The discovery of the relationship by Emma probably dates to the summer or fall of 1835.  Bradley recounted several people who have tried to pin down the date, and noted problems with each date.  Some authors have discussed an “embarrassing” incident of polygamy in August 1835.   Joseph left for Pontiac, Michigan possibly to avoid embarrassment for his role.  On Oct 14, 1835, Joseph describes “dealing with household issues”, possibly a reference to evict Fanny.  However, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee suggests this incident refers not to Fanny, but a problem with employees at the printing office.

Fanny left Kirtland in August or Sept 1836, so the incident must have occurred prior to that.  Bradley notes that dissenters condemned Joseph on July 24, and Joseph left for Salem, Massachusetts for a treasure trip the next day on July 25.  Bradley believes Joseph sent Fanny to Missouri at the same time.  William McLellin gave his famous quote about having “no confidence” in church leadership around this time as well.  Fanny soon married non-member Solomon Custer after just a 6 week courtship.  Bradley believes it may have been a cover of legitimacy if Fanny was indeed pregnant.

Following Bridget Jack Meyer’s wonderful presentation on Women priesthood holders in early Christianity earlier in the week, I thought Joshua Gillon’s presentation called “Mormon Women Had the Priesthood in 1843: Examining the Claims” might be interesting.  I was greatly disappointed.  Josh is a PhD candidate of philosophy at Princeton, having completed a BA at BYU.  His talk was nothing more than a rant against the church.  He mis-characterized Michael Quinn’s discussion of women and the priesthood.  He employed tedious grammar exercises to make his points, and finished off with an F-bomb to end his presentation.  It was definitely the worst presentation I have ever heard at Sunstone, though there was another terrible one later in the day.

I wasn’t very excited to go the the panel called “Glenn Beck: Likely Mormon or Unlikely Mormon”, but there wasn’t anything else that sounded interesting at that time.  As I reviewed the list of panelists, I was looking forward to hearing Joanna Brooks of Mormon Matters, and David King Landrith of Mormon Mentality.  (I had met him earlier in the week.) Kathryn Hemingway, Eric Samuelson, and Robert Rees weren’t nearly so interesting as Joanna and David, though they all made good points.  Rees was the moderator and not a fan of Beck.  Landrith and Hemingway were supporters of Beck, while Brooks and Samuelson were not.

I really enjoyed Landrith’s presentation.  Landrith showed that Beck’s rhetoric is very similar to political discourse over the past 200 years.  Early founding fathers often compared each other to monarchists, and spoke about each other more harshly than Beck does of his opponents.  I thought it was an interesting presentation.  Brooks really wasn’t that antagonistic toward Beck.  She basically said we should ignore Beck because his ratings are going down and he knows it.  There is no need to feed into the frenzy–Beck will go away on his own.

Following lunch, I attended a fantastic presentation by Apostle Susan Skoor of the Community of Christ.  She discussed her personal faith journey, showing how she has moved among Fowler’s stages of faith.  Her talk was titled “Faith in the Midst of the Difficulties of Life.”  Baptized at age 8 into the RLDS church, she discussed losing her testimony in her 30s, nearly falling into atheism.  Receiving a blessing, and asked “Do you want to believe?”, as Alma says, she let this desire work in her.  She discussed her new found faith as a stage 5 person, and said she knew she was too selfish to reach stage 6.  As I listened to her story, I marveled at how open she was about her life’s journey.  I don’t think an LDS apostle would admit to losing faith as she did, and I don’t think an LDS apostle would discuss spirituality in such as “secular” way as she discussed Fowlers Faith Stage theory.  I was truly moved.

Clair Barrus discussed “Oliver Cowdery’s Rod of Nature.”  It was a bit too technical for me, but I know others enjoyed it.  Finally, I listened to a panel discuss “Men and the Priesthood: Taking on the Feminine.”  Tom Kimball discussed being an unorthodox Mormon.  His previous bishop did not want to let him baptize or ordain his children.  As the bishop got to know Tom better, he decided to allow it.  Tom has previously discussed his story on Mormon Stories.  Tom’s new bishop has taken a more hard line approach, and Tom’s boys have not progressed in the priesthood.  Tom compared his situation to the idea that women can’t ordain daughters in the LDS church as well.

Robin Linkart, President of the 6th Quorum of Seventy for the Community of Christ spoke next.  She gave an excellent presentation and discussed the new revelation in 1984 allowing women to hold the priesthood.  Many in the RLDS church broke off (they lost nearly 1/4 of their membership.)  She discussed the challenges the RLDS church went through, and her personal journey in the priesthood.  It was excellent.

Holly Welker spoke next.  She gave a rant that the priesthood should be abolished in the LDS church.  During Tom’s, Lisa’s, and the Q&A session, she made faces of disbelief and disagreement.  Honestly I believe a 5th grader would have better behavior than she exhibited.  She was incredibly rude and unprofessional.  Her behavior was embarrassing.

Lisa Butterworth finished up the panel.  She started the blog at FeministMormonHousewives.  Being a feminist and an unorthodox Mormon, she was asked to speak in support of the idea of an all-male priesthood.  She did the best she could, but it was evident that she didn’t fully support the topic she was asked to address.

Overall, I enjoyed most of the sessions.  If you missed my first post on Sunstone, click here.  I’m not sure why I attended so many feminist presentations, but I guess they sounded the most interesting.  So what is your take on women and the priesthood?  Do you see it happening in the LDS church in the next 20-50 years?  Would you support or oppose such a move if the prophet received a revelation allowing women to hold the priesthood?

