John Corrill was an older Christian convert to the early Mormon church

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The early years of the Mormon Church are distinct for its young converts, with 20-something apostles embracing the progressive, radical-for-its-time distinctions between Joseph Smith’s Mormonism and the traditional Protestant Christianity. However, there was another type of early LDS convert; an older generation who embraced Christian primitivism, which encompassed a desire to return to strict Biblical principles, disdained “priestcraft,” and had a libertarian streak, mixed with republican ideals, that opposed a centralized church leadership dictating to local church groups. Most importantly, this type of convert would never place a prophet’s opinion over his own personal beliefs.

Given the direction the Mormon Church took over its 14-plus years with Smith solely at its helm, it’s not surprising that a substantial number of the older-generation converts did not stick with Mormonism. Perhaps the best example of this type of early Mormon convert who enjoyed prominence in the young church but later abandoned it is John Corrill, who is mentioned a couple of times in the Doctrine of Covenants. In the book “Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History,” University of Illinois Press, 1994, historian Kenneth H. Winn provides an interesting recap of Corrill’s life and tenure in Mormonism. A Christian primitivist, Corrill, who turned 36 in 1831, initially investigated Mormonism with a determination to expose its follies. However, Corrill, who admired the primitivist teachings of Alexander Campbell, was shocked when he heard Sidney Rigdon, a former Campbell advocate he admired, pitching Mormonism enthusiastically.

As Winn notes, Corrill, a Massachusetts native, read The Book of Mormon and decided he could not declare it a fraud. Also, Mormonism appealed to specific primitivists such as Corrill in that it contained a certainty of belief that they sought, whether with the Book of Mormon or a yearning for “a prophet who could speak for God.” He, as well as his wife and family, joined the church in 1831 in Ohio.

Soon after his baptism, Corrill, after serving a mission, was sent to Missouri to help develop the church’s growth there. He served under Bishop Edward Partridge. It was here that Corrill first clashed with Smith’s leadership. Both he and Partridge favored a more local control than Smith wanted, and both were criticized by the Mormon prophet. Also, Corrill foresaw the problems that would develop with mass migration of poor Mormon converts to land long dominated by non-Mormon Missourians. The combination of religious bigotry among Missourians as well as unwise boasting by saints of establishing a religious and political kingdom led to violence and conflicts that the Mormons would always lose over the years.

Despite the conflict with church leadership, Corrill mended his problems with Smith and according to Winn, had a very strong ecclesiastical relationship with the young prophet through the mid-1830s. In 1836, Winn notes, Corrill was appointed by Joseph Smith to head the completion of the Kirtland Temple. Corrill also developed a reputation of being the Mormon leader who was best able to negotiate with anti-Mormon elements in Missouri. By 1837, Corrill was a leading Mormon settler in Far West, Missouri, ”selected ... as the church’s agent and as the ‘Keeper of the Lord’s Storehouse,’” writes Winn.

But that was the peak that preceded the fall of Corrill’s tenure in the church. As tranquil as events in Far West were, an ill-fated banking endeavor in Kirtland by Smith and other church leaders was leading to apostasy and tense disputes between church leaders and native Missourians. Corrill, Winn writes, regarded the Kirtland monetary failure with “revulsion.” He saw the lust for wealth, and the subsequent fall, as evidence of “suffered pride.” Yet he was as critical of Smith’s dissenters as he was of the banking effort. Also, Corrill still believed that the overall church, with auxiliaries serving as checks and balances, could reform itself and maintain the better relations between Mormons and non-Mormons that still existed in Far West.

That was not to be. The turmoil of Kirtland followed the church to Far West. To cut to the chase, a speech by Rigdon, called the “Salt Sermon,” appalled Corrill. In it, Ridgon, comparing apostates to salt having lost its savor, argued that they could be “trodden under the foot of men.” In short, Rigdon said that the dissenters “deserved ill treatment.”

