Part 2 of 3
Fawn Brodie, referring to the work of psychiatrist Phyllis Greenacre, has argued that Joseph Smith should not be considered exclusively as a conscious fraud, but ought rather to be classified as an imposter in psychoanalytic terms. The present writer would argue, based on first-hand experience of charismatic leaders, that Joseph Smith probably relied on a form of mental self-management which can be labeled as "multiple personality order." 61 Significant parts of his psyche remained those of a failed village necromancer, but these coexisted with the personality of the charismatic Prophet of God assigned to conquer the world. Certain aspects of Joseph Smith's behavior indicate that he was able to control which of these personalities was on display. An important piece of evidence in this regard comes from the documented moments of self-awareness, in which Joseph Smith momentarily, and not without self-deprecating humor, revealed some interior distance between his apocalyptic and megalomaniac outward pretensions, and how he actually felt about himself.
Multiple personalities would be coherent with so much about Joseph Smith. In cosmology, he asserted the infinite plurality of worlds. In theology, he was an aggressive polytheist. In his personal life, he was polygamous. Many worlds, many gods, many wives, many personalities.
Asked about how he could exercise so much power, Joseph slyly replied: "In your hands or that of any other man, so much power would, no doubt, be dangerous. I am the only man in the world whom it would be safe to trust it with. Remember, I am a prophet!" The remarkable thing was that this last sentence was delivered "in a 'rich, comical aside, as if in hearty recognition of the ridiculous sound they might have in the ears of a Gentile." [62]
On another occasion, the Prophet was visited by the significant British agent, Edwin de Leon, who went on to become a mainstay of the Confederate foreign service. De Leon asked Joseph about the attractive females he observed going in and out of the Prophet's dwelling. Joseph said that these were his nieces. De Leon expressed some skepticism. Then, "There was a slight twinkle in the prophetic eye, as he poked me in the ribs with his forefinger, and rebuked me, exclaiming, 'Oh, the carnal mind, the carnal mind!' and I thought it discreet not to press the subject." [63] (Hirshson, pp. 44-45) On another occasion, the Prophet confessed to an associate, "Whenever I see a pretty woman, I have to pray for grace."
This cynical self-awareness also extended to the dialectical relationship between the Prophet and his cult following. At a Mormon gathering where Joseph Smith was introducing the Whig politician Cyrus Walker, Joseph commented to him: "These are the greatest dupes, as a body of people, that ever lived, or I am not so big a rogue as I am reported to be." [64]
But now, in the last several years ofthe Mormon Pompeii in Illinois, the results of polygamy were coming home to roost. At the April 1842 church conference, both Joseph and his brother Hyrum had to issue another denial of polygamy. Responding to charges that top Mormons had tried to convince a girl to become a plural wife, the Prophet declared that "no person that is acquainted with our principles would believe such lies." When Joseph was asked similar questions by influential Mormon leaders, he had to admit that the charges were true. But he claimed that he had heard bad things about the girl, and was testing her virtue. (Hirshson, p. 44)
Joseph Smith received decisive help from Brigham Young in convincing the Mormon Saints that polygamy was divinely ordained. Brigham Young asserted that Adam was Elohim, the Mormon Jehovah, and that humanity had been divinely commanded to live under seven dispensations or divine plans for human affairs. The final dispensation was the one borne by Joseph Smith. According to Brigham Young, Joseph Smith's publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830 was a sign of the end time, in part because it came 1,260 years after the Roman Catholic Church had become degenerate in 570 AD. Mormons associate this state with the centralizing activity of St. Gregory the Great, who extended a church administration over much of Christendom. The Catholic Church, needless to say, Brigham reviled as the Whore of Babylon. The year 570 AD also marks the birth of the Prophet Mohammed. In addition, the Mormons assert that at this time the Holy Grail was definitively lost. But the resulting corruption of God's Word in a universe where God's priesthood had become extinct had now ended, and the time was now right for the second coming of Christ. The beginning of the final dispensation brought with it fundamental changes, including the imperative of polygamy. In addition, the Mormons stressed the doctrine that God/Elohim/Jehovah/Adam had once been human, but had advanced to the level of divinity with the help of his faithful wife Eve. (Hirshson, p. 46)
Heaven was therefore imagined by the Mormons as a community centering on a complex of allied oligarchical families whose leaders were carrying on polygamy. Durkheim and Feuerbach might easily see in this a religious concept which in fact involves the naiVe projection of human social relations onto the plane of the divine. The Mormon heaven was a kind of Olympian pantheon based on polygamy, understood as the highest expression of oligarchical and patriarchal power. It was polylatrism [65] and polytheism. And polytheism, when it arises in the context of Western civilization, must be seen as paganism.
The Mormon leader Lorenzo Young summed up this proposition with a pithy aphorism: "As man is, God once was; and as God is, man may become." This went beyond notions of theosis, divination, or deification. It went beyond the mystics' quest for direct communion with the divine. If Horatio Alger had become rich and powerful on earth based on a philosophy of ceaseless striving onward and upward, what could such a greedy, carnal radical subjectivist hope for in the other world? He obviously could hope to become a god, or even to become the God. His ambition might include the ability to rule over larger and larger planets, and to cavort with a more and more numerous harem of goddess wives, engendering infinite numbers of divine offspring who could themselves rule over new planetary empires. People who thought that the religious opinions of George W. Bush were disturbing may soon be confronted by a reality of a far greater order of magnitude.
