(Re)Interpreting Early Mormon Thought: Synthesizing Joseph Smith’s Theology and the Politics of Religion

Formation in Antebellum America

Mormon history has slowly cut its way into mainstream scholarship. What was once an insular topic dominated by insider discourse has recently become a relevant field of study and an apt lens through which to explore broader issues. Mormonism, often heralded as the quintessential American religion, is finally being recognized as an especially fruitful framework to understand larger American tensions. However, difficulty remains, especially when interpreting dynamics relating to the first generation of the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith’s revelatory claims and iconoclast teachings, long diagnosed as the impediment to scholarly discourse on Mormonism, still lingers as a stumbling block for interpretation due to their malleable nature, the inchoate state in which Smith left his corpus of theology, and the fact that millions of Americans regard his words as scriptural pronouncements. Moreover, the continued dominant attention on Smith hides the fact that many early Mormons not only believed his teachings but also interpreted, systematized, and expanded his theology into what became the standard belief for Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century.1

This article claims that in order to better understand early Mormonism and situate it within its broader context, focus must be shifted away from the movement’s founder and toward his numerous followers. Looking at how Smith’s successors interpreted, synthesized, and adapted Mormonism’s theology, I argue that this adjusted focus allows several benefits, including a portrait of a dynamic Mormon culture that was as much rooted in as it was a reaction to its larger American climate. Most especially, however, it provides a vantage point from which to gauge the politics of religion-making in the vivacious environment that was antebellum America. Mormonism’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, whom a majority of Joseph Smith’s converts eventually followed, navigated a tenuous relationship with their surrounding American culture in order to validate their own succession rights and construct their own coherent Mormon theology. Their success depended on their ability to offer both resistance and accommodation to broader themes of the period; their message struck a cord because it, at the same time, both drew from and reacted against cultural tensions.

While there are many individuals and texts through which to introduce these issues, I have chosen to use Parley P. Pratt, perhaps Mormonism’s most prolific author of the period, and a collection of his theological essays published only months before Smith’s death. Pratt is not the focus of this article, however; rather, his 1844 pamphlet is used as a gateway text through which to explore four main themes of the period: patriotic identity, democratic religiosity, religious epistemology, and the nature of heaven. After examining how Pratt sought to synthesize Smith’s teachings on each topic, the paper will then examine broader implications of those themes as they were debated in the immediate post-martyrdom period,

1 For the recent developments of Mormon historiography, see Jan Shipps, “Richard Lyman Bushman, the Story of Joseph Smith and Mormonism, and the New Mormon History,” Journal of American History 94, no. 2 (September 2007): 498-516.

always keeping an eye on how they related to broader cultural trends. Most especially, it will demonstrate how one unifying rhetorical theme—the Kingdom of God—was utilized by Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to strengthen their succession claims and, in turn, dominated how Smith’s revelatory and theological legacy was to be remembered. Indeed, the debates that followed Joseph Smith’s premature death influentially tinged how Mormon theology was to be understood for the rest of the nineteenth century. This emphasis on theocracy drew on an important if often overlooked tension in antebellum America over the dangers of democracy’s excesses and resulting unrest. Taken together, these religious developments are significant in that they sought to both work within and against a largely tumultuous cultural climate, bringing order to a remarkably unstable religious and social marketplace.

I.First, however, in order to engage the development of

early Mormon thought it is necessary to examine the primary dynamic at work, and why that dynamic is important for understanding both Mormonism as well as the culture in which it was bred. This dynamic of interpretation and synthesizing, though, was hardly unique to the LDS Church. Three decades before the founding of Mormonism, and thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, a similar debate raged over the interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. Romantic theologian Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in defense of his interpretation of Kantian idealism, argued for a distinction between “the inventor” of an ideological system, and “his commentators and disciples.” Fichte explained,

The inventor of a system is one thing, and his commentators and disciples are another…The reason is this: The followers do not yet have the idea of the whole; for if they had it, they would not require to study the new system; they are obliged first to piece together this idea out of the parts that the inventor provides for them; [but] all these parts are in fact not wholly determined, rounded and polished in their minds…

Fichte continued: “the inventor proceeds from the idea of the whole, in which all the parts are united, and sets forth these parts individually…The business of the followers,” on the other hand, “is to synthesize what they still by no means possess, but are only to obtain by the synthesis.” In short, the progression of an intellectual movement always includes a gap between founder and disciple, and a pure continuity in worldview is impossible when perpetuating a philosophical or theological system. While the specifics of Kantian philosophy that Fichte was debating hold little importance to the interpretation of Mormonism, the tension he outlines between an “inventor” and “disciple” plays an important correlating role in the development of early Mormon thought, just as it does with any movement that boasts an innovative founder.2

2 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Second Introduction to the Science of Knowledge,” in J. G. Fichte, Science of Knowledge, translated by Peter Heath and John Lachs

2Students of the development of Mormon theology

have long focused on Joseph Smith, with good reason. As prophet and founder of the LDS Church, his revelations and teachings laid the foundations for the movement, and his voice is considered most authoritative when considering early Mormon beliefs. However, Smith’s theology is difficult to determine on two grounds. First, his premature death at the age of thirty-eight prevented the completion of his religious revolution; though he had been the recognized prophet and leader for nearly a decade and a half, the explosive theological development during his last three years showed no signs of relenting, and it can only be assumed that much of his religious vision was left inchoate and unfulfilled. Indeed, it wasn’t until the last three months of his life that Smith’s sermons began piecing together what had previously been only theological fragments.3

The second reason for this difficulty is the very nature of Smith’s prophet persona, and relates to the Kantian dynamic outlined above. Smith was by nature eclectic, rather than syncretistic, and his teachings were emblematic of that approach. His teachings were never presented in a systematic order, but rather, as Richard Bushman aptly described, in “flashes and bursts.” This collection of fragments has left many historians bewildered at the difficulty of presenting a coherent picture of his beliefs. For instance, one recent writer waived the metaphoric white flag by describing Smith as “simultaneously an eminent Jacksonian, a scion of the Yankee exodus, a creature and critic of the Second Great Awakening, a Romantic reformer, a charismatic utopian, a mystic nationalist, and a hustler in the manner of Barnum.” Further, Smith’s eclecticism has made it difficult to position him among his antebellum contemporaries, because his teachings are malleable enough to be considered emblematic of numerous—and sometimes competing—cultural tensions. Gordon Wood wrote that the principles Smith laid out contained elements “mystical and secular; restorationist and progressive; communitarian and individualistic; hierarchical and congregational; authoritarian and democratic; antinomian and arminian; anti-clerical and priestly; revelatory and empirical; utopian and practical; ecumenical and nationalist.” Other scholars have pronounced Smith as an example of the American prophetic voice, the preeminence of modern revelation, the climactic merging of folk-magic and religion, the continuity of Renaissance mysticism, or merely as a theological response to pluralism. Thus, just as Smith’s religious successors inherited a dynamic theology with countless possibilities, modern historians are left with a mesh of innovative fragments from which to make a distorted picture.4

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 57.3 For the most incisive overview of Smith’s theology,

see Samuel M. Brown, In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Conquest of Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

4 Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), xxi. Walter A. McDourgall, Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 180. Gordon S. Wood, “Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,” New York History 61 (October 1980): 380. For other intellectual

While attempts to articulate Joseph Smith’s vision will—and should—continue, it might prove fruitful to look in other directions for ways to contextualize early Mormonism. First, it should be remembered that Joseph Smith’s was not the only voice of the early LDS church. Indeed, the vast majority of Mormon print came from the disciples who were still trying to understand Smith’s theology even as they were explicating it. Just as Fichte worked from the bits and pieces of idealism he inherited from Kant, Mormon thinkers like Parley Pratt, John Taylor, and William Phelps sought to synthesize the prophet’s revelations into an intelligible dogma. Pratt summarized this process in a proclamation written only months after Smith’s death: “The chaos of materials prepared by [Joseph Smith] must now be placed in order in the building. The laws revealed by him must now be administered in all their strictness and beauty. The measure commenced by him must now be carried into successful operation.” Indeed, especially after the Quorum of the Twelve took control of the church in 1844, there was an acute anxiety to complete and expand Smith’s vision even as ambiguity remained. The diversity in these synthesizing attempts reveals not only the pliable nature of early Mormon thought, but also the difficulty in correlating eclectic ideas into a theological whole.5

The process of the theological mantle shifting from Smith to his successors is significant in its own right, as well. Sociologists Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge, who in turn were building off of the religious theory of Max Weber, have argued that this very process of correlation is an important moment in the development of a religious movement. “Cult formation,” they argued, is “a two-stage process of innovation.” The first is “the invention of new

frameworks for Smith, see John L. Brooke, Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987); Jan Shipps, “The Reality of the Restoration and the Restoration Ideal in the Mormon Tradition,” in The American Quest for the Primitive Church, edited by Richard T. Hughes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 181-195; Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); Terryl L. Givens, “Prophecy, Process, and Plentitude,” in Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries, edited by Reid L. Neilson and Terryl L. Givens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 107-118.

