History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)
The Latter Day Saint movement is a religious
movement within Christian Restorationism beginning in the early 19th
century that led to the set of doctrines, practices,
and cultures which are informally called
Mormonism, and to the existence of numerous
Latter Day Saint churches. However, Latter-day
Saints believe that the church was only restored in
the 19th century and that it is the same church that
Christ organized during His earthy ministry and
indeed has the same priesthood authority as was
given to Adam. The movements history has been
characterized by intense controversy and persecution
because of this religion's growth and in reaction to
some of the movement's doctrines and practices,
which are unique within Christianity.
The founder of the movement was
Joseph Smith, Jr., who was was born in 1805 in the
town of Sharon, Windsor county, Vermont, and raised in the Burned-over
district of upstate New York. He reported seeing
God the Father and Jesus Christ, as well as angels
and other visions, eventually leading him to a
restoration of Christian doctrine that, he said, was
lost after the early Christian apostles were killed.
In addition, several early leaders made marked
doctrinal and leadership contributions to the
movement, including Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon,
and Brigham Young. Modern-day revelation from God
continues to be a principal belief of the Mormon
faith.
The Latter Day Saint movement
arose in western New York, the area where its
founder Joseph Smith, Jr. was raised, during a
period of religious revival in the early 19th
century called the Second Great Awakening. This
"awakening" was a Christian response to the
secularism of the Age of Enlightenment, and extended
throughout the United States, particularly the frontier areas
of the west. In Joseph Smiths own words, "there was
in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on
the subject of religion. It commenced with the
Methodists, but soon became general among all the
sects in that region of country. Indeed, the whole
district of country seemed affected by it, and great
multitudes united themselves to the different
religious parties, which created no small stir and
division amongst the people, some crying, "Lo,
here!" and others, "Lo, there!" Some were contending
for the Methodist faith, some for the Presbyterian,
and some for the Baptist."
A significant early event in this
Second Great Awakening was a large camp meeting that
took place in 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in which
participants exhibited charismatic "gifts" such as
glossolalia, prophecy, and heavenly visions. This
was contrary to the traditional Christian view that
charismatic experiences had ended with the Apostles,
the idea that modern Christians could experience
charismatic "gifts" such as visions became a common
theme in these revivals. Joseph Smith's father,
Joseph Smith, Sr. said he had several visions or
dreams, as had Smith's paternal and maternal
grandfathers.
Another significant strand of
religious thought that became important to the Latter
Day Saint movement was the Restoration Movement,
primarily influenced by Barton W. Stone (who
participated in the Cane Ridge revival), and
Alexander Campbell, who joined Stone in 1824 in
Ohio. Stone and Campbell believed that the division
among Christian sects had been caused by a Great
Apostasy (or falling away) from the original
teachings of Jesus, and that the correct principles
of Christianity could be re-established by
"restoring" practices described in the New
Testament. The Restorationists also intended to
eliminate sectarianism, arguing that there should be
only one Christian church, which should be called
the "Church of Christ."
The Movement's Historical Context
While these
restorationist ideas were circulating in the western
frontier, the family of Joseph Smith, Jr. was living
in western New York, where they attended many of the
local revivals. During this time, the area was
seeing so many Christian revivals that western New
York's most well-known revivalist Charles Grandison
Finney later dubbed the area the "Burned-Over
District". Because of a lack of clergy from
established churches, this area was unusually open
to religious innovations, new movements, and social
experiments such as religious communism.
The people of western
New York, like the rest of the United States at the
time, were also influenced by folk religion. The
fathers of both Joseph Smith, Jr. and Oliver Cowdery
were reported to have used divining rods, though not
by those within the LDS church. Joseph Smith
reportedly used seer stones, which he used after his
First Vision of Jesus Christ. People of the time
used such rods and stones in various ways, including
to locate underground water, to find lost items, to
locate buried treasure or mineral mines, as part of
religious or magic rituals, or to communicate with
spirits or angels. Until about the 1830s, the use of
such divining media, even as a profession, was
thought by many, though not all, as "honorable and
profitable employment". (Palmyra Herald, July 24,
1822)
Origins of the
Movement
The early men and women who came
together to form what became known as the
Latter Day Saint movement, shared some beliefs in
common with other Restorationists, but certain
factors made them unique. Although the movements
shared a belief in the need to "restore" the "true
church" of Jesus Christ, the early Latter Day Saints
also believed that direct authority from God was essential for such a restoration to be
valid.
The movement's early
charismatic experiences
The beginning of Mormonism centers
around a number of early charismatic experiences
with the heavenly and the spiritual by Joseph Smith,
Jr. and his associates. Many of these experiences,
such as visions, visits from angels, prophecy, and
the hearing of God's voice, are still common parts
of charismatic Christianity.
Smith's first vision
Most
Latter Day Saints trace the most important event of
modern Mormonism
to Joseph Smith's First Vision, which he said he had
in about 1820 in the woods near his home. Joseph
describe the event this way:
During
this time of great excitement my mind was called up to
serious reflection and great uneasiness; but though my
feelings were deep and often poignant, still I kept
myself aloof from all these parties, though I attended
their several meetings as often as occasion would
permit. In process of time my mind became somewhat
partial to the Methodist sect, and I felt some desire to
be united with them; but so great were the confusion and
strife among the different denominations, that it was
impossible for a person young as I was, and so
unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain
conclusion who was right and who was wrong...
In the
midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I
often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all
these parties are right; or, are they all wrong
together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and
how shall I know it?
While I
was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by
the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one
day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and
fifth verse, which reads:
If any of you lack wisdom,
let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally,
and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Never
did any passage of scripture come with more power to the
heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It
seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of
my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing
that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for
how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more
wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the
teachers of religion of the different sects understood
the same passages of scripture so differently as to
destroy all confidence in settling the question by an
appeal to the Bible.
At
length I came to the conclusion that I must either
remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as
James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to
the determination to "ask of God," concluding that if he
gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give
liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture.
So, in
accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I
retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the
morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring
of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in
my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all
my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray
vocally.
After I
had retired to the place where I had previously designed
to go, having looked around me, and finding myself
alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires
of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when
immediately I was seized upon by some power which
entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing
influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could
not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it
seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden
destruction.
But,
exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me
out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me,
and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into
despair and abandon myself to destructionnot to an
imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being
from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I
had never before felt in any beingjust at this moment of
great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my
head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended
gradually until it fell upon me.
It no
sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the
enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me
I saw two ersonages, whose brightness and glory defy all
description, standing above me in the air. One of them
spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to
the other 'This
is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!'
Joseph was told that all Christian
denominations had become corrupt and that he should join
none of them. If the events of the First Vision are true, it
provides great insights to the nature of God. There were
two personages, the Father and the Son.
Each had a body of flesh and bone. They knew Joseph well,
calling him by name.
Within the context of early 19th
century
America, the
First Vision was nothing unique. There are
records of others of the day who had similar visions
in which they were told that all churches were
corrupt; however, the sectarian clergy vigorously
opposed such visions, as Smith reports they did of
his own vision.
