History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is shared by the larger Latter Day Saint movement, which originated in upstate New York under the leadership of Joseph Smith, Jr. With the important assistance of Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon, Smith dictated and published works of scripture, claimed to be visited by angels, and formed a new church. This church grew rapidly, and was chased by angry mobs through various locations including Kirtland, Ohio, Independence, Missouri, and finally Nauvoo, Illinois, until July 26, 1844, when Smith was assassinated in a prison at Carthage, Illinois.After the death of Joseph Smith, Jr, there was some confusion over who would be his successor, leading to the formation of several factions. About half of Mormons followed Brigham Young, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; however, a significant fraction of Mormons, including very prominent Mormons and the majority of Joseph Smith's family, followed the leadership of others, leading to such groups as the Strangites and the Hedrickites, who did not follow Brigham Young to Utah. Eventually, many of these groups coalesced behind Joseph Smith's son Joseph Smith III and became what is now known as the Community of Christ, the second-largest Mormon denomination.
See History of the Latter Day Saint movement.
Under the leadership of Brigham Young, Church leaders planned to leave Nauvoo, Illinois in April of 1846, but amid threats from the state militia, they were forced to cross the Mississippi River in the cold of February. They eventually left the boundaries of the United States to what is now Utah where they founded Salt Lake City.
The groups that left Illinois for Utah became know as the Mormon Pioneers and forged a path to Salt Lake City known as the Mormon Trail the arrival of the original Mormon Pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847 is commemorated by the Utah State holiday Pioneer Day.
Groups of converts from the United States, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere were encouraged to gather to Utah in the decades following. Both the original Mormon migration and subsequent convert migrations resulted in much sacrifice and quite a number of deaths. Brigham Young organized a great colonization of the American West, with Mormon settlements extending from Canada to Mexico. Notable cities that sprang from early Mormon settlements include San Diego, California and Las Vegas, Nevada.
One of the reasons the Saints had chosen the Great Basin as a settling place was that the area was at the time outside the territorial borders of the United States, which Young had blamed for failing to protect Mormons from political opposition from the states of Missouri and Illinois. However, in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded the area to the United States. As a result, Brigham Young sent emissaries to Washington, D.C with a proposal to create a vast State of Deseret, of which Young would naturally be the first governor. Instead, however, Congress created the much smaller Utah Territory in 1850, and Young was appointed governor in 1851. Because of his religious position, however, Young exercised much more practical control over the affairs of Mormon and non-Mormon settlers than a typical territorial governor of the time.
After the death of Brigham Young, the First Presidency was not reorganized until 1880, when Young was succeeded by President John Taylor, who in the interim had served as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
For several decades, polygamy was preached as God's law. Brigham Young, the Prophet of the church at that time, had quite a few wives, as did many other church leaders. The general membership required special authorization from their preisthood leader to engage in polygamy and such permission was granted sparsely (estimates say between 1% and 5% of the male membership).
This early practice of polygamy caused conflict between church members and the wider American society. In 1854 the Republican party referred in its platform to polygamy and slavery as the "twin relics of barbarism." In 1862, the United States Congress enacted the Morrill Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln, which made bigamy a felony in the territories punishable by $500 or five years in prison. The law also permitted the confiscation of church property without just compensation. This law was not enforced however, by the Lincoln administration or by Mormon-controlled territorial probate courts. Moreover, as Mormon polygamist marriages were performed in secret, it was difficult to prove when a polygamist marriage had taken place. In the meantime, Congress was preoccupied with the Civil War.
In 1874, after the war, Congress passed the Poland Act, which transferred jurisdiction over Morrill Act cases to federal prosecutors and courts, which were not controlled by Mormons. In addition, the Morrill Act was upheld in 1879 by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Reynolds v. United States. After Reynolds, Congress became even more aggressive against polygamy, and passed the Edmunds Act in 1882. The Edmunds Act prohibited not just bigamy, which remained a felony, but also bigamous cohabitation, which was prosecuted as a misdemeanor, and did not require proof an actual marriage ceremony had taken place. The Act also vacated the Utah territorial government, created an independent committee to oversee elections to prevent Mormon influence, and disenfranchised any former or present polygamist. Further, the law allowed the government to deny civil rights to polygamists without a trial.