5 Parley Pratt, “Proclamation. To the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-Day Saints: Greeting,” Millennial Star 5 (March 1845): 152. The ascension of the Quorum of the Twelve to authority was not the only option for succession following Joseph Smith’s death. Indeed, Smith’s eclectic nature left enough in question that numerous different branches were formed in a continuation of what each successor felt was Smith’s religious vision. See various articles in Newel G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer, Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism (Independence, M.O.: John Whitmer Press, 2007); Newel G. Bringhurst, “Joseph Smith’s Ambiguous Legacy: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity as Dynamics for Schism within Mormonism after 1844,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 27 (2007): 1-48.

3religious ideas,” while the second is “gaining social acceptance of these ideas” through adaptation and expansion. The latter stage is accomplished primarily by drawing from cultural tensions and expectations in order to further accommodate the movement’s religious goals. In other words, those synthesizing the innovative ideas have a specific culture in mind as their audience, and a distinct set of cultural preconceptions as their tools. With regard to the theologians of early Mormonism, their doctrinal formulations not only bare the footprint of the religious innovator—in this case, Joseph Smith—but also of the culture in which they interpreted the innovator—in this case, antebellum America.6

Thus, the synthesizing of Joseph Smith’s theology provides an opportunity to examine the procedure of religious formation in a tumultuous intellectual climate. The first half of the nineteenth century is known for being rife with religious innovation, as numerous new religious movements emerged from the fertile ground of the Second Great Awakening. However, while many new sects sprung into existence, only a few matured enough to last beyond the first generation. Mormonism, being one of the movements that survived, is then an important case study into the dynamics of religious formation. The success of their maturation, this article will argue, exists in the ability of Smith’s interpreters to merge their prophets teachings with larger cultural trends, offer enough of a critique of that culture to make the movement relevant and necessary while still utilizing common cultural fears and misgivings, and finally to provide broad enough parameters to enable theological divergence while still maintaining legitimate boundaries.

II.“In the opening of this year [1844] I completed a

number of miscellaneous works, some of which were published in pamphlet form,” reminisced Parley P. Pratt at some point during the 1850s while penning his Autobiography. Pratt, one of the original apostles chosen by Joseph Smith in 1835, had crafted his own niche within Mormonism as the religion’s chief defender and extrapolator. He published numerous works during his apostolic career, including theological treaties, apologetic pamphlets, books of poetry, hymnals, and, posthumously, his own memoirs, all of which served to spread and synthesize the Mormon religion. His literary production was only halted by his death at the hands of the ex-husband of one of his plural wives in 1856. The year 1844 found Pratt at the height of his popularity, as he just returned from a mission to the United Kingdom where he had introduced Mormonism to thousands of converts and his printed works were published in tremendous numbers. Once back in America and made aware of Joseph Smith’s religious developments of the 1840s—including human deification, theological materialism, divine embodiment, temple rituals, and the still secret practice of polygamy—Pratt was anxious to explore these intellectual possibilities in print and enter the dialogue of what Mormon theology entailed.7

6 Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), 156. For more on this formation, see their chapter 8.

7 Parley P. Pratt, [Jr.], ed., Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of

The first essay in the collection was “An Appeal to the Inhabitants of New York.” Written in the context of the LDS Church’s continued effort to obtain redress for expulsion from Missouri five years previous, Pratt hastily composed the text in less than a week. Joseph Smith, in a meeting on November 29, 1843, encouraged all those willing and able to “wield a pen write and address to his mother country” in defense of Mormon rights and retribution. Pratt responded promptly, presenting his “Appeal” to Smith and other leaders of the Church on December 4. Staking his claim as a descendent of the “early settlers of the colonies of Plimouth and Sea-Brook,” and appealing to the “honest and patriotic sons of liberty” and “lovers of your country,” Pratt positioned the Mormon movement in a way that not only made the movement appear worthy of the nation’s help but also posited Mormon believers as acute representatives of America’s promise and potential.8

The context in which Pratt wrote was equally vibrant. The antebellum period was simultaneously a triumphant and unsteady time for Protestant America. Religious disestablishment led to the flowering of new religious movements with variant expressions of faith claiming national legitimacy, yet the relationship between religious belief and American citizenship remained astoundingly tenuous. Churches claimed not only theological validation but American approval: just as citizens in the early republic sought to distinguish their country as a “Protestant Nation,” religious sects fought to prove their churches to be recognized as an “American religion.” Heirs to the Biblical Christian tradition was not enough—religionists had to prove that they were also heirs of the American Revolution. Thus, in constructing religious “Others” in attempt to validate one’s own identity, competing faiths were depicted as not only wrong, but un-American. The battle over the title of “citizen” was just as important among American religious movements as that of “Christian.”9

Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Embracing his Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts in Prose and Verse, from his Miscellaneous Writings (New York: Russell Brothers, 1874), 367. For an overview of the complexities of his Autobiography, see Benjamin E. Park et. all, “Roundtable Discussion: Perspectives on Parley Pratt’s Autobiography,” Journal of Mormon History 36, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 151-205. The definitive biography of Pratt is Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, Parley Parker Pratt: The Saint Paul of Mormonism (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). For an overview on Pratt’s writings, see Peter Crawley, “Parley P. Pratt: Father of Mormon Pamphleteering,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1982): 13-26.

8 Manuscript History of the Church, Book 1E, 1789 [November 29, 1843], 1791 [December 4, 1843], LDS Church History Library. Parley P. Pratt, “An Appeal to the Inhabitants of the State of New York,” in An Appeal to the Inhabitants of the State of New York, Letter to Queen Victoria (Reprinted from the Tenth European Edition,) The Fountain of Knowledge; Immortality of the Body, and Intelligence and Affection (Nauvoo: John Taylor, Printer, 1844), 1.

9 For Christianity during the early republic period, see Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American

4Mormonism’s relationship with the American nation

was consistently tenuous during the nineteenth century. Most of those who joined the faith in its first decade were descendents of the revolutionary generation and were raised in a period of great national pride following the War of 1812. This devotion was severely tested as Mormons were forced out of their communities and were unable to secure restitution from the local—and later, federal—governments. But even through deep conflicts with competing religionists and citizens, they still held on to what they believed to be the pure patriotism of America in the face of being denigrated as outcasts. Shortly after Mormons were kicked out of their settlement in Independence, Missouri—the first of many conflicts between Mormons and their neighbors—Joseph Smith penned a revelation stating the God himself “established the constitution of this Land by the hands of wise men whom [he] raised up unto this very purpose.” Even in Nauvoo, when external difficulties were drastically increasing and a possible civil war seemed imminent, Joseph Smith’s solution was not to dissent from the country altogether, but to run for the American presidency himself and realign the nation to its destined position. Just as Christianity had fallen into apostasy and was in need of a restoration, so too did the nation denigrate into a decrepit state that required divine recovery.10

Parley Pratt made it clear to his audience that the current atrocities committed against Mormons were a rejection of America’s founding virtue. “Here then is an end of our western empire,” he bemoaned in typical grandiose flourishing. “Here then is the consummation of all your labors, toils and suffering.” The nation’s true enemies were found amongst Mormonism’s adversaries, and the constitution—that

Christianity (New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 1989); Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Jonathan D. Sassi, A Republic of Righteousness: The Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). For the American depiction of competing religionists as “un-American,” see Benjamin E. Park, “Contesting Reason, Constricting Boundaries: Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason and the Battle of American Identities in the 1790s,” William and Mary Quarterly (forthcoming).

10 Joseph Smith, Revelation, 16 December 1833, in Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Wordford, and Steven C. Harper, eds., Revelations and Translations, Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, Vol. 1 of the Revelations and Translations series of the Joseph Smith Papers, edited by Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2009), 271. For the patriotic age in which Mormonism’s first converts were raised, see Sam. W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 24-50. For Joseph Smith’s run for the American Presidency, see Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 514-517. For the origins of Smith’s political thought, see Mark Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising: Joseph Smith’s Early Social and Political Thought” (PhD Dissertation: Arizona State University, 2008).

“sacred instrument”—was being “trampled under the feet” of those who oppressed the LDS Church. Pratt urged Americans to locate “that pure fire which animated the bosoms of our fathers,” and to offer the help due “by the kindred ties of citizen-ship” toward their fellow Americans. Indeed, Mormons owned “a right to claim [America’s] aid and assistance” due to being rightful heirs of American rights, liberties, and patriotism.11 Writing even before Joseph Smith’s own candidacy, Pratt implied that Mormonism’s cause was central to the nation’s principles.

This appeal to American citizenship only became more complex and vehement following Joseph Smith’s death. To many Mormons, the killing of their prophet was an affront to what they believed to be religious liberty in America, and the fault was laid at the feet of the American nation. Eliza R. Snow, Mormonism’s poetess and one of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, penned, “Where are thy far-fam’d laws – Columbia! Where / Thy boasted freedom – thy protecting care?” Yet their allegiance to America became much more complicated: on the one hand, they were fed up with the nation’s perceived rejection of their liberties and were anxious to flee its borders; on the other, they made certain the fact that if they left, they were taking America’s pure tradition with them as the true inheritors of the nation’s promises.12

In one anonymous editorial written in 1845—the year after Smith’s death—this connection was more than merely implied:

When in the course of the divine economy it becomes necessary for one people to separate themselves from the religious and political fellowship which has once bound them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth that just and equal standing to which God and nature has designed them, a decent respect for the opinions of others would seem to require them to show the causes which impel them to separation.

