

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Mormonism

Origins. The Mormon church, formally called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was the most successful of the dozens of new sects and communitarian movements that emerged in nineteenth-century America. Formed in rural New York with about thirty members in 1830, by the end of the twentieth century the church boasted over nine million members worldwide. The founder and prophet of the Mormon church was a young man of humble origins named Joseph Smith. Raised in an area of New York known for its frequent revivals and religious experimentation, Smith, like many of his day, felt bewildered by the array of competing religious claims. Uncertain of which church offered the truth, he prayed for guidance. According to his account, written years later, God responded to his entreaty, instructing him to join no church since all were flawed. Instead Smith was to await further instruction about a mission for which he had been divinely chosen. A few years later, Smith recounted, he was guided by an angel to a hill in the woods near his home, where he dug up a set of golden plates inscribed with ancient writing. With divine aid, the untutored Smith wrote, he was able to translate the plates into an English version, published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon.

Words of Christ. The Book of Mormon presents itself as an historical narrative about the descendants of one of the lost tribes of ancient Israel, who migrated to the Americas long before the birth of Christ. The work is said to be “another testament of Jesus Christ” because it relates a visit of Christ to the New World after his resurrection. Through Christ’s preaching, the book relates, the true church was established in America, only to be lost after one faction of the people, known as the Lamanites, had become unfaithful and eventually defeated the faithful Nephites. According to this account the Lamanites were the ancestors of the American Indians. It was one of the last remaining Nephites, their military leader, Mormon, who inscribed their history on the golden plates and instructed an angel to bury them until the time when Smith was directed to them.

Appeal. To many who read the Book of Mormon this new “testament” seemed nothing more than the fantasy of a young man with an active imagination. To others it was more threatening, a heretical document composed by a fraudulent prophet who hoped to fleece the gullible. But there were also those who found in the book the answers they had been seeking. It offered authoritative resolutions of many of the doctrinal controversies of the day and stressed the free will of man and the free grace of God. It provided comfort and hope to the dispossessed and downplayed the distinction between clergy and laity. Perhaps most appealingly, it portrayed America as the chosen land in which the kingdom of God would ultimately be established. Those who followed its teachings were promised a primary role in building that kingdom and were assured that they would be present when Christ returned to earth.

Flight from Persecution. In the early years of the church the Mormons moved frequently, in part because they were searching for the place to found God’s kingdom and in part because they faced a nearly constant onslaught of anti-Mormon propaganda and sometimes outright persecution. Their first move, in 1831, was from New York to Kirtland, Ohio, where they had been invited by Sidney Rigdon, a former Disciples of Christ preacher who was attracted by Smith’s advocacy of a communitarian lifestyle. They bought land, set up businesses, constructed a temple, and sent out dozens of missionaries across Ohio and to the West. Their membership grew rapidly, but their growth, along with their debts and other financial difficulties, aroused resentment in the surrounding communities. In 1837 they left Kirtland for a new settlement near Independence, Missouri. Smith had long before named Missouri as Zion, the location on which the city of God was to be built. But there, too, they faced overwhelming hostility from other settlers who disliked Mormon proselytizing and had no desire to see the Mormon Kingdom erected in their midst. After encounters with an armed militia the Mormons were forced to flee to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they arrived in 1839.

Nauvoo. For a few years it seemed that Smith and his followers had at last found a home. Nauvoo became the largest and fastest-growing city in Illinois. Many of the new settlers were Mormon converts who had left their homes to join the Prophet; many others were converted upon their arrival. Between 1841 and 1843, however, their relatively peaceful existence was disturbed when Smith introduced a series of new doctrines and practices into the church. The most controversial of these, the practice of polygamy, or “plural marriage,” caused conflict within the Mormon community, while rumors of the practice (which was kept secret) caused increased hostility from nonMormons. Hostility grew into violence after Joseph Smith, who had declared himself a candidate in the 1844 race for president of the United States, illegally destroyed the opposition press in Nauvoo. An outraged citizen militia seized Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, who were thrown in a Carthage, Illinois, jail. On 27 June 1844 a mob stormed the jail and murdered both men.

Brigham Young. A struggle for leadership of the Mormon Church followed Smith’s death. One faction denied polygamy and other recent revelations and settled in Missouri as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Smaller splinter groups settled elsewhere in the Midwest. But the largest faction followed Brigham Young on a long trek (1846–1848) to the unsettled territory of what would become Salt Lake City, Utah. Young was a brilliant organizer, and under his guidance the Mormon community prospered. Utah became a formal territory of the United States in 1850, and old conflicts between Mormon ways and the laws and norms of the United States were renewed. Eventually the Mormons renounced polygamy and increasingly conformed to American cultural norms. They have nonetheless maintained their distinctive character, while becoming an accepted and vibrant element of the American religious milieu.