When Smith drafted a plat for the city of Zion in , it called for fifteen to twenty thousand residents—a major city in those days, considering that had fewer than seven thousand residents and , the largest city in the West, fewer than thirty thousand.
He envisioned missionaries shepherding converts to Zion, where each family would receive an inheritance of land and have access to the temple for spiritual instruction. His answer to the failings of American society was to gather believers out of the world and organize them into a community where the poor were cared for and everyone stood on an equal material plane. When one city filled up, others were to be laid out until, as he said, the world was filled with cities of Zion.
The plat drawing specified the width of the streets and the size of the lots for a city that in biblical literature was an ethereal creation of the heavens, descending from the sky at the last day. He had a sense of making heaven on earth. And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel, and marrow to their bones and shall find wisdom, and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures; and shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.
His was a religion of the body as well as the spirit. The gathering to Zion seems to place Joseph Smith among the communitarian reformers. At the same time, he was certainly a millenarian. Although all are applicable in part, no single category is completely satisfactory. While paralleling other restorations in emphasizing faith, repentance, baptism, and the Holy Ghost as fundamentals of salvation, Smith went beyond them in dispensing scripture like Peter or Paul.
The claim to revelation appalled Campbell, who sought only to restore the forms and teachings of early Christianity, not the revelatory powers of the first apostles.
Most Protestants thought that Old Testament priesthood had ended with Christ, the great high priest of salvation. More immediately, Protestants associated priesthood with Roman Catholicism and the oppressive old regimes of Europe.
Male converts to Mormonism could not only be appointed to the office of elder, a New Testament title, but could also be made high priests, a title right out of the Old Testament. In , the earlier temple rituals evolved into an elaborate course of instruction called the endowment, which led men and women through the course of life from the Creation and Fall to the return to God.
In , two years after the city of Zion was begun in , Missouri, the Latter-day Saints were expelled and required to start all over. In , Smith and his followers in , Ohio, were forced out of that area and moved to , Missouri, where his followers were forming another Zion. Their next resort, , Illinois, begun in , grew into the largest Mormon city to that point, with ten to twelve thousand inhabitants—until the Mormons were driven out and began the trek to what would become Utah.
The pattern was unrelenting: Mormons gathered until their enemies forced them out, requiring them to begin still another city. One of the perplexities of Mormonism is why a religion formed in was so constantly in conflict with the society around it. In each instance of persecution, particular local complaints contributed to the enmity.
The Missourians suspected the predominantly Yankee Mormons of encouraging the immigration of free blacks. In Illinois, Mormons were accused of counterfeiting, thieving, and being clannishly exclusive. But one issue underlay all the local concerns: Mormonism and democratic government clashed. They believed that because his revelations came first, he would sacrifice obedience to worldly government. He was determined, they were sure, to build his kingdom by force if necessary. Nothing he did could allay suspicion.
There was always the question of which took precedence, the voice of the people acting through democratic government or the voice of God speaking through his prophet. Smith assured the world he had no intention of breaking the law, and a revelation admonished his followers to submit to legal proceedings. A committee of Illinois anti-Mormons summed up the prevailing reasoning. We find them yielding implicit obedience to the ostensible head and founder of this sect, who is a pretended Prophet of the Lord.
We believe that such an individual, regardless as he must be, of his obligations to God, and at the same time entertaining the most absolute contempt for the laws of man, cannot fail to become a most dangerous character, especially when he shall have been able to place himself at the head of a numerous horde, either equally reckless and unprincipled as himself, or else made his pliant tools by the most absurd credulity that has astonished the world since its foundation.
That was the essential anti-Mormon argument: a pretended prophet, who put himself above the law, leading a horde of unprincipled or credulous believers. The political implications were obvious. After their expulsion from , they vowed that they would never be subjected to such abuses again.
In Illinois, they negotiated a strong city charter as a form of protection against further persecution and organized a state-sanctioned militia, the Nauvoo Legion, to withstand attack. Over and over, they rehearsed the horrible tale of their sufferings, certain the manifest injustice of their treatment would evoke sympathy and bring redress.
But few came to their aid. Governor of Illinois explained why. It did not help that the temperature of Mormon rhetoric rose to match that of their enemies. Fearing mobs were forming in Illinois like those that had expelled the Mormons from , Joseph Smith let loose his anger and frustration. He had taken more than he could tolerate.
This language and the combination of powers bestowed on Mormons by the charter inflamed their enemies. By building up the Nauvoo Legion to thousands of men, Smith appeared to his enemies as a prophet armed. Using the Nauvoo Municipal Court to protect himself from arrest made him seem to set himself above the law. His acquisition of the major offices in the city, the courts, and the militia, as well as in the church, opened him to charges of megalomania. By , hundreds of citizens from nearby towns were ready to invade Nauvoo and drive the Mormons out.
