The Columbia Sourcebook of Mormons in the United States

Terryl L. Givens, Reid L. Neilson, Terryl Givens, Reid Neilson

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780231520607
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Nordamerikanische Geschichte

This anthology offers rare access to key original documents illuminating Mormon history, theology, and culture in the United States from the nineteenth century to today. Brief introductions describe the theological significance of each text and its reflection of the practices, issues, and challenges that have defined and continue to define the Mormon community. These documents balance mainstream and peripheral thought and religious experience, institutional and personal perspective, and theoretical and practical interpretation, representing pivotal moments in LDS history and correcting decades of misinformation and stereotype.

The authors of these documents, male and female, not only celebrate but speak critically and question mainline LDS teachings on sexuality, politics, gender, race, polygamy, and other issues. Selections largely focus on the Salt Lake–based LDS tradition, with a section on the post–Joseph Smith splintering and its creation of a variety of similar yet different Mormon groups. The documents are arranged chronologically within specific categories to capture both the historical and doctrinal development of Mormonism in the United States.

ONE

THEOLOGY AND DOCTRINE

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS (hereafter referred to as the church) took shape amidst a flood of other-worldly phenomena. Visitations of God and Christ, miraculously preserved golden plates and seerstones, along with Old Testament prophets, New Testament apostles, ancient American kings and warrior-priests, all appearing now as holy angels, converged on a young seeker named Joseph Smith. Even by the standards of an age prone to supernaturalism and folk magic, the restorationist movement popularly known today as Mormonism unfolded as a spectacular effusion of the miraculous. To the church’s early faithful, this manifold merging of heaven and earth was a sign of the end times, a fulfillment of millennial expectations, and the harbinger of a final gathering preparatory to Christ’s return and the building of a New Jerusalem, as described in the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

A number of historians have observed that the church’s theology is its history. This is essentially true in the same sense it could be said of Christianity, especially primitive Christianity. The earliest creed, the Apostles’, was primarily an attestation of events, not dogmas: Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of a virgin, suffered under Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. And, most importantly, faith rested on assent to the historical claim that on “the third day He rose again from the dead.” Before scriptural canons or Trinitarian formulas took shape, the brute fact of a literal resurrection of the man Jesus on the first Easter Sunday was the heart and soul of Christian belief.

Latter-day Saints continue in affirming these traditional Christian fundamentals, but they have extended the historical bases of such faith into the present age. This historical focus operates to at least two purposes. First, to more contemporary Mormons, this history is a hedge against the mythologizing common in liberal Protestantism. The relatively recent accounts of Joseph Smith’s visions attest to the continuing interaction of God with humans in the modern age. And this is a God who is fully realized in Smith’s descriptions as embodied and capable of human speech and of weeping real tears. The history of the church, in other words, points to a particular kind of divine nature and divine activity.

Second, the litany of miraculous events and heavenly visitations confirms in the LDS mind the special status of the church. Latter-day Saints frequently refer to their belief in “the only true and living church” (Doctrine and Covenants 30:1), language outsiders interpret as exclusivist and jingoistic. What the Mormons mean is perhaps what the Roman Catholic Church has traditionally meant, insofar as both traditions emphasize the divinely appointed role the church has as the earthly vehicle for human salvation. Mormon history is therefore inextricably connected to claims for a specific kind of authority that is central to their people’s religious understanding. And Latter-day Saints in the twenty-first century still look for and appreciate the continuation of charismatic spiritual gifts and otherworldly blessings in their lives, despite the church’s more institutional nature.

Authority functions in the LDS tradition in several related, important ways. First is the Mormon claim of authority for the restoration of the church itself, which they believe to have been instituted by Christ but fatally maimed through the historical loss of apostolic authority and the corruption of the original “apostasy.” Latter-day Saints usually date Joseph Smith’s calling as a prophet to the event known as the “First Vision,” wherein God the Father and his son Jesus Christ appeared to the fourteen-year-old boy and informed him that no true church then existed on the earth. Mormons sing and testify of this event as the cardinal symbol of Smith’s status as God’s latter-day prophet. He viewed the significance of the event as an affirmation of the Lord’s scriptural promise to answer the humble seeker of wisdom and as a supernal moment of forgiveness and spiritual cleansing.