Under Joseph Smith, polygamy tended to be reserved for the top leaders. The women were told that these celestial relations were a sure ticket to paradise for them. (Brodie, p. 297)
"Neque nubent," said St. Paul according to the Latin Vulgate -- the souls in heaven do not marry. [66] This was not good enough for Joseph Smith, who thus demonstrated once again that his doctrine was alien to Christianity. In the words of Mitt Romney's ancestor Parley Pratt, "'the result of our endless union would be offspring as numerous as were the stars of heaven, or the sands of the seashore."' [67] (Brodie, pp. 299-300) The Romney family tradition is thus polytheism with a vengeance.
On the other hand, those who failed to yield to the polygamous imperative would not fare well. A man who was sealed (Mormon-speak for married) to only a single wife would be separated from her in heaven as she was given to a polygamist as a reward. The man would be doomed to spend eternity as a ministering angel, a kind of heavenly flunky, forced to carry out the orders of the true polygamous elect. (Brodie, p. 300)
In one of his celestial courtships which started in 1834, Joseph Smith was able to convince a woman to become his polygamous bride based on his fanciful allegation that an angel was threatening his life in case the union were not consummated. Joseph said he was terrified, because the angel had visited him three times, and the last time with an unsheathed sword. (Brodie, p. 303) In another case, Joseph Smith informed the object of his affections that, if she did not yield to him immediately, the door of paradise would forever slam shut in her face. He also threatened Emma with the divine revelation that, if she did not cooperate with this celestial hanky-panky, she would be "destroyed."
Since it was the Victorian age, resistance to polygamy came from many quarters. Joseph Smith was on bad terms with his brothers, and one of them, Don Carlos Smith, vigorously opposed polygamy. In 1841, he stated his conviction that "Any man who will preach and practice spiritual wifery will go to hell, no matter if it is my brother Joseph." [68]
Joseph tried to seduce Sarah M. Kimball, the wife of his top lieutenant Heber Kimball, in 1842, but she rebuffed him, telling him to teach the concept to somebody else. However, she kept his unwelcome celestial advances a secret from the Welfare Society, the principal Mormon ladies auxiliary. He made an attempt on Mrs. Orson Pratt, who also declined, and did tell a few friends.
A watershed case was that of an intelligent eighteen-year-old English girl, Martha Brotherton, whom Joseph Smith and Brigham Young lured into a room above Joseph's general store and then tried to browbeat into becoming the celestial spouse of Brother Brigham. If she accepted, Brigham Young promised her a passport to paradise, adding that the union could be consummated immediately and she could go home, so that her parents need know nothing of this celestial liaison. (Brodie, p. 306-07)
Martha Brotherton said she needed to go home and pray, but when she had escaped the clutches of the two holy satyrs, she informed her parents and proceeded to write an account of the attempted celestial seduction. She escaped with her father and mother via steam boat to St. Louis, where Martha's account was published in the St. Louis Bulletin of July 15, 1842, and was soon widely copied by the national press. (Brodie, p. 307) Kimball and Brigham Young issued denials in defense of Joseph. Martha had two sisters who were induced by the Saints to swear in public that Martha was a liar and a harlot.
Interestingly for us today, one of these two cruel sisters, Elizabeth Brotherton, soon married Parley Parker Pratt, Mitt Romney's great-great grandfather. In one of her love letters to Parley, Elizabeth Brotherton wrote on April 20, 1842 that her own faith was intact, but that her sister Martha had been spreading "falsehoods of the basest kind." In atransparent celestial proposition of her own, Elizabeth Brotherton told Parley·' I believe it is your privilege" to see how sincere our faith really was. She added: "Oh! How I long to see you and enjoy your society, and unbosom all my care to yoU."69 After Martha had died in 1886, Elizabeth caused Martha's children, who had predeceased her, to be sealed to the departed Brigham Young. Martha had courageously resisted Brigham's theocratic bullying, yet this did not prevent her sister from giving the Mormon Moses custody of Martha's children. This is another instructive example of Romney family values.
MORMON ABORTIONSIn the meantime, John C. Bennett had been using the celestial marriage argument to seduce large numbers of young women. Bennett had also been promising abortions on demand to the women he approached. "Zeruiah N. Goddard, repeating the gossip of Sarah Pratt, reported that 'Dr. Bennett told her he could cause abortion with perfect safety to the mother at any stage of pregnancy, and that he had frequently destroyed and removed infants before their time to prevent exposure of the parties and that he had instruments for that purpose."' [70] (Brodie, p. 311-12)
The beginning of the end for Joseph Smith came when he clashed with Bennett, who had become his rival for the affections of the attractive nineteen-year-old girl Nancy Rigdon, the daughter of Sidney Rigdon, the Mormon second-in-command. (Brodie, p. 310) Joseph alleged that Bennett was trying to get him accidentally shot while he was attending target practice with the Nauvoo Legion.
DEATH THREATS FROM JOSEPH SMITHBennett later alleged that when he came to see the Prophet in his office, Joseph had locked the door, pocketed the key, and pulled out a pistol. The Prophet then declared:
"The peace of my family requires that you should sign an affidavit, and make a statement before the next City Council, exonerating me from all participation whatever, whether directly or indirectly, in word or deed, in the spiritual wife doctrine, or private intercourse with females in general, and if you do not do it with apparent cheerfulness, I will make catfish bait of you, or deliver you to the Danites for execution tonight -- for my dignity and purity must and shall be maintained before the public." [71]
Bennett was soon expelled from the community of Saints. He retaliated by writing a lurid but partly factual account of his experiences in Mormondom, which was serialized in major newspapers, and then published as a widely read book, The History of the Saints (Boston, 1842). The New York Herald printed the installments of Bennett's The History of the Saints, and also censured them as 'obscene and licentious in the highest degree. '" (Brodie, p. 317) [72]
THE MORMON PLAN FOR A WESTERN EMPIRE EXPOSED, 1842One of Bennett's most important charges against Joseph Smith was that the Mormons intended to create a secessionist Confederation of Western states and territories, over which Joseph Smith would rule as the King. This puts the Mormon Prophet squarely in the tradition of the arch-traitor Aaron Burr, who had attempted to create his own breakaway Western Empire between 1804 and 1806, taking advantage of the weakness of the Thomas Jefferson administration and of the collusion of Burr's cousin Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury. This conspiracy had been sponsored by the British, who would also have been the beneficiaries of Joseph Smith's evolving Western plans. Bennett alleged that the Nauvoo Legion had already acquired 30 cannon and large quantities of small arms at the expense of the state of Illinois. (Brodie, p. 314) With 30 guns mounted in fortified emplacements on the bluffs at Nauvoo, the Mormons would have been able to block traffic on the Mississippi River in something of the way that the Confederates were later to do using the fortress of Vicksburg.