The Edmunds Act only made the Mormon leadership more determined to continue the practice of polygamy. On October 13, 1882, church president John Taylor pronounced a revelation (included in five foreign editions of the Doctrine and Covenants, but not in any English-language edition), which required all priesthood officers to begin practicing polygamy if they had not already done so.
In 1887, Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which allowed prosecutors to force plural wives to testify against their husbands, abolished the right of women to vote, disincorporated the church, and confiscated the church's property. By this time, many church leaders had gone into hiding to avoid prosecution, and half the Utah prison population was composed of polygamists.
Thus, under extreme pressure by the United States, church leadership officially ended the practice in 1890, based on a revelation by Wilford Woodruff, a position which also allowed Utah to be granted U.S. statehood in 1896. However, polygamy continued to be unofficially sanctioned or allowed by members of the First Presidency at least into the first decade of the 20th Century, with many polygamous marriages taking place in Mexico to avoid legal complications. (Quinn 1985). The Church practice of unofficially sanctioning allowing new polygamous marriages ended by about 1910. At about the same time, the church prohibited its members from cohabiting with plural wives to which they had previously been married.
In modern times, the Church has consistently excommunicated all its members who have attempted to marry more than one wife, or to cohabitate with a plural wife. Although there were rare tacitly-accepted polygamous cohabitations by active church members as late as 1930, in 1935, the state of Utah made polygamous cohabitation a felony. Therefore, there have been no active polygamists in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for several generations. Moreover, in the 21st Century, the Church has officially endorsed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution forever banning marriage except between one man and one woman. Nevertheless, the church has never abandoned its practice of performing polygamous sealings, in which a widower can be sealed to a second wife after the first wife dies. According to widely-accepted Mormon belief, a trio thus formed will begin a polygamous relationship in the afterlife.
In 1898, Utah elected general authority B.H. Roberts to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat. Roberts, however, was denied a seat there because he was practicing polygamy.
In addition to religious socialism, many Mormons in Utah were receptive to the secular socialist movement that began in America during the 1890s. During the 1890s to the 1920s, the Utah Social Democratic Party, which became part of the Socialist Party of America in 1901, elected about 100 socialists to state offices in Utah. An estimated 40% of Utah Socialists were Mormon.
While religious and secular socialism gained some acceptance among Mormons, the Church was more circumspect about Communism, because of its association with violent revolution. From the time of Joseph Smith, Jr, the church had taken a favorable view as to the American Revolution and the necessity at times to violently overthrow the government. Thus, in 1917, after the Russian Revolution, LDS apostle David O. McKay initially told an audience in general conference that "It looks as if Russia will have a government 'by the people, of the people, and for the people." (April 7, 1917 Conference Report).
Eventually, however, the Church began to view the revolutionary nature of Communism as a threat to the United States Constitution, which the Church respected about as much as it respected American revolutionaries. In 1936, the First Presidency issued a statement stating:
Beginning soon after the turn of the Twentieth Century, four influential Latter-day Saint scholars began to systematize, modernize, and codify Mormon doctrine: B.H. Roberts, James E. Talmage, John A. Widtsoe, and Joseph Fielding Smith.
Soon after the 1909 statement, Joseph F. Smith professed in certain editorials that "the Church itself has no philosophy about the modus operandi employed by the Lord in His creation of the world. (Juvenile Instructor, 46 (4), 208-209 (April 1911), and that various possibilities for such creation might have included the idea that Adam and Ave: (1) "evolved in natural processes to present perfection", (2) were "transplanted [to earth] from another sphere" (see, e.g., Adam-God theory), or (3) were "born here . . . as other mortals have been." (Improvement Era 13, 570 (April 1910).
In 1925, as a result of publicity from the "Scopes Monkey Trial concerning the right to teach evolution in Tennessee public schools, the First Presidency reiterated its 1909 stance, stating that "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, declares man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity. . . . Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes."
