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Recreating Religion: he Response to Joseph
Smith’s Innovations in the Second Prophetic
Generation of Mormonism
Christopher James Blythe
Utah State University
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RECREATING RELIGION:
THE RESPONSE TO JOSEPH SMITH’S INNOVATIONS IN THE SECOND
PROPHETIC GENERATION OF MORMONISM
by
Christopher James Blythe
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
History
Approved:
_________________________
Philip L. Barlow, ThD
Major Professor
_________________________
Daniel J. McInerney, PhD
Committee Member
_________________________
Richard Sherlock, PhD
Committee Member
_________________________
Byron R. Burnham, EdD
Dean of Graduate Studies
UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
Logan, Utah
2010
ii
Copyright © Christopher James Blythe 2010
All rights reserved.
iii
ABSTRACT
Recreating Religion: The Response to Joseph Smith’s Innovations in the Second
Prophetic Generation of Mormonism
by
Christopher James Blythe, Master of Arts
Utah State University, 2010
Major Professor: Philip Barlow
Department: History
On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, was assassinated. In the wake of his death, a number of would-be
successors emerged. Each of these leaders - part of what I call the second prophetic
generation - established a unique vision of Mormonism.
In 1844, Mormonism was in the middle of a major shift in its character. Joseph
Smith’s death left numerous theological and practical questions unresolved. This thesis
argues that, rather than merely a succession struggle of competition and power, a
principal function of the second prophetic generation in Mormonism was to respond to
Joseph Smith’s innovations and to forge alternate coherent (re-)interpretations of the
Mormon faith that could continue into the future without access to the original prophet.
Two major issues that required reframing in a post-Smith world were issues of
domesticity and marriage and hierarchical structure. One or both of these issues are
considered in the thought of four second-generation prophets: Alpheus Cutler, William
iv
Smith, Charles Thompson, and Lyman Wight. Their response to these questions,
ultimately, resulted in distinct traditions within the Mormon movement.
(118 pages)
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to first offer my appreciation for Philip Barlow, my mentor and my
friend. During the past three years, Dr. Barlow has offered me a number of opportunities
to progress as a scholar, a teacher, and a person. He has seen me present research around
the country, allowed me to design and teach a class by his side, and tried to convince me
to live life more fully. His advice and criticisms have led me both to think deeper about
what I am doing as a scholar of religion and my historical subjects.
There are other scholars that have offered me a great deal of assistance and
encouragement on this project as well as others. Dr. Charles Prebish has been a crucial
component of my education at Utah State University and a major source of
encouragement to pursue the study of American religious history. Dr. Sherlock and Dr.
McInerney served on my thesis committee and offered thought-provoking criticisms of
the framework of this study. Three other professors deserve special mention to
structuring the thought that went behind this study: Dr. Jeannie Thomas, Dr. Len
Rosenband, and Dr. Tim Wolters. In addition, I gratefully acknowledge the many
scholars outside of Utah State University that have assisted in the forming of these ideas
and of me as a scholar: Terryl Givens, Matthew Grow, Danny Jorgensen, Vicki Speek,
Mike Riggs, among many others.
Some of the most important support I have received as a graduate student is the
friendship of my colleagues: Thomas Evans, Ryan Roos, Mark Rasmuson, and Don
Bradley, among many others.
vi
Most importantly, I wish to acknowledge the support of my parents. Without
their support and encouragement, this thesis would be impossible. Finally, I wish to
acknowledge Christine Elyse Blythe, my peer, my student, and finally, for the past six
months, my wife. This thesis took an extra semester to complete largely because I found
her and gladly had to put the books aside. I dedicate this thesis to Christine and my
parents.
Christopher James Blythe
vii
CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………...v
CHAPTER
1.
INTRODUCTION …...…………………………………………………...1
2.
MORMON POLYGAMY: VARIED APPROACHES TO COPING
WITH SMITH’S MARITAL INNOVATIONS ...………………………15
3.
RENEWING COMMUNITY AND HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE: A
CASE STUDY IN ECCLESIOLOGY (1853-1864) ……………......…...37
4.
CHARLES B. THOMPSON AND THE USE OF NARRATIVE
THEOLOGY TO ALLEVIATE THE TENSIONS OF
INNOVATION....………………………………………………………..64
5.
CONCLUSION …...…………………………..…………………………99
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...……………………………………………………………………103
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, was assassinated. The young faith was left without the man they had
followed as their prophet. Immediately and over the next few years, a number of men
emerged as would-be successors. They preached against one another, wrote tracts - and
even scripture - that condemned their opponents, and excommunicated one another.
Understandably, scholars have studied succession struggles, including Mormonism’s
succession struggle, through a lens of power and competition.1
In distinction to this model, this study suggests that the second prophetic
generation may sincerely possess different theological interpretations. At question is not
only who controls the movement in the wake of a leader’s death, but also how the
movement will be interpreted and administered. As scholars focus on a lens of power,
they are apt to look past very real and deep-seated causes for dissent. This generation of
successors – here termed the second prophetic generation - is comprised more often than
not bitter rivals, but the cause behind their quest for control over a movement extends far
beyond a quest for power. Using the Mormon example, this thesis argues that the
theological and structural developments instituted by each of these innovators were
essentially interpretations of Joseph Smith’s vision. The role of the second prophetic
generation is to rebuild the movement, to act as a conduit to the original prophet’s ideas,
and to reinterpret his vision for a new time.
1
Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Vintage Books, 2003),
63-64; D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994.)
2
Prophets
Scholars use categories to make sense of the historical similarities across the
human experience. This thesis employs terminology largely borrowed from the work of
the sociologist Max Weber. Although these terms are not without their limitations, they
allow for applying a case study to a broader historical framework, across time and place.
Max Weber defined a prophet “to mean a purely individual bearer of charisma,
who by virtue of his mission proclaims a religious doctrine or divine commandment.”2 In
turn, Weber described charisma as “an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of
whether this quality is actual, alleged, or presumed.”3 Followers accept the rule of
charismatic authority because of their belief in their leader’s supernatural abilities –
whether this implies the working of miracles or professed communication with the
divine.
Prophets oppose the established order. Their revelations present a “break” with
society and at least some aspect of culture. Thus, prophets innovate. They are the
creators of religion, whether they found a religion or build from an already functioning
tradition. If successful, such men organize movements and, for some, if particularly
successful, they invent a people. Historian Gregory Smoak states succinctly, “Religion
and identity are intertwined. Religions explain who a people are, how they were created,
2
Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963),
46. The term prophet like numerous other words in academia has a lay understanding that clouds the
scholarly use of the word. For example, Weber’s prophets come from all traditions and they may not
“prophesy” of future events or even accept the existence of a deity. This latter case Weber terms the
“exemplary prophet” who urges others to follow his path to enlightenment. Ibid., 55.
3
Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright
Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 295.
3
and the nature of their relationship to the world and others.”4 Beyond community
building and theological designs, prophets affect individuals. Their teachings influence
how their followers view themselves, the world, and others. The prophet’s personality their charisma - is the power that enables individuals to accept their innovations and forge
new and “deviant” – that is deviating from the norm - identities.
To clarify: this study utilizes the term prophet to mean, a leader (1) whose
followers ascribe to him extraordinary gifts, (2) who claims a mission to proclaim sacred
doctrines, and (3) whose teachings are innovative or can be perceived as innovative. The
term can be criticized for its limits or for its expansive nature. However, as an
operational category, this definition will be adequate for this historical study of
Mormonism in the nineteenth century and its application to other religious bodies.
Innovation, the prophet’s work, is anything but an orderly process. A prophet’s
revelations frequently include outbursts of new information and practice: rituals,
mythologies, and behavior. A prophet’s charisma justifies the deviance of his religious
product, but what happens when death takes him from the scene? How can individuals
and communities maintain the innovations that were dependent upon the prophet for their
existence?
Often prophets spend their whole lives innovating and, as a result, components of
their religious vision tend to remain incomplete and un-systematized at their deaths.
After all, a prophet’s strength is rarely in organizational matters. If a new religion is to
survive, succeeding leaders must complete this task, develop concepts that allow for
group cohesion and identity, and establish controls on possible excesses once permitted
4
Gregory Smoak, Ghost Dance and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian
Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 48.
4
under the founding prophet. They must find new tools to buttress cultural and theological
innovations no longer supported by the presence of the former charismatic personality.
And they must accomplish all of this while confronting a set of problems distinct from
those faced by the founder. This next leader or set of leaders is here termed the second
prophetic generation and is responsible for guiding a new religion into a permanent
structure.
In 1991, Timothy Miller compiled a series of essays under the title, When
Prophets Die: The Postcharismatic Fate of New Religious Movements. Each contributor
to this volume focused on a different new religious movement in the United States and its
experience following the death of its founder. J. Gordon Melton sets the stage for the
other scholars in his introduction by providing a politically charged framework for the
study. Eager to challenge the perception of new religions as groups dependent upon an
oppressive and all-controlling “cult-leader,” the scholar argues for the ability of a
movement to survive and flourish in their prophet’s absence.5 This key idea: new
religions can survive without their founder present is the overarching theme of the book.
Whereas other concepts are addressed in individual chapters, this premise is the book’s
major contribution to the field. When Prophets Die introduced the conversation, but
unfortunately, the project was fueled as much by feuds with scholars who perpetuated
anti-cult generalizations of new religions, as it was by the drive to answer the question at
hand: What does happen when prophets die? The movement might not join the prophet
in death, as Miller’s compilation ably proves, but neither is that prophet’s death
5
J. Gordon Melton, “Introduction: When Prophets Die: The Succession Crisis in New Religions”
in When Prophets Die: The Postcharismatic Fate of New Religious Movements, ed. Timothy Miller
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 1-12.
5
meaningless. The following effort is an attempt to continue the conversation through a
study of the leaders and movements that directly succeeded the Mormon Prophet, Joseph
Smith, in the nineteenth century – that is the second prophetic generation of Mormonism.
The Second Prophetic Generation: Prophets or Priests?
Weberian theory suggests that the prophet figure endowed with his charisma
appears as a radical opponent to the established social order. The prophet is subversive,
intent on establishing a new society. However, once this new order appears, it naturally
tames the drive for revolution. The new order eventually becomes tradition for its
adherents – even if considered deviant by the masses - and, thus, traditional authority
replaces charismatic authority. A new structure of ‘priests’ – the keepers of tradition replaces that of the prophet.
According to Weber, this process begins with the death of a prophet. New
successors gain acceptance based on their charismatic (supernatural) qualifications. Such
figures may be chosen because of “sacramental substantiation” in which a prophet has
symbolically bestowed upon a follower or followers a portion of his power. This
includes those successors who come from the emerging body of priests organized by the
prophet. Others may find their prophet’s successor through “a belief in hereditary
charisma.”6 This distinction is present in the two major branches of Sunni and Shia
Islam: the former found their leader in Abu Bakr, one of Muhammad’s closest disciples,
the latter turned to the belief that Muhammad’s son-in-law should lead as part of his
hereditary rights.
6
Weber, Sociology of Religion, 297.
6
Although Weber provides very little insight into this new leader’s specific role,
later sociologists have acknowledged his existence. In 1970, Donald Macintosh noted
that frequently “the charismatic leader leaves the task of building the new order to his
successor….”7 Although sociologist Michael Toth does not use the term second
prophetic generation, he introduced a related theory of double charisma which builds on
Macintosh’s insightful revelation. In this theory, Toth argues that a second leader “is
able to turn the corner from charisma to routine, accomplishing it under the aegis of the
more unearthly charisma of the first leader.”8 The second leader offers the scattered and
confused followers of the first charismatic figure a “new call to consolidation and
organization, distinct from the earlier call.”9 This second leader borrows from the
charisma of the original prophet. Because he is leading the new religion into the
formation of a tradition, he “expresses his charisma in a partially routinized form or along
more routinized channels.”10
These second figures are difficult to define, as Toth notes. Where do they fit in
Weber’s categories of prophet and priest? They appear to function in their task on the
border of both, moving back and forth between the boundaries of sociological definitions.
For this reason, this thesis coins the term second prophetic generation to encompass a
broad range of figures. Universally, these second-tier leaders draw their authority
through charisma, even if it is borrowed from another. Many act as a conduit between
the private teachings of the prophet and the masses. However, as we will see through our
7
Donald McIntosh, “Weber and Freud: On the Nature and Sources of Authority,” American
Sociological Review, 55, no. 5 (1970): 901-911.
8
Michael Toth, “Toward a Theory of the Routinization of Charisma.” Paper presented at Rocky
Mountain Social Sciences Association, 1971. http://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/vita/ Accessed June 10, 2010.
9
Michael Toth, The Theory of Two Charismas (Washington D.C.: University Press of America,
1981), 4.
10
Ibid., 9.
7
Mormon examples, the second prophetic generation may or may not legitimate their
authority through heredity or priestly traditions. Jan Shipps has argued that all three of
Max Weber’s leaders characterized by lineage, priestly office, and charisma are present
in the succession struggle following Joseph Smith’s death.11 Some dissent movements,
equally part of the second prophetic generation as their more popular opponents, may
return to a stronger charismatic legitimatization attempt. Such leaders are just as much
Weberian prophets as the prophet of the first generation. The category of second
prophetic generation though far from perfect, however it allows us to consider each of
these figures alongside one another. To clarify: a second generation prophet is (1) a
leader that seeks to continue the work of a first generation prophet in the wake of his
death, (2) functions in his position via borrowed or individual charisma, and (3) seeks to
routinize the innovations of the original prophet.
Mormonisms: Our Case Study
Fundamentally, historians of religion ask one question: How does religion change
over time? Philip Barlow, the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture,
began his essay entitled, “Shifting Ground and the Third Transformation of Mormonism”
by asking a question once posed by the ancient philosopher, Aristotle. “If a person were
to replace the planks of a ship with fresh planks, one by one, at which point would the
original vessel become a new one?”12 Although he does not answer Aristotle directly,
Barlow reasoned that modern-day Mormonism is “in the midst of its third transformation.
11
Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1985), 105.
12
Philip Barlow, “Shifting Ground and the Third Transformation of Mormonism” in Perspectives
on American Religion and Culture, ed. Peter W. Williams (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999),
140.
8
The original Mormon ark has become a new ship twice over, and is, as it approaches the
twenty-first century, achieving its fourth incarnation.”13 These transformations included
a shift from the primitivist Christianity of 1830 New York to the “half-Hebracized
church-kingdom” of Nauvoo, Illinois, which then morphed into the post-1890 church
“thriving for national respectability” and, finally, to the global church of the 1960s and
forward.14
To be certain, “shifts” are a useful historical devise to better understand change
overtime, however, it is possible that they will cause us to misunderstand the real process
of change. Later developments than the ones we will consider, made under the auspices
of a bureaucratic board perhaps, may properly fit in the category of a clear-cut shift.
Mormonism has uprooted its planks and conjured new boards throughout the entirety of
its existence. The evolution of the faith was a process that began immediately. Joseph
Smith was an innovator at his core and ultimately, as a religious revolutionary, he was
uncomfortable even with his own established order.
For fourteen years, the Mormon Prophet developed a restoration of ancientJudaeo-Christianity in nineteenth-century America. In a new work of scripture, Smith
brought the biblical tradition to the New World. Following the Primitivist tradition, he
organized his followers after the Christian organization described in the Book of Acts.
Yet, Smith’s prophetic instinct demanded that he introduce more than just a church. The
Mormon Prophet’s theology encompassed economic, military, marital, and political
strains in his hopes to achieve a heavenly society.
13
14
Ibid., 140.
Ibid., 141.
9
Initially, Smith’s organization utilized a simple structure characteristic of
Presbyterian and Methodist organizations of the nineteenth century.15 Joseph Smith was
recognized as the “first elder” with a “second elder” serving alongside him. These initial
positions were limited to deacons, priests, and elders. The Prophet continually added to
the prospective hierarchy of Mormonism. In 1831, the position of high priest was
introduced shortly followed by the notion of a first presidency, bishops, and finally,
patriarchs. In 1834 and 1835, respectively, a high council and quorum of twelve apostles
were formed.16
For the last four years of his life, in Nauvoo, Illinois, Joseph Smith introduced a
select number of his trusted followers into a series of esoteric teachings and ritual. These
included new concepts of deification, temple rites associated with Freemasonry, the
eternal nature of familial relationships, plural marriage, and the ceremonial anointing of
individuals as Kings and Priests. In the spring of 1844, months before his impending
assassination, the Mormon Prophet founded the Council of Fifty, a theocratic shadow
government eventually to reign over the political and spiritual affairs of all humankind.
In public, Smith spoke of an impending reformation that would restructure the church
although he left the particulars for private conversations with his inner circle.
Barlow rightfully characterizes Mormonism’s second incarnation as fully
achieved only following the establishment of a separate Mormon commonwealth led by
Brigham Young in the Desert west.17 This thesis couples Barlow’s insight with his
15
Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 253.
For an in-depth study of the development of Latter-day Saint priesthood organization, see
Gregory A. Prince, Power from on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood (Salt Lake City:
Signature Books, 1995), 47-78.
17
Barlow, “Shifting Ground and the Third Transformation of Mormonism,” 141.
16
10
insistence that we avoid the tendency to see Mormonism as one great whole consisting
solely of the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquartered
in Salt Lake City, Utah. In reality, there have been, by some estimates, nearly 400 sects
of Mormonism with their own traditions and history, but sharing a common heritage with
the nineteenth-century new religious tradition founded by Joseph Smith.18 For this
reason, Philip Barlow has argued for the plural term Mormonisms to describe the rich
diversity in the Mormon tradition.19 This thesis examines the first shift as it occurs in the
second prophetic generation – something like the stirring of cement before it dries – in
not one faction of Mormonism, but in several to capture a broader swath of the second
prophetic generation.
The first study (Chapter 2) takes into account the response of the second prophetic
generation to plural marriage, the most difficult of Smith’s innovations. It is the only
chapter to utilize a comparative approach. Three separate communities led by Nauvoo
insiders are examined, thus, demonstrating an important theme in a large segment of the
second prophetic generation – the bringing forth of esoteric elements of a faith,
previously revealed only to a founding prophet’s most trusted disciples. Simultaneously,
we see that radical innovation can lead to multiple interpretations of a prophet’s legacy
available to his adherents. Finally, through these examples we are able demonstrate the
gradual loss of a prophet’s most controversial innovations.
The second study (Chapter 3) explores the development of the Church of Jesus
Christ, a new ecclesiastical structure developed by second-generation prophet, Alpheus
18
Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer, Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism,
ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer (Independence, Mo.: John Whitmer Books, 2007), backcover.
19
Philip Barlow, “Mormonisms Course Syllabus,” copy in the author’s possession.
11
Cutler. His new church was based on the foundation of Joseph Smith’s organization, but
features several fresh deviations. This chapter demonstrates the impact of a prophet’s
death and the re-evaluation of his theology through this lens (i.e. his death) plays on the
re-ordering of his society.
The third study (Chapter 4) analyzes the manner in which one second-generation
prophet, Charles Thompson, wrote Joseph Smith’s innovations out of the scriptural
record of Mormonism. Borrowing from the creative toolbox of Joseph Smith, Charles
Thompson utilized narrative theology – the telling of a scriptural story – to reorient the
Mormon mind away from Smith’s teachings on polygamy and polytheism. Thompson’s
Inspired Enoch, one of the first Mormon scriptures to appear in the second prophetic
generation of Mormonism, was an attempt to offer a feasible alternative to a threatening
worldview championed by the Brighamites. In this manner, we will see the conflict
between two bodies led by the second prophetic generation; the first intent on preserving
and promoting prophetic innovation and the other seeking to remove and replace the
same innovations.
Mormon Terms
Like any cultural study, this thesis will use a number of terms that will be
unfamiliar to outsiders. For this reason, a glossary is included here. First, we will
establish certain policies for capitalization and the use of certain cultural terms.
Because this thesis discusses not one Mormon Church, but many Mormon
churches with very similar names (e.g. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, etc.), I use
12
the traditional designations to distinguish them from one another. For example,
“Brighamites” or “Utah church” is used to describe those Mormons that followed
Brigham Young and established their headquarters in what would become Salt Lake City,
Utah or “Strangites” for those Mormons that gathered under James Jesse Strang in
Wisconsin.
