Introduction | Joseph Smith | The Saints in England | Polygamy | Bibliography
Those
of us with open minds may often be found shaking our heads in astonishment at
how our otherwise intelligent fellow human beings could possibly believe in
Christianity. That is understandable, but imagine then a church which, although
outwardly preaching Christianity, is based almost entirely upon the writings and
prophecies of a thoroughly transparent liar. Such is the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints and such was its founder, the polygamist, Joseph
Smith. To study the Mormon church is to take an almost frightening journey into
the very most gullible depths of the human mind.
There are approximately 11 million Mormons world-wide, with a little less than half of that number living in the US. Their beliefs center upon 4 documents which, whilst including the traditional bible, consist mainly of 19th century writings, mostly written by Joseph Smith. These are the Book of Mormon , Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price.
I have no wish to explore theological difference between the Mormons and mainstream Christianity. Personally I see no difference between belief in a man being crucified, dying and rising on the third day or the Mormon 's belief that this same man visited the Americas at some time in history. If people need to believe in these things then let them. But I do intend to explore aspects of Joseph Smith's personality and behavior that should surely have caused his followers to pause for thought - and I will ask the question why they didn't cause them to pause for thought. In addition, I hope to illuminate some aspects of Mormon history and teachings that are, to say the least, far fetched.
Before I go on, let me stress again that I have no argument with the Mormon 's right to believe what they believe. My main interest is, as always, the study of why people choose to believe what they believe, not to challenge their right to do so. When a transparent liar can convince 11 million people that black is white I truly believe that we can learn something about ourselves by the study of the phenomena.
Introduction | Joseph Smith | The Saints in England | Polygamy | Bibliography
Joseph
Smith (1805-1844) was born in Sharon, Vermont, U.S.A. His family were poor and a
financially disastrous business deal forced them to move to a farm at Palmyra,
New York, when Joseph was still a child. This move did little to effect the
family's fortunes and times remained hard. Joseph and his siblings had to work
to support the family as soon as they were able and so they grew up largely
uneducated.
As we all know, a lack of formal education does not necessarily make someone less capable of great things and this was never more true than in Joseph's case. Perhaps poverty and hardship are the greatest teachers of all. Either way, he displayed an uncanny ability to spot an opportunity and he most certainly saw one when an itinerant magician/diviner stayed in Palmyra and offered to use his skills to look for water and buried Indian treasure. Smith spent as much time as he could studying the 'magician's' methods.
In one of those strange quirks of fate for which none but the faithful can account, Joseph actually enjoyed a certain amount of success in his new skill. So much so, in fact, that at the age of 19 he found himself being employed to search for buried Spanish treasure in the eastern part of the state. Here his luck deserted him and he had to resort to his ever fertile imagination for support. They could not find the treasure, the hoards of expectant treasure hunters who had flocked to the project were informed, because the gold was under an enchantment which was making it sink deeper in the ground!
But Jospeh did find one treasure of a kind, a treasure which was to remain with him for the rest of his short life. He fell in love with Emma Hale, the daughter of Issac Hale in who's house he had stayed during the unsuccessful treasure hunt. Since Issac was one of the treasure hunters who had toiled under Joseph's 'guidance' it was to be expected that he would not approve the relationship and he firmly refused Joseph the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Joseph was made of sterner stuff and in January 1827 he persuaded Emma to elope with him. They were married and went to live with Joseph's parents, but later in the year they returned to Issac's home and were reconciled with him. He gave them a small house on his property and it was here that Joseph commenced his so called translation of the golden plates which came to be known as the Book of Mormon.
The official story of the finding and translation of the golden plates is a work of fiction worthy of any writer. It is dealt with in depth in many places on the internet and it would be pointless to repeat it here. Suffice to say, nobody except Smith was allowed to see the plates for a long time. Then, when he did allow them to be viewed, it was only close associates who were allowed this honor. Even Emma, who had helped him in his work, was not allowed to view them. Once the translation was finished he conveniently handed the plates back to the angel who had told him about them and they were taken up to heaven.
Smith undertook two other translations, The Book of Abraham and The Kinderhook Plates. The Book of Abraham was a translation of an Egyptian papyrus and was, so he claimed, written by Abraham's own hand and included his signature. This was a gift on a stick to Smith, for nobody was able to read the hieroglyphics to disprove his translation. He could basically claim what he wanted. Years later the papyrus turned up in the Metropolitan Museum in NY. Needless to say, it does not translate into anything resembling The Book of Abraham.
The Kinderhook Plates were a deliberate attempt to discredit Smith, and it worked. A group of farmers created the plates and took them to Smith claiming to have dug them up along with a skeleton. Smith later wrote, "I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth.". They were, of course, nothing of the sort. The farmers later confessed to the trick and one source that I have read states that the writing was copied from the side of a Chinese tea chest!
This was clearly not a man to be trusted, but trust him they did and in their hundreds and thousands, suffering persecution and hardship in his name. Why? Even when he was dead his following continued to grow under the leadership of Brigham Young. Thousands upon thousands joined them from abroad, but for what?
