Chapter 14: Conflict to Conformity

My experience as an outsider interacting with Mormons for the last four decades is that there are times when Mormon Utah seems so normal and all-American. I will admit that I find it attractive. There are moments as we live here in Utah when you get the feeling that this is the way America is supposed to be. There is another experience that occurs when you live in Utah. It is when we have those “Oz Moments,” when we realize just how different this place is.

The reason there are two different experiences is because the LDS Church has a story, and Mormon culture is a product of that story. There are two distinct periods of Mormon history. From 1820 to 1890, we have the period when Latter-day Saints, by and large, conflicted with American culture.

In 1890, the LDS Church made a decision that changed the course of its history. It put an end to the practice that, more than any other, created conflict between itself and the rest of America. That was the practice of polygamy. Since then, rather than conflicting with American culture, the LDS Church has sought to conform itself to it.

The Mormon story begins in 1820 with Joseph Smith. Joseph was 14, living in Palmyra, in western New York, which, at that time, was the American frontier. During Joseph Smith’s youth, traveling evangelists would come and hold camp meetings in the area in which he lived. These were multi-day events where people would go and hear evangelistic messages and get caught up in the fires of revival.

Eventually, those revivals would end, and the excitement would die down until the next evangelist came. In time, the area where Joseph Smith grew up became known as the “Burnt-Over District” because it was said that religion had been burned out of the people.

Joseph Smith’s story was that the competing messages of the different evangelists had created confusion for him. At the age of 14, Joseph claims to have gone out to a place that Latter-day Saints call the “Sacred Grove.” Joseph later wrote:

“My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, then I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt.”

This is called the “First Vision.” Joseph actually gave several accounts of this experience. The account quoted here is the official version, which was not published until almost 20 years after the vision itself. This account of the First Vision gives insight into the way that Joseph Smith saw himself and the Church he was leading at that time.

Joseph and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believed that, when it came to the churches of Christendom, “all their creeds are an abomination and their professors are corrupt.” With this statement, Joseph draws a line between himself, and the movement that he was leading, and the different Christian churches that were prevalent in his time.

The First Vision is foundational to Mormonism because it sets out the founding principle of the LDS faith. Joseph Smith taught that a great apostasy had taken place at the close of the first century with the deaths of the original apostles. The one true Church did not exist on Earth until God chose to restore it through Joseph Smith. The First Vision is the beginning of what Mormons call “The Restoration.”

Several years after the First Vision, Joseph claimed that he had learned of the existence of golden plates from an angel named Moroni, who told him that they contained the story of God’s dealings with the inhabitants of the ancient Americas. In time, Joseph claimed to uncover those plates and translate them. His translation of these golden plates became the Book of Mormon. This book, translated by an untutored young man such as Joseph Smith, became the founding miracle of Mormonism.

Based on this book, Joseph claimed to be God’s prophet, sent to restore the one true Church. He said that the Book of Mormon was a book of Scripture comparable to the Bible, and its existence, more than anything else, proved that he was a prophet. Armed with these new Scriptures, Joseph officially restored the one true Church of Jesus Christ on April 6, 1830. He was president, prophet, seer, and revelator, all wrapped into one person. Shortly after the founding of the Church, Joseph restored the Melchizedek and Aaronic priesthoods. Once these priesthoods were restored, the Church once again had the authority to perform ordinances necessary for salvation and exaltation.

Many traditional Christians considered Joseph’s claims outrageous. Many opposed Joseph based on his character and family background. His family had been known for digging for buried treasure, and Joseph had been known to employ occultic means to do so. He had been known as a teller of tall tales, and his story of the way that the Book of Mormon had come about was, to his opponents, evidence of his deception.

Joseph Smith was a man with charisma and the ability to make people believe. The Church grew. If there is one thing that Joseph understood, it was how to take the opposition and persecution that came against him and use it to further his purposes.

Historian Laurence Moore, in his book Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans, makes the following observation about Joseph Smith:

“Joseph Smith eventually learned that he had something at stake in making his claims appear as outrageous as he possibly could. He recognized that reproach was one way of being noticed and taken seriously.”

Joseph boasted that he was the most persecuted man on Earth. Moore writes, “Sometimes it seems that Joseph’s behavior was meant to outrage and invite persecution.” When he was persecuted, he would say, in effect, “See, I am being persecuted. Prophets are persecuted; therefore, I am a prophet.” Part of the identity of the Mormon people was that they were a persecuted people. That became part of the Mormon DNA.

Make no mistake about it: the persecution was at times real. As they met opposition, the Saints became a wandering people. The Saints moved from Palmyra, New York, to Kirtland, Ohio, and then to Far West, Missouri. In Missouri, Joseph claimed to discover the place of the original Garden of Eden. He claimed that the return of Jesus Christ would take place in Missouri.

Mormons and Missourians did not mix well. In time, Joseph and the Mormons were perceived to be a political threat. There was open hostility that led to violence, which escalated to the point where Missouri’s governor issued an order that said, “The Mormons must be treated as enemies; and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary, for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description.”

Before that, Joseph had fanned the flames of conflict with a sermon in which he said, “We will preach the gospel of peace, but if they come at us to molest us, we will establish our religion by the sword. We will trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. I will be to this generation a second Mohammed whose motto was the ‘Alcoran or the sword.’ So shall it be eventually with us. Joseph Smith or the sword.”

The Missourians seemed to take him seriously, and they were merciless. There was a massacre of 17 Mormons at Haun’s Mill. Joseph was arrested, and at one point it appeared that he would be executed, but he eventually was allowed to escape. The Mormon people went through horrific suffering in Missouri, but the movement proved to be resilient.