In addition, I freely draw from a number of other internal cultural terms in order
to shed light on Mormon societies and provide variety to my writing. I refer to Joseph
Smith simultaneously as the Mormon Prophet and sometimes simply as the Prophet or
the Seer – terms that are capitalized to distinguish Smith from other future leaders also
dubbed prophets. The terms Mormonism or the Restoration refers broadly to the religion
of Joseph Smith as it functioned during his life in one movement and in various
movements following his death. The terms plural marriage and polygamy will be used
along with insider theological terminology coined by Joseph Smith: celestial marriage or
simply, the principle. Other important terms and their definitions include:
Adoption, Law of – In the nineteenth century, some Mormon churches, including
the LDS Church, believed that church members should be ritually bound together as a
family unit. Thus, adherents were adopted as children of Church leaders.
Bishop – In the nineteenth century, bishops were an ecclesiastical position in
charge of financial matters and traditionally directed the church’s communal efforts.
Council of Fifty – A shadow government organized by Joseph Smith in the
months before his death. According to Mormon prophecies, the Council of Fifty was
thought to be the organization that would eventually govern the entire world.
13
Endowment – a ritual drama performed in Mormon temples; believed to be
necessary for salvation and a prerequisite for further ceremonies including sealings and
second anointings.
First Presidency – Mormon churches are often governed by a council consisting
of ax president of the church and two councilors.
High Council – an ecclesiastical court; in the nineteenth century, the High
Council played a large role in the government of church communities.
Priesthood – In nineteenth-century Mormonism, the priesthood was held by lay
members who were authorized to perform any number of rites based on the office in the
priesthood they held (e.g. Bishop, Priest, Apostle, etc.). The priesthood is divided into
two orders: the higher or Melchezidek Priesthood and the lesser or Aaronic Priesthood.
In the nineteenth century, the Aaronic Priesthood was in charge of “temporal” labor and
the Melchezidek Priesthood was in charge of leadership positions and the performance of
a different level of ritual.
Prophet – the highest leadership position in Mormon churches; one who speaks
for God and receives revelation.
Quorum of Twelve Apostles – In the nineteenth century, the quorum of twelve
presided over all areas outside of established LDS communities. Following Joseph
Smith’s death, the quorum of twelve apostles became the presiding organization over the
church in preference to other quorums and offices.
Sealing – A ritual typically performed in temples in order to place Mormons in an
eternal family unit. The sealing can be performed at the same time or after a marriage.
However, a marriage without a sealing is believed to end at death.
14
Second Anointing – a ceremony that ritually ordained its recipients as kings and
priests and queens and priestesses; promised the neophytes eternal life.
Zion – a term used to describe a utopian ideal, usually associated with Jackson
County, Missouri or other locations in which Mormons have gathered in large
communities.
15
CHAPTER 2
MORMON POLYGAMY:
VARIED APPROACHES TO COPING WITH SMITH’S MARITAL INNOVATIONS
The experience of Nauvoo struck the Latter-day Saint psyche like a whirlwind.
There was real religious upheaval in the bustling Illinois city.20 Joseph Smith, who had
previously brought forth the Book of Mormon, concepts of a modern utopia, and the
restoration of the primitive Christianity, built upon these teachings concepts of temple
rituals, deification, theocracy, and plural marriage.21 Converts thoroughly convinced of
the authenticity of his early career, felt like they “hadn’t signed up for this” and in the
1840s, Nauvoo began to turn out a consistent crop of dissenters, angry at the Mormon
Prophet for making a mockery of their faith. Still eagerly embracing the earlier
principles, they announced that Joseph Smith no longer spoke for the Lord – that he had
become a fallen prophet.22 Yet many, out of their reverence for their prophet and often
with an appeal to personal revelation, came to accept the principles that at first tormented
them.
Nevertheless, even the pious Latter-day Saints of Joseph Smith’s inner circle
experienced real trauma when they learned of their prophet’s marital status. It was worse
still when they realized that they too were expected to live the principle and more often to
convince their female relations the same. The memoirs of the Nauvoo period overflow
20
For studies of the Latter-day Saint experience in Nauvoo, see Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo:
Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1965); Roger D. Launius and John Hallwas,
eds., Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited: Nauvoo in Mormon History (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1996); Glen Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise (Salt Lake City: Deseret
Book, 2002).
21
Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, 82-83.
22
D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power¸137-138.
16
with the great difficulties of embracing plural marriage. Even Brigham Young, thought
to be the most-married man in LDS history, recalled, “desiring the grave” after Smith
first approached him about the doctrine.23
According to some accounts, this experience of trauma extended even to the
originator of the practice. After marrying a number of women, Joseph Smith, fiercely
adverse to sexual sin, required divine assurance that by following the “law of God,” he
had not inadvertently been guilty of adultery.24 His adherents insisted that the Mormon
Prophet had to be divinely compelled to practice and propagate the celestial law among
his followers. One of Smith’s wives, Eliza R. Snow, remembered that the Prophet
described the trying mental ordeal he experienced in overcoming the repugnance
of his feelings, the natural result of the force of education and social custom,
relative to the introduction of plural marriage. He knew the voice of God – he
knew the commandment of the Almighty to him was to go forward – to set the
example, and establish Celestial plural marriage. He knew he had not only his
own prejudices and prepossessions to combat and to overcome, but those of the
whole Christian world stared him in the face; but God, who is above all, had
given the commandment, and He must be obeyed. Yet the Prophet hesitated and
deferred from time to time, until an angel of God stood by him with a drawn
sword, and told him that, unless he moved forward and established plural
marriage, his Priesthood would be taken from him and he should be destroyed!25
Smith told another plural wife, “The angel came to me three times between the
years of 1834 and 1842 and said I was to obey that principle or he would slay me.”26 The
story of Smith’s encounter with a sword-wielding angel is reminiscent of Old Testament
passages, in which a divine messenger threatens disobedient prophets with death.27 As in
23
Journal of Discourses, 3:266.
Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 441.
25
Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow (Salt Lake City: Deseret
News Company, 1884), 69-70.
26
Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Address Delivered at Brigham Young University, 14 April
1905, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, 2-3.
27
The story of Joseph Smith directly parallels the account of Balaam and the sword-carrying angel
of Numbers 22. In addition, the same motif of the intended divine execution of a disobedient prophet
24
17
the biblical accounts, the warning was clear. Either Joseph Smith would submit to the
task of instituting God’s laws or his prophetic mission and his life would be at an end.
The introduction of polygamy was traumatic from its inception. The very lore
surrounding its origin acknowledges this built-in turmoil as if to assure the listener that
even the most holy of individuals would struggle with the unusual but divine institution.
With the death of Joseph Smith, the responsibility and burden of plural marriage
passed to his successors. In the Great Basin, Young and the twelve apostles proceeded to
systematize Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo outbursts of revelation. They clarified, as well as
developed, rules and restrictions pertaining to plural marriage. Frequent sermons cited
the importance of its practice and the risks of its abuse. And eventually they achieved
some level of success in their attempts to integrate polygamy into Mormon culture and
belief.28
Yet, Brigham Young’s continuation of Mormonism was not the only version of
the diverse movement that maintained Smith’s marital teachings. This chapter analyzes
three additional Mormon polygamist communities, each led by their own charismatic
leader, who, like the apostles, had participated in plural marriage based on Smith’s
instructions. By exploring the issues that each of these groups faced in their introduction,
application, and cessation of polygamy, we can see the staggering impact of plural
marriage on the Latter-day Saint people.
occurs in Exodus 4, in which “the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him,” presumably for neglecting to
circumcise his first-born son – an oversight immediately corrected by the child’s mother, thus, sating the
anger of deity.
28
Katherine Daynes, More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System:
1840-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2001); Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers,
The Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Urbana: Univeristy of Illinois, 1984), 181-225.
18
While conducting this comparative study, drawing on the baseline of Utah where
polygamy became fully integrated into culture, certain points will become clear.
1) We can more fully see the strong distaste for plural marriage by believing
Latter-day Saints. Each of the Mormon peoples were eager to distance
themselves from plural marriage once they ended its practice.
2) We can see that many regulations and theological underpinnings associated
with polygamy in Utah were innovations of the twelve apostles and not fully
developed under the direction of Joseph Smith.
3) As implied in the last point, we can see that there were multiple ways to
practice plural marriage. These variations are defined in part by the
personality of the leaders who undertook them.
4) We can reasonably conclude that geography and isolation played a key role in
the successful integration and relative longevity of plural marriage in the
Mormon experience in the Great Basin.
The Other Polygamists: A Sample of Three Communities
Scholars have argued the merits of the term polygamous society.29 Rarely if ever
has a large society had a majority of their males living in plural marriages; thus the bulk
of the society itself might not be polygamous. Instead, scholars use the term to refer to
societies in which polygamy is preferred, if it were possible. By this definition, the
communities in this study are not examples of polygamous societies; rather their leaders
were polygamists and in two cases, advocated polygamy as the ideal form of marriage for
29
Miriam Koktvedgaard Zeitzen, Polygamy: A Cross-Cultural Analysis (New York: Berg
Publishers, 2008), iv.
19
their followers. In other words, only their leaders would prefer that their communities be
polygamous. Thus, we should not mistake any of these nineteenth-century sects as
mirror images of twentieth or twenty-first century Mormon Fundamentalism, which
conforms to the scholarly definition of a polygamous society – in that, the movement, as
a whole would prefer to live polygamously. We will begin this section with a brief
overview of each community with its second-generation prophet.30
Community #1: Lyman Wight
Lyman Wight led a group of 250 Saints between the summer of 1844 and his
death in 1858. Nicknamed the “Wild Ram of the Mountains,” he became a major figure
in Mormonism most notably for his military leadership during the 1830s Missouri
conflicts, and beginning in 1841, served as an apostle. Like the majority of the apostles,
he was on a mission to the east at the time of Joseph Smith’s death. He returned to
Nauvoo only briefly, before directing his followers to Wisconsin and later Texas.31
Never professing to be Joseph Smith’s prophetic successor, Wight merely considered his
group an independent branch of the original church. Although he claimed that he learned
about polygamy firsthand from Joseph Smith, when he first left Nauvoo, he was a
monogamist as was all of his party. Yet, by the next year, Wight had married three
30
Although the Strangites, a fourth polygamist sect, faced the same issues that I look at in this
essay, I have determined it best to exclude them on two grounds. First, Strangite polygamy has received a
relatively large amount of scholarly attention. Second, the Strangites reinvented polygamy with a clear
break from the practice, as it existed in Nauvoo. Strang depended on those that had knowledge of Nauvoo
polygamy to institute the practice in 1849.
31
Michael Scott Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God
(Brownsville: University of Texas at Brownsville, 1999), 54-56.
20
additional wives. And eventually, his colony included between five and eight polygamist
males.32 In a recent work, a scholar of the Texas colony placed this number into context:
Although less than sixteen percent of the families were polygamous in September
of 1850, at least thirty-three to thirty-eight percent of births were in plural
households, reflecting polygamy’s impact on population replacement.33
Community #2: William Smith
In Palestine, Illinois, another polygamist tried to introduce plural marriage to his
own sect. William Smith was the youngest brother of Joseph Smith. Within months of
the church’s founding, he was baptized and later selected as one of the original quorum of
twelve apostles. After the death of Joseph Smith, William sustained Brigham Young as
the head of the twelve and, thus, the head of the church.34 In turn, Young appointed
Smith to serve as the presiding patriarch of the church on May 4, 1845. Following a
division with Brigham Young, and a brief tenure under the prophetic claimant, James
Strang, William Smith founded his own church in 1847. Although he made some
converts to polygamy before his Brighamite excommunication, the historical evidence
specifies only one additional male polygamist in the Palestine community.35 Smith’s
church endured only a few years before collapsing in 1854.36
32
Melvin C. Johnson, Polygamy on the Pedernales: Lyman Wight’s Mormon Villages in
Antebellum Texas, 1845 to 1858 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006), 78.
33
Ibid., 84.
34
William Smith to Brigham Young, 21 August 1844, Church History Library, Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. [LDS Archives]
35
The only additional male polygamist we can specifically identity is Joseph Wood. “Letter from
William Smith to Sister C.” Dixon Telegraph, April 30, 1853.
36
For further reading on William Smith, see Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith, Lost Legacy: The
Mormon Office of Presiding Patriarch (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996); Paul M. Edwards,
“William B. Smith: A Wart on the Ecclesiastical Tree” in Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon
History, ed. Roger D. Launius and Linda Thatcher, 140-54 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994);
Kyle R. Walker, “William Smith’s Quest for Ecclesiastical Station: A Schismatic Odyssey, 1844-93” in
Scattering of the Saints: Schism Within Mormonism, ed. Newell Bringhurst and John C. Hamer, 92-114
(Independence, Mo: John Whitmer Books, 2007).
21
Community #3: Alpheus Cutler
Our third inroad into the world of post-martyrdom polygamy is a community led
by Alpheus Cutler between 1847 and 1864. Publically, Cutler’s most noteworthy office
was as a member of the high council in Nauvoo, yet privately Joseph Smith trusted him
with his new theology well before others. Following the death of the Mormon Prophet,
Cutler was fiercely loyal to Brigham Young, even participating in the excommunication
of the apostles’ rivals.37 On February 3, 1846, eager to embrace the principle, Alpheus
Cutler married five plural wives in the Nauvoo Temple.38 Likewise, two of his daughters
married the apostle, Heber C. Kimball. Cutler, along with many future Cutlerites began
the trek westward, until Young assigned them to establish a mission to the Native
Americans in what is today Kansas. After conflicts with neighboring Mormon
communities, the Cutlerites were excommunicated.39 They continued their mission, until
in 1851 they moved to Iowa. In 1853, Alpheus Cutler reorganized the church with
himself as head over the organization.40 Yet sometime along the way, the once fivetimes-polygamist had abandoned the practice, along with the entirety of his flock.
37
Fred Collier, The Nauvoo High Council Minute Books (Hanna, Utah: Collier’s Publishing,
2005), 156–57.
38
Danny L. Jorgensen, “The Old Fox: Alpheus Cutler, Priestly Keys to the Kingdom, and the Early
Church of Jesus Christ” in Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History, ed. Roger D. Launius and
Linda Thatcher (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 162.
39
The next chapter will discuss this conflict in detail.
40
Organization of the Church, September 19, 1853, box 1, folder 1, Church of Jesus Christ
(Cutlerites) Collection, 19th Century Western and Mormon Americana, L. Tom Perry Special Collections,
Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
22
Introducing Plural Marriage
The dissemination of plural marriage from the prophet to his adherents is a
dangerous moment for any religious movement, as is true of other forms of sexual or
marital innovation. The introduction of such volatile, deviant beliefs could fracture a
church, as it did under Joseph Smith and later Brigham Young. Smith had an advantage
that none of his successors possessed. Over time, he had gained his follower’s adoration
and trust. By the early 1840s, the Mormon Prophet had become an indispensible and
integral part of their faith. The brand of leadership provided by any of his proposed
successors was less powerful and less captivating. Yet, Smith was decidedly careful in
the introduction of plural marriage. When the Mormon Prophet first introduced his
marital innovations, he limited his confidants to members of the religious elite, a trusted
inner circle, often bound to maintain secrecy through personal agreement and even
religious ceremony.41
Cutler, Wight, and Smith each had to determine their own level of secrecy
concerning their practice. Tracing the history of plural marriage from Joseph Smith to
the Great Basin, we can see that the Utah Mormons practiced polygamy with three levels
of openness. This included the initial period when knowledge of its practice was
reserved strictly to the Mormon elite. Later, during the Nauvoo Temple experience and
subsequent trek west, a new phase began in which the leadership shared this knowledge
with fellow church members.42 Finally, the Latter-day Saints practiced plural marriage
openly, following the announcement of 1852, until the Manifesto of 1890.
41
See George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: “…but we called it celestial marriage” (Salt Lake
City: Signature Books, 2008).
42
Ibid., 402.
23
In post-martyrdom Nauvoo, when the practice of plural marriage was still limited
to the covenant bound, William Smith became a strong advocate for living plural
marriage in the open. In the summer of 1845, he gave a sermon entitled “the first
Chapter of the Gospel of Saint William” announcing his own polygamous status. This
fomented tensions between William Smith and members of the quorum of twelve, who
were still eager to remain in the closet.43 After his falling out with the twelve apostles,
Smith’s position on polygamy changed drastically, if temporarily. In 1845, when he left
Nauvoo, he also apparently left his wives behind.
William quickly became conscious to the dangers of publicizing polygamy – a
realization that he worked to his advantage. In 1849, he began a letter writing campaign
against the proposed State of Deseret, in which he exposed the Brighamites, his former
allies.44 Meanwhile, Smith strategically attempted to introduce plural marriage within his
own ranks. Five months after Smith’s letter to congress, Isaac Sheen, his 2nd-incommand, exposed Smith, in suit. To congress, he wrote, “I find that his accusations
against the Deseret Mormons are the ebullitions of a malicious heart, and have been made
by him to divert attention from his own outrageous villainy and licentiousness.”45 Sheen
claimed that Smith had openly taught him the doctrine. Unlike his attitude in Nauvoo,
Smith responded with a series of denials.
In the following years, the Mormon Prophet’s youngest brother tried to introduce
the practice to other members of his sect. He did so, like Joseph Smith, in the context of
an oath bound society termed the Priests’ lodge. According to Jason Briggs, an apostle in
43
William Smith Sermon, with remarks by John Taylor, 17 August 1845, LDS Archives.
Journal of History, Volume 7, 453-457, Community of Christ Archives.
45
Isaac Sheen to Honorable R.H. Stanton, 4 May 1850, Community of Christ Archives.
44
24
Smith’s movement, “at a conference in October 6th of that year (1851), they threw off the
mask, in a council called the Priests’ Lodge, and confessed to the practice of polygamy in
the name of the Lord.”46 Polygamy did not become a public practice in Smith’s church;
rather Jason was trusted with this knowledge, once initiated into the lodge. For him, the
mask was thrown off. Others remained in ignorance, such as William Blair, who was
baptized during the same conference, without any knowledge of polygamy.47
As more and more Smithites discovered that polygamy existed within their
community, a steady trail of members began to exit the movement. If plural marriage
had not turned off his followers, Smith’s hypocrisy and public criticism against other
Mormon polygamists compounded their distaste.
Geography played a role in the decision to live plural marriage openly. Of our
three examples, only Lyman Wight in the confines of Texas may have done so. He
published a pamphlet defending the principle, but even then, his intended audience was
likely members of the colony.48 The evidence suggests that Wight did not feel able to
live polygamy as openly as the Great Basin apostles led by Brigham Young. This seems
to be the case due to contradictory reports by neighboring settlers whether his community
was actually polygamous or not. Most likely, when it came to outsiders, Wight neither
hid, nor flaunted his plural families.
The Cutlerites are unique in this study. Unlike the followers of Lyman Wight
who left Nauvoo in 1844 or the followers of William Smith who largely resided in the
east, the Cutlerites participated in the Nauvoo Temple experience, as well as began the
46
“History of the Reorganization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” The
Messenger of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Volume 2:1 (November 1875).
47
W.W. Blair, Memoirs of W.W. Blair (Lamoni: Herald Publishing House, 1908), 1.
48
Gideon Carter, “Gideon Carter Statement,” LDS Archives.
25
trek westward. Cutler had not introduced them to plural marriage, rather they had
learned of the practice with the rest of the Brighamites. In addition, we currently have no
record of any plural marriages taking place in the Cutlerite tradition, following the
relationships solemnized in the Nauvoo Temple. Although it is reasonable to expect that
such developments occurred during the polygamous era in Silver Creek (i.e. before
1853), historians have yet to provide evidence.
Unique Developments
The Nauvoo theology of plural marriage raised many questions. For example Who would be allowed to participate? Who could conduct or “seal” a plural marriage?
What was the role of marriages not performed under the new system? Could such
marriages be annulled? How did plural marriages relate to the rituals associated with the
Mormon temple? Was polyandry – a woman having more than one husband - also a
principle of plural marriage? Based on rumors or knowledge of Joseph Smith’s actions in
Nauvoo, the post-martyrdom polygamists pondered each of these questions. Because of
the secret nature of polygamy, these issues seemingly remained unresolved during
Smith’s lifetime. In turn, each of these leaders sought their own understanding of
polygamy, sometimes drawing their solutions through an interpretation of Joseph Smith’s
behavior and sometimes through the reception of independent revelation.