Then I was talking to my sister a few days ago.  She asked me what I thought of the Tea Party movement.  In brief, I’m not a big fan.  Anyway, I thought it might be time to put together some of my political thoughts, and quotes from former apostle Hugh B. Brown into a post.  I considered waiting until closer to the election, but decided to go ahead and put this out now, since I was just talking to my sister about this issue.  I have combined a few emails into this post.

My sister’s email quoted a blogger complaining about President Obama.  The first question from the blogger was terrible.  “If Obama wanted to destroy the United States, what would he be doing differently?”

I don’t for a second think Obama is trying to destroy the United States.  People are welcome to disagree with Obama–certainly I do on a fair number of issues.  However, when we try to demonize people we disagree with, we have crossed the line into political extremism.

I had an email from a friend asking me about political extremism, and how the church defines it.  Well, here are some thing I told her, and I think they apply to this blogger as well.

You may be interested in this letter that was read here in Utah on Mar 22, 2010.  See http://www.newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/first-presidency-letter-on-utah-precinct-caucus-meetings

“Principles compatible with the gospel may be found in the platforms of various political parties.”  (Emphasis mine.)

I usually lean republican, but I do like Jim Matheson (D-Congressman Utah) and Peter Caroon (D-SL County mayor.)  I’m not real fond of Harry Reid, but it is cool to have such a high ranking Mormon.  Matheson is a Mormon and crusades against wasteful government spending.  He was one of the few guys who voted against the Bank Bailout (and caught a lot of heat when the bailout was popular), and voted against Health Care Reform.  He’s a real fiscal conservative, opposes abortion, and I really like a lot of his stands.  In states like NY, CA, or MA, he’d be a republican (more conservative than Guiliani, McCain, or even Mitt), but Utah is so ultra-conservative that he is really a very conservative democrat.

The following quote comes from Hugh B Brown’s famous speech “Profile of a Prophet.”  This is the beginning of the commencement address he gave to BYU students in 1968.  The first 3 minutes of the speech, Brown gives a few jokes and advice, and then gets onto Politics, before addressing his main topic of “Profile of a Prophet.”

“You young people are leaving your university at a time in which our nation is engaged in an increasingly abrasive and strident process of electing a president.  I wonder if you would permit me as one who has managed to survive a number of these events to pass on to you a few words of counsel.

First, I’d like you to be reassured that the leaders of both major political parties in this land are men of integrity, and unquestioned patriotism.  Beware of those who feel obliged to prove their own patriotism by calling into question the loyalty of others. Be skeptical of those who attempt to demonstrate their love of country by demeaning its institutions. Know that men of both major political parties who guide the nation’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches are men of unquestioned loyalty and we should stand by and support them, and this refers not only to one party but to all.

Strive to develop a maturity of mind and emotion and a depth of spirit which will enable you to differ with others on matters of politics without calling into question the integrity of those with whom you differ. Allow within the bounds of your definition of religious orthodoxy variation of political belief. Do not have the temerity to dogmatize on issues where the Lord has seen fit to be silent.  I’ve found by long experience that our two-party system is sound.  Beware of those who are so lacking in humility, that they cannot come within the framework of one of our two great parties.

Our nation has avoided chaos, like that is gripping France today, because men have been able to temper their own desires sufficiently, seek broad agreement within one of the two major parties, rather than forming splinter groups around their one radical idea.

Our two party system has served us well, and should not be lightly discarded.  At a time when radicals of right or left inflame race against race, avoid those who teach evil doctrines of racism.  When our Father declared that we, his children, were brothers and sisters, he did not limit this relationship on the basis of race.  Strive to develop that true love of country, that realizes that real patriotism must include within it a regard for the people of the rest of the globe.  Patriotism has never demanded of good men hatred of another country as proof of one’s love for his own.  Require the tolerance and compassion of others and for them.  Those with different politics or race or religion will be demanded by the heavenly parentage which we all have in common.

-Hugh B. Brown, Commencement address, Brigham Young University, May 31, 1968

I’m sure he is referring to the Civil Rights, Vietnam, as well as the upcoming presidential election following Lyndon B Johnson’s announcement that he would step down.  Of course Nixon won a 3 way race over D-Hubert Humphrey, and I-George Wallace.  There were Vietnam demonstrations, and I think it was a much more divisive time than today, though today is a very divisive time.  Let’s not forget that Wallace was later shot in 1972, and we all know what happened to Nixon.  I didn’t know what happened in France in 1968, so I looked it up on wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_in_France Apparently there were some big-time riots, strikes, and protests that almost brought the French government down.

Here’s a different talk by Hugh B. Brown that gives some good advice too.  http://unicomm.byu.edu/president/documents/brown.htm

[T]he possibility of coherent community action is diminished today by the deep mutual suspicions and antagonisms among various groups in our national life.

As these antagonisms become more intense, the pathology is much the same. . . . The ingredients are, first, a deep conviction on the part of the group as to its own limitless virtue or the overriding sanctity of its cause; second, grave doubts concerning the moral integrity of all others; third, a chronically aggrieved feeling that power has fallen into the hands of the unworthy (that is, the hands of others). . . .

Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: An excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. . . . Blind belief in one’s cause and a low view of the morality of other Americans–these seem mild failings. But they are the soil in which ranker weeds take root . . . terrorism, and the deep, destructive cleavages that paralyze a society.³

I am a bit wary of the Tea Party Movement, as well as MoveOn.org.  I view them both as unhealthy extremes.  My opinion is that it is fine to disagree with Democrats or Republicans.  But when we turn to decisiveness and refer to President George W Bush or President Barack Obama as “worse than Hitler”, we are guilty of political extremism.  As Hugh B Brown said, “the leaders of both major political parties in this land are men of integrity, and unquestioned patriotism.”