Joseph Smith’s mandate to organize a church came just years later. He only prepared for public dissemination an account of this First Vision more than two decades after the event. Figuring much more prominently in early LDS mentality was Smith’s role in translating the Book of Mormon. Remarkably, the book that garnered such notoriety—and so many converts—for the faith was relatively unremarkable for conspicuously new theology. But its material reality was the paramount sign of Joseph Smith’s prophetic status, confirming his claims to be acting under divine authority in restoring the church. It was no coincidence that the formal organization occurred mere weeks after the book’s publication. Smith subsequently used this seership, or ability to reveal ancient texts, to produce writings from more familiar biblical figures, like Moses, Abraham, and, reproduced later in this chapter, Enoch. He also dictated dozens of revelations in the voice of God, the most celebrated of which was his vision of the three degrees of glory, describing a multitiered heaven.

Latter-day Saints also see authority as necessary to the performance of saving ordinances (sacraments). This power, which they term priesthood, must be traceable to Jesus Christ through a line of unbroken transmission. In the aftermath of the apostasy, such divine provenance could only be reestablished by the appearance of resurrected apostles. No contemporary account exists of the visit of Peter, James, and John to Joseph Smith to bestow the “Melchizedek Priesthood,” but Smith and Oliver Cowdery both attested to the appearance of John the Baptist to confer the lesser, “Aaronic Priesthood” (see the selection later in this chapter). Old Testament figures like Moses and Elijah conferred on Joseph Smith more specific “keys”; that is, rights and authority pertaining to more specific powers or dispensational functions, like the gathering of Israel (Moses) or the perpetuation of the family united beyond the grave (Elijah).

Finally, a particular kind of authority inheres in the position of prophet. For Latter-day Saints, the generic use of the word prophet refers to a general category of the Lord’s anointed mouthpieces, or any who enjoy the spiritual gift described by the New Testament Apostle Paul. But more particularly, the prophet is Joseph Smith or any successor to his office, who is the one individual in whom all priesthood authority and keys reside and who alone is authorized to speak the Lord’s will to the church and to the world.

The Mormon prophet has the further prerogative of pronouncing new doctrine for the church. Protestantism developed largely as a consequence of theological reflection, with revisionist readings of biblical passages generating new understandings of grace, Christology, or the role of and necessity for the sacraments, for example. LDS doctrine developed largely as a consequence of production of scripture via revelations dictated to Joseph Smith in a process initiated by an intellectual response to some theological quandary or scriptural enigma, but which Latter-day Saints believe eventuated in a visionary experience or oracular pronouncement vouchsafed to the prophet. However, when Smith stood outside his charismatic role to preach spontaneously, he could produce doctrinal sermons whose status as scripture is therefore fairly ambiguous in the LDS faith. The most famous such example is his King Follett sermon, which represents the acme of his theology, incorporating such themes as the eternal existence of spirit, creatio ex materia, the potential for deification of humans, and the anthropomorphic nature and origins of God. Some of these, but not all, were elaborated or reaffirmed through revelations canonized in the church’s Doctrine and Covenants volume of scripture.

Although the office of prophet survived Joseph Smith’s death (after a three-year hiatus when Brigham Young led the church as president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), the pentecostal era of visions, visitations, and production of scripture largely abated. The last prophetic vision recorded and canonized was that of President Joseph F. Smith (Joseph Smith’s nephew) received in 1918, which elaborated the Mormon doctrine of the evangelizing of the dead in the spirit world (and explains the Latter-day Saints’ massive, worldwide genealogical program). Subsequent prophets would speak with authority comparable to that of Joseph Smith, and the principle of ongoing revelation to living prophets continues to the present, but such pronouncements are in general carefully crafted affirmations or clarifications of standing doctrine. This is the case with declarations on such subjects as the principle of evolution and the status of gender, marriage, and the family in this world and beyond. However, for a contemporary Latter-day Saint, the most essential calling of a prophet is as a testator of the divinity of Jesus Christ. It is in that sense that all living apostles (a quorum of twelve and all members of the First Presidency) are sustained by church members as prophets, seers, and revelators.

