From Peoplehood to Church Membership: Mormonism's Trajectory since World War II | Church History | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

Extract

Christians of every stripe are bound into faith communities by two sets of identifying metaphors. One, the body of Christ, is derived from the New Testament's account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The other, drawn from Hebraic prophecy, is linked to the understanding that Jesus was of the house and lineage of David. As the crucified Messiah, he stood at the head of the house of Israel as both Lord and Christ. In the practical terms spelled out in the Pauline letters, the first of these metaphorical congeries describes the church as Christ's body, an entity with members and a head. The second turns Christ's followers into a kinship group that is a party to a new covenant with God. Despite its heterogeneity, its inclusion of Gentiles as well as Jews, this group—along with the Jews—is one that the ancient of days selected to be his chosen people.

References

  1. Morton, Thomas, New English Canaan: or New Canaan, containing an Abstract of New England composed in three bookes (London: Printed by Charles Green, 1632)Google Scholar; reprinted in Force's Tracts: North American Colonies (New York: Peter Smith, 1947)Google Scholar, vol. 2, part 5.

  2. Miller, Perry, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper and Row, 1964).Google Scholar

  3. Looking to the New Testament, as well as to the Book of Mormon, the members of the newly restored Church of Christ held that Jesus restored his gospel and through the ministry of apostolic witnesses offered its saving truths to all men. But a “great apostasy” took place “when men departed from the pure Christianity, which was restored in the meridian of time”: see “Apostasy,” s.v., in Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1966).Google Scholar

  4. One of the best descriptions of the restoration of the church is found in The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah: Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981), section 112. This work of scripture is regularly cited as D&C, followed by section and verse.

  5. The organization of the Christian movement was complicated. The Campbells, father and son, were Presbyterians, but they moved out of that denomination and through a connection with the Baptists before creating a restoration movement designed to unite all Christendom. Although he did not remain in a leadership role, Barton W. Stone is usually cited as one of the founders of this movement.

  6. Accounts of the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are legion. For one of the most recent as well as one of the best, see Richard Lyman Bushman's biography of the prophet, Mormon, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)Google Scholar, chap. 4 and 5. For a more institutional account, see Allen, James B. and Leonard, Glen M., The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret, 1976)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

  7. Thomas G. Alexander, “The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine,” Sunstone 23:3–4 (June 1999): 16. In this prize-winning article that was originally published in 1980 and reprinted in both the tenth and twenty-fifth issues of Sunstone, Alexander makes a persuasive case that “the doctrine of God preached and believed [by Latter-day Saints] before 1835 was essentially trinitarian with God the Father seen as an absolute personage of Spirit, Jesus Christ as a personage of tabernacle, and the Holy Ghost as an impersonal spiritual member of the Godhead.”

  8. The most important monograph about the Book of Mormon is Terryl Givens, L., By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

  9. Biographies of the Mormon prophet all cover these aspects of Mormon beginnings. In addition to Bushman's recent biography of the prophet cited in note 6, other recent studies include Vogel, Dan, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature, 2004)Google Scholar; and Morain, William D., The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr., and the Dissociated Mind (Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric, 1998)Google Scholar. Older biographical studies are Bushman, Richard Lyman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Hill, Donna, The First Mormon (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977)Google Scholar; and Brodie, Fawn McKay, No Man Knows My History (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945)Google Scholar. See also, Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature, 2002).

  10. Even before the Book of Mormon was published, the local press in western New York was ridiculing the Book of Mormon. In June and July 1830, the Palmyra, N.Y., Reflector published a parody of the Book of Mormon called “The Book of Pukei.” Other famous articles of this nature are the so-called “Dogberry Editorials,” written by Abner Cole, the editor of the Reflector, and published between January 6 and March 19, 1831. Less well known is a book published in New York and Boston by C. S. Francis in 1833 with the following complex title: Mother Goose's Melodies: The Only Pure Edition containing All That Have Ever Come to Light of Her Memorable Writings together with those which have been discovered among the MSS. of Herculaneum. Likewise Every One Recently Found in the Same Stone Box Which Held the Golden Plates of the Book of Mormon [emphasis mine].

