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Mormon Communalism and Millennialism in Trans-Atlantic Context

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Protestant Communalism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1650–1850

Part of the book series: Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800 ((CTAW))

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Abstract

Grow and Kime identify communalism as a key feature of the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They link Mormon attempts to build ‘Zion’ in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and Utah to Joseph Smith’s early revelations of God’s intended unified and equal society, and developing Mormon millennialism. Noting the influence of converts from the Shakers, Harmony Society and Icarians on nascent Mormon communalism, the chapter further explores how the millennial message of early trans-Atlantic Mormon missions pulled many into Mormon communalism. Grow and Kime trace the popularity of co-operation in Mormon Utah and the brief United Order initiative before concluding with a comparative study of John Alexander Dowie’s communal scheme: Zion, Illinois.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Book of Mormon, 4 Nephi 1:3.

  2. 2.

    Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford and Steven C. Harper (eds), Revelations and Translations, Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, vol. 1 of the Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), p. 207 (also known as D&C 78).

  3. 3.

    The Pearl of Great Price, Moses 7:18–19.

  4. 4.

    For an overview of Mormon communalism, see Dean L. May, ‘One Heart and Mind: Communal Life and Values among the Mormons’, in Donald E. Pitzer (ed.), America’s Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 135–58.

  5. 5.

    For a brief overview of this type of convert in early Mormonism, see Val Dean Rust, Radical Origins: Early Mormon Converts and Their Colonial Ancestors (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 13–16.

  6. 6.

    Mark Lyman Staker, Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations (Salt lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2009), p. 56.

  7. 7.

    Acts 2:44.

  8. 8.

    Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community & Co-operation among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976), p. 19; Mario S. De Pillis, ‘The Development of Mormon Communitarianism, 1826–1846’ (PhD thesis, Yale University, 1960), pp. 39–81.

  9. 9.

    For a comparison of Mormon and Shaker forms of communalism, see J. Spencer Fluhman, ‘Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community’, BYU Studies, 44:1 (2005), 79–110.

  10. 10.

    Karen Lynn Davidson, Richard L. Jensen and David J. Whittaker (eds), Histories, Volume 2: Assigned Histories, 1831–1847, vol. 2 of the Histories Series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2012), p. 37.

  11. 11.

    Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 48–9; Michael Hubbard MacKay et al. (eds), Documents, Volume 1: July 1828–June 1831, vol. 1 of the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2013), pp. 297–303.

  12. 12.

    Ashbell Kitchell ‘A Mormon Interview’, in Lawrence R. Flake (ed.), ‘A Shaker View of a Mormon Mission’, BYU Studies, 20 (Fall 1979), 95–9; Givens and Grow, Parley P. Pratt, pp. 49–50.

  13. 13.

    Whitmer, History, 26, in Joseph Smith Papers. Histories 2:38.

  14. 14.

    On Gause, see De Pillis, ‘Development of Mormon Communitarianism’, 170–89, 325–7; D. Michael Quinn, ‘Jesse Gause: Joseph Smith’s Little-Known Counselor’, BYU Studies, 23 (Fall 1983), 487–93; Erin B. Jennings, ‘The Consequential Counselor: Restoring the Root(s) of Jesse Gause’, Journal of Mormon History, 34 (Spring 2008), 182–227.

  15. 15.

    Quinn, ‘Jesse Gause’, 489–90.

  16. 16.

    Matthew C. Godfrey et al. (eds), Documents, Volume 2: July 1831–January 1833, vol. 2 of the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2013), p. 208 (D&C 81).

  17. 17.

    De Pillis, ‘Development of Mormon Communitarianism’, 171–85.

  18. 18.

    [Latter-day Saints] Church History Library, Salt Lake City (CHL) Zebedee Coltrin diaries, 20 August 1832, 2:35, MS 1443.

  19. 19.

    Jennings, ‘Consequential Counselor’, 214–15.

  20. 20.

