Ep 43 - The Red Sermon

On this episode, Jo and Rigdon come riding into Farr West and decide to throw over the whole game board that’d been strategically placed by powers much larger than them over the past 5 years. First thing on the chopping block, the heads of all dissenters

Rigdon’s 4th of July Oration: http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/NCMP1820-1846/id/2816/rec/1

Ebenezer Robinson Autobiography: http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/ERobinson.html

Show Links: Website http://nakedmormonismpodcast.com Twitter @NakedMormonism Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Naked-Mormonism/370003839816311 Patreon http://patreon.com/nakedmormonism Outro music by Jason Comeau http://aloststateofmind.com/ Show Artwork http://weirdmormonshit.com/ Voicemail Line (864)Nake-dMo (625-3366)

This episode's audio was transcribed and may contain errors.

Welcome to episode 43 of the Naked Mormonism podcast, the serial Mormon history podcast. Today is Thursday, December 1st, 2016. My name is Bryce Blankenagle, and thank you for joining me.

The last historical episode that we had was a discussion with Mormon historian John Hamer. He offered some much-needed perspective and helped to contextualize some of the history that we've been studying recently. Well, today we're going to dive right back into the timeline.

So let's get a little bit of a refresher of what happened on the last historical timeline episode, so we can kind of just pick up where we left off. So last timeline episode, that was episode 41, covered from January to March of 1838. And it spanned three separate locations during that small time frame. The very first location, of course, was the church in Kirtland, from where Joann Rigdon and Brigham Young had just fled in the middle of the night to avoid detection. The church in Kirtland was amidst turmoil. Joseph Coe, Cyrus Smalling, and Martin Harris had created their own Church of Christ, while Warren Parrish had led an armed insurrection that pulled away his closest members from the church. There were a small number of other break-off factions that had begun and started up and kicked off out of the insurrection that was going on in Kirtland. The second setting, of course, was Joann Rigdon's journey with their families to Missouri during the worst absolute possible time of winter. It's just terrible. Some of the stories that came out of this journey from Kirtland to Missouri in January are just terrible, heart-wrenching stories, because it was tough. It was really tough to get through the cold and the snow and the rivers, you know, thwarting the frozen rivers and whatnot. I think they just made people stronger back then. And then we have, of course, the third setting, and that would be Farr West Missouri. The church leadership, they were pretty much holding their own purge out in Missouri. Prominent members, including the Whitmers and Ollie Cowdung, and many others, had their memberships either revoked or put on hold until the prophet could come into town to determine his truthful followers from the untrustworthy followers. So that does it for the milk of today's episode, so let's just jump right into the meat and continue talking about this goddamn train wreck.

Now, I know at the end of the last episode I said this week's episode would be a discussion. Well, turns out that discussion is a lot longer than I expected it to be, and it's going to be a full episode in and of itself. That'll be next week's episode. Lindsay Hanson Park of Feminist Mormon Housewives was just far too interesting to relegate to a small portion of a single episode. She deserves her own episode. So next week, that's what we'll be talking about.

But let's get into this week because there's so much going on, and I don't even really know where to start here. Now, what I mean is the church at this time in 1838, Missouri, essentially, that's where we're focusing, is there's so much going on, it's really hard to decide where to kind of pick up and what to focus on and what to talk about. So let's begin with Joseph arriving at Farr West. That happened on March 14, 1838. And then, of course, Sidney Rigdon arrived April 4, 1838. So this is how long it took them each to get from Kirtland to Missouri. And once they got to Missouri, they decided to really have a tribunal to see who would be trustworthy. Who were the members that we could trust in Farr West? Because the church in Kirtland had held its own excommunication, essentially, and they had excommunicated Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith. So the leadership, essentially, of Kirtland had been excommunicated, and they were fleeing to Missouri. And there, they were going to hold their own sort of tribunal to say, we are the leadership here, and anybody that agrees with us can stay. If you do not agree, you are welcome to leave. And what happened was a series of events that are quite telling in and of themselves.

