Mormons

• 1. Introduction

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  Mormons are a religious and cultural group, and as of the 31st of December 2021 their largest church reported 16,805,400 members. Since 2018 that church has preferred its full name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It also accepts the plain word members once its identity is clear. The church points to the derogatory origins of the word Mormon.

  So why would a people push back against their own nickname? How did a movement that began in upstate New York come to span the globe? And what holds together a community that includes devout believers, secular members, and people who no longer practice at all? The answers start with a word that was once simply a description.

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• 2. A Word With Baggage

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  The word Mormon was coined to describe anyone who considered the Book of Mormon to be scripture. Mormonite and Mormon began as descriptive labels. Outsiders, church members, and occasionally church leaders all used them.

  The 1838 Mormon War may be when the term first turned insulting. Church historian Matthew Bowman adds that members and leaders "embraced the term." By the end of the 1800s it was in broad use.

  The church has pressed for its full name more than once. It made efforts in 1982, again in 2001 before the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, and in 2011 after The Book of Mormon appeared on Broadway. The most recent effort produced a style guide.

  Patrick Mason chairs Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University. He and Richard Bennett, a professor of church history at Brigham Young University, point to a long-standing confusion. Non-members have often wondered whether this is a Christian faith, and church leaders want to settle that question.

  A second worry concerns polygamy. The word Mormon is also applied to splinter groups such as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, who practice it. Mason put it this way: "For more than 100 years, the mainstream LDS Church has gone to great pains to distance itself from those who practice polygamy."

  The style guide suggests shortened forms after the first full use of the name. They are "the Church," the "Church of Jesus Christ," or the "restored Church of Jesus Christ." It rejects Mormons, "Mormon Church," Mormonism, and the abbreviation LDS. Bowman reads the word restored this way: 'the term "restored" refers to the idea that the original Christian religion is obsolete, and Mormons alone are practicing true Christianity.'

  Not everyone agrees on the word. The Community of Christ, the second-largest sect, also rejects it because of its link to polygamy among Brighamite sects. Several fundamentalist branches of that same tradition embrace the label. To see why polygamy hangs over the name, the story must start with Joseph Smith in upstate New York and a book of scripture he said he translated.

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• 3. From Golden Plates to Carthage

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  In March 1830 the Book of Mormon was published. Joseph Smith said it was his translation of golden plates holding the religious history of an ancient American civilization. The ancient prophet-historian Mormon had compiled that record. Smith said an angel had directed him to the plates, buried in the Hill Cumorah. On the 6th of April 1830, he founded the Church of Christ.

  In 1832 Smith added an account of a vision from the early 1820s, when he lived in upstate New York. He later published the story of his First Vision, in which the Father and the Son appeared to him at about age 14. Some Mormons rank it as the most important event in human history after the birth, ministry, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

  In 1831 the church moved to Kirtland, Ohio, where missionaries had won a large number of converts. Smith also began an outpost in Jackson County, Missouri. There he planned to build the city of Zion, also called the New Jerusalem. In 1833 alarmed Missouri settlers expelled the Mormons into nearby Clay County, where residents were more welcoming.

  Smith then led a mission called Zion's Camp to recover the land. Afterward he began building the Kirtland Temple in Lake County, Ohio, where the church flourished. In 1836 the Missouri Mormons were asked to leave Clay County. They secured land in what would become Caldwell County.

  The Kirtland era ended in 1838. A church-sponsored anti-bank failed, and widespread defections followed. Smith regrouped with the remaining church in Far West, Missouri. That fall, tensions with the old Missouri settlers exploded into the Mormon War.

  On the 27th of October, the governor of Missouri ordered that the Mormons "must be treated as enemies." They were to be exterminated or driven from the state. Between November and April, some eight thousand displaced Mormons migrated east into Illinois.

  In 1839 the Mormons purchased the small town of Commerce, on swampland along the Mississippi River. They renamed it Nauvoo and began constructing the Nauvoo Temple. The city became the church's headquarters and gathering place. It grew fast, helped by converts arriving from Europe.