What say you?

I was already familiar that the Republican Party was founded in 1856 to rid the country of the “twin relics of barbarism:  slavery and polygamy.”  After the Civil War and slavery was abolished, the Republicans set their eyes on the other twin: polygamy.  Gordon says this seems to be the forgotten twin by American historians.  Gordon printed many editorial cartoons about Mormons in the 1800’s–none of them flattering.  In one cartoon, the blot of Mormonism is all over the Statue of Libery, and Uncle Sam tells a man that he needs to dip into the bucket of “Extreme Measures” to fix the blot.

It did take some extreme measures.  I’ve mentioned some of these in my previous post on the Anti-Polygamy Raids.  Mormons weren’t allowed to vote, or serve on juries (in order to secure polygamy convictions.)  The were rounded up and prosecuted, the church was disincorporated, and property was confiscated.  Leading the charge was the Republican Party.  The did everything they could to make comparisons to slavery, even referring to polygamist wives as white slaves.

Southern Democrats, while not particularly fond of polygamy, saw the parallels with slavery and made efforts to defeat anti-polygamy legislation.  The attorney who argued the case for Utah in the Supreme Court was a prominent Democrat.  While it was hard for the church to find supporters, there was more help from Democrats.  It’s funny to me that Republicans today are against “big government”, yet the Patriot Act and anti-polygamy legislation are big government intrusions into personal freedoms.

Separation of church and state was a very interesting constitutional concept.  The original framers of the Constitution wanted a relatively weak federal government.  While the Bill of Rights established that there could be no religion enforced by the federal government, states were free to establish religion.  Massachusetts didn’t abolish it’s state religion until 1820!  Many colonies were set up as religious colonies.  These colonies didn’t want the federal government to meddle in their affairs, but they didn’t have a problem with state governments cozying up with a religious denomination.  Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was wary of religion, and helped set up Virginia as a secular state.  Virginia became a model for other states.

Gordon mentions that many anti-polygamy rhetoric did not accurately depict polygamy practices, but there were very effective in rallying anti-polygamists to their cause.  They often did this by writing novels about what they thought polygamy must be like.  Even the first Sherlock Holmes novel dealt with polygamy.

I remember an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, where he says, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!”  It seems like that is exactly what the Mormons have done.  The Republican charge to end polygamy won in 1890, and the majority of Utah Mormons have now joined their one-time adversary. I see many similarities between the heavy-handed tactics of the late 1800’s and the current Patriot Act and Republican use of government.  I suspect few Mormon Republicans are aware of this dubious relationship from history.  I wonder how Mormon Republicans view this news that the Republicans were the first vocal anti-polygamist (anti-Mormons).  No wonder there is still distrust of Mitt Romney among Republicans.  I wonder if Jon Huntsman will get the same treatment if he runs?

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

“We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals,” PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. “We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals.”

I’m all for the ethical treatment of animals, but not insects, and especially flies.  This is truly unbelievable.  I wonder what their position is on mosquitos.  Anybody know?

The term “Jack Mormon” is familiar to most of us.  Generally, it means a Mormon in name only.  In modern usage, a Jack Mormon is probably inactive, doesn’t really go to church, doesn’t follow the Word of Wisdom or other orthodox Mormon habits, and may or may not be proud of his Mormon heritage.  However, in the days of Joseph Smith, Quinn says on page 101, “non-mormon allies were known as ‘Jack-Mormons’, originally an LDS term of endearment.”

Alexander Doniphan is even mentioned in LDS manuals, such as this primary manual.  Quinn talks about these incident as well, and adds some more details, while leaving out some.  It is interesting that the church manual talks about the LDS being prevented from voting, while Quinn talks about a few other incidents as well.  I’m sure the church left out the following account about the Haun’s Mill massacre out of the primary manual for good reason.  From page 100,

When one of the Missouri militiamen found ten-year-old Sardius Smith’s hiding place, he put “his rifle near the boy’s head, and literally blowed off the upper part of it,” testified survivor and general authority Joseph Young [brother of Brigham] shortly thereafter.    Other Missourians used a “corn-cutter” to mutilate the still-living Thomas McBride.  When the survivors found the elderly man, his corpse was “literally mangled head to foot.”

It is terrible the brutality the Missourians inflicted upon the saints.  I have mentioned before that I do not believe the saints were without fault, but this brutality is atrocious, and was never prosecuted.  Continuing on,

A generally unacknowledged dimension of both the extermination order and the Haun’s Mill Massacre, however, is that they resulted from Mormon actions in the Battle of Crooked River.  Knowingly or not, Mormons had attacked state troops, and this had a cascade effect…  Finally upon receiving news of the injuries and death of state troops at Crooked River, Governor Boggs immediately drafted his extermination order on 27 October 1838 because Mormons “have made war upon the people of this state.”  Worse, the killing of one Missourian and mutiliation of another while he was defenseless at Crooked River led to the mad-dog revenge by Missourians in the slaughter at Hauns Mill.

This is where Alexander Doniphan comes in.