    Karl J. Arndt, ‘The Harmonists and the Mormons’, American-German Review, 10 (June 1944), 6–9; De Pillis, ‘Development of Mormon Communitarianism’, 324–32.

  21. 21.

    Unfortunately, only Zundel’s side of the correspondence appears to have survived.

  22. 22.

    CHL, Jacob Zundel to Friends, 3 April 1846, typescript translation, MS 9095.

  23. 23.

    CHL, Zundel to Friends, 28 September 1847, typescript translation, MS 9095.

  24. 24.

    CHL, Zundel to Friends, 26 November 1865, typescript translation, MS 9095.

  25. 25.

    CHL, Zundel to Mr Hinrizi, 1870, typescript translation, MS 9095.

  26. 26.

    On Bertrand, see Christian Euvrard, Louis Auguste Bertrand (1808–1875): Journaliste Socialiste et Pionnier Mormon (Tournan-en-Brie: Author, 2005); Richard D. McClellan, ‘Not Your Average French Communist Mormon: A Short History of Louis A. Bertrand’, Mormon Historical Studies, 1:2 (2000), 3–24; Erik Freeman, ‘Louis A. Bertrand’s Voyage from Icarianism to Mormonism: French Romantic Socialism and Mormon Communalism in the Nineteenth Century’ (Master’s thesis, Brandeis University, 2013).

  27. 27.

    The standard study of the Icarians is Robert P. Sutton, Les Icariens: The Utopian Dream in Europe and America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

  28. 28.

    Jonathan Beecher, ‘Building Utopia in the Promised Land: Icarians and Fourierists in Texas’, in François Lagarde (ed.), The French in Texas: History, Migration, Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), pp. 197–225.

  29. 29.

    Victor Prosper Considerant, Au Texas (Paris: La Librairie phalanstérienne, 1854), p. 17. Translation mine. See also, Jonathan Beecher, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 301–2.

  30. 30.

    For a comparison of Mormon Nauvoo and Icarian Nauvoo, see Sarah Jaggi Lee, ‘Utopian Spaces: Mormons and Icarians in Nauvoo, Illinois’ (PhD thesis, College of William and Mary, 2009).

  31. 31.

    Louis A. Bertrand, Le Populaire, 20 May 1849 and 18 February 1849. Quotes and translation from, Freeman, ‘Louis A. Bertrand’s Voyage from Icarianism to Mormonism’, 1, 31–2.

  32. 32.

    Freeman, ‘Louis A. Bertrand’s Voyage from Icarianism to Mormonism’, 33–4.

  33. 33.

    Louis A. Bertrand, Les Mémoires d’un Mormon (Paris: Collection Hetzel E. Dentu, 1862), pp. 7, 8.

  34. 34.

    Jules Remy, Voyage au Pays des Mormons (Paris: E. Dentu, Libraire-éditeur, 1860), esp. p. 187.

  35. 35.

    CHL, Louis Alphonse Bertrand, Memoirs of a Mormon, trans. Gaston Chappuls (n.p., 196?), pp. 168–9, M273 B549m.

  36. 36.

    Stephen J. Fleming, ‘The Religious Heritage of the British Northwest and the Rise of Mormonism’, Church History, 77:1 (March 2008), 73–104.

  37. 37.

    Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 127–38; W.H. Oliver, Prophets and Millennialists: The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England from the 1790s to the 1840s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 218–38; Malcom R. Thorp, ‘The Religious Backgrounds of Mormon Converts in Britain, 1837–52’, Journal of Mormon History, 4 (1977), 63.

  38. 38.

    CHL, Daniel Holding journal, 4–5, MS 20914.

  39. 39.

    Thorp, ‘Religious Backgrounds’, 63; Underwood, Millenarian World, pp. 127–38; Oliver, Prophets and Millennialists, pp. 218–38; Fleming, ‘Religious Heritage’, 73–104.

  40. 40.

    CHL, Henry Emery, reminiscences, 4–5, 16–17, MS 7498.

  41. 41.