  Nauvoo is where Smith introduced temple ceremonies meant to seal families together for eternity. He also introduced the doctrines of eternal progression, or exaltation, and of plural marriage. He created the Relief Society, a service organization for women. He also formed the Council of Fifty, which represented a future theodemocratic "Kingdom of God" on the earth.

  By 1844, prejudice and political tension had hardened into conflict between Mormons and so-called anti-Mormons in Illinois and Missouri. Internal dissent and reports of polygamy fueled the fire. Smith was arrested. On the 27th of June 1844, a mob in Carthage, Illinois, killed him and his brother Hyrum.

  Hyrum had been Smith's logical successor, so the double killing set off a succession crisis. Brigham Young, a close associate of Smith and senior apostle of the Quorum of the Twelve, took over most Latter Day Saints. Smaller groups followed Sidney Rigdon and James Strang. Many who rejected Young eventually merged into the Community of Christ, led by Smith's son, Joseph Smith III.

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• 4. Building Zion in the Desert

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  Beginning in 1847, Brigham Young led most of the Latter Day Saints toward what became the Utah Territory. For two years after Smith's death, conflict with other Illinois residents had kept escalating. Young led them first to a temporary winter quarters in Nebraska, hoping to prevent war.

  The Mormons had failed to build Zion inside American society. In the desert they built a society apart, resting on their own beliefs. A cooperative ethic honed over roughly fifteen years now served settlers who colonized a vast desert region, later called the Mormon Corridor.

  Colonizing was treated as a religious duty. Local bishops, who were lay religious leaders, governed the new villages. The settlers viewed land as a commonwealth. They devised and kept up a cooperative system of irrigation that made farming possible in the desert. Zion, once a single city, became a "landscape of villages."

  From 1849 to 1852, the Mormons greatly expanded their missionary work. They set up missions in Europe, Latin America, and the South Pacific. Converts were expected to "gather" to Zion. During Young's presidency, from 1847 to 1877, over seventy thousand converts immigrated to America.

  Many came from England and Scandinavia, and the community quickly absorbed them. Many crossed the Great Plains in wagons drawn by oxen. Some later groups pulled their belongings in small handcarts. In the 1860s, newcomers began riding the railroad then under construction.

  In 1852, church leaders revealed something that the settlers had kept private until then.

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• 5. Polygamy and the Federal Government

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  In 1852 church leaders publicized plural marriage, a practice that had been secret. Over the next 50 years, between 20 and 30 percent of Mormon families entered plural marriages as a religious duty. The number peaked around 1860 and declined for the rest of the century.

  Doctrine was not the only reason. The practice also made economic sense. Many plural wives were single women who had arrived in Utah without brothers or fathers to support them.

  By 1857, accusations about polygamy and Brigham Young's theocratic rule of Utah had stirred new tension. President James Buchanan sent an army to Utah, which Mormons read as open aggression. Fearing a repeat of Missouri and Illinois, they prepared to defend themselves. They were determined to torch their own homes if invaded.

  The Utah War of 1857-58 followed. Its most notable violence was the Mountain Meadows massacre. Leaders of a local Mormon militia ordered the killing of a civilian emigrant party traveling through Utah. In 1858 Young agreed to step down as governor. A non-Mormon, Alfred Cumming, replaced him, though the church kept significant political power.

  Young died in 1877. His successors as church president resisted Congress's efforts to outlaw Mormon plural marriage. In 1878 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v. United States that religious duty was no defense for practicing polygamy. Many polygamists went into hiding, and Congress began seizing church assets.

  In September 1890, church president Wilford Woodruff issued a Manifesto that officially suspended polygamy. It did not dissolve existing plural marriages. Still, relations with the United States improved markedly, and Utah was admitted as a state in 1896.

