Mormonism and Authority - Political Structure in Early Mormonism

Political Structure in Early Mormonism

Early Mormonism established community legal structures as essentially theocracies (see theodemocracy). Joseph Smith and his successor, Brigham Young, presided over The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as LDS Church president and Prophet of God, until Christ's assumption of world kingship at his Second Coming. U.S. President Millard Fillmore even appointed Young governor of the Territory of Utah. Yet there was minimal effective separation between church and state until 1858.

Brigham Young envisioned a Mormon state spanning from the Salt Lake Valley to the Pacific Ocean, and so he sent church leaders to establish colonies far and wide. These colonies were governed by Mormon officials under Brigham Young's mandate to enforce "God's law" by "lay the ax at the root of the tree of sin and iniquity," while preserving individual rights. Despite the distance to these outlying colonies, local Mormon leaders received frequent visits from church headquarters, and were under Young's direct doctrinal and political control. Mormons were taught to obey the orders of their priesthood leaders, as long as they coincided with LDS gospel principles. Young's view of theocratic enforcement included a death penalty. However, there are no documented cases showing that such threats were ever enforced as actual policy. Mormon leaders taught the doctrine of blood atonement, in which Mormon "covenant breakers" could in theory gain their exaltation in heaven by having "their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins." More clearly stated, this doctrine holds that capital punishment is requisite for offenses of murder.

Commentator Thomas G. Alexander argues that most violent speech by LDS leaders was rhetorical in nature and that statistical studies were needed to determine whether frontier Utah was more violent in reality than surrounding regions. Referring to the frequent Mormon declarations that there were fewer deeds of violence in Utah than in other pioneer settlements of equal population, the Salt Lake Tribune of January 25, 1876, said: "It is estimated that no less than 600 murders have been committed by the Mormons, in nearly every case at the instigation of their priestly leaders, during the occupation of the territory. Giving a mean average of 50,000 persons professing that faith in Utah, we have a murder committed every year to every 2500 of population. The same ratio of crime extended to the population of the United States would give 16,000 murders every year." Whatever the case, there is evidence that occasionally local church leaders took the rhetoric of such doctrines seriously as they contemplated sanctionable applications of violence.

According to rumors and accusations, Brigham Young sometimes enforced "God's law" through a secret cadre of avenging Danites. The truth of these rumors is debated by historians. While there existed active vigilante organizations in Utah who referred to themselves as "Danites", they may have been acting independently. (For example, frontier Latter-day Saints Isaac C. Haight and William H. Dame were never Danites; however, Young's records indicate that in 1857 he authorized these two men to secretly execute two ex-convicts traveling through southern Utah along the California trail if they were caught stealing cattle. Dame replied to Young in a letter that "we try to live so when your finger crooks, we move." Haight and/or Dame might have been involved in the subsequent ambush of part of the convicts' party just south of Mountain Meadows.)