The Nauvoo Legion, said Bennett, had sworn the Danites oath and would obey the commands of the Prophet without question, no matter how illegal they were. Bennett also spoke of a super-secret inner elite within the Danites. These were the Destroying Angels, representing a kind of palace guard with the intelligence function of spying on the adversaries of the Prophet and murdering them, preferably at midnight, while wearing white robes and a red sash. (Brodie, p. 314-15)
JOSEPH SMITH'S REPUTATION IN RUINSOwing to Bennett's shocking revelations, coming as they did from a recognized top-level insider in the Mormon sect, the genie was now out of the bottle as far as Mormon abuses were concerned. The reputations of Joseph Smith and of the Mormons in general had now been irreparably damaged.
To make matters worse, during the summer of 1842, Joseph Smith was forced to evade capture on charges that he had been part of a recent attempt to assassinate former Governor Boggs of Missouri, the man who had issued the infamous extermination order against the Mormons. (Bushman. p. 468)
During the entire period from) 835 to 1852, Joseph Smith and the Mormons had vehemently denied the practice of polygamy, even as they systematically indulged themselves. The specious basis for these denials was in many cases a mere quibble: when they were asked about spiritual wives, plural marriage, or polygamy, the Mormons were able to lie convincingly because they told themselves that celestial marriage according to the ancient Order of Jacob was worlds apart from the vulgar practices about which they were being questioned. This was because the initiation of celestial relations was always supposed to be preceded by a solemn ceremony of sealing the bride, be it limited for time in this world, or be it extended to all eternity.
JOSEPH SMITH PREACHES HEDONISMJoseph Smith always argued a hedonistic theory of the world: the purpose of human existence, according to him, is the pleasure principle. As Fawn Brodie notes, the maxim that "Man is that he might have joy" represents one of the first "significant pronouncements in the Book of Mormon .... " Joseph Smith was working towards the polar opposite of the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards, but on the same empiricist and subjectivist plane. The result was an eclectic mix of science fiction, occultism, and materialism, promising a hedonistic heaven filled with eternal pride, power. money, and sex." [73]
As noted, in the spring of 1842, Joseph Smith became the rival of John C. Bennett for the favors of Nancy Rigdon, the daughter of Sydney Rigdon, who was theoretically the second ranking Mormon leader. Nancy had been warned by his rival that Joseph Smith was coming her way, so she burst into tears and threatened to scream unless Joseph Smith agreed to leave her alone. After Nancy Rigdon had rebuffed the celestial advances of Joseph Smith, the Prophet imprudently dictated a letter to her in which he expounded his hedonistic theory of the purpose of human existence: "happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it. ... " [74] Christianity, in contrast, has traditionally argued that the purpose of human existence is to carry out the will of God and to work for the greater glory of God. "Ad Maiorem gloriam dei" has been a favorite slogan of numerous Christian factions, and expresses the idea that the happiness of the individual is subordinated to the working out of God's plan of salvation. Mormonism is not Christian.
MORMONISM GOES FREEMASONICIt was during the time in Nauvoo that the already implicitly Masonic character of Mormonism became heavily accentuated. The temple endowment, or liturgy for divine services in the temple, was heavily larded with freemasonic symbols, gestures, secret oaths, handshakes, secret names, and the like. The famous temple garments or magic underwear are evidently related to the freemasonic apron, and the garments carry symbols and hex signs designed to facilitate the ingress of the wearer to Paradise. The Nauvoo Temple was also heavily festooned with freemasonic symbols and artifacts. At the time of his assassination in the Carthage jai I in 1844, Joseph Smith attempted to secure help from freemasons on the scene by raising his extended arms above his head and reciting the freemasonic SOS of "Oh Lord my God, is there no help for the widow's son?" Joseph Smith was said to have been simultaneously promoted through all thirty-three degrees of the freemasonic hierarchy, evidently thanks to the fact that Mormons had seized control of the Illinois freemasonic lodges. Later, other freemasons are said to have put the Illinois lodges into receivership and replaced them with their own appointees. Joseph Smith was said to carry with him at all times the so-called "Jupiter Talisman," a kind of amulet to which he attributed supernatural powers. All of these elements point unmistakably to the fact that Mormonism had long since become a separate religion, not to be confused with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. And we should bear in mind that the mother lodges of freemasonry were located in London.
THE KING FOLLETT FUNERAL SERMONOn April 7, 1844 Joseph Smith addressed the conference of the Mormon Church and in his speech recalled the recent death of a Mormon stalwart by the name of King Follett, who had been killed in a construction accident. This sermon represents one of the most important statements of Joseph Smith's theology during the last days of his life. [75] The theme was the nature of God, and how God came to be God. Posing the question "what kind of being is God? Does any man or woman know?" Joseph Smith answered that "God himself was once as we are now, and he is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible -- I say, if you were to see him today you would see him like a man in form -- like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man." Many religions have obvious anthropomorphic elements, but few so explicitly as this.
