Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints ~ Part One.

It was the summer of 1979, and I was 18 years old.  I worked as the administrative assistant to the vice president of a capital funds group in one of four tall, impressive towers in Downtown San Francisco, called the Embarcadero Buildings.  I remember a date I had with Dean one night in our early courtship--actually it was for my birthday—when we had dinner at a trendy place in number One Embarcadero.  He was always trying to remake my fashion statement into a City-fied one—showing me the merits of black shoes, rather than pink pumps.  J

When looking out of the windows of our prestigious offices, to the left was the graceful Golden Gate Bridge, and straight ahead was Alcatraz Island, and slightly to the right was Treasure Island, home of the 1939 World’s Fair.  [I have black and white pictures of my mama and dad at that fair; my mom looked so happy then.  They had been married just four years]  And of course, the Bay Bridge runs through Treasure Island.  Remember in the 1989 earthquake, when a big section of the bridge collapsed? 

There was a sweet woman with whom I worked named ‘Vicky’; she was always so nice, and in some ways, did not seem to fit in the high-pressured finance world.  She wore this cool necklace that said, ‘Be Unique’ in silver script.  I thought that was cool, and told her so.  Next thing I knew, she started talking to me about the value of being unique, and her church; she gave me my own ‘be unique’ necklace.  A week later she brought me a leather-bound book with my name inscribed on the cover, right underneath large gold letters—THE BOOK OF MORMON.

Along with Islam, Mormonism is another fast-growing religion today. Next to Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity, Mormonism is relatively young, dating to just the 1820s.  In reality, the meeting houses and the temples are not Mormon in name, but rather ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.’  So named because their doctrine states they are the true church of Jesus Christ, and we are living in the latter days before Christ returns, and ‘saints’ because the early Christians were called saints.

When trying to understand any religion:

            -take a look at its leader and his/her life

            -read their sacred scriptures or documents

            -if you have the opportunity to attend their gatherings of faith,

              look around you, and see if you find joy

The leader/founder:

Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church.  Born in Sharon, Vermont in 1805, he was the fourth child of Lucy and Joseph Smith.  His father was a mystic, a man who spent much of his time digging for buried treasure.  Joseph’s mother said he was interested in religion from a young age.  At age 14, (1820), he went out into the woods and asked God which church to join—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian?  Two beings appeared to him—Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and God told him ‘none, because they are all corrupt’.  “Smith said that Heavenly Father spoke of ‘many other things,’ but he either couldn’t or was forbidden to write about them.”  This incident is described in great detail in The Pearl of Great Price, in which he reveals that the two ‘personages’ took a rather dim view of the Christian church and announced that a restoration of true Christianity was needed, and that he, Joseph Smith Jr., had been chosen to launch this new dispensation. 

In 1823, the angel Moroni, the glorified son of one Mormon, (hence the name for the book), appeared to Joseph Smith, and led him to some buried gold plates in Cumora, New York, which Smith translated with the help of a seer stone.1  (an occult practice called ‘scrying’)  Smith began to translate the “reformed Egyptian” hieroglyphics, using “urim and Thummim” a type of miraculous glasses, which the angel Moroni had given him.  Period of time of translation, 1827-1829, with John the Baptist appearing to them in person on May 15, 1829, at the bidding of Peter, James and John to Pennsylvania to confer the “Aaronic Priesthood” on Joseph and one his scribes, Oliver.2

The BoM was published and copyrighted in 1830.  On April 6, 1830, Smith along with two of his brothers, Oliver and a couple others founded a “new religious society” entitled “The Church of Christ”.  It came to be known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1838.

Smith led the church from New York to Kirtland, Ohio, and it fled to Independence, Missouri, and then again to Illinois, where the church was granted its own community on the banks of the Mississippi, that they called Nauvoo.  However, Illinois folk got more than a little upset with some of the Mormon practices—polygamy chief among those3—as they took it as an insult to Christian morality.  Furthermore, they felt that the Mormons had violated provisions by merging church and state policies.  When an influential newspaper printed exposes on polygamy and claimed that Joseph Smith was a fraud, Smith decided the paper was a nuisance and so he closed it down, and destroyed their printing press.  With Anti-Mormon sentiment already running high, Smith’s actions only served to fan the flames.  Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested, and thrown in jail; while there, an angry mob of 200 armed men surrounded the jailhouse, and both Smiths were killed in Carthage, Illinois.  The LDS consider Joseph Smith a martyr for the faith. 

A towering figure in Mormonism, Brigham Young (1801-1877), began his professional career as a carpenter and painter. Baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1832, he was ordained an apostle in 1835. After the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, Young was chosen leader of the Mormons and continued as president until his death. He directed the migration of 16,000 Mormons from Illinois to Utah from 1856 to 1852, and became governor of the territory in 1851. In addition to bolstering his community through education and the arts, Young contracted for the national expansion of telegraph and railroad lines.4

Sources: 

~The Story of the Latter-day Saints by J.B. Allen and G.M. Leonard, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1992.

~History of Joseph Smith by his Mother, 1853, published in Liverpool.

1 - Seer stone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN_MqHSaKgg, August 15,2015

2  The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith-History, 1:68-73

3 - How Many Wives did Joseph Smith have? https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

4 – History. Com - www.history.com/topics/brigham-young