These words, appearing nearly seventy years after America’s Declaration of Independence, were explicitly written to demonstrate how Mormonism inherited its identity not only from Joseph Smith but also, at least in a rhetorical way, Thomas Jefferson. In depicting the battle between Mormons and anti-Mormons, the former were not only God’s chosen people but also the very representation of America’s promised citizenship; Latter-day Saints were not only living out Biblical narrative, but also the revolution of 1776. As Parley Pratt wrote elsewhere, a Mormon was not only “a believer in revealed religion,” but also “a patriot, who stands firmly for the laws of his country, and for equal rights and protection”; an “Anti-Mormon,” by contrast, was not only a “mobber,” but also “a man opposed to the laws of his country.”13

11 Pratt, “An Appeal,” 3-5.12 Eliza R. Snow, “The Assassination of Gen’ls

Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith…” Times and Seasons 5, no. 12 (July 1, 1844): 575.

13 Anonymous, “American Independence Declared Over Again; with Amendments to Suit the Times,” The Prophet, 22 March 1845, no pagination. Parley P. Pratt, “The

5This tension—rejecting America while still

preserving the “American” ideal—was a crucial paradigm in constructing a cogent Mormon identity post-Joseph Smith, and key to their creation of a stable religious movement. Even as LDS theology became more kingdom-oriented, as discussed below, the patriotic roots of Mormonism’s founding members could not be easily dismissed. As a result, an important emphasis that Smith’s successors turned to in systematizing Mormon theology was a distinction between America the nation and America the land. In doing this, they were able to divorce the principles and potential associated with the ideals of America from what they believed to be corrupted government that had apostatized from those ideals. This was accomplished through an emphasis and reinterpretation of the Book of Mormon that placed the American continent rather than the American nation at the center of God’s divine will.

Parley Pratt outlined this perspective in an editorial nearly a year after Smith’s death. In contrasting the Bible and the Book of Mormon, Pratt proclaimed that the latter held more importance not only due to its “home production,” but also the fact that the narrative took place in a more relevant physical geography. “This point need not be argued,” he wrote, “as all persons must admit that America, is a larger and better country than Palestine, Egypt, Arabia and the neighboring provinces generally encluded in the bible history.” He then continued upon the importance of America based entirely upon the actual land rather than the symbolic nation:

It must be admitted on all hands to be a country of vastly more importance, both as it regards the history of the past, and its future destiny.—Being larger in extent, and more firtile and productive in mineral and vedgitable wealth; consequently better calculated to sustain a numerous population. And this is the principle point in the estimated value and importance of any country. And judging from the antiquities which are daily coming to light, we feel safe in saying, that America has been more densely populated than almost any country in the world. And as to its future destiny all are willing to admit, that it must stand foremost, and take the lead of all other nations and countries while time endures.

Pratt was essentially drawing upon a common cultural meme of American exceptionalism that argued for America’s prominence to extend even to its natural landscape. It was akin to Thomas Jefferson’s strenuous efforts to prove the American continent better suited for vegetation, animals, and human population than any other piece of land in the world, repudiating the “regeneration” thesis that had previously been popular amongst Enlightenment thinkers. Even the American

Science of Anti-Mormon Suckerology---Its Learned Terms, and their Significance,” The Prophet, 10 May 1845, no pagination. For Mormonism’s complex relationship with American patriotism during this period, see Ryan G. Tobler, “Parley Pratt and Evolving Views of the American Republic in Early Mormonism.”

continent, it seemed, was destined for the climax of humanity. Thus, for Pratt, America was unique not just for its constitutional government—that very government that was depriving Mormons of their rights—but also for their physical location, something Mormons could still capitalize upon and embrace. Yet rather than making the American nation the fulfillment of the continent’s potential, it was just one more temporary tenant.14

Further, Mormons emphasized America’s chosen status through attachment with the Nephite civilization and the future role in God’s kingdom. Apostle Wilford Woodruff recorded how reading the Book of Mormon “teaches the honest & humble mind the great things of God that were performed in the land of promise now called America,” as well as “the fate & Destiny of the American Nation.” The scriptural text taught that there were expectations and standards that must be met in accordance to possession of the physical geography, and the failure to do so would invoke dangerous repercussions. “Unless [the American nation] speedily repent of there sins & humble themselves before God,” Woodruff wrote, “they will be destroyed from the land.” This separation between the promised Zion of the American continent from the actual nation then in control allowed Mormons to maintain loyalty to the ideals of Americanism, for now those ideas transcended the American nation.15

The year following Joseph Smith’s death, immediately preceding the migration from Nauvoo, Mormon newspapers were filled with disillusionment of America’s failure to live up to its scriptural and principled mandates. Particularly, they were obsessed over the injustices shown toward God’s chosen people—not just the Mormons, but also the Native Americans, whom they believed to be the descendents of the Book of Mormon people. Importantly, the native population symbolized the American continent’s other chosen civilization, a group divorced from the American nation. Mormons were especially critical of the government’s treatment of Indians through westward imperialism, “shoving these Lords of the soil ‘further west’” whenever the American “gentiles” ran out of space. Smith had shown sympathy with the nation’s manifest destiny before his death, but only once “we have the red man’s consent.” But now Smith’s successors determined that America had surpassed the moral line and was unworthy of its geographic birthright. “It is a melancholy fact, among all classes, sects, and denominations, (save the Mormons only),” one Mormon editorial critical of America’s dealings with the Oneida Indians summarized, “that there is not virtue enough among the better to create a reverence for purity among the worse portions of community.” The American land and its ideal principles were destined for the House of Israel, and the government’s malpractice meant that retribution was imminent. As a result, America’s fall and degradation paved the way for Mormonism’s Kingdom of

14 Parley Pratt, “The Bible and the Book of Mormon Contrasted,” The Prophet 1, no. 47 (April 12, 1845), no pagination. See Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: John Stockdale, 1785), 71-111.

15 Wilford Woodruff, Journal, November 1, 1845, Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1833-1898, 9 vols. (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books, 1983-85), 2: 610

6God. Apostle Orson Hyde preached that while currently “here is the United States…But we are told that the kingdom of God shall come, and his will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven.” The ideals and principles of America that Mormons so cherished would transcend the decrepit nation and merge into God’s kingdom.16

These Mormon apostles spoke not just for their Mormon constituents, but also for a large—if often overlooked—segment of antebellum society that struggled with the juxtaposition of ideals and reality in American culture. Political strife, growing consumerism, religious intolerance, the continuance of slavery, and other dividing factors served to weaken the faith of American citizens only two generations removed from the Revolution. The events of the 1840s and 1850s led many to question the nation’s exceptionalism and wonder how, as one historian puts it, “America should gain, or regain, its stature as an exemplar of liberal democracy,” a position seemingly lost somewhere in the previous five decades. By drawing on this cultural unrest, Pratt, Woodruff, and Hyde were able to construct a dynamic and compelling identity for Mormonism amidst the American nation.17

Indeed, in the wake of Joseph Smith’s death, Mormonism was forced to reinterpret what it meant to be “Mormon” and “American,” and eventually determined that an exodus to the West, leaving the confines of the American republic, was the only option remaining. Ironically, however, due to westward expansion in 1848, Mormonism would remain within the confines of the United States and continue a tense battle over citizenship and American-ness for the rest of the century—a battle that began with but continued long after Joseph Smith.

III.The second essay in Pratt’s collection was titled

“Letter to Queen Victoria,” the only text published previously in a stand-alone format, having originally been written for a British audience while Pratt was serving an ecclesiastical mission in England. Millenarian in outlook and audacious in tone, it was designed to warn foreign rulers of a forthcoming

16 “Indian Affairs,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 4 (March 1, 1845): 829. Joseph Smith, General Smith’s Views of the Power and Policy of the Government of the United States (Nauvoo, Ill: John Taylor, 1844), 8. “The Oneida Indians,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 20 (January 1, 1846): 1080-1081. “Speech of Elder Orson Hyde, Delivered Sunday, June 15, 1845,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 15 (August 15, 1845): 1002. See also Parley Pratt, “The Remnants of Lehi,” The Prophet 1, no. 47 (April 12, 1845), no pagination; “Indians in Canada,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 13 (July 15, 1845): 964; “Ephraim and Manasseh,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 13 (July 15, 1845): 965-966.

17 Timothy Mason Roberts, Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 185. See also Sean Willentz, The Rise of Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 425-455; John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal, eds., Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 99-124.