The central point of the sermon was this: "in order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see ... it is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea that God himself, the father of us all, dwelt on earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did, and I will show it from the Bible."
Joseph Smith's ontology, moreover, was explicitly polytheistic. He preached that "the head God called together the Gods and sat in grand council to bring forth the world. The grand counselors sat at the head in yonder heavens and contemplated the creation of the worlds which were created at that time." And again: "in the beginning, the head of the Gods called the Council of the gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it."
Joseph Smith's method was therefore to start from the beliefs and prejudices of his own mind, of his associates, and of his age, and to project them onto the plane of eternity. America was radically egalitarian, and heaven had to be the same. The Mormons were run by an oligarchy of committees, and heaven had to be the same. Joseph Smith had multiple personalities, and this implied that the universe had to be polytheistic.
For Bushman, the key point was that "God was one of the free intelligences who had learned to become God. The other free intelligences were to take the same path. (Bushman, pp. 534-35)
Smith elaborated: "You have got to learn how to make yourselves God, king and priest, by going from a small capacity to a great capacity to the resurrection of the dead to dwelling in everlasting burnings .... You have got to learn how to be a god yourself in order to save yourself -- to be priests & kings as all Gods have done -- by going from a small degree to another -- from exaltation to ex[altation] -- till they are able to sit in glory as with those who sit enthroned. [Christ said:] I do the things that I saw the father do when worlds came into existence. I saw the father work out a kingdom with fear & trembling & I can do the same & when I get my K[ingdom] work[ed out] I will present [it] to the father & it will exalt his glory and Jesus steps into his tracks to inherit what God did before." [76]
Bushman tries to argue that Joseph Smith has not created a polytheistic pantheon like the world of Greek mythology, because the free intelligences must be in harmony with the overall divine will. He sees a plurality of gods who have formed an infinite alliance, in the kind of idealized version of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. (Bushman, p. 535) Mormons generally do not like to be labeled as polytheistic.
Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker asked the late Prophet Hinckley whether Mormon theology was a form of polytheism.
"I don't have the remotest idea what you mean," Hinckley said impatiently.
"More than one god."
"Yes, but that's a very loose term," he replied. "We believe in eternal progression." By that he meant that human beings can evolve toward godhood by following the Mormon path. "You want to be a reporter always?" he said. "You want to be a scrub forever, through all eternity? We believe that life, eternal life, is real, that it's purposeful, that it has meaning, that it can be realized. I wouldn't describe us as polytheistic." [77]
Mormonism tries to escape the troubling paradox of free will and divine predestination and the clash between Erasmus and Luther on that score through means which resemble the Pelagian heresy. As Bushman comments, Joseph Smith "made individual persons radically free .... Rather than God being the sovereign creator of all things from nothing, He was the most intelligent of the free intelligences. The universe is a school for these free, self-existing intelligences .... This discourse envisioned a far different universe than the God-created universe of traditional Christian theology. The universe was composed of a congeries of intelligences and self-existent matter that God organized rather than made. He was bringing order out of chaos rather than making something from nothing." (Bushman, p. 535-6) Here again, the freemasonic influence is evident.
1843: JOSEPH SMITH ASKS CONGRESS FOR AUTONOMOUS MORMON THEOCRACY WITH POWER TO COMMAND FEDERAL TROOPSThe geopolitical designs of the Mormons had long been an object oflively speculation in the press. In 1841 New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett editorialized that "we should not be surprised if Joe Smith were made Governor of a new religious territory in the west, that may rival the Arabians one of these days." The Mormon Empire, thought Bennett, might "one day, control the whole valley of the Mississippi, from the peaks of the Alleghanies to the pinnacles of the Rocky Mountains." (Bushman, p. 518) This was in fact the direction in which Joseph Smith began to tend.
Joseph Smith now began to wander not just west, but into the wild blue yonder of acute megalomania. In December, 1843, he addressed a petition to Congress requesting that the Mormon city state of Nauvoo be made an autonomous Federal territory, something like a state, Commonwealth, or the District of Columbia. He also wanted the Nauvoo Legion to be federalized into the United States Army, with the mayor of Nauvoo [Joseph Smith] being in power to mobilize federal troops whenever he thought it necessary. The implication was that these troops would be fighting the state militia of places like Missouri or Illinois. Fawn Brodie saw this gesture as one of Joseph Smith's gravest political blunders. Under the Constitution, carving up the territory of any state was exceedingly difficult, and there was no way a majority could be found in Congress. In addition, the idea of carving a piece out of Illinois was guaranteed to create a backlash among any residual supporters of Mormondom that might still be found in Springfield. (Brodie, p. 356)
Sometime after April, 1843, Joseph Smith entered into a celestial marriage with Mary Ann Frost Pratt, the wife of Romney's ancestor Parley P. Pratt. On December 7, 1844 Mrs. Parley P. Pratt gave birth to a son named Moroni Pratt. Scholars like Fawn Brodie suggest that Moroni Pratt may have been a biological son of Joseph Smith. [78]
Part 3 of 3
1844: JOSEPH SMITH CREATES COUNCIL OF FIFTY, INSTRUMENT TO SEIZE POWER IN US AND WORLDBut Joseph Smith's manic political ambition did not stop here. In March 1844, he created a new political vehicle, which he called the Council of Fifty. The Council of Fifty was radically different from all of the governing bodies of the Mormon Church, because the Fifty were designed to include some token non-Mormons alongside the Saints. In other words, the Fifty were distinct from the Saints, and subsumed them. The Prophet was evidently aiming at a united front that would allow him to mobilize forces beyond the bounds of his own church. One thinks of the government of the now extinct German Democratic Republic, which allowed a significant if token presence of so-called "block parties" of liberals and Christian Democrats to be elected to the People's Chamber alongside an overpowering majority of Communists. The idea was to represent and mobilize these broader strata. Research is needed to examine the possible parallels between the Council of Fifty and the ruling body of the contemporary Chinese Taiping.
