Mormon Reformation - Impact of The Reformation

Impact of The Reformation

In addition to the Reformation's appeal to the spiritual and emotional lives of Latter-day Saints, actions taken during the movement had lasting impacts on church members, their families and the church organization.

According to historian Paul H. Peterson, the pledges of conformity with church practices led to a measurable increase in plural marriages throughout the Mormon region. Many men who had previously resisted plural marriages were sealed to one or more plural wives. Stanley S. Ivins' statistical research reveals that the number of plural marriages in relation to population was 65 percent higher in 1856-57 than in any other two-year period in Utah history.

A second impact of the Reformation was an increase in practical and emotional unity among the Church membership. Historians James Allen and Glen Leonard point out that the Reformation "may have accounted for the fact that the following year the Saints were emotionally prepared to confront the army of the United States en route to Utah." During this conflict, known as the Utah War, Mormon militia were asked to engage in diversionary action on the plains and in Wyoming. And Church members were prepared, under Young's direction, to abandon and destroy their homes, farms, and businesses and move again to the White Mountains of Arizona, which Young had selected as a possible place of refuge should full-scale war begin. Historians have also asserted that the emotional rhetoric contributed to the defensive dialogue and actions in Southern Utah which ultimately burst forth in the Mountain Meadows massacre.

Also during this time, leaders at church headquarters established a policy of assigning two "home" or ward missionaries in each congregational unit. They were asked to visit each family in the ward, assess their material needs and provide help where possible. They were also asked to inquire into family members' spiritual commitment, including asking searching questions about religious practices. After some months of these missionary visits, Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City and surrounding communities who had not yet been rebaptized were asked to do so as an expression of their ongoing commitment to the church. Paul H. Peterson asserts that those who refused to be rebaptized might "lose their membership in the Church. In Britain, zealous application of Reformation principles resulted in trimming from Church rolls a large number of the less-committed." A modest number of less zealous church members left the Utah area, returning to the east or traveling on to California.