(Above, Orson Pratt Jr., from Pratt Family Photo Project)
I’ve been reading a lot about Orson Pratt, the early Mormon apostle and leader who almost left the young church over allegations of seduction and adultery involving his wife, Sarah M. Pratt, the prophet Joseph Smith and Smith’s assistant, John C. Bennett. Later, after reconciling his wife’s accusations against Smith and Bennett with his belief in Mormonism, the apostle Pratt often clashed with Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, over doctrines, including who God was and His attributes.
His disputes with Young cost Pratt a chance to be president of the church. His dispute with Smith, and the way he resolved it, ultimately cost him his relationship with his first wife, her belief in the church he sacrificed so much for, and the belief of the children he bore with Sarah, save one. That brings us to Orson Pratt, Jr., the eldest son of Orson and Sarah.
Orson Jr. was a lot like his father. Like his dad, he was an intellectual man who applied reason and evidence with faith. He was also an accomplished musician, talented enough to teach at the university level. Unlike his father, though, Orson Jr. was not able to reconcile his theological doubts with his respect for reason. He became a disbeliever of Mormonism, and in a very public forum in southern Utah, where he had been a member of that area’s theological hierarchy, Orson Jr. told a large crowd that he no longer believed Joseph Smith was a prophet or that Mormonism was the true church. His discourse took place in September 1864, the same month he was excommunicated at the urging of LDS Church Apostle Erastus Snow, who had supplanted Orson Sr., on a mission to England, as sole leader of the southern Utah LDS cotton mission.
In Orson Pratt Jr.: Gifted Son of an Apostle and an Apostate,” published in the journal Dialogue, Richard S. and Mary C. Van Wagoner provide more insight into Orson Jr.’s decision to leave Mormonism. Orson Jr. claims to have disbelieved Mormonism at an early age. This is supported by his brother Arthur telling a reporter that his mother, Sarah Pratt, would secretly teach the children — while Orson Sr. was away on his many missions — to disbelieve in Joseph Smith, polygamy and Mormonism.
Nevertheless, Orson Jr. lived the life of a favored young Mormon son. He married Susan Snow, the daughter LDS leader Zerubabel Snow, was appointed to a Salt Lake City alderman and LDS high council member in his early 20s, played organ concerts privately for Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders and became a prominent music teacher. In the early 1860s he followed his father to the southern Utah mission and was quickly elected St. George city alderman and LDS high councilman.
However, in 1864 Orson Jr. refused a mission call from President Brigham Young, and action that in those days, explain the Van Wagoners, “was tantamount to an announcement of personal apostasy.” Later that year, Orson Jr., writing in the literary journal, “Veprecula,” under the pen name, “Veritas,” argued that faith could not derive from the supernatural, but “must be a careful and patient exercise of reason.” Young Pratt’s reasoning was similar to his father’s earlier declarations that evidence must support faith, but Orson Jr. took a step his father never did — he applied that reasoning to reject his father’s teachings.
There is a certain irony to Erastus Snow — Orson Jr.’s uncle — leading the excommunication of Orson Jr., given that Orson Sr. had helped convert Snow to Mormonism 30 years earlier in Vermont. In his discourse, Orson Jr. denounced Snow as a man who had actively, but secretly, tried to convince his wife, Susan, to reject him. As Gary Bergera explains in his book, “Conflict in the Quorum: Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith,” Snow’s beliefs on how to treat unbelieving family members may have played a large role in his desire to punish Orson Jr. with excommunication. In an 1857 LDS general conference address, Snow’s harsh beliefs on how to handle in-family apostasy were recorded: “…Sometimes we may err by being remiss in duty — too lenient in our families, and some of us may be under condemnation by being too careless about transgressors in our families; for if we hold fellowship with transgressors and spirits that are in rebellion against God and that will not repent and humble themselves — if we close our ears to it and go to sleep while wickedness is stalking unrebuked through our habitations, we become partakers in that transgression, and the consequences thereof will stick to us. …”
Snow went on to urge LDS families to send siblings and spouses who rejected the LDS Church teachings away from their families and out into the world, “better this than to harbour them where they were like a viper … corrupting and corroding in the midst of … family.”
The idea that members should cast out every young adult who rejects the Gospel of their parents fit the times of 1857, a time when the LDS church was at its most orthodox, and apostles such as George Albert Smith were sent to all corners of Utah to preach “us against them” fire-and-brimstone speeches; of such rhetoric was the Mountain Meadows Massacre wrought. But it hardly applied to the mild, academically talented, gifted musician, Orson Pratt Jr., who in more civil times would have been quietly released from his callings and left to live his existence outside the LDS Church without the theological stain of excommunication. Orson Pratt, Jr., by the way, lived a quiet, distinguished life in Ogden and Salt Lake City before dying in late 1903. He is buried in Salt Lake City and received a respectful obituary in the church-owned Deseret News. As late as September 1903, the ailing Pratt, who had moved to Ogden for his health, advertised in the Standard-Examiner for music students.
Mentioned in Bergera’s book is the suggestion that Orson Jr.’s excommunication was an attempt to embarrass his father and weaken his influence in the Quorum of the Twelve. According to Bergera, Orson Jr. initially refused to resign from his church position because he feared a “possible backlash for his father.” Also, Brigham Young blamed Orson Sr. for his son’s apostasy, calling his then-senior apostle “at heart an infidel.”
-- Doug Gibson
-- This post was originally published at StandardBlogs
From my book to be published later this fall. This on Pratt Jr.