Corrill warned the dissenters that their safety was in danger. Later, the Danites, a Mormon vigilante group, was organized. The militant group frightened Corrill, who began to work against it in secret. As Winn explains, “The crisis that began in Kirtland and eventually swept Corrill up in Missouri marked a major turning point in early Mormon history, pitting the theocratically minded devotees of the prophet, who regarded opposition to the church leadership as opposition to God, against more libertarian minded dissenters, who rejected the First Presidency’s claim over their temporal affairs and the authoritarian demand for blind obedience.”

Corrill saw the Danites and Ridgon’s call for conflict in direct opposition to the Biblical belief that God is responsible for divine retribution. From this point on, 1838, Corrill was basically in wait to be excommunicated, no longer trusted by the Smith/Ridgon leadership of the church. Nevertheless, church leaders acknowledged Corrill’s reputation for honesty by electing him — with the Danites’ support — to the Missouri legislature. The final break between Smith and Corrill was over the church leadership’s call for a communal structure, which included church leaders being paid for work other than preaching. The communal structure was, Winn notes, allegedly voluntary, although pressure was exercised on members to contribute. “In any event,” Winn writes, “Corrill deeply disapproved of the revelation and readily shared his opinion with others.”

Despite his church status, Corrill worked without success in the Missouri legislature to push Mormon interests and even donated $2,000 of his own money to help the beleaguered saints. By the time his term ended, most of his constituency had fled the area. Ridgon’s rhetoric, and the Danites’ actions, had led to militias overwhelming the church and Smith, Rigdon and others being jailed. Corrill, now without a church and due to be excommunicated in early 1839, left his religion. He wrote a book, “A Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” in late 1839. It is an interesting read for its historical value. At the time though, it sold poorly and Corrill spent the last few years of his life in poverty. He died in 1842, leaving an estate of only $265.86. As Winn writes, “His integrity and basic decency were overshadowed by charges that he had betrayed the prophet and the church.” 

Corrill did offer testimony against Smith to Missouri court hostile to the Mormons. Richard Lyman Bushman, in his 2005 biography of Joseph Smith,also describes Corrill as a “the steady, clear-headed Missouri leader” who conflicted over how much free will he had to surrender to stay a faithful Mormon, and witnessing defeat after defeat, finally decided he had been deceived..

-- Doug Gibson

Originally published at StandardNet

Doubt, rather than knowledge is most compatible with faith

 

Michael Vinson, of Salt Lake City, a master’s graduate of the Divinity School of the University of Cambridge, has a fascinating essay in a past issue of Sunstone. Titled, “The Crisis of Doubt in the Church,” (read here) it offers the proposal that “we formulate a new view of faith and doubt, one that recognizes the latter as an integral part of testimony.”

As has been mentioned in media reports, there is a trend of apostasy in the LDS Church, including “some of the most educated and highest income earners,” as Vinson relates from anecdotal sources. I’d add, citing anecdotal evidence, that many others are young adults who spent their childhoods as active members of the church. Vinson notes that a misunderstanding between faith, knowledge and doubt can hinder efforts to counsel members whose faith is tried and are seeking questions relating to doctrine or LDS Church history.

To get to the nugget, Vinson is arguing that we need to give the acknowledgment of doubt more respect, and to regard it as a major component of faith, rather than a weakness. He writes, “The underlying problem is not the level of a member’s church activity but the fact that they have bought into a false dichotomy about the relationship between faith and doubt … suggesting that the effective exercise of faith requires that one have zero doubt.”

Vinson is on to something here. He quotes Alma 32:18, “for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe.” In short, we are commanded to have faith, which is something not known. “As Vinson writes, “… if the truthfulness of the plan of salvation and the Church can actually be known, then faith is unnecessary. But since faith is the first principle of the gospel (and therefore necessary), we can conclude that it is certain knowledge, not doubt, that is the opposite of faith.”

