A Political Interpretation of Mormon History

Abstract

MUCH THAT IS SCHOLARSHIP and much that is not, including novels by the dozen, have been devoted to interpreting Mormonism in America ever since Joseph Smith announced that he had received visit from the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ, at Palmyra, New York, 1820. Most of the writing seizes upon polygamy or plural marriage as the juiciest (and undoubtedly the most salable) key for understanding the phenomena. But nothing is more apparent, once Mormon organization and doctrines are viewed together (although certain respects can be paid to Freud, and to economic interpretations), than that certain political interpretation affords yet another basis in reckoning with Mormon history, and in dealing with problems of church and state wherever Mormons are found today. On December 25, 1832, Joseph Smith, in Ohio, declared that God was about to make a full end of all nations; that war was about to be poured out on all nations; and that the inhabitants of the earth shall be made to feel the wrath..,. and the chastening hand of an Almighty God.' To have announced previously that the Church of the Latter-day Saints was destined to grow and fill the entire world, and then to declare that the national state system was about to collapse, carried implications which were not lost on the nationalists of the American frontier. The idea of Kingdom of God on earth was by no means new to American political life. And Jehovah's Witnesses today carry forth the millennial message with zeal reminiscent of the Mormons and their contemporaries of 1830o. But the Mormon concept, in which their system of mass organization was viewed as the real government of God, precedes and underlies something unique in American economic and social experimentation.' The story of Mormon difficulties in Missouri, Illinois, and the Far West is well known. But number of justifications may be presented for another writing, besides the political interpretation suggested. (1) The scenes, as illustrated by politics, afford case study in the type of modified political pluralism which has slowly developed in America from the days of Roger Williams to John L. Lewis, the closed shop, and such groups as the American Medical Association. (2) The Mormons were American nationalists of peculiar sort. In 1835 their general conference went to great pains to append to the book of