1. Joseph Smith, “Latter Day Saints”

Writing in 1835, Joseph Smith dated his prophetic career to 1827, when he began work on the Book of Mormon. At that time, few of his contemporaries knew the details of his First Vision, which occurred when he was a youth of fourteen in 1820. Apostle Orson Pratt published a second-hand account in an 1839 Edinburgh publication, An Account of Several Remarkable Visions. Only in 1842 did Smith prepare for publication a sketch of the rise, progress, persecution, and faith of the Latter-day Saints that included the first autobiographical account of his visions and angelic visitations, as well as a summary of Mormon beliefs. This version was published in the March 1 edition of the Church’s newspaper, Times and Seasons. The next year, historian Israel Daniel Rupp submitted a request to Joseph Smith to prepare a statement for his encyclopedia of American religions. Smith complied with a slightly edited and updated version of his 1842 narrative. This version, which saw print in 1844, was thus the only first-person account of the foundational events of the church published to a non-Mormon readership during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. The thirteen “Articles of Faith” with which he concluded his narrative is a curious blend of the familiar and the iconoclastic. While it affirms some Latter-day Saint distinctives (the Book of Mormon; no original sin), it was silent on others (an embodied God, pre-mortal existence, and human theosis).

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was founded upon direct revelation, as the true church of God has ever been, according to the scriptures (Amos, iii. 7, and Acts, i. 2). And through the will and blessings of God, I have been an instrument in his hands, thus far, to move forward the cause of Zion. Therefore, in order to fulfil the solicitation of your letter of July last, I shall commence with my life.

I was born in the town of Sharon, Windsor county, Vermont, on the 23d of December, A.D. 1805. When ten years old, my parents removed to Palmyra, New York, where we resided about four years, and from thence we removed to the town of Manchester, a distance of six miles.

My father was a farmer, and taught me the art of husbandry. When about fourteen years of age, I began to reflect upon the importance of being prepared for a future state; and upon inquiring the place of salvation, I found that there was a great clash in religious sentiment; if I went to one society they referred me to one place, and another to another; each one pointing to his own particular creed as the summum bonum of perfection. Considering that all could not be right, and that God could not be the author of so much confusion, I determined to investigate the subject more fully, believing that if God had a church, it would not be split up into factions, and that if he taught one society to worship one way, and administer in one set of ordinances, he would not teach another principles which were diametrically opposed. Believing the word of God, I had confidence in the declaration of James, If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.

I retired to a secret place in a grove, and began to call upon the Lord. While fervently engaged in supplication, my mind was taken away from the objects with which I was surrounded, and I was enrapt in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious personages, who exactly resembled each other in features and likeness, surrounded with a brilliant light, which eclipsed the sun at noonday. They told me that all the religious denominations were believing in incorrect doctrines, and that none of them was acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom. And I was expressly commanded to go not after them, at the same time receiving a promise that the fulness of the gospel should at some future time be made known unto me.

On the evening of the 21st September, A.D. 1823, while I was praying unto God and endeavouring to exercise faith in the precious promises of scripture, on a sudden a light like that of day, only of a far purer and more glorious appearance and brightness, burst into the room; indeed the first sight was as though the house was filled with consuming fire. The appearance produced a shock that affected the whole body. In a moment a personage stood before me surrounded with a glory yet greater than that with which I was already surrounded. This messenger proclaimed himself to be an angel of God, sent to bring the joyful tidings, that the covenant which God made with ancient Israel was at hand to be fulfilled; that the preparatory work for the second coming of the Messiah was speedily to commence; that the time was at hand for the gospel in all its fulness to be preached in power, unto all nations, that a people might be prepared for the millennial reign.

I was informed that I was chosen to be an instrument in the hands of God to bring about some of his purposes in this glorious dispensation.