  Some Mormons nonetheless kept entering polygamous marriages. In 1904 church president Joseph F. Smith disavowed polygamy before Congress. He issued a "Second Manifesto" calling for all plural marriages in the church to end. The church adopted a policy of excommunicating members found practicing it, and it still works to distance itself from fundamentalist groups.

  Today, a majority of Mormon fundamentalists have never belonged to the LDS Church at all.

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• 6. A Worldwide Church

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  In 1929 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir began a weekly performance on national radio, which became a public relations asset. Mormons stressed patriotism and industry. They rose from the bottom of American religious denominations by socioeconomic status to the middle class.

  In the 1920s and 1930s, Mormons began leaving Utah, and the Great Depression hurried the trend as they looked for work anywhere. Church leaders created programs to keep the tight-knit feel. They included Boy Scouting, a Young Women organization, church-sponsored dances, ward basketball, camping trips, plays, and religious education for youth and college students. The church also started a welfare program for poor members during the Depression. It has since grown a humanitarian branch that provides relief to disaster victims.

  In the later twentieth century came a retrenchment, in which Mormons became more conservative. They hoped to regain their status as a "peculiar people." The 1960s and 1970s brought Women's Liberation and the civil rights movement. Leaders were alarmed by the sexual revolution, widespread recreational drug use, and moral relativism. They put still greater emphasis on family life, religious education, and missionary work. Mormons today are probably less integrated with mainstream society than in the early 1960s.

  Black people had belonged to Mormon congregations since Joseph Smith's time, but before 1978 black membership was small. From 1852 to 1978, the church barred men of black African descent from ordination to its lay priesthood. Critics sharply attacked the policy during the civil rights movement. The 1978 reversal was prompted in part by questions about mixed-race converts in Brazil, and Mormons generally greeted it with joy and relief.

  By 1997 there were approximately 500,000 black church members, about 5 percent of the total, mostly in Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Growth has continued, especially in West Africa, where two temples have been built. Some black Mormons belong to the Genesis Group, which predates the priesthood ban and has the church's endorsement.

  After World War II the church grew rapidly as missionaries went across the globe. It doubled in size every 15 to 20 years, and by 1996 more Mormons lived outside the United States than inside. In 2012 there were an estimated 14.8 million Mormons, roughly 57 percent of them outside the United States. Among American Mormons, 84 percent are white and non-Hispanic.

  As of December 2019, the church reported 16,565,036 members worldwide. In Chile, Uruguay, and several areas of the South Pacific, Mormons make up a higher share than in the United States, where the figure is about 2 percent. In American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Niue, Samoa, and Tonga, they exceed 10 percent. The spread resembles a contact diffusion model, radiating outward from Utah.

  The church enforces general doctrinal uniformity, so congregations on every continent teach the same doctrines. Yet international Mormons often bring pieces of their own heritage into the church, adapting its practices to local cultures.

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• 7. Everyday Life and Obligations

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  Observant Mormons contribute 10 percent of their income to the church as tithing. Paying it is a prerequisite for entering Mormon temples. Congregations are called wards, and several wards or branches form a stake. Most leadership positions are lay, and a church leader may give 10 to 15 hours a week of unpaid service.

  Many young men, young women, and elderly couples choose to serve a proselytizing mission. During it they give all their time to the church without pay. Members are also often involved in humanitarian efforts.

  Common practices include studying scriptures, praying daily, fasting regularly, and attending Sunday worship. Many also join weekday church activities and avoid work on Sundays when possible. The most important part of services is considered to be the Lord's Supper, commonly called sacrament. In it, members renew the covenants they made at baptism.

  The Word of Wisdom is a health code that Mormons interpret as forbidding tobacco, alcohol, coffee, and tea. It encourages herbs, grains, fruits, and a moderate amount of meat. It is also understood to bar illegal drugs and the abuse of prescription drugs. Members are encouraged to keep a year's supplies, including food and financial reserves, and they oppose gambling and pornography.

