Binding Earth and Heaven: Patriarchal Blessings in the Prophetic Development of Early Mormonism

Introduction

introduction With a current official membership of more than 14,000,000 worldwide, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS Church) is one of the fastest-growing religious denominations in the United States as well as in numerous other countries.1 Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, the capital city of a staunchly Republican state, the LDS Church is widely known for its advocacy of wholesome lifestyles, traditional gender roles, and conservative family values. Two Mormon former state governors— Mitt Romney (Massachusetts) and John Huntsman (Utah)—vied as Republican Party candidates for President of the United States in 2011, with Romney emerging by the spring of 2012 as the presumptive Republican nominee (after an earlier failed attempt in 2008).2 A mere century and a quarter ago, however, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ezra B. Taylor of Ohio denounced the ‘‘Mormon menace’’ in unequivocal language: An earnest, resolute, and even fanatical people have taken possession of one of the large Territories of the Union, seized upon the public domain, organized and established a church which absorbs as well as controls the state . . . and made it not an empire in an empire, but the empire itself . . . This people and this church defy the moral sense of the civilized world and are of necessity antagonistic to the principles and institution of the Republic. . . . They defy such laws as thwart their needs and interests, and the time has arrived when it must be decided whether they rule or obey.3 PAGE 1 ................. 18278$ INTR 08-30-12 08:36:21 PS 2 binding earth and heaven The 1887 deliberations of the Edmunds-Tucker Bill—punitive anti-polygamy legislation, which Congressman Taylor was advocating—signaled the culmination of several decades of intense political struggle between the United States government and the Utah LDS Church. Beginning in the early 1830s, the ‘‘Mormons’’ had undergone years of intense opposition in the Midwestern states of Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois; thirteen years prior to the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War they had fled to the Rocky Mountains in search of religious refuge. Following a period of relative tranquility and insular theocracy in the Utah Territory, an expeditionary force of the United States Army was dispatched in 1857 to depose Brigham Young as territorial governor and reinforce federal executive and judicial authority among the supposedly rebellious Mormons. By the late nineteenth century, Mormonism was universally despised and had become the target of an unprecedented national campaign to extirpate polygamy and the theocratic institutions of the LDS Church. In the American South, especially, the means employed against the ‘‘Mormon menace’’ included not only legislation and religion but also vigilante violence directed against Mormon missionaries who dared preach their heretical faith in Southern states. In his study of second-generation Mormonism ’s relationship to postbellum America, Patrick Mason makes the case that anti-Mormonism became an important cultural mechanism for reconciling the North and South following the Civil War by uniting nominally decent, God-fearing citizens in both regions of the country against what was increasingly portrayed by politicians, clergymen, and the mass media as a malignant religious tumor on the body of Christian America.4 It is doubtful that the history of any other American religion surpasses the sustained conflict and opposition, often involving violence or the threat of violence, which the Latter-day Saints had to overcome before firmly establishing the legitimacy of their religious faith. the problem of commitment in heretical new religions In the face of fierce opposition by established religious traditions and secular authorities—opposition that often includes extralegal violence as well as relentless legal prosecutions—we may ask, How do heretical new religions sustain their resilience and the resolute commitment of their members? By ‘‘heretical,’’ of course, we do not mean intrinsically wrong PAGE 2 ................. 18278$ INTR 08-30-12 08:36:21 PS introduction 3 or wicked. We simply mean doctrines and corresponding practices that are at variance with the authority of established orthodoxies.5 It will not do to simply say that such groups consist of deluded fanatics in the thrall of egomaniacal leaders. This explains very little.6 Embattled new religions that endure, and even flourish over time, must effectively appeal to the religious aspirations of some segment of what Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge call a ‘‘religious economy.’’7 An active religious economy can exist when...