    Gerald Myron Haslam, Clash of Cultures: The Norwegian Experience with Mormonism, 1842–1920 (New York: Peter Lang, 1984), pp. 1–6; CHL, Goudy Hogan to Brigham Young, 12 April 1877, CR 1234 1.

  42. 42.

    Helge Seljaas, ‘Scandinavian Mormons and Their “Zion”’, Scandinavian Studies, 60 (Autumn 1988), 445–6.

  43. 43.

    ‘Freighting, Co-operation and Money Saving’, Deseret News, 30 November 1865.

  44. 44.

    ‘Capital and Labor—Employers and Employed’, Deseret News, 27 May 1868.

  45. 45.

    See, for example, ‘Co-operative Societies in Switzerland’, Deseret News, 17 April 1867; ‘Co-operation and Its Benefits’, Deseret News, 17 June 1868; and ‘Results of Co-operation’, Deseret News, 28 October 1868.

  46. 46.

    ‘Co-operation Abroad’, Deseret News, 24 March 1869. See also, ‘Editorial Summary’, Deseret News, 2 June 1869.

  47. 47.

    ‘Co-operative Societies’, Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, 16 October 1868.

  48. 48.

    ‘Co-operative Societies [continued]’, Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, 19 October 1868.

  49. 49.

    ‘Co-operation’, Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, 13 October 1868.

  50. 50.

    ‘Co-operative Societies [continued]’, Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, 20 October 1868.

  51. 51.

    Arrington, Fox and May, Building the City of God, pp. 94–5, 100–1.

  52. 52.

    Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 293.

  53. 53.

    May, ‘One Heart and Mind’, 146.

  54. 54.

    Hamilton Gardner, History of Lehi, Including a Biographical Section (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1913), p. 187; Arrington, Fox and May, Building the City of God, p. 89.

  55. 55.

    George Q. Cannon, 8 October 1872, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols (London and Liverpool: LDS Booksellers Depot, 1854–86), 15:207.

  56. 56.

    Brigham Young, 9 October 1872, Journal of Discourses, 15:223.

  57. 57.

    CHL, Taylor to Culbert King, 30 September 1876, Kingston United Order journals, folder 1, LR 4463 22.

  58. 58.

    Orson Pratt, 6 April 1874, Journal of Discourses, 17:33.

  59. 59.

    Philip L. Cook, Zion City, Illinois: Twentieth-Century Utopia (Syracuse University Press, 1996). On Dowie, see Grant Wacker, ‘Marching to Zion: Religion in a Modern Utopian Community’, Church History, 54:4 (1985), 503; Alden R. Heath, ‘Apostle in Zion’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 70 (1977), 98–113; Timothy E.W. Gloege, ‘Faith Healing, Medical Regulation, and Public Religion in Progressive Era Chicago’, Religion and American Culture, 23:2 (2013), pp. 185–231.

  60. 60.

    ‘False Swearers’, Leaves of Healing, 24 November 1900, 144; D. William Faupel, ‘What Has Pentecostalism to Do with Mormonism? The Case of John Alexander Dowie’, in Quincy D. Newell and Eric F. Mason (eds), New Perspectives on Mormon Studies: Creating and Crossing Boundaries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013), p. 86.

  61. 61.

    Faupel, ‘What Has Pentecostalism to Do with Mormonism?’ p. 86.

  62. 62.

    Arthur Newcomb, Dowie: Anointed of the Lord (New York: Century Co., 1930), pp. 37–8.

  63. 63.

    ‘Editorial Notes’, Leaves of Healing, 15 February 1895, 345.

  64. 64.

    ‘Editorial Notes’, Leaves of Healing, 26 April 1895, 479.

  65. 65.

    Wacker, ‘Marching to Zion’, 500–1.

  66. 66.

    ‘Dr. Dowie’s “Zion”’, The Independent, 11 May 1899, 1323.

  67. 67.

    Wacker, ‘Marching to Zion’, 496–7, 502.