Smith quite simply caught the mood of the times and offered a more optimistic vision of God than mainstream Christianity did or does. America was a fertile place in which the charismatic evangelist could work. Those who came from abroad are even easier to explain. In the case of Britain, there there was extreme poverty and inequality and a ticket to America offered a unique chance for self improvement. In other countries religious intolerance spurred people on to leave their homelands. Once together the persecution that they suffered must have created bonds of faith and mutual dependence which were almost unbreakable.
Introduction | Joseph Smith | The Saints in England | Polygamy | Bibliography
The Mormon Church has had a negligible effect upon Britain (though they
should never be underestimated), but the reverse cannot be said to be true.
Mormon missionaries arrived in Britain very early in the history of the church
and many of the resulting converts subsequently chose to emigrate to America.
There were, in fact, Mormons in Britain long before any had set foot in Salt
Lake City.
Joseph Smith originally sent 7 of his followers to Britain. Their leader was Heber C.Kimball. Kimball was a great friend of both Smith and Brigham Young – with whom he had joined the church - and he was later to officiate at a number of Smith’s ‘weddings’. Others in the group included Dr.Willard Richards, a cousin of Brigham Young, and Orson Hyde, who was later to become the first Mormon missionary to Germany and Palestine. Perhaps the most important member of the party, at least at first, was Joseph Fielding. Fielding was originally from Honedon in Bedfordshire, but had emigrated to Canada in 1832. From there he found his way to America and the fledgling Mormon Church. His importance to the group lay in the fact that he had a brother, James Fielding, who was a vicar in Lancashire and, having arrived in Liverpool on July 20th, 1837 (The LDS website says July 19th, 1837), it was to Fielding’s home and church that they headed, arriving there some two days later.
Fielding allowed the group to preach to his congregation and, on Sunday July 30th 1837, the first 9 people were baptized into the Mormon faith by immersion in the River Ribble, near Preston. A crowd of several thousand people watched the proceedings and, inevitably, it was not long before the clergy took exception to this obvious attempt to steal their congregations. The group now started to experience strong opposition, even from the Reverend Fielding, who had quickly come to regret welcoming his brother and his friends into his home and church.
The effect that these charismatic strangers from America had upon the local population cannot be underestimated. In those days the working classes of Britain were brutally poor and the church offered little opposition to the status quo. The Mormons, by contrast, were visibly shocked by the inequalities they found and Kimball wrote home in shocked tones about the suffering and privations that they witnessed. It has to be admitted that the Mormon Church was inclusive, whereas the established church was not. Smith had tapped into a rich seam of potential new converts.
Smith dreamt of building a new Zion for his followers, but the skilled hands he needed were is short supply amongst his followers. After a number of the original missionaries returned from England and reported on their phenomenal successes there, he was left in no doubt as to where he could find those skilled hands. And so he sent his most trusted lieutenants, including Brigham Young, to England where they arrived on April 6th, 1840.
Young masterminded a mass emigration of 100,000 converts from England to America. The impact of this scheme was, and remains, enormous, with the descendents of those first Mormons comprising at least 50% of the Mormon leadership ever since. In addition, many politicians, business men, scientists, academics and other people of note in America can trace their ancestry back to those first English Mormon converts.
But I have already written that the Mormon Church had a negligible effect upon Britain, so how does this equate with such huge early successes? Quite simply, Smith’s plan to build the new Zion took converts away from foreign countries almost as quickly as they could be baptized This meant that even these 100,000 converts could have little or no impact upon their country of origin. Converting Britain to Mormonism was the aim of the early church only in that it could provide new blood for the new Zion. The Mormons have, therefore, remained marginal in England (they claim a membership of 180,000, but how many of these are active and how many follow the Mormon way of life to the letter is debatable). They had their chance, but have since lost it in a country now largely regarded as one of the most secular on earth.
Needless to say, lack of real influence does not mean to say that the Mormons are inactive in England. Their 'missionaries' can frequently be seen tramping the streets, knocking on doors and trying to spread 'the word', but this is more a ritual of passage for Mormon youth rather than a serious attempt to gain converts.
The Mormons have never forgotten their connections with Preston and those first British ‘saints’. Between 1994-96 they built a temple on a 15-acre site at Chorley, not far from Preston. It is an impressive building, and so it should be for its £100million price tag. £2million was spent on plants for the grounds alone.
The finished temple is 154 ft tall with a 69,400sq ft interior. This makes it the largest temple outside of Salt Lake City in America. It was constructed from Olympia White granite imported from Northern Italy. Just as no expense was spared in the creation of the temple, so there was no effort spared in presenting a polished image during it’s construction. With this in mind, the front of the site was landscaped before building work had even begun.
The other Mormon temple in Britain is in London. Set on a 32 acre site, the 42,652 floor area is, although impressive, dwarfed by the Preston Temple. It was dedicated on September 7th, 1958.
