Draft:Mormonism and authority

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See also: Council of Fifty

Within Mormonism, authority typically refers to priesthood authority, or the ability to act in God's name. According to its founder, Joseph Smith, this authority had been removed from the primitive Christian church through a Great Apostasy, which Mormons believe occurred due to the deaths of the original apostles. Mormons maintain that this apostasy was prophesied of within the Bible to occur prior to the Second Coming of Jesus, and was therefore in keeping with God's plan for mankind. Smith said that the priesthood authority was restored to him from angelic beings—John the Baptist and the apostles Peter, James, and John.[1][2]

Priesthood authority was used as a foundation for early political structures in the Latter Day Saint movement. These included the Council of Fifty in Nauvoo, Illinois, and the theocracy established in the State of Deseret.

Priesthood authority in early Mormonism[edit]

See also: Priesthood (Latter Day Saints)

Priesthood authority as it now known in the Latter Day Saint movement originated from the movement's founder, Joseph Smith. Some of the early movement's most important charismatic experiences were shared between Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, who joined the movement during the translation of the Book of Mormon. During the translation of the Golden Plates, Smith and Cowdery determined that they needed to obtain priesthood authority, or the authority to act in God's name, which they believed had been lost from the earth during the Great Apostasy. According to an account by Cowdery in 1834, they went into the woods near Harmony, Pennsylvania on May 15, 1829, were visited by an angel who gave them the "Holy Priesthood". In 1835, Smith and Cowdery stated that the angel was John the Baptist, and that the "Holy Priesthood" was specifically the Priesthood of Aaron", which included the power to baptize. Today this area is maintained by the LDS Church as the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration Site.[citation needed]

Smith and Cowdery further elaborated for the 1835 publication of the Doctrine and Covenants that they were also later visited by Peter, James, and John, who restored the "keys of your ministry" and the "keys of the kingdom". Neither Smith nor Cowdery ever gave a date for this visitation.[citation needed]

Political structures in Utah[edit]

Brigham Young
LDS Church president,
first U.S. appointed governor of Utah Territory,
regent of pre-millennial "Kingdom of God"

Early Mormonism established community legal structures as essentially theocracies (see theodemocracy). Joseph Smith and his successor, Brigham Young, presided over the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as prophet, President of the Church, and spiritual king until Jesus Christ's Second Coming.[3] U.S. President Millard Fillmore appointed Young governor of the Territory of Utah,[4] and there was minimal effective separation between church and state until 1858.[5]

Young envisioned a Mormon state[6] spanning from the Salt Lake Valley to the Pacific Ocean;[7] he sent church leaders to establish colonies in various parts of the western United States. These colonies were governed by Mormon officials under Young's mandate to enforce "God's law" by "lay[ing] the ax at the root of the tree of sin and iniquity," while preserving individual rights.[8] Despite the distance to these outlying colonies, local Mormon leaders received frequent visits from church headquarters, and were under Young's direct doctrinal and political control.[9] Mormons were taught to obey the orders of their priesthood leaders, as long as they coincided with the church's religious principles.[10] Young's view of theocratic enforcement included a death penalty.[11] However, there are no documented cases showing that capital punishment was ever used by the Mormons. Mormon leaders taught the doctrine of blood atonement, in which Mormon "covenant breakers" could in theory gain their exaltation in heaven by having "their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins." More clearly stated, this doctrine holds that capital punishment is required to atone for murder.[12] Local church leaders occasionally took the rhetoric of such doctrines seriously as they contemplated sanctionable applications of violence.[13]

According to rumors and accusations, Brigham Young sometimes enforced "God's law" through a secret cadre of avenging Danites.[14] The truth of these rumors is debated by historians. While there existed active vigilante organizations in Utah who referred to themselves as "Danites",[15] they may have been acting independently.[16]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Prince, Gregory A (1993). Having Authority: The Origins and Development of Priesthood During the Ministry of Joseph Smith. Independence, Missouri: Herald Publishing House.
  2. ^ MacKay, Michael Hubbard (2020). Prophetic authority: democratic hierarchy and the Mormon priesthood. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252084874.
  3. ^ Melville 1960, pp. 33–34; LDS D&C 65:2, 5–6; Joseph Smith, Jr. (1844), History of the Church 6:290, 292; Young 1855, p. 310; John Taylor (1853), JD 1:230; John D. Lee diary, 6 December 1848.
  4. ^ Fillmore 1850, p. 252
  5. ^ John Taylor (1857), JD 5:266 ("We used to have a difference between Church and State, but it is all one now. Thank God."). Removed as governor during the Utah War, Young yet retained a great deal of control until his death in 1877 Melville 1960, p. 48.
  6. ^ Called "Deseret," a word used in the Book of Mormon meaning "honeybee".
  7. ^ Hunter, Milton R. (2004), Brigham Young the Colonizer, Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 1-4179-6846-X, 70 (citing Brigham Young, Latter-day Saint Journal History, October 27, 1850, Ms.).
  8. ^ In 1856, Young said "the government of God, as administered here" may to some seem "despotic" because "[i]t lays the ax at the root of the tree of sin and iniquity; judgment is dealt out against the transgression of the law of God;" however, "does not [it] give every person his rights?" Young 1856b, p. 256.
  9. ^ Quinn 2001, pp. 143–45, 147.
  10. ^ Lee 1877, p. 235; Beadle 1870, p. 495 (describing what is said to be a portion of the Mormon Endowment in which participants are commanded to "obey all orders of the priesthood, temporal and spiritual, in matters of life or death").
  11. ^ On the Mormon Trail, Young threatened adherents who had stole wagon cover strings and rail timber with having their throats cut "when they get out of the settlements where his orders could be executed" Roberts 1932, p. 597. Young also gave orders that "when a man is found to be a thief,...cut his throat & thro' him in the River" (Diary of Thomas Bullock, 13 December 1846). In Utah, Young said "a theif [sic] should not live in the Valley, for he would cut off their heads or be the means of haveing [sic] it done as the Lord lived." (See the Diary of Mary Haskin Parker Richards, 16 April 1848). The preferred method of execution was by exsanguination or decapitation, the latter being "the law of God & it shall be executed." (See the diary of Willard Richards, 20 December 1846; Watson, Manuscript History of Brigham Young, 1846-1847, p. 480.)
  12. ^ Young 1856d, p. 53. Yet Mormon leaders stated that this practice was not yet "in full force" (1857, pp. 219–20), but the time was "not far distant" when Mormons would be sacrificed out of love to ensure their eternal reward (Young 1856b, pp. 245–46; Kimball 1857a, p. 174; Young 1857, p. 219.)
  13. ^ Quinn 1997, p. 249 (referring to a request Isaac C. Haight sent to Brigham Young asking permission to enforce blood atonement against an adulterous Mormon desirous to voluntarily submit for blood atonement — a request, however, that Young eventually denied.
  14. ^ Briggs 2006, p. 320, n.26. The southern Utah pioneer and militia scout of the time John Chatterley later wrote that he had received threats from a "secret Committee, called ...'destroying angels'"
  15. ^ Young 1857c, p. 6 (warning "mobocrats" that if they came to Utah, they would find "Danites").
  16. ^ Cannon & Knapp 1913, p. 271.

References[edit]

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