Vinson suggests that members of the church embrace a union of faith and doubt, as a way to “believe something” via faith rather than “know something,” which really doesn’t take faith. He argues, convincingly in my opinion, that “it is our emphasis of testimony as a knowing experience rather than as a faith experience that causes our angst.”

The author also cites Mark 9:24, as an example of faith and doubt being in harmony. “And straightway the father of the child cried out with tears, ‘Lord I believe; help thou mine unbelief.’”

Knowledge, as well as perfection, are ends, not journeys. Faith is a journey that includes doubt and obedience. Christianity, and many other faiths, demand that we subject our will, and reason, to an unseen deity. In the LDS faith, we are asked to sustain men as senior representatives of Christ’s church. These are actions that cannot be proven. To say they can is deceiving. They demand faith. Even in times we may doubt there is a loving God or a man who speaks with God, I believe our faith in those things are more powerful than the rhetorical “I know” uttered for the same criteria.

If persons struggling with the claims of any religion, Mormon or otherwise, were told that these feelings are not a spiritual weakness, but a natural, and healthy, component of faith, there might be fewer apostasies. However, that requires tremendous patience, from parents, mentors, siblings and ecclesiastical leaders, such as bishops. Religious beliefs are so bedrock to many of us that to witness a loved one question those beliefs results in hostility. Even the late LDS prophet Spencer W. Kimball reached a point with his eldest son, Spence, a skeptic of Mormonism, where to maintain a relationship the father had to quit talking with the son about his church standing.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published in 2013 at StandardBlogs.

Sonia Johnson and the ERA a contentious issue during presidency of Kimball

This essay was first published in April of 2010.

In “Lengthen Your Stride,” the biography of the Prophet Spencer W. Kimball’s tenure as LDS Church president, there is this anecdote: President Kimball, who in spring 1979 was being constantly called by Mormon dissenter Sonia Johnson, retreated to the foyer of the Church Office Building. He was observed by Relief Society President Barbara Smith, who asked him why he was working on papers in the foyer and not his office. The prophet admitted that he was trying to avoid Johnson’s calls, adding he didn’t want to lie when she was told he was not in his office.

Smith replied, “President, may I sit with you here for a while? Sonia’s after me too!”

It’s been more than three decades since Johnson was excommunicated from the LDS Church. She’s become an answer to a trivia game. But the controversy over the LDS Church’s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment was a headache to church leaders, and particularly its leader, Kimball. In some ways it’s a lot like the uproar over the church’s support of a measure banning gay marriage in California.

The LDS Church actively opposed the ERA — which was steadily losing a battle to garner enough states to become part of the Constitution — for what it called “moral” reasons. Johnson, a lifetime Mormon from Cache County married and living in Virginia, became an active proponent of ERA.

According to “Lengthen Your Stride,” she engaged in a feisty debate with Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch while testifying on Capitol Hill. Johnson later helped start Mormons for ERA and persistently sought an interview with President Kimball.

Johnson claimed she wanted to know if the church’s opposition to the ERA was based on revelation or not. Kimball would not meet with her, believing it would accomplish nothing and that Johnson would manipulate what he would say to her. Johnson’s crusade made her famous. She became a symbol of feminist resentment against the Mormon Church. As she gained prominence, her rhetoric became more barbed. She urged, or suggested (depending on her or others’ interpretation) that people not invite LDS missionaries into their homes. She also referred to the LDS Church as a “savage misogyny.”

There’s no doubt that the LDS Church actively opposed the ERA. In 1978, a First Presidency letter read by bishops urged members to get engaged with other citizens to defeat the ERA. In a 1980 Church News editorial, the church expounded on its opposition. Later an insert in The Ensign was devoted to criticizing the ERA.

This is what the ERA actually said:
“Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.”

It seems a mild two dozen or so words, but its interpretation caused a decade or more of fierce debate. In late 1979, Sonia Johnson was excommunicated. For several years afterward, the LDS Church was subject to a lot of activism against it as a result of its ERA stance, particularly after the deadline for its passage expired.