Religious Truth does not claim to have extensive knowledge of the hierarchy within the Mormon Church, but when it comes to the Temples there is a clear two tear system. In short, it is not enough just to be a member of the Mormon Church. That entitles you to attend services in an LDS church, but not a temple. That privilege goes only to those who have proved themselves to be particularly loyal members.
Introduction | Joseph Smith | The Saints in England | Polygamy | Bibliography
Polygamy
is hardly new, even in Christian circles. The Old Testament of the Bible is
littered with so many examples of the practice that the likes of Joseph Smith
have no difficulty in finding justification for what usually amounts to little
more than their own predatory sexual greed. Show me a charismatic, messianic
type spiritual leader - Smith is just one example of the breed - and I will
usually be able to show you a man who enjoys preying upon his female followers.
No serious scandal regarding Smith's sexual habits occurred until a full 5 years after the foundation of the church but, for a man who was quoted as saying of himself that, "If the Lord had not taken me in hand, I would have become the greatest whore-monger in the world", this state of affairs was unlikely to last. However, there was always one limiting factor to Smith's excesses and that was his wife, Emma Hale. They had married in 1827 and it could be argued that she did little to curb Smith's voracious thirst for more wives, but she was certainly anything but a proponent of polygamy and her opposition adds some amusing anecdotes to the tale.
Smith's first recorded foray into what could more accurately be termed multiple adultery than polygamy occurred in 1835. A 17 year old orphan, Fanny Alger, who was lodging with the Smiths, became pregnant. Emma was furious and Fanny was forced to leave the home. We can only imagine the words that were exchanged between Emma and Joseph on the subject. What we can be sure of is that Emma's anger did little to divert her husband from his chosen course, but perhaps she did temper his ardor in one way, by making him concentrate on married women for a time.
By 1842 Smith is known to have had at least 13 affairs, but for a while at least he went to enormous lengths to hide his activities. Of the 13, 11 were already married and so presumably continued to have sexual relations with their husbands as well as with Smith. The cuckoo has provided the role model and a smoke screen for many an adulterer, but by now Smith was ready to move forward.
From 1840 onwards Smith had begun to instruct his closest associates in polygamy, but for the moment this was in the strictest confidence. However, there were only a finite number of married women with whom to play musical beds and, by 1842, the inevitable stream of bastards was raising eyebrows and tempers amongst the Mormon community. A committee of inquiry was established but, astonishingly (or not as the case may be), it was placed under the chairmanship of Smith's wife. Privately vocal in her opposition to polygamy she may have been, but she always showed a touching loyalty to her husband in public. To make doubly sure that he would be safe, Smith took the extra precaution of marrying all but one of the members of the all female committee. The exception, a Mrs. Whitney, kindly gave him the hand of her 17 year old daughter instead! Needless to say, Smith came up smelling of roses.
This manipulation and hiding of the truth was bad enough, but what is truly shocking is the readiness with which Smith and his followers were prepared to destroy lives to cover their tracks. In 1842 a scandal arose when Brigham Young, a future leader of the Mormons, tried to convert 18 year old Martha Brotherton to polygamy. She told her parents and a furious scandal ensued with Young calling the girl a liar and persuading members of her family to denounce her.
By now Smith felt safe enough to set down a 'revelation' on plural marriage and, on July 12th, 1843, that is what he did. There is, however, a strong suspicion that the motivation behind the revelation was more about persuading Emma than the wider Mormon population. This is evidenced by the fact that Smith charged his brother, Hyrum, with the task of reading the revelation to Emma, whereupon she snatched it from him and threw it in the fire. The unfortunate Hyrum later reported that he had never suffered such abuse from a woman before!
Sometime in August 1843 the revelation was read to the Mormon High Council and really this was the beginning of the end for Smith. It was bound to cause a split amongst the faithful, not least because he frequently targeted the wives of other senior Mormons. In effect he had signed his own death warrant and, unbeknown to him, he had only 12 months left to live.
The anti-polygamy faction split away and, on June 7th, 1844, published the first edition of the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper specifically created to attack Smith and his followers. Smith had the newspaper's press smashed and, when his opponents then fled to Carthage and brought charges against him for rioting, Smith surrendered to arrest. On August 27th, 1844 the jail was attacked by a mob and, 14 years after the foundation of his church and as many as 52 wives later - 20 of them virgins and some as young as 15 - Smith and Hyrum died in the ensuing battle.
After Smith's death Emma chose not to stay with the Mormon church. Instead she stayed on in Nauvoo, married a non-Mormon and spent the rest of her life running a lodging house.
Introduction | Joseph Smith | The Saints in England | Polygamy | Bibliography
Polygamy and the Mormons: As with everything else regarding the Mormons, information about Joseph Smith's polygamous habits abounds on the Internet. Of particular use though was 'After Polygamy Was Made a Sin - The Social History of Christian Polygamy', by John Cairncross.
Joseph Smith's wives: There is a pretty exhaustive list of Smith's wives here.
Introduction | Joseph Smith | The Saints in England | Polygamy | Bibliography
© Religious Truth 2001