The Changing World Of Mormonism: A Behind-the-Scenes Look At Changes In Mormon Doctrine And Practice

Americans looked on these changes with a mixture of enthusiasm and suspicio=
n, wondering how the moral fabric of the new nation would hold up to emergi=
ng social challenges. Increasingly, many turned to two powerful tools to he=
lp understand and manage the various transformations: spiritual revivalism =
and social reform. Reacting to the rationalism of the eighteenth-century En=
lightenment, the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening reignited=
 Protestant spirituality during the early nineteenth century. The revivals =
incorporated worshippers into an expansive religious community that crisscr=
ossed all regions of the United States and armed them with a potent evangel=
ical mission. Many emerged from these religious revivals with a conviction =
that human society could be changed to look more heavenly. They joined thei=
r spiritual networks to rapidly developing social reform networks that soug=
ht to alleviate social ills and eradicate moral vice. Tackling numerous iss=
ues, including alcoholism, slavery, and the inequality of women, reformers =
worked tirelessly to remake the world around them. While not all these init=
iatives were successful, the zeal of reform and the spiritual rejuvenation =
that inspired it were key facets of antebellum life and society.

When Mormonism, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as it ca=
me to be officially designated, first emerged on the religious scene in 183=
0, it was simply one of the many, often short-lived, new religious groups b=
orn amidst the spiritual ferment of mid-nineteenth-century America. But by =
the mid-1840s, Mormonism had established itself as a dynamic and distinctiv=
e new religious tradition. The historical significance of Mormonism lies no=
t so much in its size and success in gaining adherents. (By 1845, it had ne=
arly 40,000 believers; by 1870, 120,000.=20
The Mormon Temple
Salt Lake City, Utah, ca. 1880-1900
Library of CongressToday, with over seven million members in the United Sta=
tes alone, Mormonism is among the fastest growing of the world's religions.=
) What is most significant historically about Mormonism is that it was not =
simply another Christian sect or denomination but was the only new religiou=
s tradition founded in nineteenth-century America. Equally important is Mor=
monism's complex and embattled relation to both the society from which it e=
merged and to the evangelicalism that was such a dominant force in the soci=
ety.
Doctrine and HistoryThe birth of Mormonism centered on one man, Joseph Smit=
h, Jr. (1806-1844) a farmer from theregion of western New York known as the=
 "burned-over district" because of its unrelenting religious enthusiasm. It=
 was launched in 1830 with the publication of the Book of Mormon, the sacre=
d text which became the foundation for new religion. As Smith told the stor=
y, seven years earlier the angel Moroni had appeared before him and told hi=
m of a book written on gold plates and buried in a hill outside Manchester,=
 New York. Then, on September 22, 1827, after other visitations from Moroni=
 the plates were turned over to Smith. Over the next twenty-four months, Sm=
ith and a few trusted associates, using special, ancient, "seer" stones, "t=
ranslated" the Egyptian hieroglyphics of the plates into English. When they=
 had finished this arduous task, Smith reported, as arranged, he delivered =
the plates back to the angel.The Book of Mormon was not simply an arresting=
 and powerful spiritual treatise like John Fox's Book of Martyrs, which bec=
ame the foundational text of Quakerism. Rather, Smith promulgated it as a n=
ew, sacred and canonical text, a wholly new dispensation of scriptural trut=
h that God, working through the angel Moroni and his chosen earthly vessel,=
 Joseph Smith, delivered to humankind. As such, for Mormon believers, the B=
ook of Mormon possesses the same canonical standing as the old and new test=
aments do for Protestants and Catholics. In fact,just as early Christians s=
aw the New Testament, with its narrative of Christ as the fulfillment of Ol=
d Testament prophesies, as the completion of God's delivery of scriptural t=
ruth, so too did Mormons see the Book of Mormon, with its prediction of a n=
ew prophetic figure, as God's third and final dispensation. To believers, i=
n fact, the Book of Mormon built directly on the promises and predictions o=
f the earlier texts: it was the "sealed" book, described in the Book of Isa=
iah, theappearance of which would signal the coming of the "end-times" pred=
icted in the Book of Revelation. Thus did the Mormons identify themselves a=
s "saints," the new Israelites called out from the Gentiles to usher in the=
 millennium. Finally, the Book of Mormon revealed that on the day it "spoke=
 out of the ground," a prophet, named Joseph like his father, would appear =
and, with the aid of revelations delivered to him directly from God, establ=
ish the Godly kingdom on earththat would prepare the way for Christ's Secon=