ReplyDelete[September 1864] The members of Pine Valley turned their attentions to President Brigham Young, Apostle Erastus Snow, and events involving Orson Pratt Jr. in September 1864. The High Council in St. George had earlier been the scene of religious difficulties that involved Orson Pratt Jr. Orson Jr., son of the apostle he was named for, had moved to Dixie in 1862 as part of the extended family and settled within a few months at St. George.
The family lived in a tent for some time. Orson Pratt Jr. lived the privileged life with his father and Erastus Snow, his uncle by marriage, the leading personalities of the Southern Mission. Orson Jr., twenty-seven in 1862, was the city postmaster, alderman, and a member of the stake High Counsel. John Hawley wrote the younger Pratt had “become dissatisfied with some doctrine taught by the leading men of the church and stepped down and out of the council and moved back to Salt Lake Valley.”
There was much more to the story than that simple narrative.
For Pine Valley, it began as Lorenzo Brown excitedly wrote in his journal on September 11th the news announcing the arrival of President Brigham Young the following day. He would preach later in the day. The next day the traveling party arrived from Pinto. The twenty-one wagons carried more than 100 passengers along with the Nephi Brass band and a quadrille group from Salt Lake City. Nine families in the valley divided and took in the visitors. Thomas Jenkins, Seymour Young, George D. Watt, Philip Margette and some others suppered with the Lorenzo Browns.
Brigham Young, according to Brown, felt “first rate and is full of blessings.” A meeting was held at five that afternoon, and the George Hawleys hosted a dance in the evening for neighbors and visitors. Brown believed, “The President and Twelve enjoyed themselves highly.” At 9:00PM, President Young stated that “twas time to dismiss kneeled down & offered prayer in which he asked God to bless this settlement and all pertaining to it in the most fervant manner.”
Then the President began asking questions privately of at least Hawley and Brown.
ReplyDeletePresident Young inquired John Hawley how the brothers-in-law and apostles Orson Pratt Sr. and Erastus Snow, were faring with each other. John said the two apostles “was at peace at present. They was divided at one time in their judgment.” Not surprisingly, the matter was over timber and milling. John, as Presiding Elder, had allowed Robert Forsythe to cut timber in a canyon. John’s action ended up in a church trial because Eli Whipple and Erastus Snow, competitors of Forsyth, became wroth. John stood on his priesthood authority and the principle that “a presiding officer had this jurisdiction of managing the country and its surroundings.” Orson Pratt Sr., the senior apostle in Dixie, presided in a church court and awarded the decision to Hawley on that principle.
The decision caused bad blood between Pratt and Snow. John believed that Whipple and Snow had intended to create a logging and milling monopoly in Pine Valley without competition.
John Hawley’s interactions whether with President or Apostle or fellow priesthood holder or his own brother seemed to follow an iron rod. His character appeared to be inflexible once he perceived what he thought his action should be. He married his brother’s third wife to another man. He ruled against his friend and religious superior Erastus Snow in the matter of timber interests and sought the appellate approval of Orson Pratt Sr. He counseled Lorenzo Brown and others from the pulpit for what he believed was inappropriate behavior. He counseled with President Young on matters involving the Pratt family.
The conversation moved to the name sake of Orson Pratt Sr., who had had problems with the council and Snow earlier in the year. President Young believed the younger Pratt came by his need for empirical data naturally. Brown wrote that President Young had said that Orson Pratt Sr. “was at heart an infidel.” According to Hawley, Young stated Orson Jr.’s “father is sceptical also.” Young alleged that the older Pratt “never offers a prayer to God” and that he, Young, thought Pratt “was doubtful whether a being of this kind existed or not. I thought this strange but he further said the church has had more trouble with this man than any other in the church. For said he, we had to call him home from England at one time for teaching and writing that God had attained to perfection and could not progress further.”
John was flattered the President Young would share private matters with him, that “I thought it quite good to thus be honored with a pleasant talk with the Prophet of our Kingdom”.
On the 14th, members of the Twelve did most of the preaching. Brown did notice although the President did “not speak a great deal,” that he did make an exception concerning those who were called to St. George and failed. He believed those who had failed would have action taken against them at the October conference in Salt Lake City.
ReplyDeleteYoung then diverted from his topic of apostasy and spoke of a subject near and dear to his heart, cotton. He talked about growing cotton, telling the members to grow their own bread, “and that his cotton spinner was in successful operation make all sises of yarn from No 8 to No 40” and “he would exchange” the settler’s “raw cotton delivered at the machine at the rate of 5 lbs yarn for [blank] lbs of cotton He blessed the people of the mission with future promises wanted them to settle all the nooks and corners up and down the virgin and bye and bye would go beyond the Colorado stopped.”
During the next week, for Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt Jr., matters deteriorated between uncle and nephew. Lydia Pratt, Orson Sr.’s first wife and mother of Orson Jr., had received permission from Brigham Young for the family to return to Salt Lake City. However, in a sacrament meeting on September 18, Orson Jr. attacked the character of Erastus Snow. Calling Snow “a snake in the grass” that made life so miserable for Orson Sr. that he accepted earlier that year a mission call out of the country. Orson Jr. also pointed a finger at Snow for endeavoring unsuccessfully to persuade the younger Pratt’s wife “to turn against her husband.” He also testified that he did not believe that Joseph Smith came to earth to fulfill the work of the Restoration. The younger Pratt was publicly excommunicated that evening. The family moved shortly thereafter to Salt Lake City.
In light of Young’s conversations with Brown and Hawley six days earlier at Pine Valley, the events of the 18th ending with Orson Jr.’s being struck off from the church leads one to think the excommunication met the President’s approval. The event perhaps had been engineered by Snow with Young’s approval, including an attempt to privately turn Orson Jr.’s wife against him.