Despite the hatred of some Missourians toward Mormons, other non-Mormons protected LDS friends in the state.  William Thompson endured several lashes “with a cowhide,” rather than tell a mob where the Mormons were.  Better known among Mormons was Missourian Alexander W. Doniphan, who had risked his standing in his own community by defending the Mormons against expulsion from Jackson County in 1833.  In 1834, he startled fellow Missourians by praising the effort of Zion’s Camp to reclaim Mormon lands in Jackson County.  As state representative from Clay County, Doniphan regretted that his fellow residents had asked the Mormons to leave the county, and he successfully persuaded the Missouri legislature to create Caldwell County [in an 1836 compromise.]  When anti-Mormon troops surrounded Far West and forced its surrender, General Samuel D. Lucas ordered Doniphan to summarily execute Joseph Smith, and six other Mormon leaders who were in custody in November 1838.  Doniphan refused to obey the order, thus risking a similar summary execution himself.  By putting his own safety and career at risk, Alexander Doniphan saved Smith’s life and earned a permanent place as one of Mormon history’s non-Mormon heroes.

I want to quote from a website regarding Doniphan’s actual reply–I think it is impressive.  The website is http://www.historicliberty.org/tours/Alexander%20Doniphan%20-%20Juarenne.htm, and states,

When the Mormons surrendered to the militia, Doniphan’s commanding officer gave the order for Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, and six others to be shot. Doniphan’s reply was “It is cold-blooded murder. I will not obey your order. My brigade will march for Liberty at 8:00 tomorrow morning, and if you execute these men I will hold you personally responsible before an earthly tribunal, so help me God.” Doniphan chose to subject himself to the threat of possible court-martial rather then to carry out an order which meant the execution of men not found guilty by civil or military tribunal.

Continuing on from Quinn page 101,

Without the drama of Doniphan’s military insubordination, militia general David R. Atchison restrained his own troops and used his political clout to benefit the besieged Mormons.  Another young Missourian wrote his father in December 1838 that the governor’s “extermination” order was a “foul disgrace to our State,” and the the Mormons had every right “to defend [themselves] with force and arms…”  The Jews call such benefactors and rescuers, “righteous Gentiles,” but during Smith’s life these non-Mormon allies were known as “Jack-Mormons,” originally an LDS term of endearment.”

So, I wanted to learn a little more about Alexander Doniphan.

• Alexander Doniphan Elementary School is found on 1900 Clay Drive, in Liberty, Missouri
• Doniphan served 3 terms as a state representative, and worked as a lawyer, who represented Joseph Smith.  Quoting from the website above, “During his career as a trial lawyer Doniphan defended more than 188 men, none of whom suffered the extreme penalty for the crime with which he was charged. This was true in Joseph Smith’s case. Doniphan tendered his services as a civil defender of the Mormons who were never convicted in court. Thus was spared the life of one who led the beginning of one of the great religious movements of our day. This building stands as a monument to Doniphan’s compassion and respect for the law. “
• There was a presentation on Doniphan at the Truman Presidential Library in 2007.  ‘He once met Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln is reported to have said: “Alexander Doniphan is the only man I have ever met who lived up to my previous expectations.” Today there many items which bear his name including several towns, a school, a battleship, a county, a highway and numerous local awards.’
• He went on to lead a very successful campaign in the Mexican-American War in 1846-7.
• He was a slaveholder, who favored keeping the union in tact.

For more information on the 1838 Mormon War, check out this Wikipedia entry.  I am grateful for non-Mormon allies such as Doniphan, and hope we will always appreciate men like this.

Back to Joseph Smith and theocracy, there’s something that puzzles me about Quinn’s claim. If JS truly intended on establishing a theocracy in America, wouldn’t that be in complete contradiction to what his religion proclaimed (i.e. that the US Constitution was a God-inspired document)? I never took American history, so I’m no expert on the Constitution, but how could it have been upheld in a theocracy?

The short answer is Joseph absolutely believed in the Constitution, and felt it was a God-inspired document, but that’s not to say it couldn’t be improved.  I don’t have Quinn’s book anymore, but in answering FD’s question, I decided my comment would be too long, and I wanted to write a post directly to her question.  I have been planning a post on the Richard Bushman interview at the Pew Research Forum anyway, and this question gave me the perfect opportunity.

Some snippets of the interview, and then I’ll let Mr Bushman speak for himself.  Bushman said,

• Joseph Smith became a great devotee of constitutional rights because they seemed like his only hope. He said some very extravagant things about the Constitution being God-given because of those rights and became quite conversant in constitutional matters.
• They [Mormons] believed to the end that the Constitution was on their side and that they were simply claiming religious freedom, but the Supreme Court knocked down their claims one after another.
• [Joseph Smith] began [his presidential candidacy] by citing the Declaration of Independence, the famous passages about all men being equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, which of course could be a lead-in to religious rights. But he didn’t use it that way. Instead, in the very next sentence, he talked about the obvious contradiction: “Some two or three million people are held as slaves for life because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours.” His platform called for the elimination of slavery, proposing that the funds from the sale of Western lands, a major source of revenue along with the tariff in those days, be devoted to purchasing slaves from their masters in order to avoid the conflict that would otherwise ensue.
• He was already mayor of Nauvoo and lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion when he ran for the presidency. He seemingly had no sense that church and state should be separated. He gave no hint that he was going to give up his religious offices if he were to become president of the United States.
• In the closing peroration of his platform, Joseph Smith indirectly, but I think clearly, offered himself to be the priest of the people, as well as the president.
• But let me get a little closer to politics by talking about his daring in the re-envisioning of society. What is not recognized about Joseph Smith is that there is a very deep strain of what I am calling “civic idealism” in him, by which I mean the construction of a new kind of urban society that would embody Christian principles more thoroughly.