“revolution, more wonderful in its beginning…and more important in its consequences, than any which man has yet witnessed on the earth”—a bold statement considering it was only a generation past the Age of Revolutions. This revolution, however, which encompassed things “both religiously and politically—temporally and spiritually,” was centered on the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, the very kingdom prophesied in Daniel 2. “From [Daniel’s prophesy] it appears,” Pratt proclaimed, “that this new kingdom will be established over the whole earth, to the destruction of all other kingdoms, by nothing less than the personal advent of the Messiah in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” He then called on the world to repent, embrace the gospel of Christ, and take part in the new divine kingdom destined to take over the world.18

Though the millennialism of the tract promised to resonate with audiences in both England and the United States, parts of the letter appear odd within an American setting. Most especially, the emphasis on “kingdoms” rather than “republics,” the language of empire rather than democracy—indeed, monarchical authority seemed to be sacralized rather than contested, with only ecclesiastical leaders replacing corrupt rulers—seems to have been out of step in a Jacksonian America that rejected hereditary rights, emphasized upward mobility, and sacralized personal freedom. But Parley Pratt’s rhetoric demonstrates an important undergirding—if at time silent—theme in antebellum America: the fear of unfettered democracy and resulting anarchy. When addressing the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was speaking for an important segment of Americans when he noted that when instability surfaces, “there is a natural inclination in mankind for a kingly government.” But this sentiment was not isolated to elite federalists in the formation of a centralized government; rather, it permeated American discourse as citizens became concerned over the explosion of individual-based and grassroots zeal. No less a figure than Ralph Waldo Emerson quipped, “the spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless… Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy; and the older and more cautious among ourselves are learned from Europeans to look with some terror at our turbulent freedom.” Indeed, as historian Gordon Wood has claimed, the “experiment of democracy” led many disillusioned to imagine the ideal of society closer to kingdoms than pure democracies; the culture that inherited the American Revolution was one “torn between

18 Parley P. Pratt, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” in Pratt, An Appeal, 7, 9. Pratt was far from alone in invoking Daniel 2 in antebellum America. See David J. Whittaker, “The Book of Daniel in Early Mormon Thought,” in By Study and Also By Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh Nibley on His 80th Birthday, edited by John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990): 155-99. For Mormon millennialism, see Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993). While the pamphlet’s title claims that this reprint was taken from the “tenth European edition,” it appears that this was Pratt being grandiose, as there were only two previous editions.

7contradictory monarchical and democratic tendencies.” Writing during the very decade Mormonism experienced its first problems with American society, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that the “tyranny of the majority” was the American culture’s greatest threat.19

This paradoxical tension played out most poignantly in a contrast found in the last year of Joseph Smith’s life. Even as he was running for president of America’s democratic government, he was anointed “Prophet, Priest, and King” of a secretive organization titled “The Kingdom of God and his Laws.” Nicknamed “The Council of Fifty,” this clandestine Mormon group was designed to be a government-in-embryo, prepared to govern the world’s population during the millennium. Two years previous, Smith printed an editorial explaining how all governments of men “have failed in all their attempts to promote eternal power, peace and happiness.” Even America, “which possesses greater resources than any other, is rent, from center to circumference, with party strife, political intrigues, and sectional interest.” The only solution was to turn government into a divine kingdom, where divine sovereignty manifested through ordained ministers could execute pure justice; the voice of the people could never compensate for the voice of God. The position of a prophet was, at its heart, incompatible with democratic government. As one historian remarked, while Joseph Smith “valued democratic government, his revelations implicitly rejected popular sovereignty.” God’s will trumped elected opinion and, at least for those who believed in that will, brought stability to a tumultuous world.20

This theme was only strengthened, if not exponentially increased, when the Quorum of the Twelve took control, primarily due to its potential to centralize authority and validate succession claims. Challenged by competing Mormon schisms, Brigham Young and the other apostles sought to vindicate their authoritative positions by demonstrating how salvation was only achieved through their ecclesiastical dominion. To accomplish this, focus was placed on hierarchical authority rather than personal mobility. While before Joseph Smith’s death the intimate details of the Kingdom of God and their attachment to temple rites were reserved for a select few and kept secret from the public, the Twelve not only publicized much of that dialogue but also

19 Benjamin Franklin, Address to the Federal Convention, in James Madison, Notes of Debates in The Federal Convention of 1787 (New York: W. W. & Norton Company, 1987), 53. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Politics,” in Kenneth Sacks, ed., Emerson: Political Writings (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 21. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: A. A. Knoft, 1992), 124. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Library of America, 2004), 294.

20 “The Government of God,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 18 (July 15, 1842): 856. Steven C. Harper, “‘Dictated by the Words of Christ’: Joseph Smith and the Politics of Revelation,” Journal of the Early Republic 26, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 276. For the Council of Fifty, see Andrew F. Ehat, “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” Brigham Young University Studies 20, no. 2 (Spring 1980): 253-274.

made it central to their succession argument. In doing so, they tapped into a deep cultural vein that sought social order through unquestioned authority; only through a strictly organized Kingdom of God could peace and structure be maintained.

The most dramatic way in which the Twelve utilized and adapted Joseph Smith’s soteriological teachings in the succession crisis was the expansion of temple rituals and the practice of a salvific rite termed “adoption,” thereby creating literal familial kingdoms upon which the kingdom was built. While Smith introduced sealing ordinances in his final years—both monogamous and polygamous—at both an alarming rate and in a “dynastic” tone, Brigham Young and his fellow apostles furthered those rites and implemented a ceremonial fosterage in which members of the church were “adopted” into one of the leader’s sacerdotal families. These practices not only established spiritual kinship but also fostered reliance upon Young and the Twelve, developing the camaraderie and obedience necessary to centralize authority. What Smith originally introduced as esoteric rituals assuring eternal salvation, Young expanded to also include a very practical and temporal patronage system establishing an ecclesiastical hierarchy in the present as well as the future.21

Critically, Young drew on cultural themes and misgivings of the day in order to bolster his ecclesiastical claims. Specifically, he depicted his kingdom rhetoric as the only alternative to anarchy and the excesses of radical democracy. Beyond being merely a response to radical pluralism, Mormonism also drew on the general unrest that plagued all of American culture during the antebellum period. One of the early leaders of the Church, Oliver Cowdery, wrote that it was “certain the Gentile world, with all its parties, sects, denominations, reformations, revivals of religion, societies and association, are devoted to destruction.” Mormonism offered refuge from the cultural ferment of Jacksonian America. And when schismatic battles threatened Mormonism’s cohesion during the aftermath of Joseph Smith’s death, Brigham Young knew to capitalize on the stability that his authoritative claims could demand.22

“I will first set in order before these [listeners] the true order of the Kingdom of God,” Brigham Young

21 The best work on Mormon adoption rites is Jonathan A. Stapley, “Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 3 (Summer 2011, forthcoming).

22 Oliver Cowdery, “The Millennium, No. 10,” Messenger and Advocate 1, no. 3 (December 1834): 39. For Mormonism as a critique of American pluralism, see Marvin S. Hill, Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1989). For the political and cultural tumult of the period, see Yonatan Eyal, The Young American Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 411-445. Marshall Foletta, Coming to Terms with Democracy: Federalist Intellectuals and the Shaping of an American Culture (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001).

8proclaimed a mere six months after Joseph Smith’s death, “and I will shew how to make King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and how they will be organized.” A key to Smith’s message, Young explained, and one which was commonly misunderstood, was a principle largely rejected in the early American republic: hereditary authority through connected bloodlines. “That blood was in [Smith] pure and he had the sole right and lawful power, and he was the legal heir” to the prophetic mantle of the restored gospel. This mantle and authority was then passed from Smith to the Twelve, who were then in possession of the only keys that could grant eternal salvation. Exaltation was not an individual affair—it required access to the hierarchical structure that was the Kingdom of God, which only the Quorum of the Twelve could grant. Smith possessed authority through his familial lines, and that authority was then passed on to Brigham Young and the apostles who were adopted into the sacerdotal family through temple rites. “There is blood running in the veins of the family,” Young exclaimed to a large gathering of saints, many of whom would soon be “adopted” into his ecclesiastical lineage, “and I know who has the blood and the Priesthood to carry the keys to the world.”23

Young posited his authority in direct opposition to what he depicted as chaos in the overly democratic American republic. “This Gentile race”—his terminology for non-Mormons, as opposed to those adopted into Israelite lineage through baptism and temple ordinances—“is devilism from first to last, they are so far from being right that they would have an infidel for a President.” The cause of their anarchy, he explained, was their whiggish zeal. “They all cry out Republicanism and that [it] is for the Sons to rule their Fathers, Daughters to rule their Mothers…and abuse the very authority that God has ordained for their salvation.” In rhetorically creating a usable “other” against which to establish the necessity of the Twelve’s ecclesiastical control, Young attacked the very principles the American republic was perceivably built upon.24

The extent to which Young succeeded in establishing a milieu in which salvation could only be secured can be demonstrated in a letter from George Dyke, a member of the militia group the Mormon Battalion, addressed to Young himself.

I am now an Orphan wandering through a wicked world without a Father of promise Shall my Days be numbered & my pilgrimage ended, & I go to the silent tomb without a Father to call me forth from the deep sleep of death? or Shall I enjoy in common with other citizens of the common wealth of Israel enjoy the legal rights of adoption[?]…I know President Young it is a

23 Brigham Young, Sermon, Brigham Young and Willard Richards Family Meeting Minutes, January 8, 1845, General Church Minutes, 1839–77, 4, in Selected Collections, 1:18. I sincerely appreciate Jonathan Stapley for bringing this sermon to my attention.