Why did the Mormon people stick with Joseph through all these persecutions? Many did defect, but, by and large, he was able to convince people that persecution by their enemies took place because they were indeed the one true Church and he was the Lord’s prophet. The Mormon people, motivated by their identity as a persecuted people, became incredibly resilient. Rather than being defeated by persecution, their determination and faith seemed to be energized by it.

From Missouri, the Latter-day Saints went to Nauvoo, Illinois. By 1844, Nauvoo had grown to be a city of around 12,000. In Nauvoo, Joseph formed an army called the Nauvoo Legion and subsequently took the rank of general. In 1844, Joseph announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. His ambition seemed to know no bounds.

That ambition also extended to marriage. During his time in Nauvoo, word began to get out that Joseph had entered into marriages with multiple women. Joseph was married to his first wife, Emma, in 1827, but, beginning as early as 1831, Joseph began to take other women as his wives. Ultimately, he took in the neighborhood of 40 wives. He taught those in his inner circle that these plural marriages were practices that were ordained by God.

This practice was kept secret until a disaffected follower named William Law printed a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor that exposed Joseph’s involvement in polygamy. Soon after this, Joseph had the printing press of the Nauvoo Expositor destroyed. He was arrested and sent to jail in nearby Carthage. A mob attacked the jail, and Joseph was shot and killed.

Rather than being the end of Mormonism, this created much of the energy and dynamism that existed throughout the history of the Church. The LDS Church now had a martyr. When Brigham Young was appointed president of the Church, it also had a leader with vision and organizational ability. Brigham Young realized that the Saints could not remain in Illinois and survive. In 1846–1847, he led the Saints out of Illinois, across the plains, and into what is today Utah. This Mormon exodus from Illinois to Utah has a similar kind of importance to them as the Exodus out of slavery had to the Jews.

With the death of Joseph Smith, the sense among Latter-day Saints that they were a persecuted people only grew. The reality is that, in going to Utah, they had left the United States. When Brigham Young entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, and said, “This is the place,” he was looking at territory that, at that time, belonged to Mexico.

The reason that Utah was the place for Brigham is that it was, by and large, desert. He believed that it would be unattractive to settlers from the East. He believed that, in this place, the Saints would be left alone so they could practice their faith. That meant they would be free to practice polygamy.

After the Mexican-American War in 1848, Utah became a part of the United States. The U.S. government realized that Brigham Young had established a virtual theocracy in the Intermountain West. When the government sent out territorial governors, they would be ignored because everyone knew that Brigham Young and the LDS Church ruled Utah. From that time until 1890, there was conflict between American culture and Mormon Utah.

The primary issue that stood between Mormons and the rest of American culture was, of course, polygamy. American culture was dead set against its practice. It was a big enough issue that the platform of the Republican Party in 1856 stated that they needed to be rid of the “Twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy.”

The antagonism grew so great that, in 1857, an American army was sent West. Brigham Young, like Joseph Smith, understood the way that persecution could be used to rally his people. The idea of an American army advancing on Utah created an atmosphere of great anxiety and religious fervor. Mormons talked openly of avenging the blood of the prophet.

It was in that atmosphere that the Fancher Wagon Train happened to be passing through Utah on its way to California. This wagon train, which originated in Arkansas, was one of the largest and wealthiest wagon trains ever to go to California. They passed through Utah along the route of what is today Interstate 15. Along the way, there was tension between the wagon train and the Mormon settlers.

They ended up in a place called Mountain Meadows, southwest of Cedar City. There, on September 11, 1857, 120 people were murdered by a group of Mormon militia. Did Brigham Young order the attacks? There is considerable debate over this question. What cannot be denied is that he was responsible for creating an atmosphere of hostility that led to the massacre.

For a time, the Civil War gave Mormon Utah a respite from the opposition of the federal government. After the war, once again, opposition to polygamy was renewed, and the conflict grew. After the death of Brigham Young, the leadership of the Church held to the doctrine even more tightly. When John Taylor became president of the Church, he proclaimed that polygamy was practiced because it was part of an everlasting covenant with God.

In time, prominent leaders in the Church were sent to jail because the practice of polygamy violated the laws of the land. In time, the property of the LDS Church was confiscated. Finally, in 1890, the LDS Church capitulated. Wilford Woodruff, the fourth president of the LDS Church, issued the Manifesto, which was a revelation that ended polygamy. The Manifesto removed the practice that, more than any other, made Mormons outsiders in American culture.

The Manifesto was the turning point in LDS history. Rather than continuing to be in conflict with American culture, Mormons began to conform to it. After the Manifesto, the Mormon Church began its push for acceptance by American culture.

Today, Mormons are embarrassed by a doctrine that they once were willing to fight and die for. In 1998, Church President Gordon B. Hinckley was interviewed by Larry King and was asked about polygamy. President Hinckley called the LDS Church’s one-time practice of polygamy a “trick of history.” In speaking about current-day Mormon fundamentalists who still practice polygamy, he said, “These people are not Mormons.” He had a genuine frustration that modern-day polygamists continued to get press and cast a negative light on the LDS Church. He went on to say that Latter-day Saints are not extreme but are “part of the mainstream.”

How much has Mormonism changed? Before 1890, Mormonism was considered anti-family because of polygamy and anti-American because of the theocracy created by Brigham Young in Utah. Today, people look at the LDS Church and think of it as pro-family and pro-American. Mormonism changed in 1890 in order to survive. It continues to show a willingness to change where it can in order to thrive.

The impact of Mormon history on its people is that they are a blend of both the normal and the peculiar. In one way, they seem so “all-American.” In another way, they are peculiar. The normality relates to the recent drive for acceptance, and the peculiarity has to do with early Mormonism’s drive to separate from American culture.