So, I think that probably answers FD’s question the best.  And now, let me quote Mr Bushman.  There are many obvious problems with a theocracy–one of the biggest is religious freedom.  But Smith did not see it that way, and, according to Bushman, was actually for more religious freedom than many other areas of the country, which not only discriminated against Mormons, but Muslims and Jews.  It was even legal to discriminate against Jews and Muslims in some states.  Bushman says,

But by the time he got to Nauvoo, Joseph Smith saw the city as more open. One of the first ordinances passed by the Nauvoo council was a toleration act specifying that all faiths were welcome in the city and listing a number of them: Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Latter-day Saints, Catholics, Jews and “Mohammedans,” as Muslims were called. There was probably not a Mohammedan within a thousand miles, but it was a gesture of openness to every religion.

Nauvoo, then, was to be a diverse city, indicating that Joseph Smith’s civic idealism went beyond his own people to envision a much more cosmopolitan society. Nauvoo didn’t develop that way; it came to an end too soon, but that is what he projected.

Bushman also tells why Smith entered into politics.

Smith was forced into politics by the abuse that the Mormons received. As soon as they were driven out of their first city site in Independence, Mo., he turned to the government for redress. He never obtained it. No level of government, from local justices of the peace to governors to the president of the United States – to whom he constantly appealed – ever came to the defense of the Saints. But Joseph Smith became a great devotee of constitutional rights because they seemed like his only hope. He said some very extravagant things about the Constitution being God-given because of those rights and became quite conversant in constitutional matters. He even visited the president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, in the White House in 1839.

Gradually, then, Joseph Smith backed into American politics. In the fall of 1843, as the 1844 campaign began to take shape, the authorities of the church wrote to all of the known political candidates asking them about their views of the Mormons, and none returned a satisfactory answer from the Mormon point of view. The Mormons wanted a pledge that these candidates would protect them if they were attacked again, and they couldn’t get it.

Joseph Smith was nominated as a protest candidate in February of 1844. Like other protest candidates, he began to warm to his work and got quite excited about it. He may have dreamed for a moment that through some strange concatenation of events, he would get elected. Every candidate has to dream such things.

His involvement in politics was manifested in a political platform of which he was very proud. He would bring it out whenever he had visitors and read from it. It is an interesting document because it represents a man whose world had been his own people, whose own project had been to create a kingdom of God, and who now had to turn his mind to politics.

He began by citing the Declaration of Independence, the famous passages about all men being equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, which of course could be a lead-in to religious rights. But he didn’t use it that way. Instead, in the very next sentence, he talked about the obvious contradiction: “Some two or three million people are held as slaves for life because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours.” His platform called for the elimination of slavery, proposing that the funds from the sale of Western lands, a major source of revenue along with the tariff in those days, be devoted to purchasing slaves from their masters in order to avoid the conflict that would otherwise ensue.

Josiah Quincy, soon to be mayor of Boston, visited Joseph Smith in the spring of 1844 when this platform was in circulation. Much later, Quincy wrote about that visit, saying that Joseph Smith’s proposal for ending slavery resembled one that Emerson made 11 years later in 1855.

As Quincy put it, writing retrospectively in the 1880s, “We, who can look back upon the terrible cost of the fratricidal war which put an end to slavery, now say that such a solution of the difficulty” – Joseph Smith’s and Emerson’s – “would have been worthy a Christian statesman. But if the retired scholar was in advance of his time when he advocated this disposition of the public property in 1855, what shall I say of the political and religious leader who had committed himself, in print, as well as in conversation, to the same course in 1844?”

I cite this example to illustrate the radical tone of Joseph Smith’s political thought, which seemed to carry over from his religious radicalism. It extended to prison reform and better treatment of seamen, big issues in the 1840s and 1850s. Smith seemed to identify with all of the underdogs in society. I think that was why he thought he might get elected – because the little people, the beat-up people, would rise and select him.

This part of his platform accords perfectly with what modern people like us would have liked a candidate in 1844 to say. But Smith went beyond our sense of political propriety in other parts of his platform: he blended his role as candidate with his role as prophet. He was already mayor of Nauvoo and lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion when he ran for the presidency. He seemingly had no sense that church and state should be separated. He gave no hint that he was going to give up his religious offices if he were to become president of the United States.

In the closing peroration of his platform, Joseph Smith indirectly, but I think clearly, offered himself to be the priest of the people, as well as the president. “I would, as the universal friend of man, open the prisons, open the eyes, open the ears, and open the hearts of all people to behold and enjoy freedom, unadulterated freedom; and God, who once cleansed the violence of the earth with flood, whose Son laid down his life for the salvation of all his father gave him out of the world, and who has promised that he will come and purify the world again with fire in the last days, should be supplicated by me for the good of all the people.” He would be the intercessor as priest as well as prophet.

Of course, that is point at which moderns part company with Joseph Smith. We don’t want a prophet with his authoritative words from God governing the nation. That seems to lead to the exclusion of unbelievers and the repression of naysayers. All the alarm bells go off when we see these roles merging.

But I would appeal to you, before you turn away completely from that idea, to pay heed to the underlying theme of that platform and that proposal. I think it can be argued that Joseph Smith actually felt he was fulfilling one of America’s dreams. We think of the American dream as the promise of ascent for the wretched refuse of the teeming shores – the promise that in America, everyone has a chance to prosper and to achieve respectability. That is a dream for the individual.

Smith wasn’t the only one who supported a theocracy.  Brigham Young often derided capitalism, and promoted a theocracy as well.  After all, many people have lamented the abuses in capitalism.  Certainly, capitalists do not want equality of wealth, while a theocracy supports equality of all people.  Bushman continues,

Brigham Young was appointed as the first governor of Utah, and he would have remained in that position if he hadn’t been ousted by the federal government. The church set up schools, it managed the courts, it regulated the irrigation system – no small thing – and it created a political party, the People’s Party, distinct from Republicans and Democrats.