Lyman Wight seems to have been the most innovative in his theology associated
with plural marriages. Some of these ideas were quite controversial, including what the
polygamist George Miller referred to as “false teachings in regards to lineage and
26
matrimony.”49 This teaching involved the first example of clan endogamy in the
Mormon tradition. For over a decade, Mormon religious figures known as patriarchs had
provided Latter-day Saints blessings in which they identified the faithful as descendents
of the ancient twelve tribes of Israel. Although this portion of the ceremony had great
theoretical importance, the specific choice of one tribe over another had no practical
application for the Saints. Under Lyman Wight, tribal designations determined marriage
options. A member of the Texas colony, John Hawley, remembered, “Lyman had taught
us in selecting a wife we should get one of our own tribe and lineage.”50 Wight likely
based this practice on Old Testament marriage laws, forbidding the intermarriage of the
tribes due to property concerns.51
In Texas, only the tribe of Ephraim was free from this proviso. According to
Hawley:
[Those believed to be descended from Ephraim, the] highest lineage…could save
any woman whether they are of this tribe or not, for said Lyman this lineage could
have a wife from every tribe but in the resurrection he would have to place her in
her own tribe. But he would have power to visit her as a wife.52
Wight’s critics worried that there was room for abuse in this system of selecting a
spouse. Rumors suggested that occasionally, Pierce Hawley, the patriarch for the colony,
would discover that a man and woman, previously married, were of different lineages. In
such a situation, “a change [was] necessary and promptly effected.”53 Research for this
thesis has uncovered only one example in which a man, after exiting the community,
49
Miller, George, Correspondence of Bishop George Miller with the Northern Islander…, ed.
Wingfield Watson (Burlington, WI: Hajiceck Press, 1916), 42.
50
John Hawley, Autobiography of John Hawley, Community of Christ Archives, 7.
51
Numbers 36:6-8.
52
John Hawley, Autobiography of John Hawley, 7
53
Orson Hyde, George A. Smith, and Ezra T. Benson, “Report to Brigham Young and Council of
Twelve,” LDS Archives, 2.
27
claimed that Wight had sought to separate him from his wife on this basis, shortly after
the colony’s departure from Nauvoo.54
Whether this doctrine was as far reaching as to divide previously entered
marriages, it certainly affected courtships.55 Even then another of Wight’s marital
innovations would have superseded clan endogamy; the practice of arranged marriage,
referred to by Hawley as “the order of the Patriarchs.”56 The effects of these rules were a
cause of contention and dissent in the community.
In addition, Wight instituted strict rules concerning sexuality, even in marriage.
The apostle taught that a husband should be “absent [from] the bed of [his] companion
for eight days” during menstruation, thirty-three days after the birth of a son, and sixtysix days after the birth of a daughter. Like the concept of clan endogamy, Hawley
suggested that these sexual restrictions were the “law of Moses, corrected and revised.”57
Polygamy existed in yet a different form under William Smith in Palestine. Smith
likely borrowed from his brother’s polyandrous practices, to institute a form of plural
marriage with some strong similarities to complex marriage. His nephew, Joseph Smith
III, later distinguished his uncle’s version of marriage from “Utah polygamy,” noting that
William Smith’s system existed as “a sort of promiscuity of affinities under the guiss
[guise] of a ‘priestess lodge.”58 In later years, Isaac Sheen would recall that Smith had
come clean about his beliefs in plural marriage and offered “me his wife on the same
54
Journal History, September 30, 1844.
See Hawley, 10.
56
Ibid., 7.
57
Ibid., 10
58
Joseph Smith III, letter to Warren E. Peak, 4 January 1911, Miscellaneous Letters and Papers.
P13, f1073, Community of Christ Library-Archives.
55
28
terms that he claimed a partnership with other men’s wives.”59 It is unknown if others
left with Sheen at this time. In fact, it would appear that the church continued to prosper,
though the same issues would again confront William and this time with more lasting
penalties.
By design, the Priest and Priestess Lodge immolated Joseph Smith’s clandestine
organization in Nauvoo, the Holy Order. The Mormon Prophet inducted dozens of
followers as members of this elite body, who were exclusively privy to the esoteric
rituals, later to be associated with the temple. Within this organization, there were two
levels of initiation, respectively for those who had received the endowment and those
who had been selected to receive the second anointing in which they would become
ritually kings and priests and queens and priestesses.60
One of the few revelations of William Smith to survive this period describes the
relationship between Smith’s polygamy and his lodge system. Plural wives entered the
Priestess Lodge
by being sealed to my servants William Smith and Joseph Wood; and have been
washed and anointed under their hands having been received into the priestess
lodge – having taken the covenant thereof; if they or either of them, shall fall, or
altogether turn therefrom, she or they shall be excluded therefrom and from my
church also; and shall not come forth in the resurrection of the just.61
In addition, based roughly on the Nauvoo precedent, these men “exalted” their wives by
performing the Second Anointing ceremony, making them their Queens.62
59
“William Smith – Fornication – Adultery,” Cincinatti Daily Commercial, May 22, 1850.
See David John Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship
(San Francisco: Signature Books, 1994), 58–68.
61
“Letter from William Smith to Sister C.” Dixon Telegraph, April 30, 1853.
62
Ibid.
60
29
There is no evidence that William Smith urged his male followers to enter plural
marriage, with the exception of Isaac Sheen and Joseph Wood, both men who served in a
special capacity with him to “hold the keys of the dispensation.” Rather he instructed his
followers “that he had a right to raise up posterity from other men’s wives [and that] it
would be an honor conferred upon them and their husbands, to allow him that privilege,
and that they would thereby be exalted to a high degree of glory in eternity.”63 Although
plural marriage in Palestine, Illinois looks very different from plural marriage as it
evolved in Utah or Texas, William Smith also borrowed from a Nauvoo precedent as he
tried to produce an authentic version of his brother’s innovations.
The Demise of Plural Marriage
Historically no Mormon organization has been able to maintain plural marriage
since the days of Joseph Smith. Some families have continually lived polygamously
since the beginning, but no organization has espoused the practice for as long. In each
faction, both internal pressures from membership and external pressure from nonMormon neighbors were the central causes for suspending the practice of plural marriage.
To place this into context, it is worthwhile returning to the history of the
Brighamites in the west. Mormonism in the Great Basin was able to maintain the
practice of plural marriage openly from 1852 until 1890 and in religious elite circles until
1904 or shortly thereafter. The primary reason for issuing the Manifesto and its
accompanying end to public polygamy was to end polygamous prosecution. This worked
and in 1896, the United States accepted Utah as a state in the Union. During the Reed
Smoot hearings, when it became increasingly difficult to hide further clandestine
63
“William Smith – Fornication – Adultery,” Cincinatti Daily Commercial, May 22, 1850.
30
marriages from the prying American eye, the church hierarchy ended even polygamy’s
secret practice.64
Danny Jorgensen, professor of Religious Studies at Florida International
University, has hypothesized that a similar process occurred in the Cutlerite movement.65
In 1851, an associate of Cutler’s, F. Walter Cox, three-times-polygamist was threatened
with imprisonment in Iowa. At the same time, Jorgensen suggests that Cutler must have
“put away his plural wives,” in the face of persecution. Following the early 1850s, four
of Cutler’s five plural wives disappear from the historical record. Only one plural wife
remained in the Cutlerite camp and eventually remarried.66
On the other hand, there was real trauma associated with plural marriage. Thus, it
is not at all surprising that there was also an internal desire to let the system go – a desire
that Cutler may have developed quickly. For example, Alpheus Cutler may have soured
to plural marriage after the seemingly abandonment of his daughters by their husband,
Heber C. Kimball, who led many Saints west.67 Both internal and external pressures
mounted and by 1853, with the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ, Cutler
suspended the practice of plural marriage.
The termination of plural marriage in William Smith’s sect also involved public
exposure of the practice. This occurred first with the departure of Jason Briggs and other
64
See B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1992); Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The
Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004),
164.
65
Danny Jorgensen, “The Old Fox: Alpheus Cutler” in Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon
History, ed. Linda Thatcher and Roger D. Launius (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 169.
66
Clare B. Christensen, Before & After Mt. Pisgah (Salt Lake City: Privately Published, 1979),
183.
67
Richard E. Bennett, “Lamanism, Lymanism, and Cornfields,” Journal of Mormon History 13
(1986/87), 50.
31
disgruntled members, but more importantly with a messy divorce trial and an exposé
published in the local newspaper.68 Smith eventually fled Palestine, when the court
issued a warrant for his arrest. Soon thereafter, the youngest brother of Joseph Smith lost
the drive to continue with his polygamous lifestyle and teachings.
The practice of plural marriage under Lyman Wight seems to have ended because
of internal pressures, despite some persecution from outsiders. Following the publication
of the previously mentioned pamphlet, members still proved unreceptive. Thus, Wight
announced that the law was suspended, because “the people were not pure enough to live
up to that order of marriage.”69 The four polygamists, still loyal to the colony,
maintained their families and plural marriage ended with Wight’s death in 1856. A
decade later, the majority of Wightites joined the monogamist Reorganized Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. According to historian Melvin C. Johnson, the
decision to find their home in the RLDS Church signaled a further distancing from their
polygamous past.70
For the followers of Lyman Wight and Alpheus Cutler, theological consequences
accompanied the loss of plural marriage. With the lack of interest and available women,
Wight reevaluated the principle and determined that plural marriage was not a necessary
law for salvation but only added to a man’s status in the afterlife. According to one of his
followers, “the theory was that the man that had more than one spiritual wife, would
enjoy a greater measure of glory than the man that had only one.”71 Because plural
68
“Letter from William Smith to Sister C.” Dixon Telegraph, April 30, 1853.
“Gideon Carter Statement,” LDS Archives.
70
Melvin C. Johnson, Polygamy on the Pedernales: Lyman Wight’s Mormon Villages in
Antebellum Texas, 1845 to 1858, 197.
71
The Temple Lot Case, 456, Community of Christ Archives.
69
32
marriage was intimately connected to the idea of celestial marriage in Nauvoo, with the
abandoning of plural marriage, the Cutlerites eventually lost their concept of eternal
marriage altogether, one of Smith’s most potent doctrines.72
The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Ultimately, the reaction to William Smith’s polygamous teachings resulted in the
creation of the monogamist faction of the Restoration, the Reorganized Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints. Initially Smith had suggested that he would relinquish his
role as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator to his nephew, Joseph Smith III, when the teenager
had reached the proper level of maturity. Although, Smith later changed his views in
favor of the eventual succession of his own children, this doctrine had attracted most of
his followers. His beliefs concerning the Smith lineage and his vehement public resolve
against plural marriage were the two-part foundation of his movement. His adherents
were converted to these principles.73
When one of the Palestine church’s apostles, Jason Briggs, discovered Smith’s
deceit, he was devastated. On November 21, 1851, he received and announced a
revelation that would forever after alter the face of Mormonism. According to the
revelation, William Smith had been the proper guardian for Joseph Smith III, but had
“forfeited that which pertained to him.” Concerning plural marriage, the revelation
continued:
That which you received as my celestial law is not of me, but is the doctrine of
Baalam. And I command you to denounce it and proclaim against it….write the
72
The connection of plural marriage to the belief in eternal marriage, see B. Carmon Hardy, Doing
The Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise (Norman, Okla.: Arthur H.
Clarke Company, 2007.)
73
D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 235.
33
revelation and send it unto the Saints at Palestine, and at Voree, and at Waukesha,
and to all places where this doctrine is taught as my law….74
The revelation was distributed throughout the region. Many heard Briggs’
message and promptly aligned themselves with the new movement. Following the
establishment of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, excluding
the Brighamites, the scattered factions of the original church became largely united under
the new organization.75 For many, this church was a sanctuary from the teachings of
polygamy. Those who found themselves safely inside the Reorganized Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints could fervently denounce the abominable practice. Following
William Smith’s original plans, Joseph Smith III was ordained the Prophet, Seer, and
Revelator over the new church on April 6, 1860.76 Most frequently, under the platform of
Joseph Smith III, the “Josephites” attributed its creation to Brigham Young, although the
smaller sects might have conjured up the practice through independent innovation.
Romanan Wight, the son of one of Lyman Wight’s plural wives, later returned to
Texas on an RLDS mission. He recorded his thoughts while visiting his childhood
homestead.
As we stood on the old site and saw only the rock foundations of the old houses,
we were filled with thoughts of the past, and we wondered what the result would
have been if [Wight’s colony] had remained there and proved loyal to the original
tenets of the church. The effects can never be known.77
There is trauma in Romanan’s words. The assumption, of course, was that his father had
not maintained the original teachings of the church. As Romanan embraced the RLDS
74
“History of the Reorganization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” The
Messenger of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 2 (November 1875): 1.
75
Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer, “Introduction” in Scattering of the Saints: Schism
within Mormonism, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer (Independence, Mo.: John Whitmer
Books), 5.
76
Roger D. Launius, Joseph Smith III: Pragmatic Prophet (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988.)
77
Saints Herald 49:682.
34
tradition, his rejection of plural marriage now colored his vision of his father’s work in
the Texas colony. By 1860, the vast majority of the Restoration was firmly bifurcated
between the polygamous LDS and the monogamous RLDS. There was no room for a
middle ground on this position.
Of the three communities, we have analyzed here, only the Church of Jesus Christ
(Cutlerite) remains as a distinct sect of the Restoration, although RLDS missionaries
depleted their ranks throughout the nineteenth century.78 The Cutlerite experience
demonstrates that the pain of plural marriage extended even to future generations. With
the decision not to participate in plural marriage, the subject became taboo. Cutlerites
frequently criticized the Brighamites for their continued practice of the principle.
Unfortunately, for the Cutlerites not-so-subtle reminders of their polygamous roots
remained in the community: the polygamous progeny of Mormon apostle, Heber C.
Kimball and two of Alpheus Cutler’s daughters. According to one of these children,
Abram Alonzo Kimball, the community coped by insulting the youth, referring to them
by popular polygamist names such as Brigham or Heber.79 Today, the Cutlerites have
firmly establish their identity as a sect strictly opposed to polygamy, even when there is
hardly a threat of its reoccurrence. The institutional memory of the sect followed the
popular RLDS idea that Joseph Smith Jr. was innocent of the crimes of polygamy.
78
See, Barbara Bernauer, “Gathering the Remnants: Establishing the RLDS Church in
Southwestern Iowa,” John Whitmer Historical Association 20 (2000): 4-33; Danny Jorgensen, “The
Scattered Saints of Southwestern Iowa: Cutlerite-Josephite Conflict and Rivalry, 1855-1865,” John
Whitmer Historical Association Journal 13 (1993): 80-97.
79
Abram Alonzo Kimball, “Autobiography of Abram Alonzo Kimball,” LDS Archives.
35
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have analyzed plural marriage as it existed under William
Smith, Lyman Wight, and Alpheus Cutler. Each of these figures sheds additional detail
on the Mormon experience with polygamy. From Lyman Wight, we have a clear
example of the experimental nature of the principle. The apostle knew something of what
had occurred in Nauvoo, but did not understand the theological justifications behind it.
For example, men were severed from their wives in Nauvoo, Wight introduced the
concept of lineage to explain this. From the Wightite experience, we can also see the
hesitancy many Latter-day Saints felt to enter into the principle. In addition, Wight’s
belief that polygamy was not essential for exaltation represents one response to the issue
of not having enough women for every man.
Under William Smith, we can see a novel use of Joseph Smith’s clandestine
fraternity structure, as it pertained to polygamy. He demonstrates another response to the
dearth of women, namely a “partnership of wives” practiced by only the very top leaders.
William Smith, personally, enlightens us on the desire for polygamists to practice their
religion openly, despite the knowledge that in the nineteenth century, if they remained in
close proximity to outsiders, they needed to do so privately. Most importantly, we saw
that the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the continuation of
William Smith’s church without the always-problematic leadership of William Smith.
Jason Briggs’s November 1851 revelation was a revelation to revolt. Thus, the enduring
impact of polygamy in the East was the unintentional creation of the Reorganized Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a sanctuary for those traumatized by its practice.
36
The Cutlerite experience with plural marriage shows first, the true reticence even
of top leaders to continue the practice. Without Joseph Smith present to buttress the
innovation and despite his having married five women, Alpheus Cutler quickly discarded
the practice a few years later. The Cutlerite experience demonstrates the theological
implications of giving up plural marriage, which went hand-in-hand with the continued
practice of marital sealings “for time and all eternity.” Finally, the Cutlerites serve as a
key example for the recreation of memory in the wake of a prophet’s death.
Scholars of Mormonism have extensively studied plural marriage as it was
practiced by Joseph Smith and into the Brighamite experience in the west. Yet, research
on polygamy’s continuation in various Mormon schisms has historically received only
cursory attention and has only recently been the focus of academic studies. Although
these sects provide additional knowledge concerning the Mormon experience in
nineteenth century America, such studies could provide a needed contrast to the
polygamy of the Great Basin.
37
CHAPTER 3
RENEWING COMMUNITY AND HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE: A CASE STUDY
IN ECCLESIOLOGY (1853-1864)
The Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), though largely based on a Nauvoo
precedent, developed a singular ecclesiastical structure once isolated from other Mormon
influences. Developments included the incorporation of two new additions to the church
hierarchy—namely the church interpreter, a charismatic officer in charge of interpreting
spiritual gifts, and a president of the church as a separate and distinct position from the
president of the priesthood. There were also important omissions in Cutler’s hierarchy in
that the new organization had no quorum of twelve apostles, no seventies, and no
bishops. Through the process of analyzing these deviations from the model of the church
as it existed during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, and coupling this new insight with
Cutlerite theology, this chapter suggests that Alpheus Cutler’s theological emphases – his
interpretation of Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo innovations - guided the evolution of his
community’s ecclesiastical structure. Thus, Alpheus Cutler as church organizer and
theologian becomes a case study in how organization is translated through the experience
of the death of a prophet. This chapter is divided into three parts: first, a general history
of Alpheus Cutler and his followers between the martyrdom of Joseph Smith in 1844 and
Cutler’s reorganization of the church in 1853; second, a discussion of Cutlerite theology;
and finally, an examination of the development of the Cutlerite religious organization.
38
Alpheus Cutler and the Creation of the Cutlerites
Before his split from the main body of the Saints and his subsequent
excommunication, the Mormon people regarded Cutler highly. Having served as a
member of the Nauvoo High Council and the temple committee, his credentials were
exceptional. In addition, Cutler was among the few trusted followers of Joseph Smith to
receive their endowments during the Mormon Prophet’s lifetime. And when Smith
revealed the pinnacle ordinance of Mormonism, the second anointing, Cutler was the
sixth person to receive it—on November 15, 1843, a week before the president of the
quorum of twelve apostles, Brigham Young, received his second anointing. Through this
ceremony, Joseph Smith ordained Cutler to the office of king and priest, a position that
contained the fullness of the Melchezidek Priesthood.80
On March 11, 1844, Alpheus Cutler was introduced to the final phase of Joseph
Smith’s evolving understanding of theocracy, when he became a member of the Council
of Fifty.81 In this Council, Joseph Smith selected members to colonize new Mormon
communities in such places as Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Missionaries accepted
diplomatic-like assignments to journey to Russia, France, and the Republic of Texas.82
Specifically, Joseph Smith appointed Alpheus Cutler to re-establish missionary work
among the Native Americans, whom the Mormons called Lamanites. This assignment
would become Cutler’s focus for the remainder of his life. Nevertheless, he understood,
80
Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book Company, 1977), 322.
81
William Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton, ed. George D. Smith
(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 126–27.
82
Klaus Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in
Mormon History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967), 85–87.
39
via Smith’s instructions that other events must occur before a successful missionary effort
could take place.
