Mormon Reformation

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Question

What was the "Mormon Reformation"?

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 231–243 ( Index of claims )

Response

The "Mormon Reformation" was a reform or spiritual rejuvenation movement that began among the Utah Saints in the mid-1850s.

Reasons for the Reformation

Wrote Thomas Alexander:

As life became more routine and economically stable by the mid-1850s, some of the General Authorities came to believe that many Church members and leaders had fallen spiritually asleep, becoming more enamored of materialism and the other trappings of Babylon than of building the kingdom. Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Jedediah Grant attributed the crop failures and grasshopper plagues of 1855 and 1856, in part at least, to a decline in faithfulness....Members seemed less committed and enthusiastic. Not that prosperity itself was bad; but the Saints seemed unable to maintain spirituality in the face of increasing prosperity.^[1]

First Phase

In an effort to stir the saints to improvement, Brigham Young began by sending apostles into individual communities, reversing a trend toward "congregational autonomy."^[2]

Second phase: Failure of these first reform efforts

Alexander:

By early March 1856, Brigham Young's own observations together with reports from members of the Twelve led the Church President to believe that the structural changes had not prompted a spiritual rejuvenation among the Saints and that even more intense measures would be required. Being a pragmatic man, he decided to take measures certain to elicit a response. Charging the "people," presumably leaders and followers alike, with sleeping on the job and "working wickedness," Young called upon the elders "to put away their velvet lips & smooth things & preach sermons like pitch forks tines downwards that the people might wake up." Heber C. Kimball, Young's first counselor, followed the President's lead, but it was second counselor Jedediah M. Grant who really led the rally, sometimes attacking the Gentiles but usually raining pitchforks on the Latter-day Saints. The Reformation entered a second phase.^[3]

It was during this period that the leaders adopted a stern, "hellfire and damnation" preaching style, since their more moderate efforts in "phase one" had not succeeded. It was during this period that Brigham Young and others began speaking about a doctrine later called "blood atonement".

Blood atonement was a rhetorical device, and required the voluntary sacrifice of one's own life to repent for especially grievous sins. As Davis Bitton noted, however, blood atonement soon became a handy club for anti-Mormon critics of the Church. It remained so for the rest of the nineteenth century:

Against the backdrop of this heated rhetoric, unsolved murders could easily be charged to the Mormons, and Hicks [a member who later became hostile to the Church] joins in the chorus: "Many were the victims that fell by the hand of the destroyer, but not one in Spanish Fork City. My wife and myself both saw the blood of the Parrishes at Springville two days after the murders. Those were truly peralous times such as only fanatics know how to bring on a country."53 In a more sweeping allegation, he writes, "With the single exception of Spanish Fork City, I do not know a city that had an existence in Utah that has not shed the blood of from one to many victims." It is surely not quibbling to imagine Hicks on the witness stand being asked the basis for his knowledge of all these cities and perhaps being asked whether he included legal executions in his calculations. Mormons have insisted that blood atonement, by necessity a voluntary action, was never carried out in practice. But from the late 1850s on, anti-Mormons developed a series of indictments used over and over again when denouncing Mormonism. The concept of blood atonement, imperfectly understood, was especially calculated to arouse horror and indignation. Critical of the preaching rhetoric of some church leaders during the 1850s, Hicks was drawn into another rhetorical network by 1878, that of the anti-Mormons.^[4]

Alexander:

Though Young's references to blood atonement were probably hyperbole, they may have prompted some overzealous members to put the doctrine into practice. In March 1857, William Parrish and several of his family and friends decided to leave the Church and the community at Springville. They were murdered under suspicious circumstances, and although the perpetrators were never found, a number of commentators associated the deeds with the doctrine of blood atonement.^[5]

Endnotes

1. [note]  Thomas G. Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57,"," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 no. 3 (Summer 1992), 25-39.  (needs URL / links)
2. [note]  Alexander, 26-27.
3. [note]  Alexander, 27.
4. [note]  Davis Bitton, ""I'd Rather Have Some Roasting Ears": The Peregrinations of George Armstrong Hicks," Utah Historical Quarterly 68/3 (Summer 2000): 209.
5. [note]  Alexander, 27-28.