  Many families hold a weekly Family Home Evening, set aside for bonding, study, prayer, and activities they consider wholesome. Fathers who hold the priesthood typically name and bless their children shortly after birth. Parents hope their children will grow up and marry in temples, because the faith teaches that a united family lives and progresses forever.

  The law of chastity requires abstention from sexual relations outside marriage and strict fidelity within it. The church recognizes marriage only between a man and a woman and does not perform or support same-sex marriages. LGBTQ members remain in good standing if they abstain from homosexual relations. LDS Family Services estimates that four or five members per ward experience same-sex attraction.

  Mormon families tend to be larger than average. The church opposes abortion, except in cases such as incest, rape, or serious danger to the mother's life or health. Many practicing adults wear religious undergarments, which remind them of their covenants and encourage modest dress. Tattoos and body piercings are generally discouraged.

  In 2010, around 13 to 14 percent of Mormons lived in Utah, the center of the faith's cultural influence. Utah Mormons attend church somewhat more than those elsewhere and are on average more conservative. They also stress their pioneer heritage more than international Mormons, who generally are not descended from the pioneers.

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• 8. Beliefs and Boundaries

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  Mormon scripture includes the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The latter two are collections of revelations and writings by Joseph Smith. The definition of scripture is relatively open. Anything a prophet speaks or writes under inspiration counts as the word of God, and the Bible counts only as far as it is translated correctly.

  Mormons believe in "a friendly universe" governed by a God who wants to bring his children to immortality and eternal life. They teach a pre-mortal existence in which people were literal spirit children of God. Receiving bodies on earth and facing trials would let them progress and receive a "fullness of joy." Jesus, the eldest of God's children, came to earth as the literal Son of God to conquer sin and death.

  Every person will be resurrected, and nearly all will be received into various kingdoms of glory. The highest kingdom requires full acceptance of Christ through faith, repentance, and ordinances such as baptism and the laying on of hands.

  Mormons teach that a Great Apostasy followed the ascension of Jesus. In their account, Greek and other philosophies corrupted Christian doctrine, and the martyrdom of the apostles cost the church its priesthood authority. God then restored the church through Joseph Smith. Angels including Peter, James, John, John the Baptist, Moses, and Elijah are said to have appeared to Smith and others and conferred priesthood authority.

  On that basis, Mormons call their church the "only true and living church." They identify as Christian, while many Christians, particularly evangelical Protestants, disagree. Mormons nonetheless view other religions as holding portions of the truth and genuine value.

  The church has a top-down structure in which a president-prophet dictates revelations for the whole church. Lay members are encouraged to seek personal revelation too. Most do not claim visions like Smith's. They believe God speaks to them in their hearts and minds through the Holy Ghost. Richard Lyman Bushman observes that members hold some beliefs that seem strange in a modern world, but they persist because they feel God has spoken to them.

  Members of the LDS Church make up over 95 percent of Mormons. Those who do not take part in worship or church callings are called less-active or inactive. The church publishes no activity statistics, but about 40 percent of American Mormons and 30 percent worldwide likely attend regularly. Disengagement happens most often between ages 16 and 25. In 1998 the church reported that most less-active members returned later in life, and by 2017 it was losing millennial-age members.

  Fundamentalist Mormons belong to sects that broke with the LDS Church over polygamy. There are thought to be between 20,000 and 60,000 of them, or 0.1 to 0.4 percent of Mormons, with roughly half practicing polygamy. The three largest groups are the FLDS Church, the Apostolic United Brethren, and the Latter Day Church of Christ, also known as The Order or the Kingston Clan. Some also practice a communal system called the law of consecration, or the United Order.

  Liberal Mormons, also called Progressive Mormons, read LDS teaching and scripture in an interpretive way. For them revelation is a process by which God gradually leads fallible human beings to greater understanding. They place doing good and loving others above believing correctly.

  Cultural Mormons may not accept certain doctrines or practices of the institutional church, yet they identify with the Mormon ethnic identity, usually because they were raised in the faith or spent years as active members. Some cultural Mormons are not members of the LDS Church at all.

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