Mormonism

Mormonism is a restorationist faith whose scriptures, claim to continuing revelation, and sense of collective election gave its followers both a religious identity and a mission in history. In the account presented here, its power lies not only in belief but in the communities and institutions built around belief: a growing church, a sacred geography, a disciplined migration, and competing claims to carry Joseph Smith’s legacy. The resulting tension is especially visible in the divide between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Mormon Fundamentalists, who inherit much of the same religious history while disagreeing over whether plural marriage remains a divine obligation.

Founding and Sacred History

Joseph Smith founded Mormonism in 1830, presenting his new church as a restoration of the true Church of Christ. The Book of Mormon gave this claim a history rooted in the American continent: its narrative connected Indigenous peoples to sacred history, described Jesus Christ appearing in the New World after his resurrection, and placed Joseph Smith within a line of prophets. The Gold Plates, which Joseph said he received from Moroni, became central to the faith’s origin story and to the authority of the book translated from them.

The new movement attracted converts even before The Book of Mormon was printed. People who believed accounts from Joseph’s family and others who said they had seen and handled the plates helped spread the movement. The church claimed about fifty members at its formal organization in April 1830; by the following year it had more than a thousand. Converts were taught that the new scripture supplemented and corrected the Bible, and that the existing Christian churches had departed from the original faith. This account of religious history made Mormonism not merely a new denomination but a restoration after what Joseph called the Great Apostasy.

Mormonism also offered believers an intimate relationship with God through personal revelation. Revelation did not end with the founding scriptures: God was understood to continue guiding the church’s prophets, and those revelations were collected in The Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph taught that his followers were God’s elect, a people with a crucial part to play in the Last Days as they prepared for the Second Coming of Christ. The combination of restored history, present-day revelation, and an imminent religious future gave the community a strong sense of purpose.

Community, Ritual, and Belonging

The faith’s shared identity is made visible in both its major institutions and its public gatherings. Temple Square, beside the Salt Lake Temple, is described as the spiritual and temporal center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and its association with the familiar national hymn become, in the book’s account, public symbols of a people often seen as dutiful, optimistic, and orderly. That image sits uneasily beside the use of Mormon scripture by Dan Lafferty to justify murder, a contrast that exposes how religious language can carry radically different meanings in different hands.

The annual Hill Cumorah Pageant makes the collective dimension of the faith especially tangible. Each July, more than ten thousand people gather at the site associated with Joseph Smith’s recovery of the plates to watch an elaborate outdoor production. The church’s staging includes hundreds of performers and spectacular effects, but the event’s significance is not limited to its theatrical retelling of sacred history. More than 95 percent of attendees already belong to the church; for most, the pageant functions as a gathering at a place of origin, where members meet and reaffirm a shared testimony. Its repeated performance links the community’s present to its foundational story.

Communal commitment also took form under hardship. The long migration from Nauvoo and the violence the Saints experienced in Missouri and Illinois left those who reached Utah more devoted to the church, according to the narrative. The trials of the journey had separated doubters and malcontents from the committed, while survivors formed a close-knit group whose loyalty to Brigham Young was described as unconditional. The migration thus became more than movement between places: its remembered hardships helped define the community and strengthen its allegiance to leadership.

Authority, Plural Marriage, and Law

The history of plural marriage reveals a deep divide between Mormonism’s shared origins and its later institutions. Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage privately while keeping it from most followers and from non-Mormons. In Nauvoo, he introduced other teachings, including proxy baptism for the dead and the temple endowment, and taught that human beings could become gods. On July 12, 1843, he formally codified plural marriage as a divine commandment. The revelation remained secret and was not acknowledged by the church until 1852, eight years after his death.

The church’s public presentation of its history later came under strain because plural marriage was not a marginal matter in the founding story. The book notes that modern missionary literature did not disclose the extent of Joseph’s marriages, while church leaders worked to characterize polygamy as a brief, limited nineteenth-century practice. Mormon Fundamentalists, by contrast, continued to regard plural marriage as a religious duty. The two groups shared sacred texts and regarded Joseph as a prophet, but the mainstream church rejected the fundamentalists’ claim to represent a continuing Mormon obligation. The split is therefore both doctrinal and institutional: it concerns who has authority to interpret the past and determine what religious obedience requires in the present.

In Nauvoo, religious authority also acquired an unusually direct political form. A charter granted in 1840 gave the city distinctive sovereign powers. Joseph stood at its head, held the title of King, Priest, and Ruler over Israel on Earth, and commanded the Nauvoo Legion, a disciplined militia. He later sought congressional authorization for a much larger force and, in January 1844, announced his candidacy for president. These developments show a church community seeking not only to worship together but to govern itself according to its religious vision.

Brigham Young’s later approach to law carried that conflict into Utah. He argued that God’s laws took precedence over human laws, while the Utah Territorial Legislature, dominated by Mormons, expanded local probate courts under Young’s control. Mormon bishops commonly served as probate judges, and juries were largely made up of church members instructed by church leaders. Federal officials complained that the arrangement had turned the territory into a theocratic dictatorship. The competing claims were not abstract: they concerned who could judge disputes, enforce rules, and define the limits of religious self-government.

Vengeance, Revelation, and Competing Mormonisms

The authority attached to revelation could also shape collective memory and obligations. After the acquittal of the men tried for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Brigham Young declared that vengeance for the prophets’ blood belonged to God and his people. Church authorities introduced an Oath of Vengeance into the temple endowment. Participants pledged to pray for vengeance and to teach that obligation to succeeding generations. The oath remained part of the standard ritual until 1927, when it was removed after its disclosure to the non-Mormon press provoked public and political criticism. In this episode, a sacred ceremony carried a historical grievance forward as a shared commitment.

The idea that revelation could continue also created conflicts over who was entitled to receive and interpret it. Dan Lafferty’s study of Mormon history led him to believe that the modern church had gone astray by abandoning plural marriage under government pressure. He used scripture to argue against government requirements such as licenses, taxes, and Social Security numbers, treating them as incursions on individual freedom. His self-directed religious convictions illustrate how restorationist claims could be taken up beyond the authority of an established church. In a separate episode, the School of the Prophets expected a member’s revelation to be evaluated by the other members. When Ron Lafferty presented his removal revelation to Bernard Brady, Brady rejected it as wrong; neither man raised it with the group at the meeting that followed. The scene contrasts private certainty with communal discernment, without resolving the larger question of what makes a claimed revelation authoritative.

The book’s account of Mormonism therefore moves between a cohesive religious community and competing claims within it. Shared scripture and sacred history can bind believers across generations, as the pageant and the migration’s remembered hardships demonstrate. Yet the same inheritance can be invoked to contest institutional decisions, defend plural marriage, or claim authority against both church and state. Mormonism’s history, as presented here, is shaped by that unresolved tension: a faith centered on continuing revelation, whose believers must repeatedly decide who speaks for God and what obligations follow from that claim.