  11. Accounts that describe mobs gathering to persecute the Latter-day Saints are also legion. Determining what proportion of the opposition to Joseph Smith and his compatriots was based on the jealousy of local “money-diggers” anxious to gain access to the golden plates as opposed to local citizens who were worried about the development of a new religious movement is difficult. Clearly opponents engaged in both types of hostile action. The most recent account of the New York years in which such animosity was manifest is Bushman, , Rough Stone Rolling, 58–126.Google Scholar

  12. Its competitors added “Mormonite” to the name of the new church body in order to signify its lack of legitimacy. The way in which this new organization figured in the religious marketplace is spelled out in fascinating detail in the Journals of William E. McLellin, ed. Jan Shipps and John W. Welch (Urbana: University of Illinois Press; Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, 1994).Google Scholar

  13. In the mid-1830s, the official name of the church was changed to “The Church of the Latter Day Saints.” A sufficient number of Saints complained about the absence of “Christ” in the church's name to cause Joseph Smith to change it to the current “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”: see Richard Anderson, L., “What Changes Have Been Made in the Name of the Church,” Ensign 9 (January 1979):13–14.Google Scholar

  14. The wording comes from a revelation first printed in A Book of Commandments for the Government of the Church of Christ (Zion [Independence, Mo.]: W. W. Phelps, 1833)Google Scholar, chap. 29. This was the first edition of what became the Doctrines and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the current edition of the D&C, this revelation is also numbered 29, but instead of being called “chapter,” it is referred to as “section 29.”

  15. Much of the wording of this revelation would have been familiar to a biblically literate people, including the forecast that the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall be turned into blood. This passage is found in Joel 2:31, Acts 2:20, and Revelation 6:12.

  16. These historical and theological developments are fully described in Shipps, , “Joseph Smith and the Creation of LDS Theology,” chap. 14, in Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 289–301.Google Scholar

  17. The most complete account of the patriarchy is Irene Bates, M. and Smith, E. Gary, Lost Legacy: The Mormon Office of Presiding Patriarch (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996)Google Scholar: see especially chap. 2 and 3.

  18. Evidence that their settlements in Missouri were known as Zion is found in Shipps, and Welch, , ed., The McLellin Journals, 119, 120, 137, 139Google Scholar. In these missionary journals, McLellin, one of the first twelve Mormon Apostles, writes of missionaries coming from and going to Zion.

  19. Dedication of the so-called “Temple Lot” was a part of the identification of Independence, Missouri, as the “center place,” the locale for the commencing of the Second Coming: see D&C, 58:57.

  20. D&C, 38:19–20. See especially the section about the Mormons' Missouri “Zion” in Bushman's, Rough Stone Rolling, 161–68.Google Scholar

  21. Shipps, “Another Side of Early Mormonism,” introductory essay, in The McLellin Journals. See note 18 above.

  22. D&C, 107. The initial name for the Council of the Twelve was the “Traveling High Council”: see “The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,” in Quinn, D. Michael, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature, 1994), 57–67.Google Scholar

  23. The Articles of Faith were a part of the “Wentworth Letter” that Joseph Smith sent to the editor of the Chicago Democrat in 1842. The third article deals with the centrality of the atonement of Jesus Christ to the belief system of the Latter-day Saints.

  24. Mackay, Charles, The Mormons: or Latter-Day Saints With Memoirs of The Life and Death of Joseph Smith the “American Mahomet” (London: Vizetelly, 1852).Google Scholar

  25. Flanders, Robert, “To Transform History: Early Mormon Culture and the Concept of Time and Space,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 40:1 (03 1971): 108–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cannon, Donald Q., “The King Follett Discourse: Joseph Smith's Greatest Sermon in Historical Perspective,” BYU Studies 18:2 (winter 1978): 179–92Google Scholar; Hale, Van, “The Doctrinal Impact of the King Follett Discourse,” BYU Studies 18:2 (winter 1978): 209–23Google Scholar; the revelation on Celestial Marriage is D&C, 132.

  26. Because plural marriage was initially central to this final layer of restoration, it was not fully revealed to all the members of the Mormon community. Its piecemeal introduction in Nauvoo caused a deep divide within the church, one that was expressed in political action that opened the LDS “kingdom on the Mississippi” to outside interference that led directly to the murders of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Details about this break within the community are included in all general historical works on Nauvoo, as well as in biographical treatments of the Saints who lived in Nauvoo.

  27. This ecclesiastical body, which was “reorganized” in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III, the first Mormon prophet's eldest son, is headquartered in Independence, Mo. By no means was this the only institution to issue from the fragmentation of the LDS community that occurred after the death of Joseph Smith. A convenient handbook that includes a sketch of a multitude of these institutions and groups is Shields, Steven L., Divergent Paths of the Restoration: A History of the Latter Day Saint Movement, 4th ed., rev. and enl. (Los Angeles: Restoration Research, 1990).Google Scholar

  28. The most complete treatment of the Smith family's rejection of celestial marriage and other distinctive doctrines such as baptism for the dead that the Mormon prophet revealed in Nauvoo is found in the work of Roger D. Launius and Valeen Tippetts Avery. See especially Launius, , Joseph Smith III: Pragmatic Prophet (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Avery, , From Mission to Madness: Last Son of the Mormon Prophet (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).Google Scholar

  29. Shipps, , Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985)Google Scholar, especially chap. 3, “History as Text.”