All told, the charges that Utah was a theocracy were well founded. It was a theocracy, a merger of church and society under God. Two complaints about Utah were directed against Mormons in the 19th century. One was polygamy, of course, but the other was theocratic rule by Brigham Young, his successors and the presidency of the church.

This was the radical Mormonism of the 19th century, descended from Joseph Smith and continued by Brigham Young. It included a far-reaching social critique. Young criticized capitalism as often as he did philandering. Mormons were sympathetic to European revolutionaries in 1848. They saw themselves as a society set against American society with all of its inequities and iniquities.

It was a society that, as we know, was doomed to defeat. For 40 years, Mormons resisted attempts of the federal government to end polygamy and to destroy theocracy, but finally they gave in. The government began imprisoning Mormon men who had more than one wife and denying Mormons their civil rights. They couldn’t serve on juries, polygamists could not vote in elections, the government began to escheat all Mormon property – including their precious temples – and the church was actually unincorporated. By the late 1880s, it looked like the church, as a church, would be obliterated.

That intense pressure from the federal government was backed up by every branch of government, including the Supreme Court, which was, in Joseph Smith’s spirit, the Mormons’ last best hope. They believed to the end that the Constitution was on their side and that they were simply claiming religious freedom, but the Supreme Court knocked down their claims one after another. Eventually they saw it was hopeless. In 1890, the president of the church announced that they would no longer practice plural marriages.

It wasn’t just polygamy that Mormons gave up; they dismantled the whole theocratic structure. The People’s Party was dissolved and Mormons were instructed to join one or another of the national political parties. They were sometimes assigned: “You become a Democrat; you become a Republican.” There are Democrats in Utah to this day who are Democrats only because their great-grandfathers were told they should be.

They also began to give up all of the church businesses. Not immediately, but steadily over the course of the 20th century, they were not only turned into capitalist enterprises, but the church divested itself of ownership. The church elementary school system was given up. The hospitals have now all been turned into private corporations. All told, the Mormon theocracy was leveled.

Mormonism gave up on its radicalism because the United States government beat it out of them. They were forced to the point of extinction and then realized it all had to be abandoned to preserve their existence as Mormons. As a result, everything became secular. Mormons, in reaction to this treatment, turned to laissez faire liberalism, having no confidence in the government. Their history gave them no reason to trust the United States government as an agency of the people.

This was reinforced in the famous seating hearings of Reed Smoot in 1904. Smoot was an apostle – a very high official in the Mormon Church – elected to the Senate on a Republican ticket, but refused a seat. To settle the question he went through hearings for four years. This protracted examination brought forth all of the opposition to Mormons that was still residual in the nation. It was charged that they were still practicing polygamy, that they were still theocratic, that their reforms were superficial and not to be trusted.

The president of the church, a man named Joseph F. Smith, nephew of Joseph Smith, was called to testify. He was asked over and over again, will Reed Smoot be obligated out of his loyalty to you as the prophet of the church to do what you say in political matters? Over and over, Joseph F. Smith answered, no, he is not obligated; he should follow his own conscience and the obligations he feels to his constituency, not to the president of the church.

The repetition of that question was an indication of the deep suspicion that prevailed and I think prevails to this day. To calm the fears, at the end of the hearings, the church authorities codified the testimony of the church president in an official statement: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds to the doctrine of the separation of church and state.” At the time that was a departure, but an accurate statement of what they had come to believe. “They believe in the non-interference of church authority in political matters and the absolute freedom and independence of the individual in the performance of his political duties.”

On these terms, Mormonism entered the political scene: We will not interfere in politics or in the action of any politicians who are members of the church. And that policy hasn’t changed over the century.

There is, on the church website, this statement: “Elected officials who are Latter-day Saints make their own decisions and may not necessarily be in agreement with one another or even with a publicly stated church position. While the church may communicate its views to them, as it may to any other elected official, it recognizes that these officials still must make their own choices based on their best judgment and with consideration of the constituencies whom they are elected to represent.”

On the whole it is fair to say that by comparison to the 19th century, the church has withdrawn from politics. It does get entangled in Utah politics; it’s such a large part of the state’s economy and population that engagement is inevitable. The church also occasionally takes stands on political measures that it considers to be moral issues, such as prohibition, but it doesn’t direct politicians how to vote. There is nothing like the Catholic bishops’ statements. There is no bishop who would threaten to excommunicate a Mormon because he took a position contrary to church positions on abortion or gay marriage or anything of that sort – nothing like the Pope’s recent statements in Latin America.

Now, I know I’ve quoted quite a bit of Bushman.  The interview is much longer, and there are questions asked by reporters.  I’ll stop for now, but I’m sure I’ll revisit other portions of the Bushman interview in the future.  Comments?

“Smith was forced into politics by the abuse that the Mormons received. As soon as they were driven out of their first city site in Independence, Mo., he turned to the government for redress. He never obtained it. No level of government, from local justices of the peace to governors to the president of the United States – to whom he constantly appealed – ever came to the defense of the Saints. But Joseph Smith became a great devotee of constitutional rights because they seemed like his only hope. He said some very extravagant things about the Constitution being God-given because of those rights and became quite conversant in constitutional matters. He even visited the president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, in the White House in 1839.

Gradually, then, Joseph Smith backed into American politics. In the fall of 1843, as the 1844 campaign began to take shape, the authorities of the church wrote to all of the known political candidates asking them about their views of the Mormons, and none returned a satisfactory answer from the Mormon point of view. The Mormons wanted a pledge that these candidates would protect them if they were attacked again, and they couldn’t get it.

