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The Success of the Mormon Church: A Sociological Analysis
Llowell Williams (Dec 2009)The history of the Church of Latter Day Saints movement is one filled with controversyand severe persecution for many years following its foundation. Today it is one of the fastestgrowing religious movements in not only the United States but many areas of the world, and hasgained legitimacy and voice within the worldwide religious community. The Church of JesusChrist of Latter Day Saints has undergone several key transformations and changes; both to findlegitimacy within society, and to appeal to a greater number of potential converts within thereligious marketplace. For the purpose of this paper, a very brief overview of Mormon historyand belief will be given, in addition to the way these factors have cumulated into modernMormon life in the US.The Mormon movement began with a man named Joseph Smith, Jr. While living inPalmyra, a small village in western New York, Smith claimed to be visited by an angel namedMoroni who told him the location of a secret book of golden plates and other items buried in ahill near his home. (Arrington:18-20) After retrieving the buried items in 1827, Smith was visitedagain by an angel and told to not allow anyone else to view the plates. It was his duty totranslate, publish, and share the messages inscribed on the plates. He did this with the assistanceof his friend, Martin Harris. Smith used artifacts he found with the plates called “seer stones” tohelp him translate the golden plates from a language he called Reformed Egyptian. With help,Smith dictated and published the translations as the Book of Mormon three years later.Facing increasing persecution in the eastern United States, Smith and his followers
 
moved west, first setting up church headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio along with a secondary churchcenter in Independence, Missouri. After being violently driven out of Independence by non-Mormons, settlers founded a Mormon town nearby of the name Far West. It was here that JosephSmith and followers fled after several power struggles and severe drops in membership numbers.Here Smith established the new Mormon headquarters, officially giving it the name, “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” With this sudden growth of Mormon settlers collecting inMissouri, non-Mormon residents began to feel even more threatened. Mormons began settlingoutside of the county of Caldwell and Far West, leading to ever increasing feelings of enmity between them and the intolerant locals. To many Missourians, this was simply unacceptable andtensions came to a breaking point in what is referred to as the 1838 Mormon War or Missouri-Mormon War (Arrington:50-66). After being forced out of Missouri at gunpoint, Smith lead hisfollowers to Illinois to establish a new Mormon settlement by the name of Nauvoo. Much toSmith's disappointment, anti-Mormon sentiments had not been left behind in Missouri. Suspicionand distrust for the Mormons continued to grow in neighboring Illinois communities until anorder urged by the public for Smith's arrest was finally issued, officially charging him with“treason.” He and his brother turned themselves into the police of nearby Carthage where theywere placed in jail. Several days later, an angry mob began rioting outside the jail and managedto break in, making their way to the cell holding the Smiths whereupon they shot and killed them both (Arrington:78).Following the loss of its two highest ranking leaders, the Latter Day Saints faced a crisis:Who was to take Joseph Smith's place and lead the way? Several people stepped forward, and indoing so created a great deal of argument and schism within the Church. Brigham Youngsuggested that the Quorum of Twelve, a council of twelve men formed originally by Joseph
 
Smith to mirror Jesus's apostles and participate in church governance, should take the leadershiprole. However, Brigham Young eventually stepped forward as Smith's successor, managing tolead the persecuted Mormons out of Illinois, further west to the Great Salt Lake Basin. Manymiles away from their persecutors, after months of traveling on what is now referred to as the“Mormon Trail,” Young and his fellow Mormons began settling Salt Lake City as their newreligious headquarters. In 1848, the United States was given the surrounding territory by Mexico,and the federal government appointed Brigham Young as territorial governor of Utah three yearslater (Arrington: 90-102).Several years following the foundation of Salt Lake City, there was a two year periodwhich is commonly referred to as the Mormon Reformation. Despite becoming a successfulsettlement, devastating drought hit the areas in and around the Great Salt Lake Basin and muchof the Utah Territory, wreaking havoc on crops and leading to much starvation. What few cropsremained were virtually destroyed by a fierce insect infestation. Following the destruction of thecrops, many Mormons began to express concern about their faith: Were they being punished byGod? Had they failed to worship and honor Him appropriately? It was easy to draw parallels between this crisis and stories of Biblical plagues in the Old Testament. Many religious leadersstepped forward, including Young, suggesting that they and their peers had lost commitment totheir faith and needed to seek repentance for going astray. This lead to a number of ceremoniesacross Utah in which thousands of Mormons were publicly “re-baptized,” symbolic of their renewed religious commitment (Arrington:119-135) to the Mormon faith and God.This renewed religious zeal in the Utah territory alarmed the federal government, whowere beginning to question their power over Young and the territory. In response, PresidentBuchanan dispatched 2,500 troops to Utah with the goal of restoring federal authority. No direct
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