APRIL 11, 1844: COUNCIL OF FIFTY DECLARES JOSEPH SMITH "KING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD"Brodie regards the Council of Fifty as one of the best-kept secrets in the Mormondom. Bushman, certainly no adversary of the LDS, complains that, halfway through the first decade of the 21st century, the "council's original records are not available to researchers." It is known that one of their first actions was the coronation of Joseph Smith as "King of the Kingdom of God". Many of the components of the Fifty were just as imbued with the radical Jacksonian etiology of democracy as the subjects interviewed by de Tocqueville at around this time. And yet, here they were repudiating the bedrock of the American creed in favor of a temporal and celestial monarchy. They were similar to the dupes of Aaron Burr a generation before, but they compounded their crime by pretending that it was pleasing in the sight of God. (Brodie, pp. 356-57)
Apparently, the post of King of the Kingdom of God was an elective monarchy. In that April 11, 1844 meeting, one Mormon recorded, President Joseph "voted our P[rophet] P[riest] and K[ing] with loud Hosannas." According to Bushman, "the office of king came out of temple rituals where other Saints were anointed 'kings and priests .... " Joseph also acquired the title of "King and Ruler over Israel." At the same time, he remained chairman of the Council of Fifty. (Bushman, p. 523) Joseph Smith's theory of kingship appears to have been that of the sacral king rather than that of the absolute monarch known in Western Europe. His approach was closer to the Byzantine concept, and to caesaropapism. (Bushman, p. 524)
ROMNEY ANCESTOR PARLEY PRATT ENDORSES ONE WORLD GOVERNMENTThe Council of Fifty saw itself as the ·'the summit of all earthly powers." a universal empire. Mitt Romney's ancestor Parley Pratt wrote in April 1844 that the Council of Fifty represented "the most exalted Council with which our earth is at present Dignified" -- a one world government if there ever was one. When Joseph Smith declared his candidacy for president shortly after his apotheosis through the Fifty, Lyman Wight said to him, "You are already president pro tem of the world." (Bushman, pp. 520-21) Years later, Parley Pratt had a town in Utah named after him. This was Parley's Park. The name was later changed to Park City. Mitt Romney owns a palatial residence there. In late June 2012, when Romney wanted to gather his own Council of Fifty for a weekend of fundraising and strategizing, he gathered them in Parley's Park. This continuity points once again to the overwhelming importance of Mormon traditions in the way the current GOP candidate operates.
In the view of Hirshson, the Council of Fifty embodied "the earthly Kingdom of God, the organization destined to plan and control the westward migration ... the Kingdom was to prepare the world for the coming of God." As King of the Kingdom of God on Earth, Joseph Smith appointed fifty-three princes to assist him. "Unlike the Twelve and the Seventies, the Council of Fifty was an independent organization and theoretically had nothing to do with the Mormon hierarchy." But in reality, its leaders were the same people who controlled the church. The Council of Fifty became Smith's election committee for the 1844 presidential campaign, and also finished building the Nauvoo Temple. (Hirshson, pp. 79-80)
MORMON 1844 COUNCIL OF FIFTY TASKED WITH "OVERTHROW OF THIS NATION"Bushman stresses that the Council of Fifty had an explicitly political mission, which was directed against existing governments. He argues that "as the council's original records are not available to researchers, its exact nature is hard to determine, but the council may have considered itself the incipient organization for millennial rule, a shadow government awaiting the demise of worldly political authority and the beginning of Christ's earthly reign. In early April 1844, Joseph 'prophesied the entire overthrow of this nation in a few years. '" (Bushman, p. 521)
Nor did the Council of Fifty become extinct with the assassination of Joseph Smith in June 1844. In 1848, Romney's ancestor Orson Pratt said this of the Fifty:
"It is the only legal government that can exist in any part of the universe. All other governments are illegal and unauthorized. God, having made all beings and worlds, has the supreme right to govern them by His own laws, and by officers of his own appointment. Any people attempting to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and by officers of their own appointment, are in direct rebellion against the Kingdom of God.' For the past thousand years no 'true and legal government' had existed. 'All the emperors, kings, princes, presidents, lords, nobles, and rulers, during that long night of darkness, have acted without authority. Not one of them was called or anointed a king or prince by the God of heaven -- not one of them received any communication whatsoever from the rightful sovereign, the Great King." [79]
Parallel to these institutional preparations for world domination, the Mormons were conducting a military buildup. The Nauvoo Legion now had almost four thousand men, and an arsenal and a gunpowder factory were in the planning stages. The New York Sun pointed with alarm to the huge military dictatorship that was emerging along the Mississippi. (Brodie, p. 357)
The Council of Fifty was acting more and more like a sovereign state, especially by sending Lucian Woodworth as its own ambassador to Texas with instructions to negotiate a treaty -- an action barred by Joseph Smith's supposedly beloved Constitution. (Brodie, p. 360)
JOSEPH SMITH DEMANDS CONGRESS MAKE HIM MILITARY DICTATOR OF THE AMERICAN WESTNow, with the manic phase in full career, the Mormon Prophet escalated his insatiable demands on the US government even further. In March 1844, the Council of Fifty, acting on behalf of Joseph Smith, petitioned Congress to appoint the Prophet as an officer of the United States Army with the power to call up 100,000 volunteers to secure the US Western borders from Oregon to Texas. At this time, the entire United States Army numbered fewer than 15,000 troops. These 100,000 armed volunteers were supposed to maintain order, repel foreign invasions, and protect settlers against Indians, robbers, and criminals. They would not be formally a part of the US Army, although they would carry out military tasks, and were touted as a way to economize by not creating a large standing army for the West.