The issue of evolution surfaced again in the early 1930s, when there was an intense debate between liberal theologian and general authority B. H. Roberts, an ardent proponent of evolution, and the more conservative theologian Joseph Fielding Smith. This prompted the First Presidency, then led by Heber J. Grant as President, to conclude:
Today, largely influenced by Smith, McConkie, and Benson, evolution is rejected by a large number of Church members, including highly educated members and even some bio- and paleo-science professors at Church-owned schools such as Brigham Young University. However, the Church still does not have an official position on how the Earth was created, and many devout Latter-day Saints have accepted evolution as a fact of history. See, e.g., Trent D. Stephens, D. Jeffrey Meldrum, & Forrest B. Peterson, Evolution and Mormonism: A Quest for Understanding (Signature Books, 2001).
In 1955, the Church began ordaining black Melanesians to the Priesthood.
Thus, the Church underwent a number of important changes in organization, practices, and meeting schedule. In addition, the Church became more media-savvy, and more self-conscious and protective of its public image. The Church also became more involved in public discourse, using its new-found political and cultural influence and the media to affect its image, public morality, and Mormon scholarship, and to promote its missionary efforts. At the same time, the Church struggled with how to deal with increasingly pluralistic voices within the Church and within Mormonism. In general, this period has seen both an increase in cultural and racial diversity and extra-faith ecumenism, and a decrease in intra-faith pluralism.
See generally: Armand L. Mauss, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Strugle with Assimilation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Gordon Sheperd & Gary Sheperd, "Mormonism in Secular Society: Changing Patterns in Official Ecclesiastical Rhetoric," ''Review of Religious Research 26 (Sept. 1984): 28-42.
In 1973, the Church recast is missionary discussions, making them more family-friendly and focused on building on common Christian ideals. The new discussions, named "A Uniform System for Teaching Families", de-emphasized the Great Apostasy, which previously held a prominent position just after the story of the First Vision. When the discussions were revised in the early 1980s, the new discussions dealt with the Apostasy less conspicuously, and in later discussions, rather than in the first discussion. The discussions also became more family-friendly, including a flip chart with pictures, in part to encourage the participation of children.
In 1995, the Church announced a new logo design that emphasized the words "JESUS CHRIST" in large capital letters, and de-emphasized the words "The Church of" and "of Latter-day Saints". According to Bruce L. Olsen, director of public affairs for the Church, "The logo re-emphasizes the official name of the Church and the central position of the Savior in its theology. It stresses our allegiance to the Lord, Jesus Christ."
On January 1, 2000, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles released a proclamation entitled "The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". This document commemorated the birth of Jesus and set forth the Church's official view regarding Christ.
In 2001, the Church sent out a press release encouraging reporters to use the full name of the church at the beginning of news articles, with following references to the "Church of Jesus Christ". The release discouraged the use of the term "Mormon Church".
During and after the American Civil Rights Movement, the Church faced a critical point in its history, where its previous attitudes toward other cultures and people of color, which had once been shared by much of the white American mainstream, began to appear racist and neocolonial. The Church came under intense fire for its stances on blacks and native Americans issues.
The cause of some of the Church's most damaging publicity had to do with the Church's policy of discrimination toward blacks, a policy that had begun during the administration of Brigham Young. Blacks were always officially welcome in the Church, and Joseph Smith, Jr established an early precedent of ordained black males to the Priesthood. Smith was also anti-slavery. At times, however, Smith had shown sympathy toward a belief common in his day that blacks were the cursed descendants of Cain. By the year 1849, Brigham Young and other Apostles introduced a policy that though blacks could be baptized, they and others could not be ordained to the Priesthood or enter LDS temples. See Blacks and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Journal histories and public teachings of the time reflect that Young and others stated that God would some day reverse this policy of discrimination. It is also important to note that while blacks as a whole were specifically withheld from priesthood blessings (although there were some exceptions to this policy in both the 1800s and 1900s), other races and genealogical lineages were also prohibited from holding the priesthood. Only those who were assigned to the tribes of Joseph, Judah and Levi had a right to hold the priesthood during various parts of the period.
By the late 1960s, the Church had expanded into Brazil, the Caribbean, and the nations of Africa, and was suffering criticism for its policy of racial discrimination. In 1969 the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency voted to end the discriminatory policy; however, the move was later vetoed by First Counselor and later President Harold B. Lee on the grounds that a revelation was required for such a policy change. On June 9, 1978, under the administration of Spencer W. Kimball, the Church leadership finally received this divine sanction to change the long-standing policy. See Doctrine and Covenants, OD-2.