d Coming. From the beginning, Joseph Smith and his followers provoked ridic=
ule for Mormonism's seemingly magical if not superstitious origins, and opp=
osition as a heresy that dared to claim itself "the only true and living ch=
urch upon the face of the whole earth." Feeling themselves persecuted by th=
eir upstate New York neighbors, they organized separate Mormon settlements =
in Kirtland, Ohio, and in Independence, Missouri. Kirtland was the seat of =
the prophet where in l836 the Mormons built and consecrated an elaborate te=
mple. In both places, they isolatedthemselves from their neighbors, and, mu=
ch as other nineteenth-century religious communitarian groups like the Shak=
ers or the Amish, set up cohesive, economically self-sufficient and largely=
 self-governing communities, setting themselves up not simply as a group of=
 worshipers but as a people apart. Neither Ohio nor Missouri provided adequ=
ate refuge against the hostility of neighbors suspicious of Mormon belief a=
nd fearful of Mormonism's growing numbers and economic prosperity and power=
. In 1833 their Missouri neighbors attacked the settlement, forcing the Mor=
mons to abandon Independence. Opposition also intensified back in Ohio and =
by early l838 most of the Kirtland Mormons, led by the prophet, had departe=
d for Missouri, where they joined forces with their Independence coreligion=
ists who had resettled in a county organized especially for them. Still, th=
e tension between the Mormons and their Gentile neighbors escalated into ar=
med conflict, and the saints were forced to flee once again.In the spring o=
f 1839, nearly 15,000 Mormons crossed into Illinois, where they purchased t=
he town of Commerce, which they renamed Nauvoo. Granted a charter that made=
 Nauvoo virtually an independent municipality with its own court system and=
 militia, the Mormon settlement by l844 had become the largest city in the =
state. In Nauvoo, Smith completed the process of organizational and doctrin=
al consolidation begun in Kirtland. What had begun as an effort to recover =
the clarity and simplicity of early Christianity and the pure and authorita=
tive forms of the apostolic church, developed into a more doctrinally compl=
ex and more elaborate and hierarchical religious structure. With the consec=
ration of the temple in Kirtland, Smith turned away from the example of the=
 early church and embraced more ancient Hebraic models of organization. In =
addition to deacons, elders, priests and bishops, he instituted a "First Pr=
esidency," composed of Smith as president and two counselors, a high counse=
l, a special Quorum of Seventy, a Council of Twelve Apostles, and a patriar=
ch, the first of which Smith ordained his own father. Finally, revelation g=
ranted the Lord's "servant, Joseph Smith, jun.," the sole authority for rec=
eiving "commandments and revelations" from God. In addition to this revelat=
ion securing the ultimate authority of the prophet (and president), Smith a=
nnounced the key revelation concerning "celestial marriage" under which sai=
nts' marriages were "sealed" for eternity. This doctrine became the basis f=
or the revelation (disclosed to a chosen few saints in l843) for the practi=
ce of "plural marriages," under which select and worthy Mormon men couldtak=
e multiple wives. Growing Mormon power alarmed their initially welcoming Il=
linois neighbors. In addition totheir economic power, Mormons voted as a bl=
ock in accordance with revelation announced fromthe pulpit. In 1844, Smith,=
 who had revealed a plan for organizing the kingdom of God on earthwith him=
self as king, declared his candidacy for president of the United States. In=
 June, JosephSmith and his brother Hyrum were arrested, dragged from jail, =
and murdered by a group ofmilitia called out to protect the state against a=
 feared Mormon uprising. After Smith's murder,the Mormons regrouped and und=
er the leadership of Brigham Young, selected as Smith'ssuccessor as prophet=
 and president, undertook the "great trek" westward to the Utah Territory,w=
here they established a virtual Mormon kingdom, centered in Great Salt Lake=
 City, which theycalled the State of Deseret. In Utah, under the long leade=
rship of Young (1847-1877), buildingon the precepts of plural marriage and =
patriarchal, prophetic governance promulgated by JosephSmith, the Mormons e=
stablished a unique, cohesive, economically self-sufficient, and thrivingso=
ciety. Indeed, at the time of Young's death in l877, the Utah Mormons, augm=
ented byconverts from England and elsewhere in Europe, numbered close to 15=
0,000. The Great BasinKingdom endured largely intact into the 1880s. But th=
en, due to mounting hostility that centeredon the practice of polygamy (whi=
ch the U.S. Congress declared illegal by the Edmunds Act of l882), the Morm=
ons relinquished their most controversial doctrine. After the arrest of a n=
umberof Mormon leaders, the president of the church, Wilford Woodruff, in e=
xchange for grantingUtah statehood, agreed to halt plural marriage and diss=
olve the separate Mormon political party.
