Almost anywhere in America today one may see two alert, conservatively-dressed young men, knocking on doors and approaching their prospect pleasantly with, “We are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” By means of the best modern sales techniques, these somewhat mysterious and intriguing figures of the “Mormon” Church then offer a religion that claims to be the only authentic church of God, restored in these latter days by God and Christ in person, by angels, and by Peter, James, and John. They boast an extraordinarily well-organized welfare system and a love of culture and the good things of life. Using the standard Christian terms, they speak of the Godhead, of gospel and glory, of sin and salvation, of prophets and patriarchs—but they put into them a meaning radically different from that found in the Bible.
The group’s verifiable history begins in upper New York state in the year 1830 with the publication of the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith, Jr., an able young man with little formal education. The publication of the book is represented to be the culmination of several “visions” and “revelations.” Smith’s first “vision” (allegedly received in 1820 but not published until 20 years later and now somewhat altered) informed him that all churches are wrong and all their creeds an abomination. The subsequent “revelations” led to the “discovery” and “translation”—by means of the “Urim and Thummim”—of “gold plates” which were buried in a near-by hill and contained the Book of Mormon. Echoing an idea current in Smith’s day that the Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, the book basically relates how they came to America (about 600 B.C.), were visited by the Saviour, and fell into their present primitive state.
Like the word “Mormon” itself, which Smith derived from the English “more” and the (supposed) Egyptian “mon” meaning “good” (Times and Seasons, Vol. IV, p. 194), the book was an odd blending of the contemporary scene and the fictitious past, generously sprinkled with passages lifted bodily from the King James Version. A year after its publication, Alexander Campbell observed that in the book, supposedly completed by 421 A.D., Smith had written “every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last 10 years. He decides all the great controversies—infant baptism, ordination, the Trinity … and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the rights of man.” Because the book borrows so heavily from the theology of the day, it is considerably more orthodox than Smith’s later productions, causing noticeable internal conflict in Mormon doctrine.
With the work completed and the translation declared “correct” by the “Lord,” the plates allegedly were returned to heaven safe from prying eyes after being “viewed” by a few chosen witnesses. (Some 3200 improvements have since been made. Although most revisions are grammatical, “about 100 change the meaning”—J. D. Wardle, unpublished manuscript.) By 1830 Joseph Smith had begun his new church which was named, in good Book of Mormon and Campbellite fashion, “The Church of Christ.” Writing again in 1838, Smith claimed that in 1829 John the Baptist had appeared and restored to him the “Aaronic Priesthood” and a few weeks later Peter, James, and John restored the “Melchizedek Priesthood.” The Melchizedek Priesthood forms the chief source of authority for the church’s hierarchy and for nearly all the temple ceremonies. However, references to the high priests, high counselors, and presidents are conspicuously absent from Smith’s “revelations” on church government as first printed in 1833 in the Book of Commandments. Like many other matters, references to the priesthood first appear interpolated back into the early revelations when reprinted in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants (LaMar Petersen, Problems in Mormon Texts, 1957). Overlooking the biblical application of the Melchizedek Priesthood to Christ alone (fulfilling and superseding the earthly Aaronic priesthood), Smith claims to have received more of its authority from visits in 1836 by both Elijah and Elias (two separate persons to Smith!—cf. Doctrine and Covenants, 27.6, 9).
The Book of Mormon indicates that “plain and precious parts” of the Bible have been taken away by a corrupt church. Smith set about the task of restoring these parts by “revelation and inspiration.” The result was an “inspired” revision of the Bible, completed in 1833 but not published until 1867. The early chapters of Genesis received considerable reworking and are published separately as The Book of Moses. About 1835, however, Smith began to study Hebrew, and, learning that Elohim (God) was plural, he soon brought forth a new version of the Genesis creation story. This version was his “translation” of a papyrus written by “Abraham” himself and acquired, along with an Egyptian mummy, from a traveling showman. In it the “gods” create the heavens and the earth. The Book of Abraham together with the Book of Moses and excerpts from Smith’s autobiography form the volume known as The Pearl of Great Price. That volume along with the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants form the “Standard Works” of the Mormon Church in Utah.
Like leaders of other groups in the early nineteenth century, Smith believed that Christ’s coming was imminent, “even 56 years should wind up the scene” (Millenial Star, Vol. 15, p. 205). It was necessary for the “saints,” he revealed, to gather to Zion to escape the destruction coming upon the wicked, and the revelation disclosed that Independence, Missouri, was that place. However, they were driven from there by aroused “gentiles” in 1833. Then Far West, Missouri, was the chosen spot, a place not far from Adam-ondi-Ahman where, Smith revealed, the original Garden of Eden once stood and Adam’s altar was still to be seen. Ordered out of Missouri, however, in 1833, the saints followed the call to gather in Nauvoo, Illinois (George B. Arbaugh, Gods, Sex and Saints, p. 12 f.; cf. Doctrine and Covenants, 57.1–3, 115.5–7, 125.2), only to be driven from there after Smith was killed in 1844 by an angry mob. Finally, under Brigham Young, some of the saints discovered that the Salt Lake Valley was “the place.”