  68. 68.

    Wacker, ‘Marching to Zion’, 501.

  69. 69.

    ‘Where God Rules, Man Prospers’, Leaves of Healing, 26 April 1902, 23–31.

  70. 70.

    Leaves of Healings 11:764 (complete citation).

  71. 71.

    Cook, Zion City, p. 35.

  72. 72.

    Cook, Zion City, pp. 34–5.

  73. 73.

    Luke 10:1 relates Christ appointing ‘seventy’ and sending them out two by two ‘into every city’. Dowie’s organization of Seventies drew directly from Mormonism but also drew, of course, from this New Testament account through a Mormon-influenced restorationist hermeneutic.

  74. 74.

    ‘Opening of Zion’s Hall of Seventies’, Leaves of Healing, 28 January 1899, 255.

  75. 75.

    ‘Opening of Zion’s Hall of Seventies’, Leaves of Healing, 28 January 1899, 255.

  76. 76.

    Dowie’s simultaneous insistence on a restoration of the New Testament church and literal identification with ancient Israel—two of the central conceptual foundations of his communal society—was distinctively Mormon and almost certainly drawn from the Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. See Joseph Williams, ‘The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism’, Church History, 84 (March 2015), 171.

  77. 77.

    For the historical and trans-Atlantic reverberations of Dowie’s movement, see Adam Mohr, ‘Zionism and Aladura’s Shared Genealogy in John Alexander Dowie’, Religion, 45 (April 2015), 239–51; Brian Stanley, ‘Edinburgh and World Christianity’, Studies in World Christianity, 17:1 (2011), 72–91; Adam Mohr, ‘Out of Zion into Philadelphia and West Africa: Faith Tabernacle Congregation, 1897–1925’, Pneuma, 32:1 (2010), 56–79. For more contemporary comparisons of Dowie and Mormonism, see ‘False Swearers’, Leaves of Healing, 24 November 1900, 144; Ernest Hamlin Abbot, ‘Religious Life in America: New Sects and Old’, Outlook, 13 September 1902, 125; ‘Dowie and the “Mormons”’, Deseret Evening News, 13 April 1906; Gilbert Seldes, The Stammering Century (New York: J. Day Co., 1928), 389.

  78. 78.

    Other examples of the Icarian comparison include Brigham Young, 16 June 1867, Journal of Discourses, 12:61; George Q. Cannon, 6 April 1869, Journal of Discourses, 13:98.

  79. 79.

    John Taylor, 13 September 1857, Journal of Discourses, 5:237–8. See also, Lorenzo Snow, 21 April 1878, Journal of Discourses, 19:349.

  80. 80.

    John Taylor, 10 October 1875, Journal of Discourses, 18:137.

  81. 81.

    For examples, see J.W.G., ‘Fourierism, and the Three Socialisms’, Catholic Telegraph, 13 January 1844, 10–11; John B. Byrne, ‘Protestantism—Its Tendencies and Results’, United States Catholic Magazine and Monthly Review, April 1844, 239–41; Anna M. Mitchell, ‘The Brook Farm Movement Viewed through the Perspective of a Half Century’, Catholic World, 1 April 1901, 17–31.

  82. 82.

    George Q. Cannon, ‘Secret Combinations’, Deseret Weekly, 7 April 1894, 479.

  83. 83.

    David O. McKay, Conference Report, April 1930, 78–83; David O. McKay, Conference Report, April 1954, 22–6; David O. McKay, Conference Report, October 1962, 5–8.

  84. 84.

    McKay, Conference Report, April 1930, 79–81.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

    Bradley Kime

  2. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

    Matthew J. Grow

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  1. Matthew J. Grow
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  2. Bradley Kime
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  1. Trinity College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Philip Lockley

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Grow, M.J., Kime, B. (2016). Mormon Communalism and Millennialism in Trans-Atlantic Context. In: Lockley, P. (eds) Protestant Communalism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1650–1850. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48487-1_7

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