For this reason, Cutler sided with Brigham Young and the twelve apostles
following the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and continued to serve on the Nauvoo High
Council. In this capacity, he participated in the excommunication trials of those Saints
who opposed the quorum of twelve, including Sidney Rigdon, James Strang, William
Smith and their followers. During a heated high council discussion concerning
succession claims, Cutler declared, “he felt bound to sustain the Twelve, and all the
Quorums of the Church with its present organization, for on that his salvation
depended.”83
Alpheus Cutler’s loyalty to the twelve can be documented for the next several
years. In the winter of 1845–1846, Cutler with other members of the Holy Order
administered the temple ordinances to those Saints striving to maintain “Joseph’s
measures.”84 He began the trek west with the Saints, crossing Iowa during the summer of
1846; and at Winter Quarters, became the president of the Municipal High Council.85 In
1847, no one considered Cutler a rogue member of the church, but that would soon
change.
A major turning point occurred when Brigham Young appointed Alpheus Cutler
to take a company and begin missionary work among a group of Delaware Indians living
in Kansas Territory.86 Cutler led an expedition and established a small colony, the Silver
83
Fred Collier, The Nauvoo High Council Minute Books, 156–57.
Times and Seasons (Nov. 1, 1844): 694.
85
Danny L. Jorgensen, “The Old Fox: Alpheus Cutler,” 163.
86
See Danny L. Jorgensen, “Building the Kingdom of God: Alpheus Cutler and the Second
Mormon Mission to the Indians, 1846–1853,” Kansas History 15 (1992): 192–209.
84
40
Creek Branch, over which he served as president.87 Although the branch had official
sanction from Brigham Young, who was functioning as the president of the church,
difficulties and suspicion on the part of the apostles would later result in a branch
investigation by the church’s high council. During these trials, which took place in 1849,
members of Cutler’s group stated their leader had been “ordained to lead this people and
bring about the redemption of Zion.”88 The High Council disfellowshipped several
Cutlerites and suspended the colony’s Lamanite mission.89 In 1851, Cutler was
excommunicated.
Members of the Silver Creek Branch continued to pursue their missionary efforts
among the Native Americans. Later, the Cutlerites, themselves, disappointed by their
lack of success, suspended the Lamanite mission.90 In 1852, Cutler gathered his
followers and moved. They founded the town of Manti near present day Shenandoah,
Iowa, where on September 19, 1853 Alpheus Cutler reorganized the Church of Jesus
Christ with himself as “the head.”
Cutlerite Theology
A unique doctrinal emphasis defined the Cutlerite people at least from the time of
their initial struggle with the high council in Iowa. Ultimately, the severed ties arising
from this conflict allowed Cutler to establish and mature his own theology without regard
to loyalties to the twelve apostles. Three doctrinal keys form the focus of Cutlerite
87
Silver Creek Branch was located in Mills County near present-day Silver City, Iowa.
Orson Hyde, George A. Smith, and Ezra T. Benson, “Report to Brigham Young and Council of
Twelve,” 16, Brigham Young Correspondence, LDS Archives.
89
For a more complete discussion of these trials, see Richard E. Bennett, “Lamanism, Lymanism,
and Cornfields,” 44–59; Danny L. Jorgensen, “Conflicts in the Camps of Israel: The 1853 Cutlerite
Schism,” Journal of Mormon History 21 (Spring 1995): 25–64.
90
The Cutlerite endeavor to convert the American Indians was reestablished only after the death
of Alpheus Cutler and the colony had moved to Minnesota.
88
41
theology: (1) the church is dependent on the kingdom–the latter being a separate and
higher organization, (2) the death of Joseph Smith signaled the change of an era and a
major shift in the work of God, and (3) the redemption of Zion was impending and would
be accomplished through the principles of unity and consecration. Each of these
premises was based on early Mormon teachings already introduced largely in the Nauvoo
period, whether publically or privately. In the Silver Creek period, the Cutlerites
developed their own identity as a people with a mission, drawing upon this theology to
rationalize their agenda. In the Manti period, in which we are particularly interested,
Cutler utilized these same foundational doctrines to form a church organization.
In the summer of 1843, Joseph Smith made a surprising and controversial
announcement. He would resign as prophet of the church in favor of his brother Hyrum,
who would then serve in that office. When a group of panicked Saints protested his
decision, Joseph stated that his comment was only designed to try them. He responded
with surprise that his followers did not have a proper understanding of the priesthood,
declaring that he had only intended to “advance from Prophet to Priest and then to
King.”91 This scenario implies that in Joseph Smith’s mind the president of the church,
and even the role of prophet, seer, and revelator, was an inferior position to other offices.
Joseph saw his own advancement through the ranks of greater organizations, specifically
as a priest over the Holy Order and as a king over the Council of Fifty.92
91
Joseph Smith, An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith, ed.
Scott H. Faulring (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 399.
92
Joseph Smith, Words of Joseph Smith The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo
Discourses of the Prophet Joseph, ed. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook (Provo, Utah: Religious
Studies Center, 1980), 233. According to a letter from Willard Richards to Brigham Young in reference to
this sermon, Joseph Smith “did not tell them [the church as a whole] he was going to be a priest now, nor a
King by and by.” In other words, Joseph did not fully explain the situation. He was already operating as
priest over the Holy Order and would soon become king within the Council of Fifty.
42
Alpheus Cutler did not cite Joseph Smith’s proposed reorganization of the church
hierarchy as evidence for his theological statements. Yet, his theology emerged from this
period in Nauvoo, when private ordinations provided a tier of authority above that
recognized by the church. In the only extant literature written by Cutler himself— a letter
explaining his views to an opposing sect— he wrote:
Can a stream rise above its fountain, or can a stream rise without a fountain above
it to supply it? ... Surely God must have a principle of greater and lesser in all
things revealed that none can deny; now if the Church is the greater, or greatest,
what is the lesser? If the Church is the lesser, what is the greater? Herein is the
stream and fountain illustrated. I boldly answer this short question; the Kingdom
of God on the earth is the greater and by this authority were all revelations given
in 1828 and 1829, as well as since, and by this authority was the church organized
on the 6th of April, 1830.”93
The Kingdom of God held authority or priesthood above the church. Cutler
believed that the church could rebel and although it would no longer be a legitimate
organization, the kingdom would continue to possess God’s blessing. When the church
rejected the priesthood, God would reject the church. A new organization could be
formed by those in possession of the appropriate authority, when commanded by God.
Cutler’s letter also speaks specifically of a quorum of seven men, “a regular” but secret
quorum of the priesthood, which had governed the church since before its official
organization.
Following Alpheus’s death, the Cutlerites would begin to consolidate their
founder’s claims. Cutler rarely discussed the Council of Fifty, yet his comments, quoted
above, indicate that he recognized a kingdom of God over the church. In retrospect,
Cutler’s followers would place these two components of Cutler’s ideology together. All
93
Alpheus Cutler to Zenos H. Gurley, January 29, 1856, qtd. in Rupert J. Fletcher and Daisy
Fletcher, Alpheus Cutler and the Church of Jesus Christ (Independence, Mo.: The Church of Jesus Christ,
1974), 268–69.
43
references to the Kingdom of God were seen as references exclusively to the Seven and
vice-a-versa. Cutler was likely not the author of this equation.
However, Cutler based his claim to succession, as being the last surviving,
faithful member of this council of seven men, ordained as prophets. Cutler revealed that
during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, he ranked number seven in this quorum with the
number six position being held by John Smith.94 Cutlerites as far back as the 1850s
suggested scriptural and historical precedence for such a quorum. Nevertheless, today
there is a scholarly consensus that Cutler’s succession claims grew out of his reception of
the second anointing and membership in the Council of Fifty, though the specific
explanations vary. D. Michael Quinn has suggested that the Quorum of Seven existed as
an executive committee in the Council of Fifty.95 Whether Quinn is correct or not, there
is no “smoking gun” so to speak in the Cutlerite church records. Regardless of the
details, Alpheus Cutler saw the hope of the Saints in the Kingdom of God, a quorum of
priesthood above and separate from the church. Through his position in the kingdom, he
had the authority to reorganize the church.
Latter-day Saints ascribed to the notion of dispensationalism. Theologians
commonly divided the history of time into seven acts, in each of which God dispensed his
work anew, often differently than before. According to the Book of Mormon, the last
period would be subdivided into two parts: the Times of the Gentiles and the Times of
Israel. During the Times of the Gentiles, people of European descent would receive the
Mormon Gospel and through missionary efforts have the opportunity to become
94
Fletcher and Fletcher, Alpheus Cutler and the Church of Jesus Christ, 54.
D. Michael Quinn, “The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945,” BYU Studies 20, no.
2 (1980), 183.
95
44
“numbered among the House of Israel.” Yet eventually, “when the Gentiles shall sin
against [the] Gospel,” a new period would begin in which the Lamanite people would be
the central focus of God’s work. These prophecies included apocalyptic allusions to war
and disaster for the unbelieving Gentile people (i.e. the Whites) at the hands of the House
of Israel. The House of Israel “shall go through among them, and shall tread them
down….”96
Cutlerites believed that the last days of Nauvoo signaled the shift to this new era.
They based this on two major events: the martyrdom of their prophet, Joseph Smith, and
the delayed completion of the Nauvoo Temple. The former represented the rejection of
the gentile people as a whole, while the latter represented the rejection of the church.
The rejection of the church was based on a divinely appointed deadline for the
construction of the Nauvoo Temple. In 1841, Joseph Smith received a revelation
commanding the Saints to build a temple and boarding house in the vicinity of Nauvoo.
The revelation also announced that the newly revealed ordinance of baptism for the dead
was to be performed exclusively within the temple walls. However, the revelation
allowed the Saints to continue the performance of vicarious baptisms outside of the
temple until they “have had sufficient time to build a house unto me.” Deity warned the
Saints if they did not complete the temple before the “the end of the appointment [they
would] be rejected as a church, with [their] dead.”97 Later, Smith announced that the
Saints could no longer perform baptisms until the temple had been completed. In
retrospect, the Cutlerites and others interpreted this announcement as a divine rejection of
the original Mormon Church.
96
97
3 Nephi 16:9–15.
Doctrine and Covenants 124:32.
45
Although there is no evidence that Alpheus Cutler held this view before the Silver
Creek period; well before 1853, the Cutlerites had come to believe that the church had
been rejected. This concept may have stemmed from the teachings of Lyman Wight, who
had interaction with the movement in the late 1840s.98 Wight had concluded as early as
February 1844 that the church would not live up to its responsibility to construct the
temple “in a reasonable time.”99 Regardless of whether Lyman Wight and Alpheus Cutler
had come to this conclusion independently or in response to the other, Cutler had
accepted the concept of the rejected church by the 1840s. In 1849, LDS apostle Orson
Hyde suggested that the Silver Creek Branch was teaching “that there is no organization,
nor in the [Salt Lake] Valley; that the church is disorganized at present.”100
The second aspect of the Times of Israel was the rejection of the gentiles as a
whole. Following the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints halted missionary work among those of European descent in
the United States. For example, Brighamite missionaries did not proselytize in the United
States again, until 1854.101 The Cutlerites also subscribed to this view, but emphasized
the new missionary endeavor that would occur among the House of Israel, specifically
the Native Americans (Lamanites). As one Cutlerite, Marcus Shaw, explained in an 1863
conference address: there was a “work that was to be carried out after the death of the
Prophet [Joseph Smith] and of the work going to the house of Israel and of Alpheus
98
Jorgensen, “Conflict in the Camps of Israel,” 41–42.
Lyman Wight to First Presidency, February 15, 1844, in History of the Church, ed. B.H. Roberts
(Salt Lake City, Utah: 1912), Volume 6, 255.
100
Frontier Guardian, May 2, 1849, 1:7.
101
“St. Louis Missouri, Conference Minutes, 1852-1856 ... From Bill Hartley Notes,” series IX,
box 33, folder 13, item 17, Leonard Arrington Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier
Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah.
99
46
Cutler carrying the same to them.”102 In another sermon, Shaw preached, “show me the
man that has carried the gospel to the house of Israel for that individual holds authority
above all other authorities that may come.”103 For the Cutlerites, this man was Alpheus
Cutler. As explained by Luman Calkins during the high council investigations of 1849,
the Cutlerites believed that Cutler held full directional control of Mormon-Indian
affairs.104
Certainly from the beginning of his mission to 1851, Cutler’s full attention was
turned to the Native American people or, as they were often called by Cutlerites,
Lamanites, Israel, or “the red men of the forest.”105 The Lamanites would be a key in
fulfilling Last-Days prophecy, particularly the establishment of the rule of the Kingdom
of God. Even after the suspension of the Kansas mission, the responsibility to convert the
Lamanites remained a crucial part of the Cutlerite psyche. In the 1860s, following the
death of Alpheus Cutler, the Cutlerites traveled to Minnesota with renewed hopes of
bringing the Mormon gospel to the local Native Americans.106
The third theological focus was the continuation of the overarching emphasis of
Joseph Smith’s ministry— the creation of Zion.107 According to an 1831 revelation, the
Lord had appointed a spot for the establishment of a future utopia in Independence,
102
Minutes of conference, April 6, 1863, box 1, folder 2. Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerites)
Collection, 19th Century Western and Mormon Americana, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B.
Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. [Hereafter, Church Records].
103
Minutes of church meeting, February 22, 1863, box 1, folder 5, Church Records.
104
Orson Hyde, George A. Smith, and Ezra T. Benson, “Report to Brigham Young and Council of
Twelve,” 15, Brigham Young Correspondence, LDS Archives.
105
Jorgensen, “Building the Kingdom of God,” 195.
106
For a full discussion of the Cutlerites efforts among the Native Americans of Minnesota, see
Biloine Whiting Young, Obscure Believers: The Mormon Schism of Alpheus Cutler (St. Paul, Minn.: Pogo
Press, 2002), 138–156.
107
For a full comparative study on Zion (specifically Jackson County) in Restoration thought, see
Craig S. Campbell, Images of the New Jerusalem: Latter Day Saint Faction Interpretations of
Independence, Missouri (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004).
47
Jackson County, Missouri.108 The Saints envisioned a temple in the frontier town to fulfill
the biblical prophecy of Isaiah: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the
mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established ... and all nations shall flow unto it....
for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the world of the Lord from Jerusalem.”109
In 1833, the Latter-day Saints were driven from Jackson County and later from
Missouri altogether. Yet the redemption of Zion remained a prominent theme throughout
nineteenth-century Mormonism. An 1834 revelation informed the Saints of the reasons
for their exile from the designated city of Zion. Specifically they were “not united
according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom; And Zion cannot be
built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom.”110 They were
not united as a people, nor had they implemented the law of consecration.
The Cutlerites, although participants in the trek west across Iowa, believed the
greater exodus west would only delay the true task of redeeming Zion.111 In Cutlerite
prophecy, the Lord’s people would be brought into the Promised Land through the efforts
of a modern-day Joshua. Their leader, Alpheus Cutler, would perform this messianic role.
This was in part because, in 1838, Cutler had been appointed to be the master-workman
or chief architect of the temple at Far West, Missouri.112 A prophecy soon spread among
the people, stating “Father Cutler’s trowel is going to ring in the Temple walls of Jackson
County.”113
108
Doctrine and Covenants 57.
Isaiah 2:2–3 [King James Version].
110
Doctrine and Covenants 105:3–4.
111
Richard E. Bennett, “Lamanism, Lymanism, and Cornfields,” 49–50.
112
Fletcher and Fletcher, Alpheus Cutler and the Church of Jesus Christ, 25.
113
Hyde, Smith, and Benson, “Report to Brigham Young and Council of Twelve,” 14.
109
48
During a January 6, 1861 church service, Cutler specifically prophesied that he
would be “standing in Zion, if he lived to be 80 years old.”114 That gave the Saints
approximately four years, until Cutler’s 80th birthday on February 29, 1864. The memoirs
of Joseph Smith III provide us with an outsider commentary on what the young prophet
perceived as fanaticism in response to this prophecy:
“They had become imbued with the idea that God would soon command them to
gather to Zion. So strong was this belief among them that they had made ready
wagons, tents and other appurtenances of nomadic life—and were ready, at a
moment’s notice, to throw their household goods into the vehicles and start for
Independence … Among these people who held to Elder Cutler, there was so
strong a belief that such a call would soon come, that they would not furnish their
houses enough to even make themselves comfortable, nor make proper
improvements upon their lands, notwithstanding the fact that they were located in
one of the very best and most fertile parts of Southern Iowa.”115
In the 1860s, Cutlerites came to consider it their responsibility to remain always
prepared to begin the great trek back to Jackson County, Missouri that would begin the
fulfillment of God’s promises to his people. This theme was recalled often during the first
several decades of Cutlerite history, until a group of Cutlerites in the 1920s constructed a
church in Jackson County, near the temple site.116
The Cutlerites made several attempts throughout their history to implement the
communal teachings of Joseph Smith. However, they interpreted consecration differently
at different times. The first communal efforts at Silver Creek ended with a scandal
referred to cryptically as the “tight jacket.” Although, the Cutlerite Church Records do
not provide the details of this communal attempt, the Cutlerites remembered that they had
114
Box 1, folder 3, 87–88, Church Records.
Joseph Smith III, Memoirs of Joseph Smith III, ed. Mary Audentia Smith Anderson and
Richard P. Howard (Independence, Mo.: Herald Publishing House, 1979), 98–99.
116
Biloine Whiting Young, Obscure Believers, 186. See also Danny L. Jorgensen, “Back to Zion:
The Emergence of the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) and Its Return to Independence, Missouri” in
Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer
(Independence, Mo.: John Whitmer Books, 2007), 161–76.
115
49
been deceived into believing that Cutler had approved of their efforts, when he actually
had not.117 After their arrival in Manti, Alpheus Cutler encouraged his followers to
consecrate informally, by meeting the needs of their neighbors. Chancey Whiting later
described this teaching as “come down with all but not put it in his hand.”118 Alpheus
Cutler also became trustee-in-trust over the organization and sometimes requested
specific properties and funds for the church. An organized United Order was not formed
during Cutler’s lifetime; nevertheless, Cutlerite sermons promised that when members of
the Church of Jesus Christ would truly live the law of consecration, “the earth will begin
to quake before us, then you will begin to see the Lamanites receive [the gospel], and that
Zion can be redeemed.”119
For Cutlerites, this meant the communal order was essential. The Saints would
have to come to a point by which they were worthy to participate in the assignments God
had in store for them, then they could effectively teach the Lamanites the Restored
Gospel, and finally, they could return to Jackson County.
The Organization
On the basis of the above theology, the Cutlerites founded a new Mormon church
to replace the previously rejected organization. Realizing their proselytizing efforts were
rendering little to no results, the Cutlerites left Silver Creek. They arrived in Fremont
County, Iowa in 1852. Alpheus Cutler, always mindful of sacred space, had seen the area
117
Minutes of council meeting, July 14, 1868, box 1, folder 7, Church Records. Cutlerites
discussed the “tight jacket” during a July 14, 1868 meeting, in which members covenanted to once again
dedicate all they possessed “to be governed by the voice of the council of High Priests.” During this
meeting, certain individuals objected to the new covenant based on their previous experience at Silver
Creek.
118
Box 2, folder 6, Church Records.
119
Statement from Joseph E. Fletcher, 1884, box 1, folder 4, Church Records.
50
in a vision before their arrival.120 They later named their new town Manti, after a city in
the Book of Mormon. Manti was designed to be a way station where the people could
begin to work towards the threefold process of the Last Days, as discussed above. The
Cutlerites frequently spoke of “preparation.” They prepared by becoming worthy to bring
the Gospel to the Lamanites and to redeem Zion.
In Manti, Cutler’s theology began to take on an organizational form. On
September 8, 1853, Alpheus baptized several individuals into the Kingdom of God. He
had determined that without a divinely recognized church, the Saints could claim
membership in the Kingdom of God via baptismal rites. Ultimately, this situation was
temporary, awaiting a commandment to re-establish the church organization. According
to a twentieth-century history, Cutler witnessed a divinely appointed manifestation—two
back-to-back half moons in the sky. The sign confirmed his revelation to reorganize the
church.121
On September 19, 1853, Cutler conducted the first baptisms into the newly
reorganized Church of Jesus Christ. The rejection of the original church had subsequently
rendered all previous ordinances void; thus, over a period of time each of Cutler’s
followers was rebaptized.122 In contrast, again according to the twentieth-century history,
120
Minutes of council meeting, December 26, 1859, box 1, folder 2, Church Records. For further
reading see Michael S. Riggs, “The Cutlerite Migration to Minnesota: An Epic Perilous Journey into
Diaspora,” in Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and John C.