In “Lengthen Your Stride,” it is recalled, “In January 1981, a group of twenty representing NOW and Ex-Mormons for ERA gathered at the gates of the Ogden Temple and burned temple garments…” The National Organization For Women, which described the Mormon Church as a major opponent in the effort to ratify the ERA, sent missionaries door to door in Utah to petition President Kimball. It was common for protesters to vote against sustaining LDS Church leaders at general conferences, to picket and to fly banners over many church meetings.

The protests faded in the mid-1980s as the ERA diminished as an issue. Sonia Johnson ran for president under a fringe party banner. She wrote a biography, “From Housewife to Heretic,” that can still be found at used bookstores, as well as other small-press books.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

Orson Pratt Jr., Erastus Snow, apostasy and excommunication

(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

John Corrill an example of the older Christian primitivist converts to Mormonism

The early years of the Mormon Church are distinct for its young converts, with 20-something apostles embracing the progressive, radical-for-its-time distinctions between Joseph Smith’s Mormonism and the traditional Protestant Christianity. However, there was another type of early LDS convert; an older generation who embraced Christian primitivism, which encompassed a desire to return to strict Biblical principles, disdained “priestcraft,” and had a libertarian streak, mixed with republican ideals, that opposed a centralized church leadership dictating to local church groups. Most importantly, this type of convert would never place a prophet’s opinion over his own personal beliefs.

Given the direction the Mormon Church took over its 14-plus years with Smith solely at its helm, it’s not surprising that a substantial number of the older-generation converts did not stick with Mormonism. Perhaps the best example of this type of early Mormon convert who enjoyed prominence in the young church but later abandoned it is John Corrill, who is mentioned a couple of times in the Doctrine of Covenants. In the book “Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History,” University of Illinois Press, 1994, historian Kenneth H. Winn provides an interesting recap of Corrill’s life and tenure in Mormonism. A Christian primitivist, Corrill, who turned 36 in 1831, initially investigated Mormonism with a determination to expose its follies. However, Corrill, who admired the primitivist teachings of Alexander Campbell, was shocked when he heard Sidney Rigdon, a former Campbell advocate he admired, pitching Mormonism enthusiastically.

As Winn notes, Corrill, a Massachusetts native, read The Book of Mormon and decided he could not declare it a fraud. Also, Mormonism appealed to specific primitivists such as Corrill in that it contained a certainty of belief that they sought, whether with the Book of Mormon or a yearning for “a prophet who could speak for God.” He, as well as his wife and family, joined the church in 1831 in Ohio.

Soon after his baptism, Corrill, after serving a mission, was sent to Missouri to help develop the church’s growth there. He served under Bishop Edward Partridge. It was here that Corrill first clashed with Smith’s leadership. Both he and Partridge favored a more local control than Smith wanted, and both were criticized by the Mormon prophet. Also, Corrill foresaw the problems that would develop with mass migration of poor Mormon converts to land long dominated by non-Mormon Missourians. The combination of religious bigotry among Missourians as well as unwise boasting by saints of establishing a religious and political kingdom led to violence and conflicts that the Mormons would always lose over the years.

Despite the conflict with church leadership, Corrill mended his problems with Smith and according to Winn, had a very strong ecclesiastical relationship with the young prophet through the mid-1830s. In 1836, Winn notes, Corrill was appointed by Joseph Smith to head the completion of the Kirtland Temple. Corrill also developed a reputation of being the Mormon leader who was best able to negotiate with anti-Mormon elements in Missouri. By 1837, Corrill was a leading Mormon settler in Far West, Missouri, ”selected ... as the church’s agent and as the ‘Keeper of the Lord’s Storehouse,’” writes Winn.