Joseph Smith was nominated as a protest candidate in February of 1844. Like other protest candidates, he began to warm to his work and got quite excited about it. He may have dreamed for a moment that through some strange concatenation of events, he would get elected. Every candidate has to dream such things.

His involvement in politics was manifested in a political platform of which he was very proud. He would bring it out whenever he had visitors and read from it. It is an interesting document because it represents a man whose world had been his own people, whose own project had been to create a kingdom of God, and who now had to turn his mind to politics.”

I want to address some really interesting parts of Joseph Smith’s platform that I found really interesting.  Regarding slavery, Joseph Smith came up with a solution that would have avoided the Civil War.  He advocated low taxes (just like conservatives do today.)  I found most of his points very appealing.  Let me quote from Quinn’s book, page 119,

“Smith’s Views revealed him as more than a one-issue candidate.  For the reform of government, he intended to reduce the size and salary of Congress.  In judicial reform, he advocated rehabilitation of convicts through work projects and vocational training and liberal pardoning.  In economic reform, he proposed less taxation, free trade, secure international rights on the high seas, and establishment of a national bank in every state and territory.  On the slavery question, he advocated compensated emancipation through the sale of public lands.  To cope with resulting social stress, he advocated the relocation of the several million freed slaves to Texas.  In keeping with the spirit of “Manifest Destiny” in the 1840s, he proposed annexation of Oregon and Texas and whatever parts of Canada wished to join the Union.  As a reflection of the Mormon expulsion from Missouri, Smith’s platform also advocated presidential intervention in civil disturbances within states.  As one author noted, this interventionist impulse ‘did not exist until the Civil War and Reconstruction.’”

So I want to address several points, and give my comments.

1.      Reduce the size and salary of congress.  Wow!  Congress continues to grow in size with each census.  I’d love to cut salary, but on the other hand, the only people who go to Congress are the rich.  Perhaps increasing salary would invite more middle class types.  I’m not sure how cutting the size of congress would impact the nation.  I need a constitutional scholar on this one.

2.      Rehab convicts – I like this idea.  While everyone likes to think they’re tough on crime and wants to throw ‘em all in jail and throw away the key, the reality is we can’t build prisons fast enough to keep pace.  And the prisoners we do have end up becoming more skilled at criminal activity.  It seems our current procedures are not working.  I’m with Smith on this one.

3.      Liberal Pardoning – Hmmmm, didn’t we go through that with Bill Clinton?  I’m not sure I like this one as it has the capacity for abuse.

4.      Less taxes – yes, but we need to balance the budget, not simply reduce taxes.

5.      Free trade – I guess he would support NAFTA

6.      Secure International Rights on high seas – It seems pirates are making another comeback.  I’m with Smith on this one.

7.      Establishment of national bank in every state and territory – Bad idea.  We are currently experiencing banking problems with banks getting too big and doing bad mortgages. Joseph has a bad record of running a bank.  See my post on the Kirtland Bank Failure.

8.      Sale of public lands for sale of slaves -  I like it.  That’s a much better solution than the Civil War was.  Richard Bushman commented about this at the Pew Research Forum,

He began by citing the Declaration of Independence, the famous passages about all men being equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, which of course could be a lead-in to religious rights. But he didn’t use it that way. Instead, in the very next sentence, he talked about the obvious contradiction: “Some two or three million people are held as slaves for life because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours.” His platform called for the elimination of slavery, proposing that the funds from the sale of Western lands, a major source of revenue along with the tariff in those days, be devoted to purchasing slaves from their masters in order to avoid the conflict that would otherwise ensue.

Josiah Quincy, soon to be mayor of Boston, visited Joseph Smith in the spring of 1844 when this platform was in circulation. Much later, Quincy wrote about that visit, saying that Joseph Smith’s proposal for ending slavery resembled one that Emerson made 11 years later in 1855.

As Quincy put it, writing retrospectively in the 1880s, “We, who can look back upon the terrible cost of the fratricidal war which put an end to slavery, now say that such a solution of the difficulty” – Joseph Smith’s and Emerson’s – “would have been worthy a Christian statesman. But if the retired scholar was in advance of his time when he advocated this disposition of the public property in 1855, what shall I say of the political and religious leader who had committed himself, in print, as well as in conversation, to the same course in 1844?”

9.      Send all the freed slaves to Texas – Wow, what would Texas be like if that happened?  Remember at this time, Texas was trying to become independent nation from Mexico.  About 1848 came the Mexican-American War, freeing Texas from Mexico and establishing Texas as an independent nation.  (Texas was later annexed into the US.)

10.  Annex Texas, Oregon, and parts of Canada??? I know Canadians like the US, but I didn’t know they wanted to be part of our union!!!  FD, are you aware of this?

11.  Presidential authority to get involved in state disturbances.  As I mentioned in my Sidney Rigdon post, Van Buren refused to get involved in Missouri because he didn’t feel that was a federal mandate.  Joseph was 20 years ahead of actions which resulted in the Civil War.  It’s interesting to see how Joseph would have wanted to handle the federal raid in Waco, and the state raid of the FLDS (both in Texas.)

Finally, let me conclude with Bushman again.

This part of his platform accords perfectly with what modern people like us would have liked a candidate in 1844 to say. But Smith went beyond our sense of political propriety in other parts of his platform: he blended his role as candidate with his role as prophet. He was already mayor of Nauvoo and lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion when he ran for the presidency. He seemingly had no sense that church and state should be separated. He gave no hint that he was going to give up his religious offices if he were to become president of the United States.