Hamer (Independence, Mo.: John Whitmer Books, 2007), 177–89.
121
Fletcher and Fletcher, Alpheus Cutler and the Church of Jesus Christ, 47.
122
“An Extract from Some of Chancey Whiting’s Writings,” box 1, folder 4, Church Records.
According to Chancey Whiting: “In view of rejecting the Church ... he required baptism of all old or new
members who united with him. This move entirely separated him and his followers from all the present
factions of the Church.”
51
“Father Cutler did not suffer himself to be rebaptized, stating that he would not sever the
tie between himself and Joseph Smith.”123
A similar pattern followed in regard to priesthood ordinations and other
ordinances. Just as previous baptisms needed to be performed anew, priesthood
ordinations, with the exception of Cutler’s own, were considered invalid. Even those men
Cutler ordained between 1846 and 1853 were reordained under the new organization. The
recording of the first reordinations refers to this process as a “reconfirmation” of the
priesthood, suggesting that the men would have considered themselves previously
possessed of ecclesiastical authority.124 Nevertheless, reordinations, like rebaptisms were
more than a formality. This was the design of a new people. Cutlerites frequently
proclaimed that their movement received the priesthood entirely through Alpheus
Cutler.125 These reordinations were a crucial step in forming an independent body of the
Restoration, no longer linked to any other group.
The process of reordination provides insight into Cutler’s methods of leadership.
Whereas, he could have promptly organized the church hierarchy with all of its quorums
as they existed in Nauvoo (the resources were available), he opted to begin a slow
process, lasting several years, of reordaining individuals as they proved themselves
faithful. Cutler was less concerned with organization than with the development of his
followers. When Cutlerites were eventually chosen by church leaders to receive
reordination, those who had served as elders and high priests were ordained to the office
123
Fletcher and Fletcher, Alpheus Cutler and the Church of Jesus Christ, 54.
List of ordinations, box 1, folder 1, Church Records.
125
Minutes of church meeting, January 8, 1860, box 1, folder 1, Church Records. Cutler himself
stated that “the Priesthood the people of Manti had got, had come from him, and if they did not use it right
he would take it from them, and take it home.”
124
52
they previously possessed. However, Cutler ordained those men who had been seventies,
the most popular priesthood office in Nauvoo, to the office of high priest.
In Manti, religious life revolved around advancement. The Cutlerites, as a
community, strived to advance to greater righteousness to eventually be worthy of Zion.
As individuals, they sought self-mastery in order to be considered for advancement in the
priesthood.126 Males were ordained first priests in the Aaronic Priesthood, then elders in
the Melchezidek Priesthood, and finally high priests. Cutlerite sermons from this period
stressed the essential nature of the office of high priest. Yet during an 1860 church
service, Cutler warned his followers not to think that even the high priest ordination was
sufficient, for there were “two keys” remaining, an allusion to ordination as a king and
priest through the second anointing ceremony associated with the Holy Order and later
with the temple in Nauvoo.127 This was the same ritual that had provided Alpheus Cutler
with the fullness of the Melchezidek Priesthood and was thought to guarantee exaltation
for its recipients.128 These final keys, along with the preliminary endowment ceremony,
pertained to entrance in the Kingdom of God.
In 1868, Cutlerite leader Calvin G. Fletcher declared that “this Church stands in a
different situation [than the Church in1844] and of the most belonging to the
Kingdom.”129 Cutlerites distinguished between the kingdom order, which according to
their understanding, came to mean a governing quorum of seven men, and the kingdom in
a broader-sense consisting of all those who had advanced. When a man or woman,
received the temple ordinances, they became a part of the kingdom. According to many
126
See for example, conference minutes, October 6, 1863, box 1, folder 2, Church Records.
Minutes of church meeting, January 29, 1860, box 1, folder 1, Church Records.
128
See David John Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness, 58–68.
129
Conference minutes, April 6, 1868, box 1, folder 7, Church Records.
127
53
Cutlerite sermons of the period, Alpheus Cutler was building a kingdom of priests. One
was first a member of the church and then advanced to the kingdom.
Cutler’s reorganization stemmed from his theology: namely, the concept that the
church was subordinate to the Kingdom of God. The Times of Israel, with its
corresponding rejection of the earlier church, demanded the creation of a new
organization; and thus, in 1853, Cutler acted under the authority of the kingdom to
reorganize the Church of Jesus Christ.
Church Government
While the basic framework for the church followed the 1844 church organization,
there were several innovations, reflecting Cutler’s views of changing times. Most
noticeably within Cutler’s 1853 reorganization, is the absence of three major priesthood
offices: apostle, seventy, and bishop; and the additions of two unique positions in the
hierarchy: church president and church interpreter.
Nevertheless, at the founding meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ, only three
positions were recognized. According to the minutes, “firstly Br. Alpheus Cutler [was]
chosen our head or chief councilor and sustained by a unanimous vote. Secondly Br.
Edmund Fisher [was] chosen and sustained as President of the Church of Jesus Christ by
clear vote. Thirdly Chauncey Whiting [was] chosen and sustained as Clerk of the Church
of Jesus Christ by clear vote.”130 Later, both Alpheus Cutler as the president of the
Melchezidek Priesthood and Edmund Fisher as president of the church had two
counselors to assist them in their responsibilities.131
130
131
Organization of the Church, September 19, 1853, box 1, folder 1, Church Records.
Conference minutes, April 6, 1856, box 1, folder 1, Church Records.
54
The division between Cutler’s role as head or chief councilor and Fisher’s role as
president of the church was based on a precedence left by Joseph Smith. As Joseph Smith
had desired to make Hyrum Smith the prophet in Joseph’s place, Alpheus Cutler had
instituted a position below his own to deal with the business affairs of the church
organization. However, the comparison between Cutler’s organization and Joseph’s
proposal to have Hyrum take over the office of prophet is limited. The Church of Jesus
Christ did not consider Edmund Fisher to be a prophet. Alpheus Cutler was clearly the
prophet in his position of chief councilor. Rather Fisher’s position consisted of day-today affairs.
Cutler’s position of chief counselor was a not-so-veiled reference to his position
in the Council of Fifty. In the Kingdom of God meetings in Nauvoo, the council was
ranked according to age. In 1853, seventy-three year old, John Smith was the only
surviving Council of Fifty member ranked ahead of Alpheus Cutler. Considering John
Smith out of the quorum, Cutler was thus the eldest member of the Council of Fifty. If in
1853, Joseph Smith were alive and still meeting with his council, Cutler would have been
the first-voice in the meeting— Smith’s right-hand man or chief councilor.
The addition of a church presidency does not suggest that Cutler was forming a
more complicated church hierarchy than the original. Rather, Cutler separated the
operational side of the church from the charismatic. The existence of a church president
allowed Cutler to focus on receiving revelation—acting in the role of a traditional
prophet. Of course, dividing the two positions may have appealed to Cutler for another
reason; in 1853, he was nearly seventy years old and it had become important for others
to assist him with the day-to-day direction of his people.
55
Cutler did eventually establish a more practical church government, including
priesthood quorums: first, an elders’ quorum in 1856; a priests’ quorum in 1857; and
finally, a high priests’ quorum in 1858.132 On April 6 1858, Alpheus was sustained in a
second role as president of the high priests’ quorum.133 These quorums seem to have
largely followed their Nauvoo precursors. Yet unlike Nauvoo, the Church of Jesus Christ
had neither a quorum of apostles nor a quorum of seventies. As has been suggested, such
variants can only be understood by considering Cutler’s theology— in this case, as it
relates to the Times of Israel.
Between 1835 and 1844, the specific responsibilities of the quorum of twelve
apostles, under Joseph Smith, gradually developed.134 The initial concept of the
apostleship was a travelling council providing leadership over evangelistic efforts and
church government outside the organized Stakes. Those in the position of seventy acted
as assistants to this missionary and leadership effort. Eventually, under the apostolic
administration of post-martyrdom Nauvoo, the offices of apostle and seventy evolved
into a new level of prominence throughout the church.135
The exclusion of a quorum of twelve apostles in the Cutlerite Church has caused
many scholars familiar with typical Mormon ecclesiastical structure to wonder at the
cause.136 For example, D. Michael Quinn has suggested that Alpheus Cutler secretly
accepted the original twelve apostles as the legitimate head of the Restoration. In this
132
Box 1, folder 1, Church Records.
Conference minutes, April 6, 1858, box 1, folder 2, Church Records.
134
Ronald K. Esplin, “Joseph, Brigham, and the Twelve: A Succession of Continuity,” BYU
Studies 21 (1981): 308–12.
135
See William G. Hartley, “Nauvoo Stake, Priesthood Quorums, and the Church’s First Wards,”
BYU Studies 32 (1991): 1–20.
136
See, for example, Danny L. Jorgensen, “Fiery Darts of the Adversary: An Interpretation of
Early Cutlerism,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 10 (1990): 77.
133
56
theory, because there could be only one quorum of twelve apostles, Cutler did not
establish their rivals in his organization.137 Quinn cites as evidence, the report of a private
statement by Cutler to his grandson Abraham Alonzo Kimball: “I know that Joseph
Smith was a Prophet of God, and I know that Brigham Young is his legal successor, and I
always did know it!”138
However, the absence of the seventy, as seen in the church records, must be seen
as a complementary anomaly. Both quorums were in charge of missionary efforts outside
of the central gathering of the Saints. Joseph Smith’s revelations had not placed a limit to
the number of seventies who could be appointed in the church; thus, even if Quinn’s
suggestion is correct concerning the Twelve, this could not also be true of the seventy.
Cutler could have ordained members of the seventy without rivaling the twelve, but did
not.
Of course, the serious flaw in this theory is that it privileges the private account of
a single and likely biased memoir to Cutler’s own well documented views and actions.
Quinn’s idea requires a belief that Alpheus Cutler, though bold in his statements
concerning a rejection of the church, was hesitant in doing anything that would officially
sever the two organizations.
The reorganization of the twelve apostles would have been meaningless in Manti.
Missionary work had not been a focus since the establishment of Cutler’s church.
Specifically, the absence of the quorum of twelve was an outgrowth of Cutler’s views
regarding proselytizing during the Times of Israel. Alpheus Cutler believed that the
137
138
D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 209.
Cited in Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 209.
57
authority to perform missionary work among the Native Americans had been re-invested
in the Council of Fifty, which included him, rather than the twelve apostles.
The missing office of bishop is somewhat more unusual in a community that
emphasized the law of consecration as a means to redeem Zion. Bishops had traditionally
directed the church’s communal efforts, as Luman Calkins did as a bishop in the Silver
Creek Branch. Like other colonies, the bishop worked alongside the branch president, as
one of the two essential community officers. Yet, once Cutler reorganized the church,
Calkins ceased to function in his temporal capacity.
On December 9, 1877, over a decade after Cutler’s death, a Cutlerite council
debated the propriety of having a bishop in the church.139 Two suggestions were offered
to explain why Cutler had been reluctant to utilize the position. First, it was suggested
that the position of bishop belonged to Luman Calkins by right and because Alpheus
Cutler knew “what kind of man he was, did not want him to for one.”140 In the Silver
Creek Branch, Calkins had considered himself Cutler’s right hand man.141 On January 22,
1858, however, Calkins had been excommunicated for “unlawful acts with his daughter”
and his reputation in the church had been greatly diminished.142
Why was it Calkins’ right to be the community bishop? According to an 1831
revelation, a man had a “legal right” to the office of bishop if he was a firstborn son of
Aaron.143 Calkin’s patriarchal blessing declares his lineage was not Levi through Aaron,
139
Conference minutes, December 9, 1877, box 1, folder 11, Church Records.
Ibid.
141
Jorgensen, “Conflict in the Camps of Israel,” 41.
142
Minutes of high council, April 22, 1858, box 1, folder 1, Church Records.
143
Doctrine and Covenants 68:15–21.
140
58
but through Ephraim.144 Though frequently referred to as the royal bloodline, lineage
through Ephraim did not provide Calkins any right to the office of bishop. So, then, why
were some under the impression that Calkins would have been the obvious choice for
bishop of the colony? The answer is that Luman Calkins had previously served as the
community bishop before the 1853 reorganization. At some point before 1853, this
ordination, as all others, had ceased to be recognized.
Yet, in the December 9, 1877 meeting, one Cutlerite reasoned that just as all
priesthood offices were reordained in their exact same position as previous to the
Cutlerite reorganization, Cutler would have felt the necessity to appoint Calkins to his old
calling. For early Cutlerites, with few exceptions, such as priesthood advancement,
callings were permanent throughout a man’s association with the church. Being released
from a position, without attaining to a higher rank, seems to have been reserved strictly as
a method of rebuke.
On the other hand, another Cutlerite provided a counter-argument for the lack of a
bishop, arguing that the true cause was the unique situation of the Cutlerite people: they
had a prophet who could act as the mediator over consecration, rather than provide a tier
of middle management to the church hierarchy. The responsibility of consecration was
too essential for the redemption of Zion to be delegated to another. According to this
argument, “the people would take a step down to have a bishop.”145
Though this is a reasonable suggestion, it would appear that the financial concerns
of the church were decided by the council of high priests, rather than invested to one
man, whether it was a bishop or Alpheus Cutler. Instead, the reason Cutler failed to add
144
145
Pliney Fisher, “Pliney Fisher Patriarchal Blessing Book,” Community of Christ Archives.
Conference minutes, December 9, 1877, box 1, folder 11, Church Records.
59
the position of bishop was the anticipation of the church’s return to Zion. A bishop who
established inheritances for the Saints seemed advantageous for a permanent structure,
but not so much for a church that saw itself on the verge of an exodus.
There is one position in the Cutlerite Church hierarchy that has never been
duplicated in other expressions of the Restoration—the church interpreter. In 1860,
Alpheus Cutler ordained Squire Eggleston to the calling of an interpreter. With that
ordination, Eggleston became responsible for interpreting the spiritual gift of tongues, a
practice that was quite prevalent among the early Cutlerites. Like other church leaders,
Eggleston was sustained (that is publically recognized and symbolically ratified) annually
in his position during general conference. He frequently spoke in church meetings
concerning the spiritual gifts and was more often called upon to use his power of
interpretation. On at least one occasion, Squire Eggleston provided the interpretation for a
patriarchal blessing that had been revealed through the gift of tongues.146
Cutler’s institution of this office cannot be explained by the earlier theological
discussion. Rather this position seems to be practical. The gift of tongues, if interpreted
by fringe members, could have disastrous results. Thus, Cutler chose a trusted follower to
define the gift. Ultimately, the calling of interpreter became established in the Cutlerite
psyche and would be seen as an integral part of the church organization.
With Eggleston’s excommunication in the 1860s, another interpreter was
appointed to fill his place. With the loss of a major portion of church membership at this
time, there was a shift in the practice of spiritual gifts during public meetings. A
discussion of seemingly spiritual dreams replaced the manifestations of tongues. Again,
146
Records.
Patriarchal blessing given to Chancey Whiting, February 1, 1856, box 1, folder 4, Church
60
the calling of interpreter was re-envisioned to meet the need to explain and define
spiritual dreams.147 The office of interpreter existed through the turn of the century, but
disappeared from the records by the 1920s.
Conclusion
Individuals have often wondered why the Cutlerite ecclesiastical organization
looks so different from that of other Restoration churches. This includes the major
absence of the quorum of twelve apostles and the separation of the church president from
the president of the priesthood. This chapter argued that Alpheus Cutler developed the
distinct Cutlerite Church structure as he was guided by the theology of early Mormonism,
yet determined by his own specific doctrinal emphasis. Specifically, the theological seeds
of the Nauvoo period were already sown in the group’s thought, from at least the Silver
Creek period. This thought process included primarily three doctrinal focuses: first, the
Cutlerites asserted that there was a kingdom order in authority above The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints; second, a new era was ushered in following the assassination
of Joseph Smith and the delayed completion of the Nauvoo Temple; and, third, the
redemption of Zion and the return of the Saints to Jackson County were imminent events,
yet could only be brought about through the advancement of the Saints individually and
collectively, by living the necessary laws of consecration.
This theological formula was based on a Nauvoo precedent and established in the
Cutlerite psyche in Silver Creek. It later formed the ecclesiastical organization of the
newly organized Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite). Their understanding of the priesthood
147
Records.
See for example, minutes of council meeting (February 8, 1885), box 2, folder 2, Church
61
above the church, justified the reorganization, allowed the Cutlerites to bring the prophet
position out of the every-day mundane responsibility of leading a religious group, and
instituted an understanding of advancement. The Cutlerite understanding of the Times of
Israel rendered unnecessary the offices of apostle and seventy. A zeal for the Redemption
of Zion overshadowed more organized efforts of consecration; thus, the community had
no functioning bishop.
It is worthwhile to consider a counter argument to my thesis; namely, that
Alpheus Cutler had a limited number of resources from which to draw his leadership.
Therefore, he organized his ecclesiastical structure based on constraints—namely lack of
manpower. According to this line of reasoning, his theology then developed in response
to his restrictions. This paradigm is useful for explaining the structural changes that have
occurred within the church in the twentieth-century. A lack of resources demanded that
the Cutlerites begin to use women in church positions that would have otherwise been
reserved solely for men. For example, during a 1956 conference, President Clyde
Fletcher stated: “I think we are short on officers. The only way I can see how to work is
to put Amy Whiting in as acting secretary until other arrangements can be made.”148
Another example of the reluctant use of women is the case of Edna Fletcher, from whom
we are indebted for access to the wealth of Cutlerite records. In 1960, she was called as
custodian of the church records, and in 1963, as church historian.149 Likewise, a lack of
males explains the late twentieth-century practice of one man serving both as a member
of the presidency of the church and the presidency of the Melchezidek Priesthood.
148
149
Minutes of conference (October 6, 1956), box 2, folder 8, Church Records.
Ibid.; Minutes of Conference (April 6, 1963), box 2, folder 8, Church Records.
62
Yet this paradigm does not sufficiently explain the organization of the Church of
Jesus Christ. Despite having limited numbers, Cutler certainly had enough members to
form a quorum of twelve apostles. This was the first step undertaken in other
organizations, including the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Cutler’s first step was to divide the office of church president from the president of the
kingdom. This peculiar decision and others have been explained within the context of
Cutlerite theology. In addition, because these doctrines predated the Cutlerite church we
can be sure they did not develop in response to constraints brought about by structure.
Since the death of Alpheus Cutler, the Cutlerites have gone through changes, such
as their use of female adherents to perform tasks previously done only by males. The
community no longer believes in the ease of revelation and the gifts of prophecy,
tongues, and dreams have gradually diminished. Even the President of the Priesthood—
the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator—Stan Whiting waits with his church, for the coming
“Moses man,” a messianic figure, who will redeem Zion and unite the Restoration.150
Following the 1920s, the Cutlerites found themselves enmeshed in
interdenominational discussions in Jackson County, Missouri. Their participation in this
theological dialogue helped them redefine themselves as a church. Cutlerites today do not
stress their identity through Alpheus Cutler— rather, they look back to Joseph Smith.
They have taken the view that Joseph Smith instituted the only teachings of Mormonism
that should be considered canonical. Thus, Cutlerites defend the Lectures on Faith and
the 1844 version of the Doctrine and Covenants, as Joseph Smith, not Alpheus Cutler,
was the lawgiver to this dispensation.
150
Interview with Stan Whiting, February 4, 2002.
63
The Cutlerites, however, have not forgotten Joseph Smith’s vision of an esoteric
gospel. According to an important Cutlerite president and theologian, Rupert J. Fletcher:
Few people grasp the greatness of the plan of salvation as held forth in the
scriptures, because of the unwritten part which they never see and never know,
unless they advance far enough to be taken through the higher order of the
priesthood, as these things are handed down from one generation to another and
this is the only way they are obtained.151
The Church of Jesus Christ has preserved this “higher order” in the upper room of their
chapel through the perpetuation of endowment ceremonies associated with the Nauvoo
Temple.
Structurally, the movement seems to have followed a similar pattern under
Cutler’s successors. A bishop was eventually appointed and after relocating to
Minnesota, the church instituted a more enduring form of the United Order. The
separation of church president and president of the Melchezidek Priesthood remains a
crucial component of the Cutlerite worldview—even when the lack of priesthood holders
forces some men to serve in both presidencies.