But that was the peak that preceded the fall of Corrill’s tenure in the church. As tranquil as events in Far West were, an ill-fated banking endeavor in Kirtland by Smith and other church leaders was leading to apostasy and tense disputes between church leaders and native Missourians. Corrill, Winn writes, regarded the Kirtland monetary failure with “revulsion.” He saw the lust for wealth, and the subsequent fall, as evidence of “suffered pride.” Yet he was as critical of Smith’s dissenters as he was of the banking effort. Also, Corrill still believed that the overall church, with auxiliaries serving as checks and balances, could reform itself and maintain the better relations between Mormons and non-Mormons that still existed in Far West.

That was not to be. The turmoil of Kirtland followed the church to Far West. To cut to the chase, a speech by Rigdon, called the “Salt Sermon,” appalled Corrill. In it, Ridgon, comparing apostates to salt having lost its savor, argued that they could be “trodden under the foot of men.” In short, Rigdon said that the dissenters “deserved ill treatment.”

Corrill warned the dissenters that their safety was in danger. Later, the Danites, a Mormon vigilante group, was organized. The militant group frightened Corrill, who began to work against it in secret. As Winn explains, “The crisis that began in Kirtland and eventually swept Corrill up in Missouri marked a major turning point in early Mormon history, pitting the theocratically minded devotees of the prophet, who regarded opposition to the church leadership as opposition to God, against more libertarian minded dissenters, who rejected the First Presidency’s claim over their temporal affairs and the authoritarian demand for blind obedience.”

Corrill saw the Danites and Ridgon’s call for conflict in direct opposition to the Biblical belief that God is responsible for divine retribution. From this point on, 1838, Corrill was basically in wait to be excommunicated, no longer trusted by the Smith/Ridgon leadership of the church. Nevertheless, church leaders acknowledged Corrill’s reputation for honesty by electing him — with the Danites’ support — to the Missouri legislature. The final break between Smith and Corrill was over the church leadership’s call for a communal structure, which included church leaders being paid for work other than preaching. The communal structure was, Winn notes, allegedly voluntary, although pressure was exercised on members to contribute. “In any event,” Winn writes, “Corrill deeply disapproved of the revelation and readily shared his opinion with others.”

Despite his church status, Corrill worked without success in the Missouri legislature to push Mormon interests and even donated $2,000 of his own money to help the beleaguered saints. By the time his term ended, most of his constituency had fled the area. Ridgon’s rhetoric, and the Danites’ actions, had led to militias overwhelming the church and Smith, Rigdon and others being jailed. Corrill, now without a church and due to be excommunicated in early 1839, left his religion. He wrote a book, “A Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” in late 1839. It is an interesting read for its historical value. (here ) At the time though, it sold poorly and Corrill spent the last few years of his life in poverty. He died in 1842, leaving an estate of only $265.86. As Winn writes, “His integrity and basic decency were overshadowed by charges that he had betrayed the prophet and the church.” 

Corrill did offer testimony against Smith to Missouri court hostile to the Mormons. Richard Lyman Bushman, in his 2005 biography of Joseph Smith,also describes Corrill as a “the steady, clear-headed Missouri leader” who conflicted over how much free will he had to surrender to stay a faithful Mormon, and witnessing defeat after defeat, finally decided he had been deceived..

-- Doug Gibson

Originally published at StandardNet

The prodigal Mormon apostle, Thomas B. Marsh

The “Milk and Strippings” story as it relates to Thomas B. Marsh, onetime top LDS apostle turned apostate who came to Utah almost 20 years later a broken, humbled, impoverished supplicant, is one of the pleasant semi-fictions of Mormon history. It probably isn’t completely untrue, but it seems a mostly unlikely fable, which follows: In Far West, Sister Marsh and Sister Harris agreed to share milk and so-called “strippings” in order to make more cheese. Sister Marsh kept too many of the “strippings.” Sister Harris complained to the ward teachers, who decided that Sister Marsh was in the wrong. There was an appeal and the bishop upheld the verdict. Thomas B. Marsh, the senior apostle, appealed to the High Council, who upheld the bishop’s verdict. Apostle Marsh then appealed to the First Presidency, who upheld the High Council. The story concludes with Marsh so angry over what he perceived as an affront to his wife, that, as Apostle George A. Smith relates, “With the persistency of Lucifer himself, he declared that he would uphold the character of his wife, ‘even if he (Marsh) had to go to hell for it.’” (It bears noting that Smith’s recollections are from the 1850s.)