Today, there are many black members of the Church, and many predom This is an Article on History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Migration to Utah and Colonization of the West (c. 1846 to c. 1856)
Brigham Young's early theocratic leadership
Originally, Brigham Young stated that he, nor any other man could be the successor of Joseph Smith and the position he held in the Church and dispensation. Eventually, after the majority of Mormons moved to Utah, Brigham Young was sustained as a member of the First Presidency on December 25, 1847, (Wilford Woodruff Diary, Church Archives), and then as President of the Church on October 8, 1848. (Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 3:318).The Church's attempt to restructure society on the fringes of the United States (c. 1856 to c. 1890)
The Mormon Reformation
In 1856-1858, the Church underwent what is commonly called the Mormon Reformation. See Peterson, Paul H. "The Mormon Reformation of 1856-1857: The Rhetoric and the Reality." 15 Journal of Mormon History 59-87 (1989).Early political conflicts between Mormons and outsiders
In 1857-1858, the Church was involved in a bloodless conflict with the U.S. government, entitled the Utah War.
In September 1857, paranoia over the Utah War led local officials in southern Utah to join with Indians to massacre a company of settlers traveling from Arkansas. See Mountain Meadows Massacre.Brigham Young's later years
Brigham Young died in August 1877.Polygamy and the United States "Mormon question"
Main article: Plural marriageThe Church and the modern world (c. 1890 to c. 1960)
When the Church renounced polygamy in 1890, and Utah received statehood in 1896, Latter-day Saints for the first time saw an opportunity to begin entering the modern American mainstream.The beginnings of Mormon involvement in national politics
Until about 1890, Utah politics was divided between the Mormon People's party (composed of Mormons) and the Gentile Liberal party (composed of non-Mormons). After the 1890 Manifesto, Mormons began their involvement in both the United States Republican Party and United States Democratic Party.Mormonism and socialism/communism
Mormonism has had a mixed relationship with socialism in its various forms. In the earliest days of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, Jr had established a form of religious communism, an idea made popular during the Second Great Awakening, combined with a move toward theocracy. Mormons referred to this form of theocratic communism as the United Order, or the Law of Consecration. While short-lived during the life of Joseph Smith, the United Order was re-established for a time in several communities of Utah during the theocratic political leadership of Brigham Young.The effect of modernism on Mormon doctrine
The Church and evolution
The issue of evolution has been a point of controversy within the Church. The first official statement on the issue of evolution was in 1909, which marked the centennial of Charles Darwin's birth and the 50th anniversary of his masterwork, the Origin of Life. On that year, the First Presidency led by Joseph F. Smith as President, issued a statement reinforcing the predominant religious view of creationism, and calling human evolution one of the "theories of men", but falling short of declaring evolution untrue or evil. "It is held by some", they said, "that Adam was not the first man upon the earth, and that the original human was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men." Notably, the Church did not opine on the evolution of animals other than humans, nor did it endorse a particular theory of creationism.