151
1959), 43.
Rupert J. Fletcher, The Scattered Children of Zion (Independence, Mo.: privately published,
64
CHAPTER 4:
CHARLES B. THOMPSON AND THE USE OF NARRATIVE THEOLOGY TO
ALLEVIATE THE TENSIONS OF INNOVATION
In their adolescence, religions often formulate a permanent canon of scripture.
They find a consensus on which written works are acceptable as the standard of faith and
which works belong only on the shelves of heretical dissenters. Such a process leads to
the development of a religious orthodoxy. The canon of scripture consigns the
phenomenon of divine revelation to earlier times. And, most importantly, it ensures that
new heresies are unable to claim scriptural legitimacy. As a result, for many established
religious traditions, debates over scripture revolve around the interpretation or weight of
key passages. This sort of scriptural rivalry is familiar to many: whether across the
dinner table, over the pulpit, or in the academic classroom. These contests, limited to a
common scriptural tradition (e.g. the bible) have played a role in the fissuring of
theologically orthodox forms of Christianity. Even with the benefit of a universal text,
schismatic bodies can find support for heterodox beliefs.
This essay examines rival narratives being produced either in the period before
traditions close their canons or when radical movements ignore the constraints imposed
by the orthodox majority. Rather than merely debate the details of worn passages,
innovators can appeal to entirely new sources. Continuing the prophet’s craft, they can
develop fresh sources by which they work out the issues of their times through sacred
lore.
The scholarship of Elaine Pagels examines this process as it occurred in early
Christianity before the biblical canon was established. An expert in twentieth-century
65
Gnostic discoveries, Pagels has shown how texts such as the Gospel of Thomas or the
recently unearthed Gospel of Judas were written as rebuttals of mainstream scriptural
accounts and vice-a-versa. She paints a portrait of diverse Christian sects each relying on
scriptures credited to a specific follower of Jesus of Nazareth. The story of their
struggles for dominance, or at the very least, the struggle for legitimacy is documented
within these accounts. However, she notes that these scriptural conflicts “involve more
than power struggles: they involve the substance of Christian faith. As the stories
themselves show, at stake is the central question of Who is Jesus, and what is the gospel
(good news) about?”152
Her point: scriptural rivalry is not only about power, but about subverting those
teachings opposed to the true interpretation of the Christian faith. Pagels suggests that
the Gospel of John’s introduction of the figure of Doubting Thomas, while
simultaneously emphasizing the divinity of Jesus, is an attempt to undermine the Thomas
Christians and their more-human understanding of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the
heterodox Gospel of Judas features narratives designed to undermine the authority of
those that considered themselves followers of Peter. Beyond the power struggle, the
second-century scripture responds to Christians’ zeal to die unnecessarily as martyrs. But
it is the teaching of second-century theologians that advocate these “human sacrifices”
and, thus, concerns the author of Judas. The narrative that seeks to reformulate early
Christian ideas of martyrdom presents a scene in which the twelve apostles dream that
twelve priests offer a sacrifice of their own wives and children. They turn to Christ for
the proper interpretation of this disturbing vision and are told that it was the apostles
152
Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, 63-64.
66
themselves who offered the unholy sacrifices.153 This type of scriptural rivalry has
occurred frequently in religious history, whether with Mahayana Buddhists in firstcentury India or with the Moorish Science Temple, a heterodox Muslim sect in the
twentieth-century United States.
Kathleen Flake, scholar of Mormon history, documents a similar approach in the
religion-making of Joseph Smith. Flake goes so far as to credit Smith’s success to his use
of narrative “to challenge the Christian tradition in ways not possible through discursive
debate or speculative theology.”154 Unlike other Christian bodies of the time, who
exchanged “creedal statement and dogmatic restatement” to define their communities,
“Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, wrote stories.”155
Thus, this study is informed by both Flake’s study of Mormon narrative and
Pagel’s study of sectarian rivalry. Here, our focus will be on the time period following
Smith’s death and the subsequent atomization of the Mormon tradition. Previous studies
have demonstrated how those prophets who followed Smith reproduced, if not mimicked,
the process of his revelatory gift in order to cement their own legitimacy as religionmakers.156 Here, we will discover a more sophisticated borrowing from Joseph Smith –
the use of narrative theology. Through probing Inspired Enoch, a scripture produced in
153
Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of
Christianity (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 59-75.
154
Kathleen Flake, “Translating Time: The Nature and Function of Joseph Smith’s Narrative
Canon.” Journal of Religion 87, no. 4 (October 2007): 500.
155
Ibid., 497.
156
D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 209-212; Robin Scott Jensen,
“Mormons Seeking Mormonism: Strangite Success and the Conceptualization of Mormon Ideology, 184450” in Scattering of the Saints: Schism with Mormonism, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer
(Independence, Mo.: John Whitmer Books, 2007):115-140. See also Roger Van Noord, King of Beaver
Island: The Life and Assassination of James Jesse Strang (Chicago: University of Illinois, 1988), 33-35.
For a discussion of “process” in the ministry of Joseph Smith, see, Terryl Givens, “Joseph Smith:
Prophecy, Process, and Plenitude” in Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries, ed. Reid L.
Neilson and Terryl L. Givens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 107-117.
67
the decade following Smith’s death, we will find that, like the early Christians, dissenting
thinkers within Mormonism used the medium of story to provide the Saints usable
alternatives to the formidable position of Brigham Young.
The Book of Enoch
In 1773, James Bruce, a British explorer, returned from a journey through
modern-day Ethiopia where he discovered what had become for the Western world a lost
book of the Bible, the Book of Enoch. Ancient peoples among both Jews and Christians
accepted the tome attributed to the patriarch that, according to the biblical record,
“walked with God and …was not; for God took him.”157 Even the Epistle of Jude,
included in the traditional Western canon, quoted from the lost (but not forgotten) text.158
However, Ethiopia remained unaffected by the councils that shaped Western Christian
thought, and there the volume survived as part of an alternative canon. For nearly fifty
years, Bruce’s discovery was housed at the Bodleian library at Oxford, until in 1821,
Richard Laurence, a professor and Anglican clergyman translated the ancient scripture
into English.159 Due to ongoing interest, at least four editions of his work appeared over
the next several decades.160 Yet, no Christian denominations embraced the controversial
work. According to Brigham Young University professor, Hugh Nibley, “the Christian
ministry of all denominations neither liked Laurence’s Enoch nor wanted it. It was not
157
Genesis 5:24.
Jude 1:14-15.
159
For a concise history and commentary of the Book of Enoch, see Margaret Barker, The Lost
Prophet: The Book of Enoch and its Influence on Christianity (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Phoenix Press,
2005).
160
The Book of Enoch, the Prophet : an Apocryphal Production, Supposed for Ages to Have Been
Lost…, trans. Richard Laurence (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1821,1830, 1833, 1883). Thompson seems to have
used the 1838 edition for his translation.
158
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circulated by them but suppressed.”161 The story of the Book of Enoch in the Restoration
was a different one altogether. After all, Mormons were understandably sympathetic to
the idea of newly discovered holy books.
With the publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith opened the canon
closed by Christian councils over a millennium before resulting in a rich tradition of new
and restored scriptures. The purportedly ancient American scripture promised further
holy books: the Brass Plates, an extended 600 BCE Old Testament collection; the records
of the Lost Ten Tribes; and the Sealed Portion, a continuation of the Book of Mormon
text. Later, Joseph Smith produced further revelations which predicted the return of more
lost records: the Book of Joseph of Egypt, the Book of John the Baptist, and the Book of
Enoch.
After the death of Joseph Smith, numerous Mormon prophets brought forth their
own contributions titled after the promised volumes. For example, in 1850, James Strang
published the Book of the Law of the Lord, a purported translation of the brass plates. At
least four prophets have brought forth the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon.162 And
Charles B. Thompson, an early Mormon apologist turned sectarian prophet, published the
Book of Enoch “Revised, corrected and the missing parts restored by Divine
Inspiration….”
This work, which is here termed Inspired Enoch, was to Laurence’s translation of
the Book of Enoch what the Inspired Version or Joseph Smith Translation was to the
King James Version of the Bible. Charles Thompson’s Inspired Enoch is a thoroughly
161
Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet, ed. Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book
Company, 1986), 107.
162
Steven Shields, “Revelation in the Latter Day Saint Movement: Prophets, Seers, and Revelators
in the Modern Era,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 29 (2009), 141.
69
Mormon scripture, capturing both in content and concept key elements of Joseph Smith’s
scriptural tradition. Published in 1852-53, the singular production of Inspired Enoch
offers insights for understanding nineteenth-century Mormonism as it existed outside of
Utah. Inspired Enoch was an attempt at producing a scriptural response to the
controversial theology of mid-century Mormonism namely plural marriage and the
plurality of gods. An outgrowth of the continuing controversy over prophetic succession
was a conflict between rival factions, rival thinkers, and rival theologies. The Utah
faction embraced Joseph Smith’s controversial doctrines of the Nauvoo period and with
scriptural precedence, largely borrowed from the patriarchal narratives of Genesis and the
still secret revelations of Joseph Smith, they defended their understanding of the Mormon
faith. Inspired Enoch produced legitimacy for Thompson’s rival ideology by returning
to the figure of Enoch, who is portrayed as a staunch monogamist. Thus, narrative
theology again had utility for prophets of Mormonism as they shaped their understanding
of what it meant to be a Latter-day Saint and rivaled competing and, in their minds,
dangerous voices.
Ethiopian Enoch and the Restoration
In the summer of 1830, Joseph Smith began his ‘translation’ of the bible with a
new narrative of Moses beginning just before the first chapter of Genesis and continuing
into the traditional text, chapter by chapter. The newly minted prophet modified, edited,
and amended the text. In December, Smith arrived at the first reference to Enoch in the
fifth chapter of Genesis when he recorded the following in his journal:
Much conjecture and conversation frequently occurred among the Saints,
concerning the books mentioned, and referred to, in various places in the Old and
70
New Testaments, which were now nowhere to be found. The common remark
was, “They are lost books”; but it seems the Apostolic Church had some of these
writings, as Jude mentions or quotes the Prophecy of Enoch, the seventh from
Adam.163
Smith then produced a largely expanded version of the Genesis account. When
finally published, the text extended the traditional 5 verses into 110 verses. 164 Smith
introduced details about the enigmatic prophet that “God took,” providing details of his
ministry which foresaw the coming of the flood. Enoch established Zion, a holy city,
which God removed from the Earth to preserve it from the impending destruction. The
newly restored prophecies pointed to the coming millennium when the City of Enoch
would return to meet a last days Zion established by the Saints. According to Philip
Barlow, in Enoch’s narrative, “the sacred past merged with the Mormon present and
future.”165 In the story of the City of Enoch, the Mormons had a myth in which to
encourage their own utopian endeavors, thereafter, referred to as the Order of Enoch.
Scholars have debated whether Joseph Smith himself may have been familiar with
the 1821 edition of the Book of Enoch and used it as a source text for his own Enoch
narrative.166 To be sure, Charles Thompson was not the first Mormon to discover
Laurence’s translation. The earliest definite reference to the “lost book” appeared in the
Millennial Star in July, 1840.167 When the early Mormon theologian, Parley P. Pratt,
discovered the Book of Enoch, he was ecstatic. Within its pages he saw evidence both
163
Joseph Smith Jr., History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: History of Joseph
Smith, the Prophet, by himself, 2nd rev. edition, ed. B. H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: The Deseret Book
Company, 1957), 131-133.
164
Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 138.
165
Philip Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American
Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 49.
166
See D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, Revised and Enlarged
(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 190-192; Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet, 105-106; Richard
Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 138.
167
Parley P. Pratt, “The Apocryphal Book of Enoch,” Millennial Star 1 (July 1840): 61.
71
for the scripture’s ancient origins and more importantly, for Pratt, prophecies of the
Mormon restoration. Enoch had predicted:
the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and the mission of our Elders, which
they are now performing among the nations, together with the late persecution
which has befallen our people in America, with the conduct of the rulers of that
Republic, in refusing to give us redress; yes, in fact, it predicts the final result of
that matter, and the complete triumph of the saints.168
Following an enthusiastic introduction, the early apostle presented a small portion
of the text “without further comment, [leaving] our readers to form their own judgment in
regard to this remarkable book.”169
Over the next two centuries, many other Saints across denominational factions
became interested in the Book of Enoch. One early example is Warren Post who
included notes from the text in his diary. As might be expected of a nineteenth-century
Saint, Post was particularly interested in Enoch’s references to various angelic beings and
their prescribed responsibilities.170 In the late 1860s, the Saints’ Herald, the official
periodical of the RLDS Church, serialized Laurence’s translation of the Book of Enoch.
In the mid-1900s, Mormon Fundamentalists discovered the text. Numerous authors
published excerpts with particular emphasis on Enoch’s symbolism-rich “prophecy of the
ten weeks,” an apocalyptic timeline.171 Later in the century, LDS scholars from Brigham
Young University, including Hugh Nibley, would probe the work in great detail. These
apologists sought to demonstrate the ancient nature of Joseph Smith’s narratives of Enoch
by appealing to similarities in the Ethiopian record and other ancient Enoch literature.
168
Ibid.
Ibid.
170
Warren Post, Warren Post Diaries, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young
University.
171
See for example, Francis M. Darter, Michael Adam God (Salt Lake City: Self Published, 1949)
and Ross Wesley LeBaron, Proclamation…. (Salt Lake City: Self Published, 1964.)
169
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There have been numerous Saints interested in this mysterious book with its
discussion of angels, prophets, and highly symbolic visions. Of course, this point could
be overemphasized. If a theologically-minded, perhaps apologetically motivated, class of
Mormon thinkers read and discussed the Book of Enoch, it never held a place within the
average Saint’s psyche. But, Charles Blancher Thompson was a prime example of a
Mormon thinker.
Like many who united with the fledgling church, Thompson was engrossed in the
concept of modern-day revelation and the coming forth of ancient records. In 1841, he
published Evidences in Proof of the Book of Mormon, a 255-page volume, which
received high praise within Mormonism as one of the first defenses of the Book of
Mormon.172 Thompson’s passion for scripture likely played a role in his attraction to the
prophetic leadership of James Strang, as depicted in a poem he wrote in 1846: “For the
Prophet Joseph’s dead/ And the Lord through him hath said,/ James I’ve planted in his
stead, / To lead the Church in Righteousness. / And a holy Angel then, / Brought the
interpreters to him; / That he might translate for them, / Ancient Records sacredly. / Even
James he now inspires, / Yea, his heart he truly fires; / With the light that he desires, / For
the work of Righteousness. / In Voree the plates were found,/ Showing who were there
cut down; / Unto James the same were shown, / And he translated sacredly.”173 The
poem extolled the new prophet for his ability to bring forth scripture, including his gift of
translation as evidenced by the discovery of the Voree Plates.174
172
Times and Seasons 3 (Jan 1, 1842): 640-644.
Voree Herald 1 (August 1846): 36.
174
Strang purportedly discovered the Voree plates near Burlington, Wisconsin. His angel-guide
offered him the same urim and thummim device provided to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni. From the
three small brass plates, he produced a translation of two paragraphs: a record left by Rajah Manchou of
173
73
Beyond the scriptural tradition continued by Strang, Thompson saw in this
successor of Joseph Smith a continuation of the church’s ecclesiastical structure. He left
Strang’s movement only after he determined that God had earlier rejected the church as
an organization.175 Like other dissenters of the period, Thompson believed that the
Saints’ delay in completing the temple in Nauvoo had resulted in the fulfillment of a
divine warning received through Joseph Smith. The same revelation that commanded the
construction of the edifice, cautioned that, following a “sufficient time” to complete the
work, the disobedient Saints would “be rejected as a church.”176 If there was no church,
Thompson concluded, there was no need for a President of the Church, no matter how
closely his (Strang’s) leadership paralleled Smith’s.177 In January of 1848, Thompson
had his first experience with with the production of scripture. According to his account,
he heard a voice, which announced itself as Baneemy, the true successor of Joseph
Smith.178 Thompson, not unlike a Spiritualist medium of the time, recorded the
utterances of this unseen messenger who was in turn the conduit of divine revelation.
The image is Thompson as a scribe analogous to the role of Oliver Cowdery, who
recorded much of Smith’s recital of the Book of Mormon translation. Later in his career,
Thompson claimed the title of Baneemy for himself.
Vorito, the lone survivor of an ancient civilization destroyed as a result of wickedness and war. The Voree
Plates concludes with a prophecy of Strang. For further information, see Vickie Speek, “God Has Made
Us a Kingdom: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006), 24-26;
Roger Van Noord, King of Beaver Island, 33-36.
175
Bill Shepard has documented the concept of early Mormonism becoming a “rejected people”
throughout the Restoration. See Bill Shepard, “The Concept of a ‘Rejected Gospel’ in Mormon History,
Part 1.” Journal of Mormon History 34, no. 2 (Spring, 2008): 130-181; “The Concept of a ‘Rejected
Gospel’ in Mormon History, Part 2.” Journal of Mormon History 34, no. 3 (Summer, 2008): 142-186.
176
Doctrine and Covenants [LDS Edition] 124: 32-33.
177
Charles B. Thompson to James J. Strang, April 29, 1848 in Zion’s Harbinger and Baneemy’s
Organ[ZHBO] 2, no. 3 (March, 1852):22-24.
178
ZHBO 2, no. 8 (August 1852), 61.
74
In 1848, the prophet-still-acting-as-medium organized his movement initially
titled Jehovah’s Presbytery of Zion.179 Previous to his revision of the Ethiopian Enoch,
Thompson had produced several revelations through Baneemy’s voice, in addition to
what he termed “true translations” of biblical excerpts. Without a question, Thompson
quickly became one of the most prolific of Mormon revelators.
Inspired Enoch appeared in Zion’s Harbinger and Baneemy’s Organ, the
Presbytery’s official periodical in fourteen installments from October 1852 to December
1853. As this newspaper includes the only known references to Inspired Enoch, we do
not know if the new narratives ever obtained substantial use even among the Presbytery’s
adherents. However, we can be assured that this was Inspired Enoch’s intended purpose.
There were several occasions in which Thompson and other theologians cited the text of
Inspired Enoch in published treatises. Regardless, whether it had a large impact on the
Restoration, which it did not, or was read by only a few of the most devoted
“Baneemyites,” Inspired Enoch provides us with a case study in the Mormon
construction of scripture.
The Mormonization of an Ancient Scripture
During the lifetime of Joseph Smith, he alone produced the vast majority of
written revelation, certainly the vast majority of that which received scriptural status.
With his death, numerous would-be successors claimed to have heard the voice of God
for themselves. Others brought forth scriptural records akin to the Book of Mormon.
Each would-be prophetic voice built on the framework of revelation Smith had
179
For a history of Thompson’s community, see Junia Braby, “Charles B. Thompson: Harbinger
of Zion or Master of Humbuggery?” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 23 (2003):149-163.
75
introduced during his ministry. In order to demonstrate the truly unusual nature of
Thompson’s contribution to this literature, we will consider the four major divisions
within the scriptural tradition Smith pioneered: (1) historical translations; (2) faith
translations; (3) correction literature; and (4) contemporary revelation.180 Providing a
framework for a study of Latter-day Saint scripture is no simple matter. As Philip
Barlow noted, Mormon scripture includes comparatively unconventional forms such as
“oral scripture, private scripture, noncanonized scripture, temporary scripture, and
others.”181 Yet, these four categories broadly encompass the canonized scriptural
tradition of Mormonism.
The first category, historical translations, refers to ancient scripture brought forth
through a scholarly translation process. For example, if Thompson had canonized
Laurence’s translation as is then it would fall under the category of historical translation.
Faith translations, on the other hand, are based on purportedly ancient documents that
have undergone an inspired process without verification from academic sources.
Traditionally, the biblical text is the exclusive historical translation accepted by the
Restoration movement. The Book of Mormon, a record originally written in “Reformed
Egyptian” and translated by the “gift and power of God” is a clear example of what we
here define as a faith translation.
The third category, correction literature, is an amalgamation of the above two
processes. Whereas, faith translations consist of an entirely new restoration of an earlier
180
When the Book of Commandments (1833) and Doctrine and Covenants (1835) were compiled,
they also included documents and public statements, which were considered of importance for the Saints.