I was informed also concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of this country, and shown who they were, and from whence they came;—a brief sketch of their origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments, of their righteousness and iniquity, and the blessings of God being finally withdrawn from them as a people, was made known unto me. I was also told where there was deposited some plates, on which was engraven an abridgment of the records of the ancient prophets that had existed on this continent. The angel appeared to me three times the same night and unfolded the same things. After having received many visits from the angels of God, unfolding the majesty and glory of the events that should transpire in the last days, on the morning of the 22d of September, A.D. 1827, the angel of the Lord delivered the records into my hands.

These records were engraven on plates which had the appearance of gold; each plate was six inches wide and eight inches long, and not quite so thick as common tin. They were filled with engravings in Egyptian characters, and bound together in a volume, as the leaves of a book, with three rings running through the whole. The volume was something near six inches in thickness, a part of which was sealed. The characters on the unsealed part were small and beautifully engraved. The whole book exhibited many marks of antiquity in its construction, and much skill in the art of engraving. With the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called Urim and Thummim, which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim on a bow fastened to a breastplate.

Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record, by the gift and power of God.

In this important and interesting book the history of ancient America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came from the tower of Babel, at the confusion of languages, to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era.

We are informed by these records, that America, in ancient times, has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites, and came directly from the tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed, about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians who now inhabit this country. This book also tells us that our Saviour made his appearance upon this continent after his resurrection; that he planted the gospel here in all its fulness, and richness, and power, and blessing; that they had apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists; the same order, the same priesthood, the same ordinances, gifts, powers, and blessing, as was enjoyed on the eastern continent; that the people were cut off in consequence of their transgressions; that the last of their prophets who existed among them was commanded to write an abridgment of their prophecies, history, &c., and to hide it up in the earth, and that it should come forth and be united with the Bible, for the accomplishment of the purposes of God, in the last days. For a more particular account, I would refer to the Book of Mormon, which can be purchased at Nauvoo, or from any of our travelling elders.

As soon as the news of this discovery was made known, false reports, misrepresentation and slander flew, as on the wings of the wind, in every direction; my house was frequently beset by mobs, and evil designing persons; several times I was shot at, and very narrowly escaped, and every device was made use of to get the plates away from me; but the power and blessing of God attended me, and several began to believe my testimony….

Believing the Bible to say what it means and mean what it says; and guided by revelation according to the ancient order of the fathers to whom came what little light we enjoy; and circumscribed only by the eternal limits of truth: this church must continue the even tenor of her way, and spread undivided, and operate unspent.

We believe in God the Eternal Father, and in his son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

We believe that men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam’s transgression.

We believe that through the atonement of Christ all men may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

We believe that these ordinances are: 1st, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; 2d, Repentance; 3d, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; 4th, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

We believe that a man must be called of God by prophecy, and by laying on of hands, by those who are in authority to preach the gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.

We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, viz. apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, &c.

We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, &c.

We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

We believe all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal, and we believe that he will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

We believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes. That Zion will be built upon this continent. That Christ will reign personally upon the earth, and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisal glory.

We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates in obeying, honouring, and sustaining the law.

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul; we believe all things: we hope all things: we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is any thing virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek thereafter.

From He Pasa Ekklesia: An Original History of the Religious Denominations at Present Existing in the United States (1844)

2. Joseph Smith, Selection from The Book of Mormon

The earliest and most conspicuous emblem of the Mormon faith, which gave the movement its popular appellation, was the book published a few weeks before the church’s formal 1830 organization. Joseph Smith used “the gift and power of God” to translate a set of ancient plates he retrieved, under the angel Moroni’s supervision, from a hillside near his home in upstate New York in 1827. The record chronicled various peoples who migrated to ancient America. The principal group, whose prophets created the plates and maintained a thousand years of history, traveled from Jerusalem to the Western hemisphere in the sixth century BCE. T...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1: Theology and Doctrine
• 2: Scattering of the Saints
• 3: Gathering to Zion
• 4: Government and Politics
• 5: Race and Ethnicity
• 6: Sexuality and Gender
• 7: Education and Intellectualism
• 8: Contemporary Religious Life
• Notes
• References
• Index