So, Marsh eventually left the church, filed affidavits that Mormon paramilitary organizations were prepared to attack church opponents. According to authors Richard Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, writing in Sunstone, Vol. 6, No. 4, Marsh’s affidavit, which was co-filed by Orson Hyde, an apostle who later returned to the church, contributed to the extermination order of Mormons in Missouri, signed by Gov. Lilburn W. Boggs, and the Haun’s Mill massacre, where 17 Mormon men and boys were murdered.

Marsh’s apostasy was damaging to the church leaders. As A. Gary Anderson, writing for the website 1857massacre.com, notes, Joseph Smith “spent five months in jail as a result of the betrayal of Marsh and the others.”

Both the Sunstone piece and Anderson’s online essay, titled, “Thomas B. Marsh: Reluctant Apostate,” rely a lot on the “Milk and Strippings Story” to explain Marsh’s apostasy. Frankly, it seems ludicrous that a dispute over a pint of milk “strippings” would lead to such chaos. But that’s the point of the fable, to point out how something that seems inconsequential can have great ramifications.

But there is a rest of the story to Marsh’s apostasy. He was under a great deal of personal and religious stress. As a senior church apostle, he was confronting rebellions from some of the church’s earliest leaders, including John Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, William E. McLellin, John Boynton, Luke Johnson and Lyman Johnson. In fact, Marsh’s efforts to maintain a church led by Joseph Smith were rewarded with his appointment as “President pro tem of the Church in Zion,” writes Anderson.

Nevertheless, history records that by the end of 1838 Marsh was both an apostate and an enemy to the LDS Church and its prophet, Joseph Smith. Casting aside the “Milk and Strippings” story as more legend than fact, John Hamer, writing in the blog bycommonconsent, offers a reason for Marsh’s apostasy that seems to have more curd in it. Hamer casts Marsh as a church leader very concerned over the young faith’s embrace of “Gideon’s mythic defeat of the Midianites (Judges 7-8) where God required only 300 men to defeat 120,000,” Hamer writes. Hamer argues that Marsh’s concern over Mormons wanting Quixotic battles with far superior enemies that would be waged with God’s help “was no small thing. Rather, it was the big thing.”

Now, the second part of the “Milk and Strippings” fable is that Marsh, nearly 20 years later, returned to Utah a broken man, begged publicly for forgiveness, and was reinstated into the church by a forgiving Brigham Young. Again part of that’s true, but it’s much more complex.

As Hamer notes, Young offered this ungracious reply: “I presume that Brother Marsh will take no offen[s]e if I talk a little about him. We have manifested our feelings towards him, and we know his situation. With regard to this Church’s being reconciled to him, I can say that this Church and people were never dissatisfied with him; for when men and women apostatize and go from us, we have nothing to do with them. If they do that which is evil, they will suffer for it. Brother Marsh has suffered. ...

“He has told you that he is an old man. Do you think that I am an old man? I could prove to this congregation that I am young; for I could find more girls who would choose me for a husband than can any of the young men. Brother Thomas considers himself very aged and infirm, and you can see that he is, brethren and sisters. What is the cause of it? He left the Gospel of salvation. What do you think the difference is between his age and mine? One year and seven months to a day; and he is one year, seven months, and fourteen days older than brother Heber C. Kimball. ‘Mormonism’ keeps men and women young and handsome; and when they are full of the Spirit of God, there are none of them but what will have a glow upon their countenances; and that is what makes you and me young; for the Spirit of God is with us and within us. When Brother Thomas thought of returning to the Church, the plurality of wives troubled him a good deal. Look at him. Do you think it need to? I do not; for I doubt whether he could get one wife. Why it should have troubled an infirm old man like him is not for me to say.”