In Utah the church has thrived, acquiring commercial holdings running into millions of dollars, operating a 60-million-dollar, up-to-date university (Brigham Young), and sponsoring a large-scale welfare program for its own people. Its world membership is now placed at about 1,650,000. Since the days when Smith offered “eternal salvation” to individuals which he called by revelation to be missionaries, the church has maintained a strong proselytizing program. With better than 7500 “missionaries” on the field—mostly college-age youths donating two years of service—the church expects in the reasonable future to reach a goal of 12,000 missionaries and to see advances particularly in India and the surrounding countries.
Of the more than dozen groups which rose after Smith’s death to claim divine authority as his successor, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the second largest that survives. Numbering about 200,000, with headquarters in Independence, Missouri, the Reorganized Church does not accept the Book of Abraham with its plurality of gods, or the revelation sanctioning polygamy; and therefore it is somewhat closer to historic Christianity. Another group, the Church of Christ (also in Independence), uses the Book of Commandments instead of the Doctrine and Covenants and holds (along with David Whitmer, one of the Book of Mormon witnesses) that after 1833 Joseph Smith became a “fallen prophet” and changed the structure and theology of the church.
One area where the theological shift becomes very evident is in the Mormon doctrine of deity. In the Book of Mormon and earlier revelations, God is often displayed with such unity that the Son is the Father. In later productions the Father and Son emerge as two separate “flesh and bone” beings, united in sharing common qualities and purposes. Finally, men themselves are declared to be able by means of temple ceremonies to progress to Godhood. Out of eternal matter they will shape other worlds and people them, just as the Father peopled this one, by “spirit children” born to their wives. In the early days in Utah this type of teaching reached such an extreme that Adam was held to be the God of this world and Jesus was not born of the Holy Spirit but by the physical union of this Adam-God with Mary (Journal of Discourses, Vol. I, p. 50). These one-time gems of heavenly light are looked upon by many modern Mormons as the unwise “speculations” of the early leaders. The “Godhead” today is represented as consisting of two separate personages with flesh and bone bodies and the Holy Ghost with a “body of spirit.” The Son has the distinction of being the first of many “spirit children” born to the heavenly Father and “Mother.” Like the Father, who is an exalted and “perfected man” living near the planet “Kolob,” each spirit child must come to earth and take a “physical body” in order to progress toward Godhood: his pre-existent faithfulness determines what race and status he should be born into here.
Tied inseparably to the Mormon concept of deity is the Mormon idea of salvation. For the most part the biblical doctrine of sin is replaced with the idea of sins (for example, smoking, drinking alcohol, coffee, tea), none of which merit everlasting punishment. Salvation, therefore, becomes a matter of striving to reach the highest degree of glory, that is, Godhood itself. The path upward begins with repentance (mainly of the above sins), Mormon baptism, laying on of hands, and church membership. However, the highest or celestial glory can only be reached through the various temple ceremonies. In the temple, living Mormons may go through baptism and the other ceremonies on behalf of their dead relatives and thus deliver their spirits from the “prison house” and enable them to progress toward exaltation. But the pinnacle of celestial glory, Godhood itself, can only be reached through the temple ceremony that claims (contrary to Christ’s express teaching in Luke 20:34 f.) to seal husbands and wives in marriage for time and eternity. This doctrine is based on the teaching in Smith’s revelation sanctioning polygamy, in which he made Godhood dependent on man’s ability to beget innumerable children throughout eternity (Doctrine and Covenants, 132.15–19, 63). Since obviously this can best be accomplished by having a plurality of wives, Smith received the “divine” command to seal many wives to himself and his followers. Today the church advises its members in America to refrain from contracting polygamous marriages because it is forbidden by the government, but the principle of polygamy remains on their books as divinely approved.
The teaching that the sex relationship continues in the eternal state has yielded a strong practical emphasis on home and family solidarity, but it has robbed the religion of any real spiritual relationship with the Lord. In seeking exaltation through physical relationships and ceremonious activities, Mormonism completely misses real salvation and exaltation as a free gift of God’s grace. The Gospel is reduced to laws and ordinances brought to men by a Christ whose only function as Saviour is to guarantee to men a resurrection. To those enmeshed in a religion so materialistic in emphasis and so lacking in reverence, evangelical Christianity must hold out an all-sufficient Saviour who saves, sanctifies, and glorifies unworthy sinners who place all their confidence in Him alone.
SELECTION OF BOOKS FOR STUDY
Mormon
Gordon B. Hinckely, What of the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S., 1954).
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (Bookcraft, 1958).
James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith (Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S., 1958).
Non-Mormon
George B. Arbaugh, Gods, Sex and Saints (Augustana, 1957).
Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (Knopf, 1946)—Smith’s biography, documented, by L.D.S. President’s niece.
Gordon H. Fraser, Is Mormonism Christian? (Moody, 1957).
Thomas F. O’Dea, The Mormons (University of Chicago, 1957)—a good, scholarly survey.
John L. Smith, Has Mormonism Changed? (Utah Evangel Press, 1959).
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