The spirit of Aaron Burr was once again abroad in the land, but this time with the kind of bombastic theocratic impudence which Burr never possessed. Joseph Smith had demonstrably lost all sense of political reality and proportion. On May 25, 1844, the US House of Representatives rebuffed him by refusing to allow his petition to be read on the floor. (Brodie, p. 360-1, Bushman, p. 519)
JOSEPH SMITH FOR PRESIDENT, 1844: STOP HENRY CLAY'S AMERICAN SYSTEM, ELECT POLKThe Mormons had a history of bouncing back and forth between the pro-Jackson Democrats and the anti-Jackson Whigs, who included an authentic nationalist faction. During the 1830s, the Mormons generally supported Democrats like Jackson and Van Buren, but when Van Buren rejected Joseph Smith's direct appeal for help after the Mormon war in Missouri, the Mormons switched to the Whig William Henry Harrison in 1840. The help the Mormons received from Stephen Douglas in Illinois moved them back into the Democratic column in 1841, but this was reversed when the Democrats supported the expulsion of Joseph Smith to Missouri in 1842, in connection with the shooting of former Governor Boggs, while a Whig judge let him off.
In 1843, Joseph Smith pledged his support to the Whigs. But, at the last minute, Hyrum Smith announced that he had received a revelation that it would be better to vote for the Democrats. The Democrats then won thanks to Mormon votes, and the Whigs, according to some accounts, began thinking of how to get rid of the Mormons. (Bushman, p. 508-9) Here again, the inherent dangers of monolithic bloc voting were presented in sharp relief.
Joseph Smith now wrote letters to all of the prospective presidential candidates for 1844, asking them for assurances that they would help protect the Mormons. As the result of unsatisfactory responses to Joseph Smith's circular letters to the candidates demanding protection for the Mormons, on January 29, 1844 the Twelve Apostles nominated the Prophet for the office of President of the United States. (Bushman, p. 514) Joseph Smith got William Phelps to ghost write a presidential platform, which was duly published under the title of General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States. (Bushman, p. 515) "General" was now his favorite title.
Joseph Smith joined the Democrats in supporting the annexation of Texas as a slave state, but also recommended that slavery be abolished in Texas after statehood, with compensation to the slave owners being paid out of the sale of US public lands. The Mormon Prophet expressed what was fundamentally a plan for world conquest in terms of universal harmony, intoning "Come Texas: come Mexico; come Canada; and come all the world -- let us be brethren: let us be one great family; and let there be universal peace." Smith supported the reinstitution of a national bank. (Bushman, p. 516) It was a middle position designed to siphon votes away from Clay.
The major party candidates for 1844 turned out to be James Knox Polk for the Democrats, and Henry Clay of Kentucky for the Whigs. Clay was the great patriot of the age, and advanced the classic program of the American System of Political Economy. This included a Hamiltonian National Bank, a protective tariff to promote industrialization, and internal infrastructural improvements paid for by the federal government when they were of national utility, even if they happen to be located in a single state. Clay was also not enthusiastic about the expansion of slavery.
HENRY CLAY'S 1844 CANDIDACY WAS LAST CHANCE TO AVOID CIVIL WARFrom the profile of Joseph Smith's campaign, which partially mimicked the Henry Clay Whig program of the National Bank and the gradual phasing out of slavery, it is possible to discern that the Mormon Prophet's candidacy would in practice have siphoned votes away from the Whigs, to give victory to the Democrat Polk. In the event, Polk's victory depended on another minor party, the abolitionist Liberty Party of James G. Birney. Slave owners and British imperialists united in their support for Polk, who would strengthen the Slave Power by the admission of Texas into the Union. Henry Clay's 1844 presidential bid may be considered as the last best chance for the United States (apart from the later Zachary Taylor presidency) to reestablish a national bank, restart the process of vigorous economic development which had been interrupted under Jackson and Van Buren, diminish the importance of slavery on the national scene, and thus avoid civil war. From this point of view, Joseph Smith's attempt to construct a countergang against Henry Clay emerges as profoundly dangerous for US national survival.
The Mormons immediately launched a robust nation-wide campaign. Their center of gravity was in Nauvoo, but they also had organizations across the United States. They had a newspaper in New York, and one in San Francisco, among others. In April 1844, forty-seven campaign conferences were to be held in 14 states. Some 339 Mormon elders were pressed into service as political operatives. (Bushman, p. 517)
In a manner similar to Mitt Romney's use of the Latter-day Saints Church apparatus and the Mormon-dominated Utah state government bureaucracy, Joseph Smith mobilized the Mormon Saints to help him become the decisive swing factor in the election. The King of the Kingdom of God might not become president, but he would surely be a kingmaker.