24 Ibid., 9. See also Brigham Young, Sermon, May 4, 1845, in Richard S. Van Wagoner, ed., The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, 5 volumes (Salt Lake City: The Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2009), 1: 84.

great thing for an unworthy saint to ask at the hands of the highest authority on Earth & if you think it too great a condecention for you to accept of me in your Family, then place me if you please in the Family & under the guarding care of [fellow apostle] Amasa Lyman.

Dyke, like many others in the tumultuous period of antebellum America, was seeking spiritual and temporal security in a world filled with chaos and upheaval. Young’s message of adoption and hierarchical structure resonated because it offered stability and assurance. Even if Brigham Young’s personal family was too high to grasp, a less prestigious figure like Apostle Amasa Lyman would do. The Kingdom of God offered an asylum from the religious, political, and cultural uncertainty of the American republic.25

While similar sentiments could be found in Joseph Smith’s own sermons and private teachings, nothing approached the tenacity and consistency of kingdom-centered discourse during the immediate post-martyrdom period. Joseph Smith’s fragments of theology and temple rituals introduced to his inner circle intended to anoint “kings and priests” and extend exaltation to all those worthy followers—Brigham Young and the Twelve adapted and expanded those teachings to solidify their claims of succession and stabilize a fledging faith within a tumultuous climate. Young repeatedly mentioned how this aspect of Smith’s teachings was not fully understood—demonstrating his awareness of the tensions surrounding synthesizing the founding prophet’s theology—and he was determined to clear up confusion. He drew on the fears and misgivings of certain segments of American society about the excesses of democracy and the dangers of the rising “young American movement” during the period. Hesitant of the new path upon which American culture was embarking, Smith’s successors systematized the prophet’s theology as to pave the way for the later Utah theocracy.

IV.Part of what made Mormonism so scandalous was its

claim of new scripture in an age dominated by bible-centrism. Joseph Smith’s entrance into the religious marketplace was not with a theological treatise, published sermons, or even a conversion-oriented pamphlet; rather, it was a book claiming ancient origins, supernatural translation, and scriptural authority, challenging the traditional—and staunch—views of canonicity of the period. In his essay “The Fountain of Knowledge,” Parley Pratt countered the accepted Protestant epistemology of antebellum America by arguing that religious knowledge stemmed not from the Bible, but from immediate revelation from God. In doing so, he synchronized a Mormon discourse that both embraced and adapted American notions of common sensism.

America had long been a bible-oriented culture. British subjects in colonial America and citizens in the newly United States perceived themselves as members of the modern-day House of Israel. Cities were named after Old Testament Towns, children were named after biblical figures,

25 George Dyke to Brigham Young, August 17, 1846, LDS Church History Library.

9and rules of society were modeled closely after scriptural laws. This emphasis only increased in the early nineteenth century, as one book peddler described it as “the very season…of the Bible” because “the crater of the public appetite” was so large that it consumed anything bible-related. But the bible was far from just a cultural symbol—it was also the measuring stick for knowledge. Biblical common sense was how Americans differentiated their rationality from those like the deist Tom Paine, and, coupled with the Scottish philosophy of common sense, provided an epistemology that not only based human knowledge on revelation but also allowed the bible to be the standard of truth. “Theistic common sense”—as Mark Noll aptly put it—dominated American religious discourse, as a religion’s validity depended on if that movement could tether its belief system to the biblical text.26

“Modern men have been traditionated to believe that a sacred book was the fountain of Divine knowledge,” Pratt wrote in “The Fountain of Knowledge.” “That the heights and depths, and lengths and breadths of heavenly intelligence is contained therein, and that the human mind must be limited and circumscribed thereby, so as never to receive one particle of knowledge except the small amount contained within its pages.” Pratt challenged this quintessential Protestant notion, arguing instead that divine truths were independent of the written word; imagining the Bible as superior to independent revelation was placing the buggy before the horse. Relying entirely upon one book of scripture was stultifying to humankind’s progress: “a sacred book could never be made to contain a millionth part of the knowledge which an intelligent being is capable of receiving and comprehending.” It would not be until Christians “burst the chains” of Bible centrism that they could fully comprehend Divine will. Biblical common sense emphasized building on the foundation of scriptural text—Pratt sought to attack and adapt that very epistemology. “Does not common sense teach you,” he reasoned, “that you must feast as well as [those in the past], or perish forever.” In a similar rhetorical ploy as Ralph Waldo Emerson and other American Romantics—though to a completely different end—Pratt essentially proclaimed, “the sun shines to-day also.”27

26 Mason Weems, quoted in Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll, eds. The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 3. Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 93. For the importance of the bible in the period, see various essays in Hatch and Noll, Bible in America. For American religious use of common sense rhetoric, see E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), esp. 174-180; Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Park, “Contesting Reason.”

27 Parley P. Pratt, “The Fountain of Knowledge,” in Pratt, An Appeal, 15, 19. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 5 vols., edited. by Robert E. Spiller and Alfred R. Ferguson (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1971–94), 1: 7. For similarities and contrasts between Mormonism and American

But in rejecting Biblical common sense, Mormon thinkers were introducing a unique epistemology that worked to merge empiricism and supernatural discourse. The cultural context in which they lived was similarly at a crossroads. On the one hand, while the American Enlightenment era was in decline by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had inflicted a deep impact upon the intellectual climate. As E. Brooks Holifield wrote, “never had the issue of rationality assumed as much importance as it did in the early decades of the nineteenth century,” which saw rise to what he titled “evidential Christianity.” On the other hand, this era also saw rise to what has been termed as Romantic thought. This intellectual shift allowed more room for the sublime and supernatural, and yearned to know the unknowable. Those considered Romantics rebelled against the neo-classical structure of the previous age that they found both stifling and limiting to human potential, and they argued for an ideology that placed no limits on the soul. But, while Romanticism influenced many religious groups of the day—including the Mormons—the requirement for a rational presentation and defense still remained. What they needed was an intellectual approach that could be seen as respectable while at the same time still proving the reasonableness of religion, revelation, and supernaturalism.28

Nowhere was this epistemological merging more evident than in Joseph Smith’s accounting of how to determine false from true angelic being. “If an Angel or spirit appears offer him your hand,” Smith explained to his close confidents, “if he is a spirit from God he will stand still and not offer you his hand. If from the Devil he will either shrink back from you or offer his hand, which if he does you will feel nothing, but be deceived.” Elsewhere, the instructions included the addition that if the angel were a resurrected personage, he would grasp the individual’s hand—literally interlocking mortal flesh and blood with what Smith described as immortal flesh and bone—and the physicality of the angel would thus prove his pure intentions and divine authority. Not only were supernatural, extra-canonical experiences possible,

Romantic critiques of Bible centrism, see Benjamin E. Park, “‘Build, Therefore, Your Own World’: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Smith, and American Antebellum Thought,” The Journal of Mormon History 36, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 59-64. Mormonism’s founding scripture denounced Bible centrism as a perversion of religious devotion. “Thou fool, that shall say, A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible,” the God in the Book of Mormon bellowed. “Wherefore murmer ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word?” The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon, Upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi, translated by Joseph Smith (Palmyra: Printed by E. B. Grandin, for the Author, 1830), 115 (current LDS edition: 2 Nephi 29: 3-11).

28 E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 175. For an overview of Romanticism and Mormon thought, see Terryl Givens, “Prophesy, Process, and Plentitude,” in The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress, edited by. John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2006), 55-56.

10but they were capable of withstanding empirical testing. Similarly, Smith explained in an editorial that Mormons believed in the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, but only “rationally, reasonably, consistently, and scripturally, and not according to the wild vagaries, foolish notions and traditions of men.” Most importantly, these moments of knowledge were available to all, and could be confirmed through individual reason and revelation.29

Especially during the Nauvoo period, Joseph Smith and other early Mormons fully employed this version of common-sensical approach to color their theological discourse. When Joseph Smith preached on the possibility of salvific certainty, he prefaced his remarks by claiming, “it is so plain & so simple & easy to be understood that when I have shown you the interpretation thereof you will think you have always Known it yourselves.” When he attacked the idea of creation ex nihilo, he explained that it was not only on the basis of revelation but also because “it is contrary to a Rashanall [rational] mind & Reason. that something could be brought from a Nothing.” It was this combination of reason and revelation that Parley Pratt felt was the key to unlocking theological truths: “Revelation and reason, like the sun of the morning rising in its strength, dispel the mists of darkness which surround him; till at length heaven’s broad, eternal day expands before him, and eternity opens to his vision. He may then gaze with rapture of delight, and feast on knowledge which is boundless as the ocean from which it emanates.”30

The dynamics and tensions between reason, revelation, and tradition took center stage in the dialogue that followed Joseph Smith’s death, but were now tinged with the Twelve’s authoritarian zeal. With Mormonism’s founding prophet gone and several competing factions struggling over Smith’s authoritative mantle, the question of how truth was obtained was a defining feature of one’s claim to legitimacy. While the Quorum of the Twelve eventually took control and moved a majority of the saints west, their approach to revelation and epistemological authority were deeply affected by the debates concerning Smith’s legacy and teachings. Most importantly, they met a surprising challenger in James J. Strang, a recent convert who claimed validation through angelic visitations, a new book of translated scripture, and a corpus of continued revelations that composed an impressive prophetic mimesis in opposition to the Twelve’s claims. Throughout the rhetorical battles waged between followers of Brigham Young and James Strang, the dynamics of revelatory authenticity and canonicity within a tumultuous American climate remained paramount.

