INTERFAITH  ETIQUETTE  GUIDE    Dalai Lama's Letter    Links    RELIGION IN THE NEWS    Contact Us

M0RM0NISM

Mormonism is a generic term for the religious society established by Joseph Smith Jr. in the early 1800s in upstate New York. The term is most appropriately applied to the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which used the nickname "The Mormon Church" in many of its radio and television commercials in the 1980s.  A better general category of religious organizations which trace their heritage to Joseph Smith Jr. would be the "Latter Day Saint movement."

Some of the denominations which trace their roots to the church established by Joseph Smith Jr. in the 1830s include the best-known Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah); the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Independence, Missouri); and several other, smaller organizations. Each of these denominations is unique and independent of the others.

Joseph Smith Jr. and others formally incorporated a church in the state of New York on April 6, 1830. This culminated a ten-year long religious journey which began with a teenage Joseph Smith Jr.'s seeking the "right" church. Various accounts of his "first vision" survive, the best-known being the account in which Smith declares God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him and commanded him to organize a church. This account is foundational to the Utah-based LDS Church, as well as many of the other Latter Day Saint organizations. The RLDS Church, however, has been moving toward an interpretation of Joseph's vision as a personal faith experience rather than an absolute theological statement of the nature of the Trinity.

After his first vision, Smith began telling of other heavenly beings who began to appear, directing him to a hill near his home in upstate New York.  At this hill, Smith said he found a set of metal plates "having the appearance of gold" on which was engraved the religious history of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas. This record was translated by Smith through the "gift and power of God" and was published only days before the incorporation of the church in 1830. The Book of Mormon is used as Scripture by most Latter Day Saints and is seen as fundamental to the faith in a majority of the Latter Day Saint churches. There are notable differences of opinion regarding the book's historicity, however, mostly in the ranks of the RLDS Church, where a growing number of persons no longer view the Book of Mormon as a historical document, except as can be applied to early nineteenth-century frontier America.

Mormonism has a long history of persecution, beginning in Joseph Smith's youth, and continuing in some areas to the present day.   During his lifetime, Smith was accused of being a charlatan and on more than one occasion had to flee for his life. The early history of the Latter Day Saint Church describes difficulties in Missouri, where the "Mormons" were abolitionist Yankees from New England and were driven from their colonies in that state, finally, by decree from the governor calling for their removal or extermination.

Settling on the Mississippi River in Illinois, Joseph Smith led his people in a great frontier community building effort at Nauvoo. Once rivaling Chicago for commerce and industry as well as population, Nauvoo came crashing down in the months following Joseph Smith's assassination while in protective custody at the county jail in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844. By February 1846, Mormon residents of Nauvoo were abandoning their homes and fleeing westward to territories unknown under the leadership of Brigham Young, while church members in other places watched and waited.

Joseph Smith Jr.'s death launched the infant church into a chaotic struggle for power. Numerous prominent leaders in the church claimed authority, and more than two-dozen different groups emerged from the breakup at Nauvoo. A twenty-year-long period of fragmentation ensued. Many faithful Latter Day Saints refused to follow Brigham Young to what became Utah. Others, putting their faith in one leader or another, found other gathering places or simply remained in the towns and villages across the frontier and continued with local church activity, waiting for some indication as to which leader they should follow.

                Six different churches survived the fragmentation period and continue to the present day. These six include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, originally led by Brigham Young, and currently based in Salt Lake City, Utah; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Strangite), originally led by James J. Strang, and based in Burlington, Wisconsin; the Church of Jesus Christ, founded by Alpheus Cutler, and based in Independence, Missouri; the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, led by Joseph Smith III, and based in Independence, Missouri; the Church of Jesus Christ, founded by William Bickerton, and based in Monongahela, Pennsylvania; and the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), organized by Granville Hedrick, and based in Independence, Missouri.