The New York Herald understood that the Mormons were seeking to gain political power by controlling the outcome of the election, writing on May 23, 1844 that the Saints "claim possession of from two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand votes in Nauvoo and throughout the Union, and with that they calculate that they can hold the balance of power and make whoever they please President. Well, if so, they may be worth looking after .... It seems by this movement that Joe Smith does not expect to be elected President but he still wants to have a finger in the pie, and see whether something can't be made out of it.'" (Brodie, p. 363)
FROM THEOCRATIC TO "THEODEMOCRATIC" DICTATORSHIPModern libertarian ranters against Big Government can look back with admiration at Joseph Smith's assault on the modern secular state. "The world is governed too much, and there is not a nation or a dynasty now occupying the earth which acknowledges Almighty God as their lawgiver, and as 'crowns won by blood, by blood must be maintained,' I go emphatically, virtuously, and humanely, for a Theodemocracy, where God and the people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness. And where liberty, free trade, and sailor's right, and the protection of life and property shall be maintained inviolate, for the benefit of ALL." (Bushman, p. 522) Joseph Smith's answer to Big Government was to promote Big Theocracy, which turned out to be far more oppressive and destructive. The alternative to the partisan clash of political parties was a one-party state dominated by the Mormon party of God. Notice also that Joseph Smith endorsed British free trade, the hallmark of the anti-national opponents of the American System, as the work of Friedrich List and Henry Carey made clear.
JOSEPH SMITH DEMANDS ARISTARCHYIn practice, theodemocracy meant the usual dictatorship of Joseph Smith as messenger of God. But this time he was dressed up as a kind of guide to democracy, in which the Church authorities would allow self-rule, but intervene if the people went astray. The Mormon Prophet lectured the Nauvoo High Council that theodemocracy was "the principles of democracy that the people's voice should be heard when the voice was just, but when it was not just it was no longer democratic, but if the minority views are more just, then Aristarchy should be the governing principle. i.e. the wisest & best laws should be made." (Bushman, p. 523)
Some politicians could understand that the Mormons were a ticking time bomb, and tried to get rid of them by sending them west as far as possible. One Illinois politician wanted them to go all the way to California. (Bushman, p. 520)
MORMON DISSIDENTS PROTEST THE PROPHET'S ABUSESBut now the final crisis ofthe Nauvoo theocracy was at hand. Once again, despite repeated purges, a dissident group of marginal Mormons had emerged as a kind of internal opposition to the Prophet. The leader of the malcontents was William Law, who had been excommunicated in the spring of 1844. Once again, the principal grievance cited by the opposition was polygamy, since the Prophet had attempted to initiate celestial relations with Law's wife.
Because of Joseph Smith's notoriously unscrupulous business practices, the Mormon dissidents also had economic grievances. Law alleged that the Prophet was using church funds collected through tithing in order to buy land which he then intended to sell at exorbitant prices to new Mormon converts as they arrived in Nauvoo. (Brodie, p. 368) Some of the dissidents wanted to break out of the autarkic command economy which Joseph Smith had mandated. They bid against him to buy lumber, and began building houses and other structures in Nauvoo. These breakaway entrepreneurs paid their workers in cash, while Joseph Smith offered only goods and payments in kind, supplemented by Nauvoo scrip or local funny money. When workers preferred to sell their labor for actual money, a crisis broke out in the Nauvoo labor market, with Joseph Smith averring that his projects were more important because salvation depended on them. (Brodie, p. 368)
The dissenters chose a course of robust muckraking, but they appear to have regarded Joseph Smith as a fallen prophet rather than a con artist. They still venerated the Book 0/ Mormon, and wanted to go back to the early days when spiritual wifery had not been an obvious problem. "What they hated was polygamy, the Kingdom of God, and the 'tyranny' of Joseph Smith." (Bushman, pp. 537-38) Joseph Smith kept denying polygamy until the end. "What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can find only one," he quipped in 1844.
These were the goals of the Nauvoo Expositor, the dissident Mormon newspaper which appeared only once, on June 7, 1844. This journal announced its intention to "explode the vicious principles of Joseph Smith, and those who practice the same abominations and whoredomes." It also took exception to Joseph's teaching of polytheism, specifically his authoritarian doctrine "that there are innumerable Gods as much above the God that presides over this universe, as he is above us." (Bushman, p. 539) The dissidents also rejected the idea that Joseph Smith was a King, since this title had to be reserved for Christ alone.
JOSEPH SMITH TRASHES DISSIDENT PRESS, VIOLATES CONSTITUTION HE CLAIMED TO REVEREBrodie points out that Joseph Smith could have chosen this moment to go on the offensive, confess that divine revelations had long dictated polygamy, and announce the beginning of the great trek towards the Rocky Mountains. But, in her opinion, the Prophet was now crushed under a burden of "secrecy, evasion, and lying" which robbed him of coverage and initiative. His earlier charismatic demagogy deserted him at the most critical moment. (Brodie, p. 376)
So when the paper exposing a catalog of abuses was distributed in the town, Joseph Smith responded by ordering the Danites into action. They proceeded to destroy the printing office, smashed the press, and burn all the copies they could find. On Joseph's orders, the city council had declared the publication libelous. Joseph Smith thus trampled on the First Amendment of the Constitution which he always claimed to be divinely inspired. It was a colossal example of Mormon doublethink.
And then he did more; he called together The Nauvoo Legion, his private Danite Army, and pledged before God "that this people shall have their legal rights, and be protected from mob violence." (Brodie, p. 379) Of course, when it came to the small group of dissidents, the majority Saints were themselves the mob.
THEOCRACY LEADS TO ANARCHY: JOSEPH AND HYRUM SMITH MURDERED BY LAWLESS MILITIA, JUNE 27, 1844Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were now arrested and jailed on the charge of treason, because they had declared martial law and mobilized the Nauvoo Legion to fight off a posse of militia which was coming to arrest the Prophet. Joseph, Hyrum, and some other Mormon leaders were imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois. Concerned to his last day about revenge, Joseph had wanted to save Hyrum so his brother could "avenge" his own death -- not a Christian sentiment. Anti-Mormon militias from nearby towns, including the Warsaw militia and the Carthage Grays, massed outside the jail, and then stormed the premises. The Smith brothers defended themselves with firearms, and hit some attackers, but they were overwhelmed and killed. John Taylor and some other top Mormons survived.