Hamer describes Young as “uncharitable” in his remarks. Perhaps that’s true, but there’s more context to this historical tale, as Van Wagoner and Walker note in their Sunstone article. Prior to the reunion and speeches at the Bowery, Marsh had sent Young what he claimed was a revelation from God. It read in part, as the Sunstone piece records, “Behold I say unto thee Brigham Young! Where is the servant of the Lord, Thomas Marsh, Chief of the 12 to whom the Lord gave the keys of the Kingdom? from whom they have not been taken, who was driven out from among you because of the iniquity of his brethren who hunted for his blood but did not obtain it because his life was hid with Christ in god, because he had made the Lord, who was the God of David, his habitation …”

The letter from Marsh to Young also claimed that God wanted Young, as well as himself, to be part of a “Supreme Council” in which “they shale obtain the word of the Lord through the mouth of Thomas ...”

Brigham Young did not suffer those whom he considered fools easily. Reading the letter, one imagines emotions including contempt, pity and compassion. History does record that he sent for Thomas B. Marsh, and allowed the “prodigal apostle” a place in the church he once abandoned. Young’s tendency to be blunt, one which often extended to cruelty, was also on display on the day the former apostle Marsh addressed the Utah saints. As for Marsh, after spending time in Springville and Spanish Fork, he eventually moved to Ogden. As Van Wagoner and Walker note, he sometimes wrote Brigham Young, requesting clothes. He died in Ogden in 1867, and is buried in the city cemetery.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

From LDS apostle to spiritualist: the journey of Amasa Mason Lyman

By Doug Gibson

In the spring 1983 edition of Dialogue, author Loretta L. Hefner recounts a sermon Mormon prophet Brigham Young delivered in 1867. Young said that doctrinal deviancy was not limited to the church rank and file. In fact, Young continued, among the present 12 apostles, “one did not believe in the existence of a personage called God,” another “believes that infants have the spirits of some who have formerly lived on earth,” and the third “has been preaching on the sly ... that the Savior was nothing more than a good man, and that his death had nothing to do with your salvation or mine.” 

Young was a sometimes caustic, even sarcastic LDS president, who once said that he kept the apostles in his pocket to take out when needed. He was not shy of public denunciations. The first two apostles mentioned by Young were Orson Pratt and Orson Hyde. Although Young used his influence late in life to make sure neither would be in a position to lead the LDS Church, Pratt and Hyde remained apostles.

The third apostle Young mentioned, Amasa Mason Lyman, would not survive his “heresy.” Lyman, baptized by Orson Pratt at 18, served 16 missions, spent months in a filthy Missouri jail cell with Mormon founder Joseph Smith, and attained the rank of apostle, only to lose it all in the final decade of his life. 

As Hefner relates in the Dialogue article, “From Apostle to Apostate: The Personal Struggle of Amasa Mason Lyman,” the LDS apostle proved his commitment to Mormonism countless times, but never seemed to shake an eccentric interest in spiritualism. In the 1850s, while establishing a branch of the church in San Bernadino, California, Lyman participated in seances.

The apostle’s interest in spiritualism might have remained a tolerated hobby — and of no danger to his church standing — had he not embraced “what later historians have termed the golden age of liberal theology,” writes Hefner. During this time, Lyman seems to have embraced “universalism,” or a belief that man, being derived from God, was inherently good and did not need Christ’s sacrifice to attain salvation.

In separate speeches — in 1862 in Dundee, Scotland and 1863 in Beaver, Utah — Lyman preached that Christ was only a moral reformer, and that man could redeem himself by correcting his errors. In short, Lyman denied the need for a savior.

To continue reading this essay, go to the Standard-Examiner web article, where the essay was previously published. It was first published on the now-defunct StandardBlogs.