In the closing peroration of his platform, Joseph Smith indirectly, but I think clearly, offered himself to be the priest of the people, as well as the president. “I would, as the universal friend of man, open the prisons, open the eyes, open the ears, and open the hearts of all people to behold and enjoy freedom, unadulterated freedom; and God, who once cleansed the violence of the earth with flood, whose Son laid down his life for the salvation of all his father gave him out of the world, and who has promised that he will come and purify the world again with fire in the last days, should be supplicated by me for the good of all the people.” He would be the intercessor as priest as well as prophet.

Of course, that is point at which moderns part company with Joseph Smith. We don’t want a prophet with his authoritative words from God governing the nation. That seems to lead to the exclusion of unbelievers and the repression of naysayers. All the alarm bells go off when we see these roles merging.

But I would appeal to you, before you turn away completely from that idea, to pay heed to the underlying theme of that platform and that proposal. I think it can be argued that Joseph Smith actually felt he was fulfilling one of America’s dreams. We think of the American dream as the promise of ascent for the wretched refuse of the teeming shores – the promise that in America, everyone has a chance to prosper and to achieve respectability. That is a dream for the individual.

So, what do you think of Smith’s platform?

There has been much ado with Barack Obama’s skin color and his upcoming inauguration.  While this is certainly a historic event, I do not believe Mr. King’s dream has been fully realized yet.  Certainly President Obama’s election is a noteworthy event, and he will be the answer to trivia questions for the next several hundred years.  Obama’s election is a wonderful step, but I don’t believe King’s dream has been fully realized yet.  Comments?

Now it was so interesting to me that I mentioned it to my brother in law.  He immediately called the Wall Street Journal biased, and said it was just tearing down Washington’s legacy, and he did not believe it was credible.  He even compared it to anti-mormon attacks, and called it revisionist history.  I found this stance interesting, because I have been accused of thinking poorly of Brigham Young.

So, I did a little more research.  Did you know that George Washington was the largest whiskey producer in America? Now to be fair, America was much smaller back then, it was before the revolution in 1776, the Word of Wisdom was unknown, and there was no Constitution, Bill of Rights, or any real democracy, so things were much different then, than they are today.  So, I’m willing to cut some slack.

I found it interesting that George Washington owned slaves.  In his will, he directed that his slaves be freed and educated.  Now while I would have preferred Washington did this before he died, I am glad that he had the foresight to free and educate his slaves. There’s an interesting link about Washington and slavery here. He correctly predicted that the slavery issue would tear the nation apart, which happened about 70 years later.

What do you make of this information?  Does it lessen your appreciation for Mr Washington, or make him a more real person?  Is this anti-Washington information that should be suppressed?  Do you think less of him?  For me, I still revere Washington, but I think he probably shouldn’t have offered alcohol for votes, and he should have released his slaves sooner.  (For the record, I revere Brigham Young, but wish he had handled the priesthood ban differently.)

Between 1917 and 1985, 6 of 9 Utah governor’s were Democrats. When the Republican party was founded in 1856, it was mainly opposed to “the twin relics of barbarism—slavery and polygamy,” and pledged themselves to rid the country of these two evils. Mormons were understandably anti-Republican Party, and voted for Democrats in droves.

In the 1840’s there was no Republican party. Abraham Lincoln was in the House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party, while Stephen Douglas was a Democrat. The Mormons under Joseph Smith weren’t sure which party they were for, and often would vote en masse with Joseph, often switching between the parties, causing heartache to both parties. They would vote for the candidate who promised the most protection. It is interesting to note that Democrat Judge Stephen Douglas (of Lincoln-Douglas Debate fame) acquitted Joseph Smith from some trumped up charges from Missouri during the persecutions. So Democrats were preferred by Mormons at the time…

Anyway, I’m not sure as to what caused the demise of the Whig Party, but it could have been slavery. The Republican Party was established in the 1856. As part of its platform, it said the twin evils of the country were “slavery and polygamy.” So most church members hated republicans. I believe that Abraham Lincoln was the first republican president.

And as a side note, did you know that when the California Compromise was passed by Congress, California was admitted as a free state, while Utah was a slave state? Some of the early apostles held slaves…. So Utah was moderately democratic leaning back then. It’s kind of funny that Joseph Smith was an abolitionist, while Brigham was much more accepting of slavery.

As this blog says, in the 1970’s and 80’s, the democrats became more liberal, pro-choice, pro-gay, etc. Most of the southern states, had been democrat leaning up until this point. About then the Christian Coalition, Moral Majority (Jerry Falwell), and Focus on the Family (James Dobson) became more political than ever heavily influencing the republicans. At the time, many of the southern states, switched to the republican side. Utah felt more at home with these groups and saddled up, although the evangelicals have always been suspicious of Mormons, as this election bears out. Anyway, it’s quite ironic, that now Utah has turned 180 degrees to become republican….

When Joseph Smith ran for President of the US in 1844, he wanted to ban slavery. (Of course Joseph was killed about 6 months later, due to the issues of slavery, polygamy, and too much governmental power in Nauvoo.) A future presidential candidate adopted Joseph’s proposal about 15 years later….

Why does it seem that Mormons now think the Republican Party is “true party” of the church? I’m pretty frustrated with the Evangelicals treatment of Mitt, and I’m becoming much more moderate in my views. I’m very disappointed that the Republicans are spending money like Democrats. Is there a real difference between the two parties any more?

I enjoy some of Mormon Paleo Thoughts, especially in regards to government spending.  Perhaps I’m becoming more Libertarian, but I don’t know that I would go that far yet.  I am certainly sympathetic to some things.