This category encompasses these portions of the canonized record, in as much as these statements are
received by the Saints as “contemporary revelation.”
181
Philip Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, x.
76
text, correction literature utilizes a historical translation as the foundation for further
inspired modifications, including both additions and subtractions from scholarly
productions. The Joseph Smith Translation or Inspired Version of the King James
Version of the Bible is the only piece with which most Mormons will be familiar. The
fourth category consists of revelations with a tendency to begin with the words “Thus
Saith the Lord,” written as if deity himself uttered each word.
Despite the importance ascribed to the Joseph Smith Translation, the production
of correction literature ebbed quickly. Or rather it became officially limited to the
accepted Old and New Testaments. On March 9, 1833 when Smith arrived at that portion
of the Bible referred to as the Apocrypha, he received a revelation that rendered inspired
revisions unnecessary for that section:
there are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated
correctly; there are many things therein that are not true, which are the
interpolations by the hands of men…Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him
understand for the Spirit manifesteth truth; and whoso is enlightened by the Spirit
shall obtain benefit therefrom…182
Although this revelation referred explicitly only to the apocryphal books
published in the King James Bible, Restoration churches have drawn from its message
when considering whether to include new historical records to the canon or the possibility
of prophetically correcting a historical translation. Thus, the answer for established
Restoration churches whether they should again open the canon for fresh discoveries of
ancient scripture has strongly tended (with few fringe exceptions) to “No.” Individuals
are assured that they might gain personal benefit from such records in a private setting,
182
Section 88.
Doctrine and Covenants (1835), Section XCII; also D&C (LDS), Section 91; D&C (CofC)
77
assuming that they are truly enlightened by the spirit. Yet, leaders have found that divine
approval or divine editing remains unnecessary based on the March 9, 1833 revelation.
This revelation was a major force in the future development of Mormon scripture.
It prevented giving in to the very real tendency to embrace a very large canon; an issue
that would have been all the more pressing with the colossal discovery of ancient records
in the twentieth century. The concept of correction literature could have allowed for any
and all of the world’s great works to be mutated into Restoration literature. Yet, as it
happened, the prophets of Mormonism have only very seldom produced correction
literature. Charles B. Thompson’s Inspired Enoch is one of very few examples.
Such works demand a level of controversy. The very existence of correction
literature implies an accusation against those that brought forth the uncorrected version.
When Joseph Smith revised the King James Bible, he suggested at least three means or
three culprits possibly responsible for the text’s corruption. Smith explained: “I believe
the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators,
careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors.”183
Despite the glut of scenarios that could have resulted in the mutilation of the text,
Charles Thompson offered only one setting for Ethiopian Enoch’s corruption. Rather
than place the blame ambiguously on apostate or well-meaning scribes in the distant past,
his indictment was of modern scholarship. According to an editorial published in Zion’s
Harbingers and Baneemy’s Organ, “The English translator [meaning Laurence] has
labored hard to cover up the most important, and consequently to this generation the most
objectionable truths contained in it.” He added a sympathetic explanation of Laurence’s
183
Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book Company, 1977), 327.
78
apparent subterfuge stating, that “undoubtedly…. He was conscientious in doing so,
thinking thereby to bring the book in better repute among the Christians of the present
day.”184
On one hand, Thompson’s indictment of Laurence as a willful, but
“conscientious” fraud was risky. If by some miracle Inspired Enoch received wide
distribution, a comparison with the original record would prove that Thompson erred in
his revisions.185 Seen this way, the critique could very well be evidence that Thompson
believed his correction literature was genuine. On the other hand, Thompson may have
sensed, whether accurately or not, that the real enemy of Mormon scripture was with
present-day intellectuals. After all, ancient scholars could not write critiques of
nineteenth-century scriptural productions. Thus, he took the offensive when dealing with
what was potentially his most serious set of opponents – not Laurence necessarily, but
someone with the same claims on intellectual, rather than spiritual, authority.
The amount of Thompson’s contribution to the text varied. In my opinion, the
fourteen installments bear signs of having been produced at separate intervals for
publication, which might explain the wide-ranging intensity of Thompson’s participation
on the text. In some installments, an initial albeit minor reference taken whole cloth from
the Book of Enoch begins a several page treatise with no semblance to the original. This
occurs notably in the first installment of Inspired Enoch when Thompson includes a
mildly corrected version of the first two chapters of Laurence’s translation, before
184
ZHBO 2 (October 1852): 80
Newer translations demand that we either believe that later scholars were also in on the
conspiracy or that Thompson’s revisions were something other than a literal rendering of the original text.
185
79
inserting a five page Creation and Garden of Eden narrative.186 Other installments draw
almost exclusively from Laurence’s translation. For example, the sixth installment
included the almost complete reproduction of Laurence’s Enoch chapters 96 through 103
with only minor emendations.187 Finally, there are occasions in which short phrases from
the Book of Enoch are dispersed through passages with only a minor relationship to their
original placement.
Taking Thompson’s October 1852 comment at face-value, then we must assume
that he insisted that the complete manuscript of the Book of Enoch in its Ethiopian
incarnation would, when properly translated into English, mirror Inspired Enoch, wordfor-word. However, Thompson promised a text “revised and corrected, with the missing
parts restored by Divine Inspiration.” Giving the St. Louis prophet the benefit of the
doubt, we can assume that his statement referred only to that portion that was “revised
and corrected,” leaving a significant segment of Inspired Enoch to consist of “missing
parts restored.” Thus, he seems to have claimed that the full Ethiopian text was present
in his corrected version, but this reading allows that he was frank about new
accompaniments. These interpolations were quite extensive, but not all were original
with Thompson, rather he acted in the role of prophet-compiler, a major motif within
Mormon scripture. The Book of Mormon was, according to its own assertions, produced
under the inspired editorial work of Mormon and his son, Moroni. In the Books of Moses
and Abraham, respectively, the protagonists, both of who served as something like
divinely-appointed archivists, claimed access to earlier records to which they added their
own contributions. Joseph Smith’s own revelations were compiled to form new
186
187
ZHBO 2, no. 10 (October, 1852):73-78.
ZHBO 3, no. 3 (March, 1853): 17-19.
80
amalgamated texts in the published editions of the Book of Commandments or Doctrine
and Covenants. In this tradition, Inspired Enoch is a conglomerate text consisting of
Laurence’s translation of the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jasher, revelations of Joseph
Smith, the published excerpts of the Joseph Smith Translation, (i.e. the Book of Moses
and the Prophecies of Enoch). The Book of Jasher, another recently discovered
apocryphal text documenting the history of the patriarchs, represented as much of the text
of Inspired Enoch as the Book of Enoch itself.188 Other portions bear a clear
resemblance to the narrative of the ritual endowment drama performed within the Nauvoo
Temple and the creation account of the Book of Abraham. Of course, as in Thompson’s
creation narrative published in the first installment, there were occasions in which he
produced these missing parts entirely “from scratch” – so to speak.
Thompson never mentioned his sources. The October 1852 statement is the only
extant explanation of the text. One fact is certain: we do not know that Thompson
concealed the origin of his writings from his followers in order to perpetrate a fraud. It is
possible that he was not forthcoming with his references in order to maintain an aura of
mystique surrounding his new publication. In fact, instead of deliberately misleading his
audience through plagiarism, Thompson brought forth materials that were identified as
missing parts which rightfully belonged within the original Ethiopian work. It is
interesting to note that he altered the compiled revelations of Joseph Smith and the Book
of Jasher, like he did the Laurence’s translation of the Book of Enoch, itself. This might
provide a clue to the text’s construction, suggesting that he first compiled his sources
188
The Book of Jasher was embraced with great interest by segments of both the LDS and RLDS
Church. For example, Jasher was republished in Utah by George Q. Cannon & Sons in 1883. The RLDS
Church distributed copies of the 1840 publication, as advertised in the Saints Herald.
81
together and then treated each of his pieces as ancient parts of “the original book written
by Enoch.”189
Although the motif of the prophet-compiler is present in Mormonism with
Mormon, Moroni, Moses, and Joseph Smith, who each had access to a greater scriptural
tradition from which they compiled and paraphrased portions, Mormonism holds a more
prominent, but related motif of prophets whose calling includes authorship. Prophets
were record-keepers and often wrote scripture in texts akin to a journal. This motif of the
first-person prophet is present, though not as pronounced, in the Bible. Smith sought to
remedy this. For example, tradition holds that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old
Testament; yet, the text does not make this claim – featuring the Hebrew’s own death.
The first restoration Joseph Smith made to the biblical canon was a prologue that ensured
that the reader understood that Moses was, in fact, the book’s rightful author. The
creation narrative that followed in the first three chapters of Genesis was now presented
as Moses’ own personal record of a cosmic vision.
Thompson was well aware that it was prophets that record scripture in the
Restoration tradition. The Book of Enoch, in its original, claims to be the record of
Enoch, but does not employ the first-person throughout. The Book of Jasher and the
revelations of Joseph Smith did not use the first-person for Enoch. Thus, one way that
Thompson united the texts was by emphasizing the telling of the story through the voice
of Enoch. Like the Book of Mormon’s opening, “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly
parents….” or the Book of Abraham’s, “…I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to
obtain another place of residence,” the Book of Enoch shifted from the initial phrase
189
ZHBO 2 (October, 1852): 80.
82
“The word of the blessing of Enoch” to “I, Enoch, the son of Jared…having been
instructed in the mysteries of those things that were before the foundation of the
world.”190
Another detail important to Mormon scripture is setting. The prophets of the
Restoration, based on Joseph Smith’s precedence, have been unwilling to produce ancient
scripture set solely in the mythological cosmos. Instead, such scripture tells the story of
how a prophet obtained his knowledge of the mythological cosmos. Through the Book of
Mormon, Smith introduced a scriptural world with a historical setting that occurred all
around the modern believer. When in New York, he was led to the Hill Cumorah, near
where the ancient Nephites fought their last battle. When in Missouri, he received a
vision of Adam-Ondi-Ahman, where Adam held a council of his faithful sons before his
death. It is more unusual to provide the location of correction literature, such as the
Joseph Smith Translation or Book of Enoch, because these records were not discovered
in the Americas, but in the Near East. Because Joseph Smith placed the first man, Adam
in America, the pre-flood events of the Book of Enoch would have naturally occurred in
the New World. A brief notice following the thirteenth installment of Inspired Enoch
referred to the physical remains of two mythological beasts discussed within the Enoch
text, “A part of the jaw bone of one of those monsters Enoch speaks of, has been found
near Peru, Illinois. The teeth measured across three and five inches.”191
Thus, Thompson, like Smith, introduced and reinforced a literal setting for the
narrative. Beyond the continuation of prominent motifs, style, and genre, Inspired Enoch
was, also, Mormon in its content. This was after all the design of correction literature –
190
191
ZHBO 2 (October, 1852): 73.
ZHBO 3 (November, 1853): 83.
83
to bridge the gap between ancient scripture and modern movements.
In 1830, Alexander Campbell wrote his famous treatment of the Book of
Mormon, condemning the text not because it offered insufficient information to be
meaningful to a nineteenth-century reader, but because it offered too much to be
convincing as an ancient text.
This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi, in
his Book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in New York
for the last ten years. He decides all the great controversies -- infant baptism,
ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the
atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious
experience, the call of the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment,
who may baptize, and even the question of free masonry, republican government;
and the rights of man.192
At its very core, scripture is designed to answer pressing questions, to share or
establish a worldview, to comfort, and to condemn. When Alexander Campbell wrote
that the Book of Mormon “decides all the great controversies” – he stated what the
informed reader, believer or skeptic, should expect from any scriptural text. If the books
of the Bible, themselves, did not seek to answer the problems of their day, then they did
not meet their principal purpose. This is true whether they were of divine or human
origins.
Campbell’s sentiments suggesting that the text was designed to answer
theological issues could also be said of Thompson’s revisions of the Book of Enoch.
Inspired Enoch addressed every error and almost every truth [being] discussed
throughout the Restoration movement of the 1850s. As would be expected, a very
different list of controversies confronted the Saints of the 1850s than those faced by the
Protestant world of 1830. In 1852, the most pressing theological issues that concerned
192
Millennial Harbinger II (February, 1835): 85.
84
the Saints in all factions involved the plurality of gods, Christology, succession,
polygamy, prophecy, and matters of race. Inspired Enoch deserves scholarly attention
through the lens of each of these doctrines however, this essay confines itself with those
matters introduced as a part of Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo theology.193
Before we proceed in this portrayal of Thompson as a dissenter waging a
sophisticated battle against Nauvoo innovations, we should not neglect to acknowledge
his dependence on the experience of Nauvoo. Examining the person of Charles
Thompson and the movement he founded helps us to see a division between the Nauvoo
theology of Joseph Smith and the mode by which it was propagated. The theology
associated with Nauvoo revolved around eternal relationships, theocracy, deification,
plurality of gods, and, most controversially, plural marriage. The mode by which these
concepts were promulgated included the secret organizations of the Holy Order and
Council of Fifty; oath-based societies entrenched in fraternal esoterica. When George
Bartholomew Arbaugh undertook a study of Charles Thompson in his Revelation in
Mormonism: Its Character and Changing Forms, he wrote:
[The acceptance of Freemasonry] changed the essential nature of Mormonism by
converting it into a mystery cult…. The great Brighamite church preserved
Mormonism as a mystery religion but it was quite satisfied with that religion just
as Smith left it. Consequently we turn with interest to Charles Thompson, for in
him we find the continuation of the metaphysical and Masonic tendencies.194
Arbaugh saw within the Presbytery of Zion numerous examples of Masonic
motifs including the movement’s organizations, the titles of its officers, degrees of
193
Other works to consider Thompson’s theology include: Newell G. Bringhurst, “Forgotten
Mormon Perspectives: Slavery, Race, and the Black Man as Issues among Non-Utah Latter-day Saints,
1844-1873,” Michigan History 61 (Winter, 1977): 352-370; Newell G. Bringhurst, "Charles B. Thompson
and the Issues of Slavery and Race," Journal of Mormon History 8 (1981): 37-47; George Bartholomew
Arbaugh, Revelation in Mormonism: Its Character and Changing Forms (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1932): 159-171.
194
George Bartholomew Arbaugh, Revelation in Mormonism, 159-160.
85
membership, as well as the traditional oaths, keywords, and signs, all shrouded by
secrecy. Arbaugh accurately documented within the Presbytery a continuation of the
mode of esoteric instruction used in Nauvoo, but what of the theology? Whereas, the
movement embraced the Masonic-like ritualism as its principal mode of organization,
Thompson rejected much of what scholars associate with Mormonism in Nauvoo: most
particularly plural marriage and the plurality of gods. An 1853 letter addressed to the
followers of Brigham Young in St. Louis declared as much:
Mormonism, as it now exists, is nothing more nor less than a new edition of
heathen mythology, corrected and revised, and cloaked under the guise of
revelation. Polygamy – upon which rests their salvation, and exaltation in the
eternal worlds, is nothing more than a heathen and uncivilized custom…. The
doctrine of plurality of Gods, is likewise a heathen and idolatrous doctrine of
Brahmins, Chinese, Hindoos, and all heathen nations.195
Inspired Enoch was an all out assault on this new strain of revised Heathenism:
polygamy and the plurality of Gods. The remainder of this paper will analyze two key
narratives and how they provided an alternate mythology in order to rebut what were
perceived as Brighamite heresies.
Inspired Enoch’s Creation Narrative: Addressing the Plurality of Gods
Throughout his prophetic career, Joseph Smith continued to revise the story of
creation: the inspired translation of the first chapters of Genesis, the Book of Abraham,
the May 6, 1833 revelation [D&C 93 LDS], the Joseph Smith Translation of the first
chapter of the Gospel of John, the King Follett Discourse, and the Nauvoo Endowment
drama. Each time Joseph Smith re-presented the story of the creation, he added a new
layer to the religion’s mythology. If his goal was a radical reformulation of the faith,
195
George Hickenloper, “To the Council of the St. Louis Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints, February 18, 1853.” ZHBO 3 (March, 1853): 24.
86
then what better place to begin than with the start of mankind - helping the Saints to reconceive the universe and their place in it. As Smith stated, when he publically
introduced the idea of deification, “If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time; but
if we start wrong, we may go wrong, and it be a hard matter to get right.”196
The Mormon story of creation transformed the traditional ex-nihilo origin of the
universe, as related in the orthodox interpretation of Genesis, to an “organizing” of
already existing matter. This act, rather than being carried out by one God or a God and
his son is instead performed by a quorum of deities, who served under one head God. In
1842, the Book of Abraham synthesized many of the more innovative concepts of Latterday Saint thought which had been brewing for the past decade, into a coherent – Genesislike - seven-day creation narrative. In this account, Abraham witnesses the events of
creation beginning with a vision of the “intelligences that were organized before the
world was.”197 Among them were “many of the noble and great ones” who would serve
as rulers on the earth. Jesus Christ appeared as a separate being from God the Father,
“like unto God” and above the rest of creation. The future Savior declared “We will go
down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an
earth whereon these [spirits] may dwell….”198 Following the traditional division between
the righteous and wicked angels, these noble and great ones led by Jesus begin the
creation. This collective body is, thereafter, referred to as “the gods.”
The Book of Abraham helped to revolutionize the Saints’ cosmology. While
translating this record, Joseph Smith came to believe there was more to the plurality of
196
Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 343.
Abraham 3:22, The Pearl of Great Price, [LDS].
198
Abraham 3:24.
197
87
gods than simply the deification of spirits through the mortal experience. He cited the
premise made by Deity in the Book of Abraham that “these two facts do exist, that there
are two spirits, one being more intelligent that the other; [then] there shall be another
more intelligent than they....”199 From this passage, Smith came to the conclusion that
even God himself must have a father through an endless lineage of deities.200
In his famous King Follett discourse, Joseph Smith explained “how God came to
be God and what sort of a being he is.” He reasoned that the God of this world had once
been “a man like one of us and that God himself, the father of us all, once dwelled on an
earth.” He then explained the implications to his audience:
You have got to learn how to make yourselves Gods in order to save yourselves
and be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done—by going from
a small capacity to a great capacity, from a small degree to another, from grace to
grace, until the resurrection of the dead, from exaltation to exaltation—till you are
able to sit in everlasting burnings and everlasting power and glory as those who
have gone before, sit enthroned.201
Smith then revealed an equally controversial insight, although it had been
contained in the revelations since 1833, that there was a part of mankind - his intelligence
- that can neither be created, nor made.
We say that God Himself is a self-existent God. Who told you so? It’s correct
enough, but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist
in like manner upon the same principle?…the mind of man—the intelligent part—
is as immortal as, and is coequal with, God Himself.202
This concept of eternity was absolute. There was no first god and no true
beginning of all things. Both matter and spirit were self-existent and were not the
creation of a supreme deity.
199
Abraham 3:19.
Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 373.
201
Ibid., 346-347.
202
Ibid., 352-353; Joseph Smith, Words of Joseph Smith, 359.
200
88
The nature of God and his relationship to mankind is at the very essence of
religious ideologies. Thus, it is not surprising that Joseph Smith’s radical departure from
orthodox Christianity resulted in real psychological distress. On one hand, there were
dissenters, most notably the Reformed Mormon Church, founded by William Law and
Robert Foster, who saw this polytheistic system as another example of a fallen prophet’s
“false doctrine.” The one and only publication of the group, the Nauvoo Expositor
announced the plurality of gods, following that of polygamy and the church’s
involvement in politics – the latter, likely designed to gather outside support. According
to the statement, a belief in many gods is:
one of the most direful [doctrines] in its effects that has characterized the world
for many centuries. We know not what to call it other than blasphemy, for it is
most unquestionably, speaking of God in an impious and irreverent manner.203
On the other hand, there were dedicated Saints devoted to the organization and
leadership that wanted to be supportive of Joseph Smith’s theological innovations, but
felt unable to embrace them fully. Internally, Smith’s denial of the traditional “first
cause” did not satisfy some orthodox Mormon thinkers, including Orson Pratt. The
apostle suggested that Smith’s comments were certainly true of the deity of this world,
but that this being was subservient to a higher self-existent divinity. Pratt referred to this
entity as the “Great God,” who governed all things. This set of ideas was controversial in
that it seemed to rival, at least, the popular interpretation of Joseph Smith’s theology.