His enemies may have feared Joseph Smith all the more because he was formidable personally. Joseph Smith seems rarely to have been intimidated. I could clearly see that Joseph was the captain, no matter whose company he was in, Knowing the meagerness of his education, I was truly gratified, at seeing how much at ease he always was, even in the company of the most scientific, and the ready off hand manner in which he would answer their questions.
Joseph Smith may have tried for the upper hand because of a sensitivity to insult. He came from a social class that bore the onus of contempt almost as a way of life. Poor tenant farmers like the Smiths were looked down upon as shiftless and crude. The ridicule that followed his stories of revelation may have magnified his unease and led him to compensate with abrasive behavior and brave flourishes.
He clung to his military title in the Nauvoo Legion as a badge of honor and expected recognition of his standing. When slighted, he would lash back.
Against his enemies he was adamant. Upon reading the piece, Smith canceled his subscription:. Sharp, Editor of the Warsaw Signal:. Sir --You will discontinue my paper--its contents are calculated to pollute me, and to patronize the filthy sheet--that tissue of lies--that sink of iniquity--is disgraceful to any mortal man. Yours, with utter contempt,. Joseph Smith. Please publish the above in your contemptible paper. Although Smith was perpetually caught up in controversy, strife pained him.
The anger and hatred the Mormons suffered was exactly the opposite of his own vision. During the expulsion of Mormons from in winter —, he was kept under prison guard for five months, charged with treason for having resisted attack. During those months, Smith meditated on the evils of power—in society and within the church. In the same letter he wrote to his wife and children:. Oh my affectionate Emma, I want you to remember that I am a true and faithful friend, to you and the children, forever, my heart is intwined around you[r]s forever and ever, oh may God bless you all, amen I am your husband and am in bands and tribulation.
Sadly, in the end, the bands between the couple were tried to the breaking point. At times revelation became a burden as well as a blessing, at no time more than when plural marriage was revealed.
He knew that if he embraced polygamy he would be castigated for it. But then between and an angel came down to him, no fewer than three times, urging him to get on with it. And so it came to pass that Joseph Smith, visionary and creator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, took to himself up to 40 wives, engaging in sexual relations with between 12 and 14 of them.
He was told not to join any of the churches. In , Joseph Smith said he was visited by an angel named Moroni, who told him of an ancient record containing God's dealings with the former inhabitants of the American continent. In , Joseph retrieved this record, inscribed on thin golden plates, and shortly afterward began translating its words by the "gift of God. As an evidence of this I will state that on Thursday, just before I left to return to Liberty [Missouri], I saw him out among the crowd, conversing freely with every one, and seeming to be perfectly at ease.
In the short space of five days he had managed so to mollify his enemies that he could go unprotected among them without the slightest danger. A New York Herald writer said he was "one of the most accomplished and powerful chiefs of the age. Joseph Smith, the president of the church, prophet, seer, and revelator, is thirty-six years of age, six feet high in pumps, weighing two hundred and twelve pounds. He is a man of the highest order of talent and great independence of character--firm in his integrity--and devoted to his religion;.
Opposite the positive views presented here and the conflicting views of Joseph which critics seek to take advantage of, there is reason to pause and consider the absoluteness of one opinion of Joseph over another.
Speaking of Joseph's human side, the world's expectations of him, and reconciling the two realities, Marvin S. Hill concluded:. If a look at the human side of Joseph Smith seems at times somewhat unflattering, it comes from no desire to diminish him. It comes rather from the belief that at times in the Church we tend to expect too much of him, to ask him to be more than human in everything he did.
This may lead to some disillusionment, if occasionally we find that he did not measure up to all our expectations. The early Saints usually avoided that kind of mistake. Brigham Young said of Joseph: 'Though I admitted in my feelings and knew all the time that Joseph was a human being and subject to err, still it was none of my business to look after his faults.
Parley P. Pratt said that Joseph was "like other men, as the prophets and apostles of old, liable to errors and mistakes which were not inspired from heaven, but managed by These brethren knew Joseph as a man with human weaknesses, yet they believed in his divine calling and in his greatness. It seemed to them that what he had achieved as a prophet far outweighed his imperfections. In the long run their love of him and their faith in his calling were decisive in shaping their lives.
Seeing Joseph in his various moods, they still called him a prophet of God Those who would understand the Prophet must give consideration to his spiritual side as well as his human side. It was his strong commitment to things spiritual which made him so aware of his human failings, so desirous to overcome his weaknesses and to give his all to the work of the Lord.
Webb wrote: [9]. To see citations to the critical sources for these claims, click here.
0コメント