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.
This article is a draft. FairMormon editors are currently editing it. We welcome your suggestions on improving the content.

Question

What was the "Mormon Reformation"?

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 231–243 ( Index of claims )

Response

The "Mormon Reformation" was a reform or spiritual rejuvenation movement that began among the Utah Saints in the mid-1850s.

Reasons for the Reformation

Wrote Thomas Alexander:

As life became more routine and economically stable by the mid-1850s, some of the General Authorities came to believe that many Church members and leaders had fallen spiritually asleep, becoming more enamored of materialism and the other trappings of Babylon than of building the kingdom. Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Jedediah Grant attributed the crop failures and grasshopper plagues of 1855 and 1856, in part at least, to a decline in faithfulness....Members seemed less committed and enthusiastic. Not that prosperity itself was bad; but the Saints seemed unable to maintain spirituality in the face of increasing prosperity.^[6]

First Phase

In an effort to stir the saints to improvement, Brigham Young began by sending apostles into individual communities, reversing a trend toward "congregational autonomy."^[7]

Second phase: Failure of these first reform efforts

Alexander:

By early March 1856, Brigham Young's own observations together with reports from members of the Twelve led the Church President to believe that the structural changes had not prompted a spiritual rejuvenation among the Saints and that even more intense measures would be required. Being a pragmatic man, he decided to take measures certain to elicit a response. Charging the "people," presumably leaders and followers alike, with sleeping on the job and "working wickedness," Young called upon the elders "to put away their velvet lips & smooth things & preach sermons like pitch forks tines downwards that the people might wake up." Heber C. Kimball, Young's first counselor, followed the President's lead, but it was second counselor Jedediah M. Grant who really led the rally, sometimes attacking the Gentiles but usually raining pitchforks on the Latter-day Saints. The Reformation entered a second phase.^[8]

It was during this period that the leaders adopted a stern, "hellfire and damnation" preaching style, since their more moderate efforts in "phase one" had not succeeded. It was during this period that Brigham Young and others began speaking about a doctrine later called "blood atonement".

Blood atonement was a rhetorical device, and required the voluntary sacrifice of one's own life to repent for especially grievous sins. As Davis Bitton noted, however, blood atonement soon became a handy club for anti-Mormon critics of the Church. It remained so for the rest of the nineteenth century:

Against the backdrop of this heated rhetoric, unsolved murders could easily be charged to the Mormons, and Hicks [a member who later became hostile to the Church] joins in the chorus: "Many were the victims that fell by the hand of the destroyer, but not one in Spanish Fork City. My wife and myself both saw the blood of the Parrishes at Springville two days after the murders. Those were truly peralous times such as only fanatics know how to bring on a country."53 In a more sweeping allegation, he writes, "With the single exception of Spanish Fork City, I do not know a city that had an existence in Utah that has not shed the blood of from one to many victims." It is surely not quibbling to imagine Hicks on the witness stand being asked the basis for his knowledge of all these cities and perhaps being asked whether he included legal executions in his calculations. Mormons have insisted that blood atonement, by necessity a voluntary action, was never carried out in practice. But from the late 1850s on, anti-Mormons developed a series of indictments used over and over again when denouncing Mormonism. The concept of blood atonement, imperfectly understood, was especially calculated to arouse horror and indignation. Critical of the preaching rhetoric of some church leaders during the 1850s, Hicks was drawn into another rhetorical network by 1878, that of the anti-Mormons.^[9]

Alexander:

Though Young's references to blood atonement were probably hyperbole, they may have prompted some overzealous members to put the doctrine into practice. In March 1857, William Parrish and several of his family and friends decided to leave the Church and the community at Springville. They were murdered under suspicious circumstances, and although the perpetrators were never found, a number of commentators associated the deeds with the doctrine of blood atonement.^[10]

Endnotes

1. [note]  Thomas G. Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57,"," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 no. 3 (Summer 1992), 25-39.  (needs URL / links)
2. [note]  Alexander, 26-27.
3. [note]  Alexander, 27.
4. [note]  Davis Bitton, ""I'd Rather Have Some Roasting Ears": The Peregrinations of George Armstrong Hicks," Utah Historical Quarterly 68/3 (Summer 2000): 209.
5. [note]  Alexander, 27-28.