Eventually the Brighamite faction relegated Pratt’s dissenting thought to heresy.204
203
Nauvoo Expositor (June 7, 1844): 3.
Loyd Ericson, “The Great Grand Executor”: The Development of the Holy Spirit in the
Thought of Orson and Parley Pratt. Unpublished. Copy in the author’s possession.
204
89
Charles Thompson shared Pratt and Law’s concerns with the new theology. By
re-presenting the creation narrative of Mormonism – maintaining enough of the existing
narrative to build on its legitimacy – Thompson rivaled the most controversial portions of
the Nauvoo innovations. The creation narrative of Inspired Enoch began by responding
to the question of whether there exists an endless progression of deities or an initial deity
of the first cause. Siding with the latter, Inspired Enoch canonized an argument similar to
Pratt’s. According to the text:
In the beginning, before any of the creations had taken place, Iame, (which
signified the embodiment of all intelligence,) by his wisdom constructed Iada,
(which signifies the place of light,) out of Zebo, (which signified unorganized
matter,) and clothed himself therewith. In Iada were constructed many wombs;
and Iame quickened Iada, so that Iada became a living being, and principle of
power with Iame; and Iame impregnated Iada with the seed of intelligence. Iada,
therefore brought forth from her variously constructed wombs many Intelligences
of various forms, clothed with semile (which signifies very refined matter.)205
Iame is the equivalent of all intelligence, in other words, he is an entity present in
all things. This consciousness organized his own material body through self-existent
matter and then, in turn, constructed a female principle, Iada, who aided in the
organization of the universe. The cosmic union of Iame and Iada brought forth individual
intelligences or spirits. Iame then:
finding these Spirits imperfect as to the quantity of intelligence they possessed, by
his wisdom concerted a plan to increase their intelligences and thereby make them
perfect; and having completed the plan, he called them together to consult them in
reference to their willingness to enter into his plan; and when he had made known
his plan to them they were glad, and he organized them that they might
accomplish his will and be made perfect.206
So far into the narrative, Inspired Enoch followed closely the creation accounts of
the Book of Abraham and the King Follett Discourse. Inspired Enoch made use of the
205
206
ZHBO 2, no. 10 (October, 1852): 73.
Ibid.
90
narrative of Abraham, in which deity discovered that the spirits varied in intelligence and
in the King Follett Discourse, in which “God himself finds himself in the midst of spirits
and glory, because he was greater, and because he saw proper to institute laws, whereby
the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself….”207 Like in Abraham, the next
step for Iame was to organize his leadership.
And he chose seven Chief Ones and placed them over the rest of the Spirits, and
he Ordained them, and he Ordained three of these, Chiefs over the seven and he
Ordained one of the three, who was elected over all, to be over the three, and he
was called the Elect One; and one of his fellows was anointed to represent him in
the flesh, and he was called the Anointed, his other fellow was to remain
concealed under the appellation of the Father, until the consummation of
righteousness; therefore he was called the Concealed One. And Iame chose
twenty-four of the most noble remaining Spirits, and he Ordained them to
minister for the seven; (and he called them Arch-Angels;) and he chose, Ordained
and Organized four grand Quorums of Angels of different grades of authority; and
their number is written down in the Heavens, and their names are all there
recorded. And when Iame had completed their Organization, they rose up with
one accord and called Him the Lord of Spirits; and prostrating themselves before
him, they worshipped him, calling Him God Almighty. And Iame blessed those
he had Ordained, calling them the Sons of God, then the Morning Stars sang
together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy.208
This angelic hierarchy parallels the throne-room vision of John in the Book of
Revelation. John witnessed seven “spirits of God” and twenty-four elders surrounding
the celestial throne. Thompson’s heavenly hierarchy built on this image suggests that the
seven spirits are the heads of the twenty-four elders, who are, in fact, archangels.
Specifically, three of the seven took on roles equivalent to the Christian godhead: the
Father referred to as the Elect One in Inspired Enoch and identified as Adam or the
Archangel Michael; the Son referred to as the Anointed One and identified as Jesus
Christ; and the Holy Spirit referred to as the Concealed One and identified as Baneemy.
207
208
Times and Seasons 5:15 (August 15, 1844): 615.
ZHBO 2, no. 10 (October, 1852): 73-74.
91
Throughout the text, Iame is referred to as the Lord of Spirits or God Almighty.
He, alone, is God, serving above the “sons of God” including the three equivalents to the
Christian trinity. Although, in this model, Adam or Michael presides over Jesus, this is
not the Adam-God doctrine proposed by Brigham Young. Instead, this represents the
elevation of Adam in Latter-day Saint thought, as well as an adoptionism present in
Inspired Enoch’s theology, likely borrowed from the teachings of James Strang. Thus,
the text is unitarian, emphasizing only one true God, despite many assistants.
Unlike the Book of Abraham, which re-couches the Genesis creation to speak of
Gods (plural) forging the world on each respective day, Inspired Enoch softens the blow
of plural creators by referring to them as Sons of God. Abraham has these same Gods
command the creation of the world and wait for the earth to obey. Instead, Inspired
Enoch shows the Sons of God praying to Iame beckoning him to perform the desired
tasks of organization. It is God Almighty who performs the creation, according to the
prayers of his children.
Thompson presented a new creation story, in a compromise between Nauvoo
theology and more traditional understandings of deity. God Almighty is the self-existant
“first cause.” Inspired Enoch replicated the Christian trinity, but in a subservient role to
the one true God. Thus, Smith was correct about the progression of a deity through
mortality, except that the scenario did not apply to the supreme deity. Nevertheless,
Thompson allowed for progression to a type of sub-divinity operating under the reign of
the Lord of Spirits.
Inspired Enoch’s Fallen Angels Narrative: Addressing Plural Marriage
92
Before 1852, many Saints were only aware of plural marriage through hearsay rumors published by former Brighamites. The faithful of most sects outside of the Great
Basin could deny that their leaders participated in the practice, largely because they did
not know. Yet, this all changed in the first few years of the 1850s. At that time,
controversy and fracture followed in the wake of the exposure of plural marriage as
practiced both by the followers of James Strang and William Smith. It is likely no
coincidence that two months before the first installment of Inspired Enoch was published
in Zion’s Harbinger and Baneemy’s Organ, Orson Pratt officially announced the
Brighamite practice of plural marriage.
Pratt’s announcement on August 29, 1852 was the first time that an official
spokesman from within Mormonism publically defended the principle. Pratt argued for
the practice on several major counts. First, he purported that there were numerous spirits
who still waited to be embodied, before the Second Coming of Christ. If the righteous
Latter-day Saints could have more children through plural marriage, then “many spirits
that are more noble... [could be born] through a just and righteous parentage.”209 Second,
Pratt posited that cross-culturally polygamy was the preferred form of marriage.
According to his statistic, 80% of the world’s cultures practiced polygamy. Third, Pratt
drew on the biblical Abraham narratives to legitimize the newly restored marital
structure. Finally, with this announcement, the Brighamites publically issued the 1843
revelation of Joseph Smith that commanded the practice of plural marriage as “a law of
209
Deseret News Extra, September 18, 1852.
93
the holy priesthood.”210 Inspired Enoch’s addressed each of these points through the use
of narrative.
In traditional Mormon accounts of the pre-existence, Lucifer and his one-third are
cursed to remain as spirits. They failed in the pre-existence when they rejected the Christ
in favor of Lucifer. This argument does not occur in Inspired Enoch at all. Thompson’s
one-third do not debate over future saviors, but over which of deity’s children would
possess the first mortal body:
Now it came to pass when Iame Organized the sons of God, He appointed the
Elect One to receive the first Tabernacle because he was elected by the voice of
two-thirds of all the sons of the Morning. But Lucifer who received one-third of
the votes, disputed with Michael in reference to that matter, and wished to take
the first Tabernacle: but Michael referred the matter to Iame who rebuked Lucifer,
and appointed Michael to receive the first Tabernacle; so Michael entered into his
Tabernacle, and Iame blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and thus man
became a living soul. But Lucifer was angry, and he sought from that time forth
to frustrate the plan of Iame.211
Inspired Enoch frequently returns to this crucial theme of embodied angels. The
narrative continues – in stark contrast to Smith’s teachings of devils left eternally without
bodies - with Lucifer eventually receiving his own tabernacle in Cain. Later, after
receiving instruction from the archangel Raphael, Adam prays for “one of the holy
angels, to be with me in this flesh, that I may council with him.”212 Raphael is then born
as Adam and Eve’s second son, Abel. Established in Thompson’s first installment, the
theme of embodiment finds great utility as a tool to transform a major plot of Ethiopian
Enoch – likely designed to explain the origins of evil – into a response to plural marriage.
210
Ibid.
ZHBO 2, no. 10 (October, 1852): 75.
212
Ibid., 77.
211
94
As Inspired Enoch expanded and altered the account of Ethiopian Enoch, the
latter text, itself, was an extension of a story found only briefly in the sixth chapter of
Genesis. According to the biblical record:
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and
daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men
that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose…There
were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God
came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same
became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.213
In the Enoch narrative, two-hundred angels, identified as watchers, make an
agreement each to marry mortal women. Their interspecies union produced a race of
giants, which were responsible for the greatest evils among mankind.214
Based on the concept of embodiment, Inspired Enoch portrayed the watchers as
mortal men who held the priesthood – angels, sure, but embodied angels. This group
made a covenant to practice plural marriage, despite a rule that “the Sons of God, shall
not take to themselves wives of the daughters of men, for the Lord will give them each a
wife of the seed of his chosen race.”215 When they entered these marriages, their
offspring emerged as a race of giants mirroring Ethiopian Enoch.
In the Book of Enoch, the prophetic author bears a formal message to the fallen
angels condemning them for their rebellion. A list of severe punishments for them and
their seed are outlined. Inspired Enoch built on this passage, but applied the castigation
to the polygamists and their descendents. Keeping in mind Orson Pratt’s defense of
213
Genesis 6:1-2, 4.
In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith may have advocated this interpretation of the Genesis text based on
his reading of Josephus. The Autobiography of George Laub quotes Smith as saying, “Now the history of
Josephus on speaking of angels came down and took themselves wives of the daughters of men (see
Genesis 6:1-2). These were resurrected bodies [who] violated their laws.” George Laub, Autobiography of
George Laub, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University.
215
ZHBO 3, no. 8 (August, 1853): 57.
214
95
plural marriage as a means to bring forth righteous seed, Inspired Enoch suggested that
God specifically did not want righteous Saints to enter plural marriage. The argument is
that the Saints do not need to do so, because they know that life continues after death.
(Presumably, the desire to have many, many children was to continue one’s legacy.)
However, unbelievers, likely the 80% of the world population that Pratt suggested
accepted polygamy, could “take as many wives as they choose, that sons might be born
unto them, and that they may continue their seed upon the earth.”216 Those giants born of
the polygamous unions were not the celestial spirits of Pratt’s polygamous unions, but
“terrestrial spirits who have been born in carnal blood.”217 Certainly, to be born the
product of a polygamous marriage was no favored status.
Point-by-point, Thompson’s Enoch responded to Pratt’s arguments. Pratt said
that plural marriage would allow for the coming of more children, Enoch admitted this
was so, but regarded it as unnecessary for those who understood eternal life. What is the
point of a numerous offspring, if one’s offspring would be cursed to die and become evil
spirits, as Enoch portrayed? Pratt argued that, cross-culturally, polygamy was the norm.
Enoch agreed, but clarified that these practitioners were unbelievers, not the faithful
Saints. Finally, Pratt cited Smith’s revelation that portrayed plural marriage as a law of
the Holy Priesthood. Enoch declared the exact opposite. There was a law of the Holy
Priesthood. It was monogamy.218
The Brighamites justified their practice of polygamy through scriptural
precedence, namely the polygamy of Abraham and the 1843 revelation of Joseph Smith.
216
Ibid., 60.
Ibid.
218
ZHBO 3, no. 2 (February, 1853): 10.
217
96
Thompson found utility for the Book of Enoch in delegitimizing these same concepts. If
the Brighamites could turn to Abraham for support, then why couldn’t he appeal to
Enoch? Such a figure could potentially trump even Abraham.
Final Thoughts
The most effective way to look at Inspired Enoch is as a cultural artifact. At its
core, the new scripture demonstrates scriptural rivalry in the second prophetic generation
of Mormonism. Specifically, Inspired Enoch was a response to what Charles Thompson
viewed as the Brighamite borrowing of Heathen beliefs – albeit “corrected and revised” –
under the auspices of Mormonism. The volume legitimized Baneemyism’s adherence of
traditional American monogamy and a not-so-traditional Unitarian interpretation of deity,
while it delegitimized the Nauvoo innovations of Celestial Plural Marriage and the
plurality of Gods.
Many were threatened by the shift within Mormon beliefs. Inspired Enoch had
the potential, if accepted by Mormonism’s believing dissenters, to buttress a countertheological position that could alleviate the adherents’ psychological stresses.
Hypothetically, Inspired Enoch could have established the borders of a formidable new
Mormon identity in the Eastern states. After all, the Book of Mormon had performed a
similar task a generation before.
However, we must conclude that, in fact, Inspired Enoch impacted only a
miniscule percentage of nineteenth-century Mormonism. It has had no perceivable
impact on twentieth-century Mormonism and may be known by little more than a handful
within the scholarly community today. Why was such a fascinating and creative volume
97
doomed to obscurity? Interestingly enough, this was because of a competing product in
the mid-century spiritual marketplace, namely the Reorganization.
In November of 1851, Jason Briggs, like individuals in several Mormon sects at
the time, rejected his affiliation with William Smith based on the former’s advocacy of
plural marriage. That month he received a “thus saith the Lord” revelation, which stated
in part: “Behold, that which ye received as my celestial law [i.e. plural marriage] is not
of me, but is the doctrine of Baalam. And I command you to renounce it and proclaim
against it.”219 The revelation instructed Briggs to take the message to all of the places
that polygamy had been taught. Over the next several years, those that embraced Briggs’
revelation began to coalesce and build the foundation of what would become the
Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Both the Reorganization and the Presbytery of Zion had largely the same goals in
mind. They both offered legitimacy via revelation for believing Saints, who preferred not
to accept the innovations of Nauvoo Mormonism. Thus, the question becomes: why the
one excelled in uniting the various sectarian factions of Mormonism, while the other
declined and ultimately became one of the denominations absorbed? Although such a
question deserves serious consideration in future endeavors, a preliminary solution will
be offered here. Namely, that the beliefs and practices of the Presbytery of Zion were
simply more rigorous – more expensive in the spiritual marketplace of 1850s Mormonism
- than those of the future Josephites. For example, Thompson promoted communal living
through the concepts of consecration and established gathering places. Thompson
required rebaptism and re-ordination. Finally, the Presbytery emphasized esoteric rituals
219
“History of the Reorganization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” The
Messenger of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 2 (November, 1875): 1.
98
associated with the Mormon priesthood. The Reorganization did not require rebaptism,
promote communal endeavors, or accept any form of secret ritual. These three emphases
alone would have made the Presbytery a less attractive option. In short, the reason that
the Presbytery did not flourish despite the great potential of Inspired Enoch was that
believing dissenters found legitimacy and solace in the teachings of the Reorganization.
This left the true test of Inspired Enoch’s utility as a scripture, untried.
Yet, as a scriptural artifact Inspired Enoch has – to make a metaphor of a literal
prophecy concerning ancient records in the Book of Mormon - “retain[ed] its
brightness.”220 Through its pages, we can document the continuation of Mormonism’s
narrative tradition. Most importantly, we can document the intellectual rebellion that
occurred in response to the introduction of plural marriage and Joseph Smith’s heterodox
teachings concerning deity. Others tried to rebut Nauvoo theology, as it emerged
throughout the Restoration, yet none as creative as was Charles B. Thompson. His was a
sophisticated dissent.
220
Alma 37:5, Book of Mormon (LDS).
99
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
The concepts behind this thesis were inspired by Philip Barlow’s discussion of
shifts and incarnations in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
the most prominent version of Joseph Smith’s Mormonism. Barlow suggests that the first
shift did not fully occur until the establishment of the Saints in Deseret territory.221 Thus,
a shift is a turning of a religious movement’s character – while the movement is in a state
of flux, whereas an incarnation is a movement in a period of relative stability. The
purpose of this thesis was partly to demonstrate this shift as it occurs with the death of a
prophet - as a process, a conversation between the second prophetic generation and his
interpretation of the first generation prophet’s religious vision.
To return to Aristotle’s metaphor: prophets are perennially uprooting planks.
They haphazardly toss new boards on to the fresh gaps. Sometimes they nail the boards
down and other times they leave them bound to the new ship with only a bit of paste and
a prayer that they will hold. Their tendency to be irresponsible with the building supplies
leaves future craftsmen (the second prophetic generation) the task of sanding and
providing smaller planks to the greater project. They sometimes must even pry up some
of the new planks and provide an even more recent model (e.g. Charles Thompson) or
perhaps find some of the old planks left in the warehouse and nail them back onto a
vessel they worry is too flimsy to travel (e.g. Joseph Smith III).
221
Philip Barlow, “Shifting Ground and the Third Transformation of Mormonism,” 140-141.
100
Due to the exaggerated state of fragmentation following Smith’s death,
Mormonism proves an ideal case study of exploring the second prophetic generation. For
example, Jan Shipps has argued that the post-Smith succession crisis was:
a struggle between forms of legitimacy – almost in class Weberian terms. Among
the early Mormons the chief charismatic claimant, Strang, proved to be
unimportant. Here lineage, i.e. the Smith family, was brought into competition
with office, i.e. Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve.222
These three types of authority are each present in the second prophetic generation in
Mormonism and may be present in the second prophetic generation of any faith.
This thesis sought to take Weberian insights to the next level, rather than simply
classifying these figures. In the examples used in this study, we can determine additional
motifs – specifically in how new leaders respond to the first prophet’s innovations. For
example, we can document the second prophet generation’s transformation of esoteric
theology introduced by the Prophet into a suitable public expression of a new movement.
We can demonstrate the use of mimicry, as new leaders borrow from the charisma and
the process of revelation used by the first-generation prophet. We can document the
uneasy state of innovations and the stresses upon our new religion-makers.
The second chapter used Joseph Smith’s innovation of plural marriage and its
integration into three separate communities to illuminate the role played by the second
prophetic generation. These three figures each initially integrated the Prophet’s radical
marital innovations into their version of Mormonism. By developing strict regulations
surrounding polygamy, they were able to stabilize the great stresses such an innovation
naturally brought upon adherents. Ultimately, polygamy died out due to outside
persecution or internal pressures, including failures of the second prophetic generation.
222
Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, 105.
101
The relative longevity of plural marriage in the Great Basin was dependent on the
development of a genuine routinized Mormon culture developed in the isolation of the
desert west. The only movement to survive their second-generation prophet’s death, the
Cutlerites, worked to develop a usable past by collective amnesia.
The third chapter used the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) as a case study for
the re-organization of a religious community under a second-generation prophet. A
complete alternative to Brigham Young’s Utah Mormonism, Alpheus Cutler forged a
new organization as comprehensive – if not as successful – as any other variants of the
Restoration. Acting as a conduit for the esoteric teachings of the Nauvoo, Smith’s secret
doctrines became the foundations of the exoteric (and esoteric) teachings and
organization of the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite.)
The second-generation prophet interprets theology – theology introduced by the
founding prophet – through a lens of the first-generation prophet’s death. Thus, we saw
that Cutler interpreted Smith’s death through prophecies of dispensationalism and for
lack of a better term, “rejection” theology.
In the fourth chapter, we analyzed the scriptural writings of Charles Thompson,
another distinct example of the second prophetic generation. Unlike Cutler, Wight, and
William Smith, each men who had personal experience with Joseph Smith, Thompson
had little direct involvement with the Mormon Prophet. Rather, he imitated Smith’s
prophetic gift through the production of scripture. By using mechanisms that the
founding prophet introduced, this example of the second prophetic generation was able to
un-write the most controversial innovations of Mormonism.
102
This study explored what the second prophetic generation is and how they
function. Future studies will examine the lenses by which the second generation operates
– specifically, the lens of trauma, an underlining theme in chapter two, and the lens of
grief.
103
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