Religious and Social SourcesThroughout the nineteenth century and most of t=
he twentieth, Mormonism has been viewed as anaberrant, bizarre, isolated, a=
nd largely self-contained religious movement cut off from themainstream of =
American society. But what this picture obscures is the extent to whichMorm=
onism, for all its distinctiveness, was not only rooted in many of the broa=
der ideas thatcharacterized early nineteenth-century evangelicalism but was=
 also broadly responsive to thesocial changes playing across nineteenth-cen=
tury American society. Like the Campbellite movement or the "primitive" Bap=
tists, it sought to cut through theconfusing welter of warring sects and de=
nominations and restore the simplicity of the earlychurch by resting itself=
 on a few clearly revealed, authoritative truths. It also reflected the str=
ongcurrent of belief in magic and the occult and in the reality of spiritua=
l visions and divine signsthat was widespread in the culture. (In fact, in =
1831 in Southampton County, Virginia, anotherprophetic figure, Nat Turner, =
following signs and visions given only to him, launched a bloodyslave insur=
rection that he too saw predicted in the Book of Revelation.) Finally, of c=
ourse, themillennialism at the heart of Mormonism drew on evangelicalism's =
pervasive sense of millennialexpectancy. Mormonism, however, took these bro=
ader religious impulses farther than more "mainstream"religious groups were=
 willing to go. Cutting through the complex doctrines surroundingevangelica=
l conversion and spiritual rebirth, it simply shed the idea of original sin=
 and promisedsalvation to all who professed belief in Jesus Christ, renounc=
ed sin, and promised to obey theclerked "laws and ordinances of the Bible."=
 Mormonism also went well beyond mere millennialexpectancy. To believers, d=
eliverance of the Book of Mormon and the institution of a Mormonorder had l=
aunched the "latter days." Mormons considered the social and spiritual orde=
r thatJoseph Smith tried to build in Nauvoo and that Brigham Young and his =
followers established inthe Great Basin of Utah as the actual kingdom of Go=
d on earth, the replica of the celestialkingdom to which all "saints" were =
sealed for all eternity.Mormon doctrine and organization also reflected bro=
ader and often contradictory socialconditions. Above all, it provided despe=
rately desired structure for lives beset byunpredictability, disorder, and =
change. It gave its adherents enormous social, psychological, andeconomic s=
upport. In social terms, in fact, Mormonism can be seen as perhaps the most=
successful, dynamic, and enduring version of the communitarianism of the l8=
30s and 1840s. Itprovided isolated, struggling, often desperate families li=
ke the Smiths and Youngs fromeconomically changing or declining countryside=
 and small towns from the Northeast andMidwest with a new kind of economic =
security and cooperation. In the early years in Kirtland,the Mormons, like =
the Shakers or the Moravians, practiced a form of economic communism inwhic=
h the church held title to all property and possessions. Even when they aba=
ndoned churchownership of property, the Mormons made sure that those who jo=
ined their community had abeginning economic stake in the community and ins=
tituted a strict regime of tithing to insure thatno member of the community=
 would be abandoned to poverty. Mormons extolled hard workand discipline an=
d soon offered tangible proof that it would be rewarded with solid and secu=
reproperty. The Mormon social order, referred to by some scholars as a theo=
cratic-democracy, embodied aunique combination of democracy, hierarchy, and=
 authoritarianism. All adult males possessedthe franchise. Moreover, Mormon=
ism did not possess a priesthood or organized, speciallytrained, and paid c=
lergy. In effect, it obliterated the distinction between clergy and laity b=
ymaking all adult males from the age of twelve members of the priesthood wh=
o could ascend asthey matured from the lowest to the highest rank or "quoru=
m" of the priesthood. After BrighamYoung, the position of president and pro=
phet devolved on the eldest surviving member of theCouncil of Twelve Apostl=
es. Females, though "sealed" as "saints," were not admitted to thepriesthoo=
