Theodemocracy - History

History

Smith first coined the term theodemocracy while running for President of the United States in 1844. It is also clear that this concept lay behind his organization of the secretive Council of Fifty that same year. But it is uncertain whether Smith believed that he could or should form a functioning theodemocratic government before the advent of the Second Coming and the destruction of worldly political systems.

Once formed the Council of Fifty had little actual power, and was more symbolic of preparation for God's future kingdom than a functioning political body. The town of Nauvoo where Smith organized the Council was governed according to a corporate charter received from the state of Illinois in 1841. The Nauvoo Charter granted a wide measure of home rule, but the municipality it created was strictly republican in organization. Such an arrangement may reflect the Mormon history of persecution, with the form of the Nauvoo government developing as a practical self-defense mechanism rather than as an absolute theological preference.

Despite this, later critics labeled the town a “theocracy,” mostly due to the position of many church leaders, including Joseph Smith, as elected city officials. This was a serious charge, as in Jacksonian America, anything which smacked of theocratic rule was immediately suspect and deemed an anti-republican threat to the country. Suspicions about Mormon rule in Nauvoo, combined with misunderstandings about the role of the Council of Fifty, resulted in hyperbolic rumors about Joseph Smith’s “theocratic kingdom.” This in turn added to the growing furor against the Latter-day Saints in Illinois which eventually led to Smith’s assassination in June 1844, and the Mormons' expulsion from the state in early 1846.

Even before coining the name 'theodemocracy,' Smith's teachings about a political Kingdom of God had caused friction with non-Mormons even before the Nauvoo period. As early as 1831, Smith recorded a revelatory prayer which stated that "the keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth...Wherefore, may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come..."

In other words, Smith believed that it was necessary for the Mormons to at least lay the foundations for the Kingdom of God before the Second Coming could occur. It remains unclear what he felt those foundations must entail. Unfortunately, a lack of precise definitions sometimes confused the issue. For instance, in another 1831 revelation, the "Kingdom" seems to be synonymous with the "Church." Yet many LDS leaders went to great lengths to distinguish between the "Church of God," which was a spiritual organization which included both social and economic programs, and the "Kingdom of God," which was fully political and had yet to be fully organized.

In an 1874 sermon, Brigham Young taught that what the Mormons commonly called the "Kingdom of God" actually implied two structures. The first was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which had been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith. The second was the political kingdom described by Daniel, a theodemocratic polity which would one day be fully organized, and once initiated would "protect every person, every sect, and all people upon the face of the whole earth, in their legal rights." But however defined, Smith certainly did not believe that the Saints would ever establish this kingdom by force or rebellion.

Nevertheless, the very concept of political power enforced by God through any human agency was rejected as obnoxious and highly dangerous by contemporary society. When Smith was arrested in connection with the 1838 Mormon War, he was closely questioned by the presiding judge about whether he believed in the kingdom which would subdue all others as described in the Book of Daniel. Smith's attorney Alexander Doniphan announced that if belief in such teachings were treasonous, then the Bible must be considered a treasonable publication.

The development of theodemocracy was continued along with the development of Smith's community. Nauvoo was governed by a combination of LDS church leaders and friendly non-Mormons who had been elected to serve in civil office might mark the city as a theodemocracy in embryo. Further, Smith had anticipated that the Mormons would move west long before his murder, and he may have believed that he could create a theodemocratic polity somewhere outside of the United States in anticipation of Christ's return to earth. Smith's "last charge" to the Council of Fifty before his death was to "bear off the Kingdom of God to all the world."

After Smith’s death, the banner of theodemocracy was carried by his successor Brigham Young to Utah in 1847. While Young’s early conception of the State of Deseret was no doubt based on theodemocratic principles, its practical application was severely hampered after Utah was made a territory in 1850, and further eroded when Young was replaced as territorial governor after the Utah War of 1857-1858. But even at an early stage, the Utah government never fully implemented Smith's theodemocratic vision. Like in Nauvoo, theodemocratic principles were mainly expressed through the election of church leadership to territorial office through republican processes. As before, the Council of Fifty remained essentially a "government in exile" with little real power. In 1855, one LDS Apostle explained that a "nucleus" of God's political kingdom had been formed, although that in no way challenged their loyalty to the government of the United States.

Mormon belief in an imminent Second Coming continued throughout the 19th century, and their expectation of the violent self-destruction of governments seemed to be confirmed by such events as the American Civil War. Orson Pratt taught, "not withstanding that it has been sanctioned by the Lord...the day will come when the United States government, and all others, will be uprooted, and the kingdoms of this world will be united in one, and the kingdom of our God will govern the whole earth...if the Bible be true, and we know it to be true." Thus, while the Saints sincerely proclaimed their loyalty to the United States throughout this period, they also expected its unavoidable collapse along with other worldly governments. This in turn would require the Latter-day Saints to bring order to the resultant chaos and "save the Constitution" by implementation of a true theodemocracy.

By the turn of the 20th century, Mormon expectations of an imminent Apocalypse had largely dissipated, and Utah's admission to the Union in 1896 required the removal of the last vestiges of theodemocracy from the local government. The Council of Fifty had not met since the 1880s, and was technically extinguished when its last surviving member, Heber J. Grant, died in 1945. Thus, theodemocracy within the LDS church has slowly receded in importance. While Mormons still believe that the Kingdom of God maintains the bifurcated definition espoused by Brigham Young, both church and millennial government, its political implications are now rarely alluded to. Rather, the kingdom predicted by the Prophet Daniel is commonly identified simply with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Theodemocracy has become a principle which, when discussed at all, is relegated to an indefinite future when secular governments have already fully collapsed in the turbulent times preceding the Second Coming. Until such time, injunctions within the LDS church to "build up the Kingdom of God" refer to purely spiritual matters such as missionary work, and Joseph Smith's political ideal bears little weight in contemporary LDS political theory or objectives.