29 Joseph Smith, December 1840, recorded in William Clayton’s Private Book, in Words of Joseph Smith, 44. Joseph Smith, “Gifts of the Holy Ghost,” Times and Seasons 15 June 1842, pg. 823. For Mormon angels, see Benjamin E. Park, “‘A Uniformity So Complete’: Early Mormon Angelology,” Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 2 (2010): 1-37.

30 Joseph Smith Sermon, Howard and Martha Coray Notebook, in Ehat and Cook, Words of Joseph Smith, 206. Joseph Smith Sermon, Frank McIntire Minute Book, in Ehat and Cook, Words of Joseph Smith, 61. Parley P. Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” in Pratt, An Appeal, 23.

The most significant problem the Twelve faced when combating Strangite missionaries was that the latter group emphasized exactly what Mormonism had hitherto highlighted: central to their claim was the necessity of a prophet and immediate dialogic communication with God. Brigham Young and the Twelve were at a theoretical disadvantage as they lacked the prophetic figure that James Strang fulfilled. Previously, Parley Pratt had adapted a common American folk song to proclaim, “A church without a Prophet, is not the church for me / It has not head to lead it, in it I would not be.” However, now that they lacked that very “head” celebrated in the hymn, the Twelve—according to one amused Strangite observer—dropped the song “like a hot potato.” Meanwhile, Strang’s followers embraced both the song and its message, positing themselves as the true successors to Mormonism’s revelatory claims and Joseph Smith’s prophetic legacy.31

These tensions played out in a debate that took place in Nauvoo on March 3, 1843, just as thousands of saints were beginning their exodus out of America and into the West. John E. Page, formerly an apostle in the LDS church but now a loud and persuasive convert for James Strang, argued against the Twelve’s authority because they lacked the power of continuing revelation: “it is for the voice of God to say who the [leader] shall be, & then the people shall say amen.” To follow the tradition of Joseph Smith, a divine intervention and bellowing voice from the heavens was the manifestation needed for God’s chosen prophet. But, he bemoaned, now there is only “talk of the people appoint[int] a [president],” and by so doing, “we have to trample upon the Doc[trine] & Cov[enants]”—the collection of Joseph Smith’s revelations, and the tangible manifestation of Smith’s mantle and expansion of the scriptural cannon. The problem with Brigham Young was he “had no more power to give rev[elations] than any of the other – it requires the ‘thus saith the Lord’ to put a man in his place.” Page emphasized that his embrace of Strangism and rejection of Young was a product of being a faithful follower of Mormonism for over a decade. “If I have erred,” he insisted, “it is because I placed too much confidence in them that taught me.” Persuasively, Page sought to demonstrate that the only possible interpretation of Mormonism required a figure of continuing revelation—the “thus saith the Lord”—and anything else was counterfeit.32

In response, Orson Hyde, one of the most prolific and dynamic of the apostles, voiced what had come to be the dominant rhetorical message of Twelve: Smith’s revelatory position was not being “trampled,” but it had evolved into the esoteric rituals of the temple—the climax, according to Hyde, of Smith’s prophetic career. Through temple ordinances, the church is still linked to Smith and the fountain of revelation.

31 Voree Herald 1, no. 9 (September 1846): [37]. Robin S. Jensen, “Mormons Seeking Mormonism: Strangite Success and the Conceptualization of Mormon Ideology, 1844-50,” in Bringhurst and Hamer, Scattering of the Saints, 100. Times and Seasons 5 (4 February 1845): 799.

32 Thomas Bullock minutes of a meeting held in Nauvoo, March 3, 1846, LDS Church History Library, 2-3, transcribed by Robin Jensen, emphasis mine. I appreciate Robin Jensen for alerting me to this and the following document, and for providing transcriptions of both.

11“Joseph Smith is [still] the Hook in Heaven – the 12 [are] the next link - & you [are] all linked on,” Hyde explained. Hyde continued his sermon four days later, expanding the linkage between Smith, gospel knowledge, and the Twelve’s authority.

Recollect Jesus Christ was the president of the Church he choose 12 Aposttles & they were witnesses, to go to all the nations & preach – by & bye the Lord was crucified & ascended to heaven – did he take the keys with him or leave them on the Earth – he did both – he left knowledge on Earth & took knowledge with him, & Knowledge is power – says he to Peter, I give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Just as with Christ in the meridian of time, Smith passed on the keys of knowledge to the Twelve. In the early years of the Twelve’s leadership, “knowledge” and “priesthood keys” became intrinsically connected, creating a cannon centered on priesthood authority. Whereas with Smith the temple rites were to be the apex of gospel learning, with the Twelve they became the standard of all knowledge and validity. It was only through the priesthood keys that the fountain of knowledge could continue. Indeed, that the term “keys” came to be the dominant descriptor for salvific truth demonstrates the lengths to which the Twelve routinized epistemological authority. Smith’s revelations had laid the foundation, but now the temple ordinances ritualized and fulfilled that spirit and message. “I asked Elder Page the other day,” Hyde mused, “which is the greater, this Book (the D&C) or the Sprit that gave it?” And for the previous year, the Twelve had emphasized that the temple was the apex of this spirit of revelation.33

Being that this debate between Hyde and Page took place mere weeks after thousands of saints experienced these salvific ordinances, and the fact that the discourse was given in the shadow of the temple, would have underscored the connection between “knowledge” and “priesthood keys,” and further confirmed the apostles’ succession claims. Knowledge could and would be gained through reason and revelation, but it could only be solidified through priesthood rites. In this sense, Mormonism’s canonicity expanded to include not only recorded revelations but also ritualistic experience.

This rhetorical and strain of interpretation also dominated the Twelve’s debate with another schismatic figure, Sidney Rigdon. Previously, Rigdon was the First Counselor in Smith’s First Presidency, perceivably placing him second in authority and power. But with Smith’s death and the Twelve’s rise to leadership, Rigdon challenged their claims and argued that he was to be the “guardian” of the movement. Similar to Strang, Rigdon claimed a revelation that he felt validated his authority. Thus, in their battles with Rigdon—and especially his excommunication trial—the Twelve emphasized that the former leader lacked the knowledge absolutely necessary for church leadership, which could only be gained through the highest temple ordinances. In the epistemological crisis in

33 Ibid, 4. Thomas Bullock minutes of a meeting held in Nauvoo March 7, 1846, LDS Church History Library, 1, transcribed by Robin Jensen.

which competing supernatural revelations are claimed as support for practical concerns, the only determining factor was priesthood keys—a development the Twelve emphasized they obtained from Smith himself.

“There is a way by which all revelations purporting to be from God through any man can be tested,” Orson Hyde explained at the trial over Rigdon’s membership. “Brother Joseph said, let no revelation go to the people until it has been tested” in the highest councils. This interpretation of Smith’s teachings emphasized order and authority in determining what was truth, and made the Twelve gatekeepers for established knowledge. Further, this precedent was especially relevant in the months preceding Smith’s death, bolstering the Twelve as the central figures in this epistemological hierarchy, because they “were in council with Brother Joseph almost every day for weeks” Smith had prepared them for this position by “conduct[ing] us through every ordinance of the holy priesthood and when he had gone through with all the ordinances he rejoiced very much, and says, now if they kill me you have got all the keys.” It was only then, Hyde recalled Smith proclaiming, that “Satan will not be able to tear down the kingdom” and corrupt the doctrines and ordinances of the gospel. Parley Pratt added to Hyde’s testimony, explaining that though “the quorum of the Twelve have not offered a new revelation” since Smith’s death, that was only due to the fact that “we have spent all our time, early and late, to do the things the God of heaven commanded us to do through brother Joseph”—most especially, building the temple and administering the ordinances therein. Revealed truth had all pointed to the temple and its consanguineous priesthood sealings, and future knowledge depended on its completion.34

In placing the temple and priesthood keys at the center of Mormonism’s epistemological claims, the Twelve succeeded in establishing a theological framework in which their claims triumphed over all others. By holding the keys to the temple, Brigham Young and the apostles held the keys to knowledge. But in doing so, they dictated that Joseph Smith’s revelatory legacy would be understood in a way that led first and foremost to the future temple rituals—ordinances that were not introduced until two years before and not made public until after shortly after his death. What had been a set of secret rituals limited to a small circle of initiates—though they planned to have larger participation once the Nauvoo Temple was completed—was now the only path through which one could gain salvific knowledge. Pratt’s “Fountain of Knowledge” of 1844 focused on Smith’s teachings of dialogic revelation through personal connection to deity; now the “fountain” was more to be experienced rather than merely learned. While this adapted perspective of revelatory knowledge threatened to routinize what had hitherto been a dynamic understanding of truth, it succeeded in centralizing epistemological power within Brigham Young and the Twelve and attaching believers to a unified religious movement.