Some Mormon historians have attempted to develop a conspiracy theory according to which the militia mob action that killed the Smith brothers in Carthage Jail had been fomented by the leaders of the Illinois Whig party, the friends of Henry Clay.8o But the case they have made so far fails to convince. It is characteristic of the Mormons that their hostility should be directed over decades against the most positive figures of the American tradition, including Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, Justin Morrill, and others.
MORMON THEOLOGYWhat are the main beliefs of the faith which Joseph Smith founded? The task of answering is difficult because some points of Mormon doctrine are kept secret, while others are obscured. Mormonism, so far as is known, has never announced a Creed, although such a Creed may exist as an esoteric or shelf doctrine. So, we are left with guesswork to some extent. Still, a number of writers who know Mormonism well have attempted to sum up the main Mormon articles of faith. One was the nineteenth-century British publicist William Hepworth Dixon, who wrote a book critical of Mormonism. In it he included the following surmise of the "Mormon Creed":
"(1) God is a person with the form and flesh of man. (2) Man is a part of the substance of God, and will himself become a god. (3) Man was not created by God, but existed from all eternity, and will never cease to exist. (4) There is no such thing as original or birth sin. (5) The earth is only one of many inhabited spheres. (6) God is president of men made gods, angels, good men, and spirits waiting to receive a tabernacle of flesh. (7) Man's household of wives is his kingdom not for earth only, but also in his future state. (8) Mormonism is the kingdom of God on earth." [81]
A more recent summary of the key tenets of Mormonism was offered by the Associated Press on January 16, 2008, when Romney was competing against McCain in the GOP primaries. Here we read:
"Nature of God: God once was a mortal who became an eternal being after a great trial.
Jesus Christ: Christ was God's first-born spirit child, his only earthly child and the only perfect mortal.
No Trinity: Mormons reject the idea of the Christian Trinity -- God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as one ethereal being. Instead, they believe the three are separate beings joined in a common purpose.
Pre-existence and the afterlife: Before their mortal birth, humans existed in pre-mortality and were born in the spirit world to heavenly parents. Mormons also believe in the resurrection and teach that most people will receive some measure of salvation and have a place in a three-level eternal kingdom.
One true church: Mormons say their faith is not Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox but holds a unique place as 'restored New Testament Christianity.' Founder Joseph Smith said God told him none of the existing churches were practicing Christianity as it was intended.
A living prophet: Mormons believe the head of their church is a living prophet, seer and revelator who can communicate with God." [82]
The late religious broadcaster and author Walter Martin, known for his radio program "The Bible Answer Man," summed up several points which represent the specific personality of Mormonism as a religion:
"The Bible is the Word of God in so far as it is correctly translated. There are three sacred books in addition to the Bible: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
The Earth is one of several inhabited planets ruled over by gods and goddesses, who were at one time humans on other planets. Mormonism is polytheistic in its core.
The Trinity consists of three gods born in different times and places; the Father begot the Son and the Holy Ghost through a goddess wife in heaven.83 Humankind is of the same species as God. God begot all humans in heaven as offspring of his wife or wives, who were sent to Earth for their potential exaltation to godhood. Salvation is resurrection, but exaltation to godhood, for eternal life in the celestial heaven, must be earned through self-meriting works." [84]
Martin's evaluation of Mormonism is well-informed and severe. He writes that "Mormonism, with its apostles, priesthood, temples, secret signs, symbols, handshakes, and mysteries, claims to be 'the church of the restoration'; but at its heart, in its doctrine of the Messiah, it is found to be contrary to every major biblical pronouncement." [85]
WALTER MARTIN: MORMONISM A "POLYTHEISTIC NIGHTMARE" AND "NON-CHRISTIAN CULT SYSTEM"Martin also rejects the Mormon three-tiered heaven with telestial, terrestrial, and celestial levels in ascending order, like first class, business, and economy accommodations on an airliner. He points out that "even in the celestial kingdom godhood is by slow progression, and in the end each who becomes a god will, with his family, rule and populate a separate planet of his own. It is almost superfluous to comment that this entire scheme of the consummation of Mormon salvation is the antithesis of the biblical revelation, which knows nothing of godhood, either constituted or progressive, and which teaches instead that in heaven the destiny of the redeemed will be the special providence of God himself. ... [86]
Martin was also well aware of the esoteric theology of Mormonism (the "shelf doctrines"), which tend to mask what is really professed. He observed that
" ... the Mormon religion utilizes biblical terms and phrases and even adopts Christian doctrines in order to claim allegiance to the Christian faith. Mormons have also come to lay much stress on public relations and take pains to make certain that they do not use language that might reveal the true nature of their theological deviations. We have also seen that the Mormon Church considers itself alone the true church of Christ in our age, and further that they consider all other groups to be Gentiles and apostates from the true Christian religion .... From these facts it is evident that Mormonism strives with great effort to masquerade as the Christian church complete with an exclusive message, infallible prophets, and higher revelations for a new dispensation that the Mormons would have us believe began with Joseph Smith Jr. But it is the verdict of both history and biblical theology that Joseph Smith's religion is a polytheistic nightmare of garbled doctrines draped with the garment of Christian terminology. This fact, if nothing else, brands it as a non-Christian cult system." [87]
Accordingly, Martin directed his efforts to helping his readers avoid or escape "the spiritual maze that is Mormonism." [88]
Mormonism was thus an entirely new religion, radically separate from Christianity. It was also a program to create a new theocratic nation at the expense of the United States.