  30. Large numbers of accounts of the Mormon pioneer experience exist, both in manuscript and in print. Arrington, Leonard J., Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958)Google Scholar is universally recognized as one of the very best. For an insightful discussion of migration as a “theologizing experience” that can turn migrants into chosen populations, see Smith, Timothy L., “Religion and Ethnicity in America,” American Historical Review 83:5 (12 1978):1155–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 1181. See also Shipps, “Brigham Young and His Times: A Continuing Force in Mormonism,” chap. 12, in Sojourner in the Promised Land, especially 249–51.

  31. MacKinnon, William P., “The Buchanan Spoils System and the Utah Expedition: Careers of W. M. F. McGraw and John Hockaday,” Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (winter 1977): 127–50Google Scholar; Poll, Richard D. and MacKinnon, William P., “Causes of the Utah War Reconsidered,” Journal of Mormon History 20:2 (1994):16–45.Google Scholar

  32. Gordon, Sarah Barringer, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar, chap. 5.

  33. Lyon, T. Edgar, “Religious Activities and Development in Utah, 1847–1910,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35 (fall, 1967):293–306.Google Scholar

  34. Alexander, Thomas G., Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature, 1991), 261–305Google Scholar; Alexander, , Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).Google Scholar

  35. The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph, compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret, 1976), 149–50Google Scholar. This teaching is indexed under “Comforter,” and it has to do with the descent of the Holy Ghost that Saints receive after faith, repentance, and baptism.

  36. “A Discourse by Brigham Young,” delivered in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City on April 8, 1855, printed in Journal of Discourses: Sermons of the Prophets and Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 26 vols. (London: privately printed, 1854–1886), 2:266–69.Google Scholar

  37. “In and Out of Time,” chap. 6, in Shipps, Mormonism, begins with an extended discussion of what it meant to live in the Mormon kingdom.

  38. Mormon culture region, a term coined by geographers, entered academic discourse with the publication of Meinig's, Donald W. “The Mormon Culture Region: Strategies and Patterns in the Geography of the American West, 1847–1964,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55 (June 1965): 191–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This region includes the entire state of Utah, northern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, eastern Nevada, western Colorado, southern Idaho, and southwestern Wyoming.

  39. At this point in the American experience, the nation almost came to understand itself through the pages of the Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, Coronet, and Life magazines. It was in these publications that efforts were made to “plant” Mormon stories and articles about the Latter-day Saints and their church.

  40. Marini, Stephen, “Mormons and Music: Maintaining and Mainstreaming Sectarian Identity,” chap. 8, in Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003).Google Scholar

  41. The sociologist whose work is most often consulted with regard to Mormon growth is Rodney Stark, who published his first article on the subject in 1984. See Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Mormonism, ed. Neilson, Reid L. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is a collection of Stark's articles, revised by the author himself.

  42. Alder, Douglas D., “The German-Speaking Immigration to Utah, 1850–1950” (master's thesis, University of Utah, 1950), 115.Google Scholar

  43. “The Scattering of the Gathering and the Gathering of the Scattered: The Mid-Twentieth Century Mormon Diaspora,” chap. 13, in Sojourner in the Promised Land.

  44. Bradley, Martha Sonntag, “The Church and Colonel Sanders: Mormon Standard Plan Architecture” (master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1981).Google Scholar

  45. The program under which church publications and programs are currently administered is known as “Correlation.” Whereas earlier church programs were planned, carried out, and controlled in the various church “auxiliary organizations” such as the (Female) Relief Society, the Sunday School, Mutual Improvement Associations for Young Women and Young Men, and Primary (programs for children younger than twelve years old), leaders of these organizations now operate in true auxiliary fashion, under the direct oversight of the LDS Priesthood.

  46. “Correlation,” s.v., in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow (New York: Macmillan, 1992).Google Scholar

  47. Foster, Lawrence, “Apostate Believers: Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Encounter with Mormon History,” in Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History, ed. Launius, Roger D. and Linda, Thatcher (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 343–65Google Scholar. The most extreme charges against the Mormon claim to be Christian were made in Decker, Ed and Hunt, Dave, The God Makers: A Shocking Exposé of What the Mormon Church Really Believes, rev. ed. (Eugene, Ore.: Harvest House, 1997)Google Scholar. This book was made into a film that was regularly shown in evangelical churches.

  48. The notion of Mormon DNA is much discussed among Latter-day Saints who regard themselves as “cultural Mormons.” For a prime example of this, see Anderson, Lavinia Fielding, “DNA Mormon: D. Michael Quinn,” chap. 13, in Mormon Mavericks: Essays on Dissenters, ed. John, Sillito and Susan, Staker (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature, 2002), 329–64.Google Scholar