Later, Joseph Fielding Smith published his book Man: His Origin and Destiny, which denounced evolution without qualification. Similar statements of denunciation were made by Bruce R. McConkie, who as late as 1980 denounced evolution as one of "the seven deadly heresies" (BYU Fireside, June 1, 1980), and stated: "There are those who say that revealed religion and organic evolution can be harmonized. This is both false and devilish." Evolution was also denounced by the very conservative Ezra Taft Benson, who as an Apostle called on members to use the Book of Mormon to combat evolution and several times denounced evolution as a "falsehood" on a par with socialism, rationalism, and humanism. (Ezra Taft Benson, Conference Report, April 5, 1975).The beginnings of the Church bureaucracy
New building programs
The early correlation movement
Priesthood-Auxilliary movement (1928-1937): re-emphasized the church hierarchy around Priesthood, and re-emphasized other church organizations as "priesthood auxilliaries" with reduced autonomy.The Church Educational System
Church welfare systems
The Church and "Lamanites"
During the post-World War II period, the Church also began to focus on expansion into a number of Native American cultures, as well as Oceanic cultures, which many Mormons considered to be the same ethnicity. These peoples were called "Lamanites", because they were all thought to descend from the Lamanite group in the Book of Mormon. In 1947, the Church began the Indian Placement Program, where Native American students (upon request by their parents) were voluntarily placed in white Latter-day Saint foster homes during the school year, where they would attend public schools and become assimilated into Mormon culture.Reacting and Adapting to the Postmodern World (c. 1960 and later)
By the 1960s and 1970s, as a consequence of its massive, international growth in the post-World War II era, the Church was no longer primarily a Utah-based church, but a world-wide organization. The church, mirroring the world around it, felt the disunifying strains of alien cultures and diverse points of view that had brought an end to the idealistic modern age. At the same time, the postmodern world was increasingly skeptical of traditional religion and authority, and driven by mass-media and public image. These influences awoke within the church a new self-consciousness. The Church could no longer rest quietly upon its fundamentals and history. It felt a need to sell its image to an increasingly jaded public, to jettison some of its Utah-based parochialism, to control and manage Mormon scholarship that might present an unfavorable image of the Church, and to alter its organization to cope with its size and cultural diversity, while preserving centralized control of Latter-day Saint doctrine, practice, and culture.Latter-day Saint ecumenism
Until the Church's phenomenal growth after World War II, it had been seen in the eyes of the general public as a backward, non- or vaguely-Christian polygamist cult in Utah -- an image that interfered with proselyting efforts. As the Church's size began to merit new visibility in the world, the Church seized upon the opportunity to re-define its public image, and to establish itself in the public mind as a mainstream Christian faith. At the same time, the Church became publicly involved in numerous ecumenical and welfare projects that continue to serve as the foundation of its ecumenism today.Moderation and assimilation of Mormon rhetoric
As part of the Church's efforts to re-position its image as that of a mainstream religion, the Church began to moderate its earlier anti-Catholic rhetoric. In General Authority Bruce R. McConkie's 1958 edition of Mormon Doctrine, he had denounced the Catholic Church as "the church of the devil" and "the great and abominable church". In his 1966 edition of the same book, this language was removed.Standardization of missionary discussions
The first routinized system for teaching Church principles to potential proselytes had been created in 1953 and named "A Systematic Program for Teaching the Gospel". In 1961, this system was enhanced, expanded, and renamed "A Uniform System for Teaching Investigators". This new system, in the form of a hypothetical dialogue with a fictional character named "Mr. Brown", included intricate details for what to say in almost every situation. These routinized missionary discussions would be further refined in 1973 and 1986, and then de-emphasized in 2003.Changes in the Endowment ceremony
In 1990, the Church revised the text of the Endowment ceremony. Whereas the ceremony had historically depicted a Christian minister as being in league with Lucifer, the revised ceremony deleted all reference to the Christian minister. The new ceremony also deleted certain Masonic references and blood oaths, which had been shocking to many traditional Christians.Emphasis on the name and significance of Jesus Christ
In 1982, the Church renamed its edition of The Book of Mormon to The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, in order to emphasize that the book is about Jesus.Cooperation with Other Churches
Emerging Multiculturalism
As the Church began to collide and meld with cultures outside of Utah and the United States, the Church began to jettison some of the parochialisms and prejudices that had become part of Latter-day Saint culture, but were not essential to Mormonism. In 1971, LDS Apostle and scholar Bruce R. McConkie drew parallels between the LDS Church and the New Testament church, who had difficulty embracing the Gentiles within Christianity, and encouraged Saints not to be so indoctrinated with social customs that they fail to engage other cultures in Mormonism. Other peoples, he stated, "have a different background than we have, which is of no moment to the Lord . . . . It is no different to have different social customs than it is to have different languages. . . . And the Lord knows all languages". In 1987, Boyd K. Packer, another Latter-day Saint Apostle, stated, "We can't move [into various countries] with a 1947 Utah Church! Could it be that we are not prepared to take the gospel because we are not prepared to take (and they are not prepared to receive) all of the things we have wrapped up with it as extra baggage?". See 21 Dialogue 97 (Fall 1988).The Church and Blacks
Main article: Blacks and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.