34 “Trial of Elder Rigdon,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 17 (September 15): 649-651, 653. For this trial and its relevancy to the succession debates and temple ordinances, see Andrew F. Ehat, “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982), 189-236.

12V.

The fourth and fifth essays found in Pratt’s compilation focused on different topics yet are related in significant ways. The first, titled “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” examined the eternal nature of matter, the necessity and glory of a resurrected body, and the potency of a God embodied with flesh and bones; it contains many of the aspects critical to Mormonism’s unique theological materialism. The second essay, “Intelligence and Affection,” built on the former’s base principles and gloried in the eternal nature of love and knowledge while defending the natural affections of the body as both pure and divine. In “Immortality,” Pratt wrote that traditional dualism was a “mere [relic] of mysticism and superstition,” and that “all persons except materialists must be infidels, so far at least as belief in the scriptures is concerned.” In “Intelligence and Affection,” he penned that the purpose of life is for all “power and energy of your body and mind may be cultivated, increased, enlarged, perfected and exercised for his glory and for the glory and happiness of yourself, and of all those whose good fortune it may be to associate with you.” Together the essays offer a synthesis of Joseph Smith’s ontological collapse of spirit and matter, exaltation of the physical body, and redefinition of the Godhead.35

At the heart of this theological revolution was a redefinition of the afterlife. Indeed, Mormonism’s unique heaven—based on material possessions, exalted corporeality, and deified humans—offers a succinct microcosmic view of what some historians have termed a “divine anthropology.” It also provides perhaps the most potent lens through which to interpret the tensions surrounding Smith’s successors, as they both drew from and reacted against their larger culture while synthesizing their founder’s teachings.36

Mormonism appeared at the cusp of what historians Colleen McDannel and Bernhard Lang described as the “modern heaven.” This theological shift, most popular at the folk level yet never officially accepted by clergy, emphasized a continuation and fulfillment of material existence, an increase in progress and activities occupying saved individuals in a dynamic environment, and, most importantly, a focus on human love and social relationships. The epitome of this intellectual shift was the immensely popular novel The Gates Ajar, a book that outsold every other novel in the 19th century other than Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Written by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844-1911), the narrative boldly rejected the formerly popular theocentric heaven in favor of one based in familial affections, social relations, and the Victorian home. “Would it be like [God] to suffer two souls to grow together here,” exclaimed the fictional Aunt Winifred, “so that the day of separation is pain, and then wrench them apart for all eternity?” The answer from the proponents of this domestic heaven was a resounding “no.”37

35 Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” in Appeal, 21. Pratt, “Intelligence and Affection,” 39. For the development of Mormon materialism, and how it relates to other materialist theologians during the period, see Park, “Salvation Through a Tabernacle,” 10-14.

36 For “divine anthropology,” see Brown, In Heaven as It Is on Earth.

Aspects of this domestic heaven were acutely present in Joseph Smith’s teachings. Smith at times appeared a proponent of this eternal sentimentalism, which laid the groundwork for celestial domesticity. “If I had no expectation of seeing my mother, brother[s], and Sisters and friends again,” he proclaimed in 1843, “my heart would burst in a moment and I should go down to my grave.” Yet it would be a mistake to characterize early Mormonism’s heaven as the apex of the Victorian domestic heaven. Smith’s emphasis on the continuation of relationships stretched further than the immediate family: through the temple rituals of polygamy and adoption, Mormonism sought to form a larger dynastic society enabled by priesthood ordinances. Heber C. Kimball wrote that these ordinances were meant “to bring us to an organization,” and once this organization was in place, “we have the Celestial Kingdom here [on earth].” Even more revealing, close confidant Benjamin Johnson later remembered Smith claiming the “great mission” for the Saints was to “Organize a Nucli of Heaven” which would remain the centerpiece of life after the grave. These rituals solidified temporal relationships, celestialized the earthly existence, and set the foundation for eternal glories. Smith (and a number of his successors) was not as interested in the continuity of domestic love as he was in the salvific rites connected to this forged society. Even as the broader society was yearning for sentimentalism, Mormonism placed limits on that sentimentality and offered instead a world of order and stabilization.38

Yet, more than just a continuation of earthly societies and activities, the Mormon heaven emblemized a period of unfettered democracy, upward mobility, and a culture yearning for unlimited potential and individual progress. The intellectual merging of Romantic individualism and radical Whig politics during the early nineteenth century led to an emphasis on self-reform and the self-made man. Emblematic of the period was the success of Henry Fielding’s satirical novel The History and Adventures of Joseph Andrews, which mocked the aristocratic foundations of the eighteenth century, particularly its “whole ladder of dependence.” This “kind of ladder,” Fielding playfully, yet incisively, painted, was a mere relic of the days of superstition and mythology. The book’s numerous print-runs revealed a culture anxious to embrace the democratic revolt against fixed social status while at the same time desiring unlimited individual mobility. The era of Jacksonian politics only solidified this all-too-American

37 Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 183. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Gates Ajar (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1868), 75-76.

38 Joseph Smith, Sermon, April 16, 1843, in Scott H. Faulring, ed., An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates, 1989), 366-367. Heber C. Kimball Journal, in George D. Smith, ed., Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Signature Books in Association with Smith Research Associates, 1995), 226. Benjamin Johnson remembrance, quoted in B. Carmen Hardy, ed., Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise (Oklahoma: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2007), 119.

13notion of the “self-made-man,” cementing a democratic age of individual reform and progression.39

Nothing more epitomized this spirit of progress than Joseph Smith’s formulation of the potential of man. “You have got to learn how to make yourselves Gods,” he famously proclaimed, “in order to save yourselves and be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done—by going from a small capacity to a great capacity, from a small degree to another…till you are able to sit in everlasting burnings and everlasting power and glory as those who have gone before.” William Phelps wrote that the temple empowered individuals to progress “from heaven to eternity; and from eternity to ceaseless progression,” allowing humankind to move “from system to system; from god to god, and from one perfection to another.” Parley Pratt’s “Intelligence and Affection” described the Mormon heaven as “a field where, ambition knows no check, and zeal no limits; and were the most ardent aspirations may be more than realized.”40 In early Mormonism, the idea of eternal “progress” was as audacious as it was literal.

However, kingdom rhetoric once again came to dominate the post-martyrdom discussion, reinterpreting the Mormon heaven as a counterbalance to whiggish zeal. Revolving around temple rituals, the celestial order was to be based on priesthood order, and a saints’ mobility was limited to the ecclesiastical tree in which they were found, making important both familial relations and ecclesiastical positions. Explaining to Newel Whitney the importance of these priesthood rites, Smith promised “honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house…because of the lineage of my Preast Hood,” implying that ecclesiastical chains were as significant as personal merit. Utilizing this kingdom rhetoric, disciple Joseph Fielding wrote that in order to “obtain all the Glory I can… a Man’s Dominion will be as God’s is, over his own Creatures and the more numerous the greater his Dominion.” While progression is indeed possible, it would only be within the larger celestial “kingdoms” of the afterlife; this was a patronage based on priesthood that could not be transcended, a heavenly social order that took precedence over individual mobility.41

39 Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Henry Taylor, 1791), 2:157. For this larger social transformation, see Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), esp. 194-238; Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 107-135; Sarah Knott, Sensibility and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2009), 195-264.

40 Joseph Smith, Sermon, in Stan Larson, "The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text," BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 201. William Phelps, sermon, in Richard Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, “The Joseph/Hyrum Smith Funeral Sermon,” BYU Studies 23 (Winter 1983): 11. Pratt, “Intelligence and Affection,” 40.

41 Joseph Smith, Revelation, July 27, 1842, MS 4583, Box 1, fd. 104, in Richard E. Turley, ed., Selected Collections

These comparisons to contemporary intellectual themes do more than just connect early Mormon conceptions of heaven to the larger antebellum context; they also demonstrate the malleable nature of Joseph Smith’s religious legacy, enabling multiple—and at times, seemingly contradictory—interpretations of his theology. Different Mormon thinkers in the late Nauvoo period—even those amongst the Twelve—emphasized different themes and cultural tensions in their individual formulations. Specifically, they utilized Smith’s inchoate teachings as support for their own theological and temporal claims or understandings. This tension is most aptly demonstrated in the juxtaposition of Brigham Young and Parley Pratt.