d nor granted the vote, though they did have a series of special, gender-ba=
sed roles andassociations.But at the core of the Mormon social order, espec=
ially as it developed in the Desert Kingdom ofremote and isolated Utah, was=
 its unique familial organization rooted in the practice ofpolygamy. The ex=
traordinary motion and mobility of American society that launched thousands=
upon thousands of families into a kind of rootless nomadism destroyed most =
vestiges of thebroader kinship networks that had characterized much of eigh=
teenth-century America. Againand again, in diaries and letters as well as i=
n newspapers and tracts of various description,Americans decried the evils =
of "isolated households." The familial organization of Mormonsociety counte=
red this society by incorporating its members into a resolutely patriarchal=
 structurethat seemed not only to restore but to extend and strengthen patr=
iarchal authority and the scopeand power of kinship by grounding it in Hebr=
aic models drawn from the Old Testament andreinforced by the ongoing revela=
tions to the Mormon prophet.Finally, Mormonism was organizationally, cultur=
ally, and intellectually comprehensive,cohesive, and complete. To many it p=
roved a welcome antidote to a highly fluid society oframpant individualism =
in which people sought improvement and prosperity for themselves andtheir f=
amilies at the same time as they craved a sense of belonging and sought out=
 various formsof community. The comprehensiveness of Mormonism, moreover, c=
ombined with its self-contained isolation and sense of itself as different,=
 superior, and exclusive, provided its adherentswith a sense of identity, b=
elonging, and esteem comparable to that which Afro-Christianreligions provi=
ded enslaved African Americans and which Roman Catholicism providednineteen=
th-century Irish immigrants.
The Sources of Anti-Mormon HostilityA puzzle remains. If Mormonism was so d=
eeply embedded in broader religious ideas andimpulses and so reflective of =
broader social processes, how do we account for the hostility withwhich non=
-Mormon Americans greeted it? In some ways, anti-Mormonism can be seen as a=
 partof the deeper and violent intolerance of the l830s and l840s that was =
also turned against Masons,Roman Catholics, Native Americans, and blacks in=
 the "free" north.Most Protestant Americans perceived Mormonism as an alien=
 and threatening force, almost as"un-American" outsiders at odds with "nati=
ve" American values and beliefs as the RomanCatholic Irish immigrants. The =
Mormons exhibited a sense of exclusiveness, superiority andrighteousness --=
they condemned all existing forms of Christianity as false religions. But, =
unlikesuch exclusive, doctrinally idiosyncratic groups as the Shakers who p=
rovoked opposition andridicule but little violence, the Mormons before the =
migration to Utah seemed to run counter aswell to basic American democratic=
 values and practices. Like the Masons and the "MonsterBank," the Mormons s=
eemed to those who drove them out of Missouri and Illinois to representan i=
llegitimate concentration of power. Mormonism seemed a mysterious cult, clo=
aked insecrecy and bent on assembling illegitimate, almost monopolistic pow=
er that would preventordinary non-Mormons from fulfilling their dreams of d=
emocratic self-improvement and rise. And like Roman Catholicism, it seemed =
an un-American and antidemocratic form of religionwhose adherents were unde=
r the dominion of an autocratic "prophet" who not only controlledbelief but=
 also dictated how believers should vote in secular elections. Finally, wit=
h thepromulgation of its doctrine of plural marriage, Mormonism threatened =
to undermine theconventional institution of monogamy that "mainstream" Amer=
ica increasingly envisioned as acentral bulwark against immorality and the =
principal agency for the control of sexuality. For allof these reasons, Mor=
monism served as a convenient "other" upon which "mainstream" Americacould =
project many of its deepest fears and anxieties.

The Changing World of Mormonism: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Changes in Mor=
mon Doctrine and Practice
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