                The foundation of the Latter Day Saint movement was the Book of Mormon. This book was used by the earliest missionaries to recruit new members. Most of the Latter Day Saint churches still consider the Book of Mormon as part of the scriptural canon.

                The LDS Church maintains a view of the Trinity that is at odds with traditional Christian belief. They hold that the Father was once a man who lived on another planet Earth and, because of his obedience to the god of that Earth, was himself elevated to a god, and then created this Earth. Jesus, then, was the literal offspring of Mary and God. James Strang and his followers rejected any notion of the Virgin Birth, and believed that Jesus earned his divinity because of his willingness to bear the burdens of the sins of humanity. The RLDS Church holds to a traditional Christian theology of the Trinity, which places them at odds with most of the other Latter Day Saint denominations, as well as some of the later theology taught by Joseph Smith Jr.

                The LDS Church has the most highly developed liturgy of any Latter Day Saint church. This liturgy is expressed through the ceremonies conducted in its temples. The LDS Church has an ever-growing number of temples throughout the world. These are special places that, in fact, are not generally open on Sunday when faithful members will be found worshipping in their local churches. In the temples, faithful members participate in ceremonies that bestow upon them the necessary covenants to obtain salvation. The majority of the ceremonies in the temple are conducted on behalf of deceased persons, in accordance with LDS belief that the LDS Church alone has the authority to represent God and perform baptisms, ordinations, et cetera, that are acknowledged by God. Alpheus Cutler's church retains a temple cultus, but conducts the ceremonies only for its living male members. No other details about the ceremony have ever been made public.

                The RLDS Church completed and dedicated a temple in Independence, Missouri, on April 17, 1994. Unlike the LDS Church, the RLDS temple is not a place where sacramental ceremonies will be conducted, except for the Eucharist. It is rather a focal point for world peace--a sacred place in which education and mediation can be conducted for building interpersonal relations, as well as community building for the entire world. This is, admittedly, the dream and hope of the RLDS leaders and faithful. The facility and its programs are still in their infancy. However, unlike other Latter Day Saint churches, the RLDS Church stands alone in acknowledging the ecumenicity of all Christians and recently adopted a policy that permits all Christians to partake of the Eucharist.

                While most Latter Day Saints today still cling tenaciously to the early view that Joseph Smith Jr. was in fact restoring a church that was identical in structure, practice, and theology to the church established by Christ, the RLDS Church interprets "restoration" in an ongoing relational sense--a process of trying to bring God and humanity back into the righteous relationship that was intended. No longer does the RLDS Church hold that it alone is God's authorized church, The LDS Church is noted for its army of young missionaries who serve voluntarily for eighteen months (for females) to two years (for males) in more than one hundred nations. The LDS Church has also developed a somewhat

distinctive architecture for its local church buildings.

                The LDS Church dealt for many years with its controversial policy of polygamy, finally suspending its practice in 1890 in order to avert the wrath of the United States government and total financial collapse of the church. This spawned an underground polygamy movement, which is still quite active in Utah and surrounding areas. The LDS Church expels any of its members known to be practicing polygamy.

--STEVEN L. SHIELDS

Excerpted from The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects and New Religions Edited by James R. Lewis  published by  <a>href= www.prometheusbooks.com>Prometheus Books</a>

<a href="http://www.mormons.org/">Official information about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons)</a>

<a href="http://www.lds.org/">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a>http://www.rlds.org

<a href="http://www.cofchrist.org/">Community of Christ Official Homepage</a>

References

Arrington, Leonard J., and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979,

Blair, Alma R. "The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: Moderate Mormons." In The Restoration Movement:   Essays  in  Mormon   History. Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1973.

Launius, Roger D. Joseph Smith II1: Pragmatic Prophet. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinos Press, 1988.

Ludlow, Daniel  H.  Encyclopedia of Mormonism. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Shepard, Gordon, and Gary Shepard. A Kingdora Transformed: Themes in the Development of Mormonism. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984. Shipps, Jan. Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985.