As leader of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a majority of Young’s teachings during 1844-1847 revolved around centralizing Mormon authority and defending the Twelve’s succession claims. As such, he emphasized the hierarchical order of heaven as a blueprint for authority on earth. “[We] have taken kingly power and grades of the priesthood,” he proclaimed in 1847. “Those that are adopted into my family and take me for their counselor, if I continue faithful I will preside over them throughout all eternity.” Even in the afterlife, “I will stand at their head, and Joseph will stand at the head of this church and will be their president, prophet of God to the people in this dispensation.” Though Godhood was the eventual destination of valiant priesthood holders, it was only achieved within an ecclesiastical hierarchy of restraint and order.42

Young spoke out against individuals who were “jealous” of the leaders above them and did not understand their appointed role within the larger society. He verbally warned about those “who would even try to pass right by me and go to Joseph thinking to get between him and the Twelve.” These warnings were an obvious product of the succession crisis in which they were taught, and had a distinct effect on the structure of the afterlife. “I have heard Elders say they were not dependant upon any man,” he continued, which is a mistaken position “for I consider that we are all dependent one upon another for our exhalta-tion & that our interest is insperably connected…I hold the Keys over them through which they are to receive there [sic] exhaltation.” To Young, patronage and stewardship were the epitome of heaven, where felicity and joy were to be achieved through dominions and kingdoms. “If you wish to advance [in the afterlife],” he concluded, “hold up the hands of your file leader & boast him a head.”43 His heaven was more a defense of ecclesiastical authority than it was an appeal for uninhibited progression,

from the Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2 vols., DVD (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, [Dec. 2002]), 1:19. Joseph Fielding, Journal, in “‘They Might have Known that He Was Not a Fallen Prophet’—The Nauvoo Journal of Joseph Fielding,” transcribed and edited by Andrew F. Ehat, Brigham Young University Studies 19, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 154.

42 Brigham Young, Sermon, February 16, 1847, in Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff’s Journal: 1833-1898 Typescript, 9 vols. (Midvale, UT: Signature Books, 1983), 132-133.

43 Ibid., 130, 135, 137.

14more concerned with kingly government than democratized exaltation.

Following Young’s lead, apostle Orson Hyde spoke of “the kingdom of Jesus Christ” in the next world as a place where individuals would be resurrected to their ordained “stations” within that kingdom, according to their earthly deeds, temple endowments, and adoptive sealings. “A man in the Priesthood,” he explained, “has persons sealed to him in his kingdom [who are] subject to him in the dominions of God.” When Hyde later drew a diagram outlining “the order and unity of the kingdom of God,” he depicted an ecclesiastical tree where all who “received their [temple] washings and anointings” were granted entrance to the celestial heaven, but only within a hierarchical kingdom based on stewardship and priesthood authority. “Many are called to enjoy a celestial glory,” Hyde summarized, “yet few are chosen to wear a celestial crown, or rather, to be rulers in the celestial kingdom.” The celestial organization was not merely based on personal merit or individual distinction, but on a hierarchical setup of priesthood keys and genealogies. This vision of the afterlife largely shaped temporal church structure and polygamous relationships.44

On the other hand, while Pratt maintained sensibilities to the symbolic Kingdom of God, he continued to emphasize Victorian sentimentality and domesticity. “Heaven,” as he succinctly defined it, was “a planetary system where there is no death, sickness, pain, want, misery, oppression, ignorance, error, doubt, fear, sin or sorrow.” In Pratt’s heavenly utopia, the family, not just the priesthood, was at the center of resurrected humanity, and even wives played a crucial, if subservient, role. He wrote, “the celestial order is designed not only to give eternal life, but also to establish an eternal order of [the family], founded upon the most pure and holy principles of union and affection.” In his Autobiography, Pratt enthusiastically remembered learning from Joseph Smith the principle of eternal sealings, and that “the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity; and that the refined sympathies and affections which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love . . . that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase in the same to all eternity.” While Brigham Young taught that the label “father” in the celestial kingdom was merely a symbolic term for the priesthood leader, Pratt still held that it was the literal family unit that was the core within the larger kingdom and urged saints to be sealed to their biological families. It is worth noting that Pratt was not among those who accepted adopted families into his own familial kingdom.45

44 Orson Hyde, Sermon, May 3, 1846, in Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 45-46. Orson Hyde, “A Diagram of the Kingdom of God,” Millennial Star 9 (January 15, 1847): 23.

45 Pratt, “Heaven.” Pratt, “Celestial Family Organization,” The Prophet 1 (March 1, 1845): no pagination. Pratt, Autobiography, 329. Parley P. Pratt, “Family Government,” The Prophet (January 18, 1845): no pagination. For Young on the role of a “father,” see Brigham Young, Sermon, February 16, 1847, in Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journals, 137-138. For adoption statistics, see Stapley, “Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism.”

Even more than the Victorian family centrism, Pratt’s heaven symbolized the perfection of domestic sensibilities like love and joy. It was “intelligence, wisdom, goodness, love, peace, [and joy],” he wrote, that “eminate from the fountain of life and existance, and flow out through all the branches of family organization both in heaven and earth.” In a sentiment that would have been appreciated by many of the Victorian authors of the day, Pratt summarized the afterlife as a place where “the exalted throne of the celestial heavens…to the least member of Christ’s family on the earth” are all a part of “a kingdom without a jar or scism; a family of which all the members are happy.” Further, eternal progression for Pratt was not just about increasing dominions, but developing human affections. When writing about love and affections, he wrote that “the very germs of these Godlike attributes…only need cultivating, improving, developing, and advancing by means of a serious of progressive changes” in the next life, until they finally “arrive at the fountain ‘Head,’ the standard, the climax of Divine Humanity.” While for Young, heaven was about kingdoms, dominions, and hierarchical structure, to Pratt it was the continuation and unity of human relationships, the physicality of love, and the exaltation of earthly pleasures.46

These different viewpoints were not, of course, mutually exclusive; indeed, Pratt took a major part in establishing the symbolic kingdom that Brigham Young emphasized, and Young at times echoed the celestial sentimentality that was at the heart of Parley Pratt’s vision. However, their differing paradigms of how to interpret, expand, and synthesize the particulars of Joseph Smith’s larger vision exemplify the dynamic nature of early Mormon theology—or, more appropriately, Mormon theologies. The idea of what the celestial kingdom entailed was a developing concept, closely tied to broader intellectual currents, and ambiguous enough to be interpreted within differing theological frameworks.

This dynamic framework allowed Mormon theology to flower in the second half of the nineteenth century. Because it both drew on cultural themes while at the same time critiquing a society many were growing disillusioned with, Mormonism persisted long after many of the other antebellum religious movements faded away. The Victorian sentimentalism of the domestic heaven became latent as theocratic rhetoric dominated the early Utah period, only to reappear with a vengeance at the turn of the twentieth century as Mormonism sought a new religious identity. American culture, then, served as a toolbox from with Joseph Smith’s successors could pick and choose which elements to accept and adapt, and which elements to reject and attack. This dynamic—and at times, tenuous—relationship was at the core of not only Mormon conceptions of heaven, but the thriving Mormon movement in general.

VI.

46 Pratt, “Family Government.” Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology: Designed as an Introduction to the First Principles of Spiritual Philosophy; Religion; Law and Government; As Delivered by the Ancients, and as Restored in This Age, For the Final Development of Universal Peace, Truth and Knowledge (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855), 32.

15Parley Pratt continued his prolific publishing career

for another decade after Joseph Smith’s death, only interrupted by duties that ranged from leading Mormonism’s settlement in Utah, various ecclesiastical missions including nearly a year spent in South America, and, finally, death at the hands of the ex-husband of one of his plural wives in 1857. His most memorable works were largely composed in the 1850s—Key to the Science of Theology (1855), considered his theological magnum opus, and The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt (1874), which was edited and completed by his son—and cast a large shadow over Mormonism to the present day.

And the process of correlating and synthesizing Joseph Smith’s revelations and teachings largely continued in step with the new developments and evolutions in Mormon history and culture: settlement in Utah introduced theocratic dominance, frontier discourse, and sometimes violent reformations; the end of isolation brought more spiritually orientated boundaries; the stoppage of polygamy forced a reformulation of what constituted “families” and “kingdoms” in the Mormon cosmos; and finally, the twentieth century brought a growth of fundamentalist and neo-orthodox thought in reaction to an increasingly secular and skeptical world. Indeed, the transformations in LDS thought during its first two centuries offer in microcosm the larger intellectual trends of the cultures in which Mormons acted within and reacted to.47

And therein lies the significance of the interpretation(s) and reinterpretation(s) of LDS theology. The growth of and development of Mormonism from a frontier faith to a Utah theocracy depended to a large extent upon Smith’s successors’ ability to both incorporate and challenge broader cultural tensions in the process of synthesizing and expanding the teachings of its founding prophet. This task required innovation in sustaining—or recreating—a uniquely Mormon and coherent theology with a tenuous and dynamic relationship with the broader culture. As a result, the study of how that theology developed reveals not only added light on the movement itself, but also the American context in which it constantly battled.

47 For theocratic thought in the early Utah period, see Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen W. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 6-40; Leonard J. Arrington, The Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958). For more spiritually attuned boundary maintenance, see Stephen C. Taysom, Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2010), 51-99. For the transformation from polygamy to mainstream, see Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930 (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Matthew B. Bowman, “The Crisis of Mormon Christology: History, Progress, and Protestantism,” Fides et Historia 40, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 1-27. For the twentieth century and fundamentalism, see Armand L. Mauss, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1994); O. Kendall White, Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy: A Crisis Theology (Salt Lake City, Ut.: 1987).