Mormon Principle of Obedience to Church Authority

The Mormon Principle of Obedience to Church Authority makes hierarchical leadership and revelation from above central to religious life. The book presents it both as an institutional foundation of Mormonism and as a recurring source of conflict: the authority that binds a community can be challenged when an individual claims a direct command from God, or when rival believers dispute who has the right to lead.

Institutional Authority and Collective Survival

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is described as founded on obedience to hierarchical authority and confidence in revelation from above. Its supreme leader’s official title joins the roles of president, prophet, seer, and revelator, expressing the close connection between ecclesiastical office and the claim to divine guidance. In this account, obedience is not merely a rule for individual conduct; it is a principle through which religious authority is organized and maintained.

The book places that principle in the conditions of the American frontier, where cooperation could be essential to survival. In a setting where people might have to depend on one another to endure, collective discipline could seem necessary rather than simply opposed to individual freedom. The account argues that this inheritance of survival helps explain why obedience remained important to Mormon institutions across generations, even as the Church expanded and its public image changed.

Personal Revelation and the Limits of Church Control

Joseph Smith initially urged his followers to seek direct impressions from God and to let them guide their lives. This emphasis distinguished the new religion from churches in which religious truth was more thoroughly filtered through established institutional hierarchies. Personal revelation was also popular because it promised an intimate, direct relationship with God.

That invitation created a problem for centralized authority. If members could receive divine direction for themselves, they might receive teachings that contradicted Joseph Smith’s, raising the question of why his revelations should prevail. In 1830, the year the Church was incorporated, Joseph Smith announced a revelation reserving the right to receive commandments and revelations concerning the Church to himself. Yet the practice of personal revelation had already taken hold. Members continued to heed what they understood as God’s guidance, including on theological questions, even after the restriction was announced. The book links this unresolved tension to the continuing emergence of splinter groups: a prophet might claim institutional authority, but believers who considered a competing message divine could regard it as superior.

Authority as a Boundary Between Communities

The principle also operated through the boundaries drawn between the faithful and those outside the community. In the account of the Book of Mormon’s appeal, religious belonging is presented in sharply opposed terms: the world is divided between the Church of the Lamb of God and the church of the devil. That division lends force to obedience by making religious allegiance a matter of choosing between good and evil, rather than simply accepting one institution among others.

The conflict in Jackson County illustrates how these claims could shape relations with outsiders. Mormon immigrants regarded the area as divinely appointed for their gathering and saw themselves as God’s chosen people. Many local residents, already concerned by the newcomers’ political and economic practices, regarded the assertion of a divine right to the land as a threat. Joseph Smith’s teaching that people could choose whether to side with the Lord or with wickedness reinforced the moral division: those who rejected the Saints’ understanding of God’s plan were not treated as merely unconvinced neighbors.

At Nauvoo, the relationship between religious and civic power took a more formal shape. The city’s charter gave Joseph Smith unusual sovereign powers, and the book describes Nauvoo as a theocratic principality with Joseph at its head. He was officially installed as ruler over Israel on earth and commanded the Nauvoo Legion, a disciplined militia. The episode shows how a claim to religious leadership could extend into the governance and defense of a community, placing spiritual authority alongside civic and military power.

Competing Revelations in the Lafferty Circle

The conflict between obedience to leaders and obedience to personal revelation becomes especially clear in the experiences of Ron Lafferty, Dan Lafferty, and Onias. Ron first entered a meeting of his brothers’ religious-political discussions after Dianna urged him to intervene. He brought an essay from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints warning against fundamentalism and urging members to follow Spencer W. Kimball. As the discussion continued, Dan defended his own conclusions from scripture and the Constitution. Ron arrived as a defender of the institutional Church but, within hours, accepted Dan’s position that the Church had gone wrong.

Later, Onias appointed Ron bishop of the School of the Prophets’ Provo chapter, after revelations had identified the Lafferty brothers as chosen. The appointment placed Ron inside a new hierarchy and gave him formal responsibility in the group. But it did not settle who possessed the highest authority. During a dispute over the school’s practices and leadership, Ron presented a revelation that he wanted the members to assess. When most of those present rejected it, Ron, Dan, and Watson Lafferty left the meeting. They treated the revelation as more compelling than the judgment of the school and its prophet, while Onias’s followers refused to accept it as divine instruction.

The episode exposes the difficulty inherent in a community that encourages dialogue with God while also expecting obedience to a recognized leader. A prophet’s authority depends in part on followers accepting that authority, but the same followers may believe they have received a command that requires them to disobey him. In the Lafferty circle, the disagreement was not resolved by a shared institutional rule: the competing claims of revelation and leadership instead divided the group. A member of the school, Bernard Brady, was sufficiently concerned that Ron might act on the revelation to make a formal affidavit recording his worry.

Succession, Schism, and the Principle’s Consequences

The same problem appears in disputes over succession among Mormon fundamentalist groups. After John Y. Barlow’s death, Joseph Musser became a leader, but his debilitating strokes left him reliant on Rulon Allred, whom he named as his second elder and heir apparent. Others considered LeRoy Johnson the rightful successor, citing Barlow’s earlier specification. After Musser died, the movement divided: Johnson led the larger group that remained in Short Creek, while Allred led the Apostolic United Brethren in the Salt Lake Valley. The dispute turned on more than personal preference; it concerned which claim to authority, and which line of succession, followers should recognize.

A later succession crisis followed LeRoy Johnson’s death in 1986. Rulon Jeffs took leadership, but his right to succeed Johnson was contested by followers of Marion Hammon. Nearly a third of the community left and formed the Second Ward across the highway from the original church. Each group denounced the other as apostate. The division shows how a principle that calls for obedience to legitimate religious authority cannot, by itself, determine who is legitimate when the community disagrees about succession.

Across these episodes, hierarchical obedience supplies a means of cohesion, while personal revelation and contested succession repeatedly open space for rival authority. The book’s account does not reduce the principle to a single effect: it connects collective discipline with the demands of communal survival, but also shows how claims of divine authority can compete, fracture institutions, and turn disagreements over leadership into lasting divisions.