Let's talk about Oliver Cowdery for a second. This guy only has been with us for such a long time. He's been a very important piece of the puzzle for the entirety of the church, essentially. If not for Oliver Cowdery, the Book of Mormon never would have been written down. The original and printer's manuscripts never would have come to fruition. The Book of Mormon itself would not have arisen if not for our good friend, Ollie. And there were some tensions between him and Joseph at this time. Now, when we say tensions, we can mean any number of things, and it's really hard to understand exactly how their relationship dynamic played out at this time. But what we can do is look at letters and exchanges that were happening between Oliver Cowdery and other people at this time to see what their opinions essentially were. But Ollie... In some ways, I've seen him as almost a reality check for Joe. When Joe would have fantastical dreams about doing something, it seems like Ollie would be the person that would translate that into reality. Whether it was saying, we need a printing press, and we need you to start publishing a monthly journal, or a monthly newspaper. Ollie makes it happen. We're going to found a bank, and we need our own money. Ollie goes and he gets the plates, and he prints the five million dollars in cash. I mean... Whenever Joe has some fantastical wish, Ollie seems to be the person that translates that to making it happen. Or he will say, Joe, we can't do this. And this is a time when I think his ability to say Joe, we can't do this, finally overcame his ability to say, yes sir, let's do it. Ollie, at this time, was very frustrated with Joe's intermingling of church and state. Essentially, Joe was using the church as his own legal body that was handling and transacting legal matters. They were holding ecclesiastical tribunals in place of actual legitimate legal lawsuits and trials. I mean, Ollie was part of this movement that I think he had a fundamental disagreement with at a very base level. He'd say, you know, I don't think that the church should have authority beyond just ecclesiastical affairs. The church should only be able to control what happens in the church. There shouldn't be a thick wall of separation between church and state. Of course, this is from the minutes of the January 1838 letter. And it's out of the Oliver Cowdery letter book.

And he says, Ollie says he was concerned that they were, quote,

endeavoring to unite ecclesiastical with civil authority and force men under a pretense of incurring the displeasure of heaven to use their earthly substance contrary to their own interest.

end quote.

So when Joseph would say, like, to William Wines Phelps, hey, I have these plots of land that I want to sell you. And it is the Lord's will that you buy them. And then, of course, Double Dub buys those plots at a dramatically inflated rate. And then Joe holds him to that debt. As soon as Joe says that it is the will of God that you buy these plots of land, that's a big problem. That's the point where ecclesiastical authority is influencing secular transactions. And Ollie had a problem with it. So upon Joe's arrival, this is when things really become, I would say, confusing and frustrating for certain members of the church. When he arrived, we have this coming out, and it is a letter by David Whitmer, D-Day David, W.W. Phelps Double Dub, and then John Whitmer, John Goebel's Whitmer. And Oliver Cowdery was clerk of the high council at the time, so he was the person who attested to it being a true copy and everything. But this is the body of the complaint, and this is an actual legal complaint that these people were filing against Joseph at the time. Quote,

1 FAR WEST March 10 1838 Sir-- It is contrary to the principles of the revelations of Jesus Christ and His gospel and the laws of the land to try a person for an offense by an illegal tribunal or by men prejudiced against him or by authority that has given an opinion or decision beforehand or in his absence.

Very respectfully we have the honor to be, DAVID WHITMER WILLIAM W PHELPS John WHITMER Presidents of the Church of Christ in Missouri

End quote.

That's where we see the frustration coming in. These people were following Joseph Smith because he was a prophet, but then he was coming along and saying, I'm also the civil leader in the area. I'm also the mayor of Farr West. I'm also the person who handles all legal tribunals. I am the judge of the area. I handle any legal complaints that you have. As soon as all of those are united into one person, it's tyranny. And of course, one thing that we cannot ignore at this time when it comes to Oliver Cowdery's relationship with Joseph Smith was Fannie Alger. The Fannie Alger affair happened, as best we can tell, 1836 is when it was discovered when Emma actually discovered Joe and Fannie fucking in the barn behind the house. That's when we see this come out, 1836. Right now what we're discussing is barely two years and not quite two years after that supposedly happened. And it serves to be a sticking point, a burr in the relationship between Ollie and Joe. And we see that come out in Ollie's letter to his brother Warren A. Cowdery in January of the year, calling the Fannie Alger incident a dirty, nasty, filthy scrape. And that scrape was later written over with the word affair.

Ollie had a problem with Joe's incessant attraction to women. I mean, Ollie was violently opposed to polygamy all of his years. He would never join a sect of Mormonism that was affiliated with polygamy. He had his own opinions about the way women should be treated in the church, and I think that they were much more fair-minded than Joseph. Joe just liked to do what he liked to do at the expense of whoever or whatever. It didn't seem to matter much to him. But Ollie was much more sensible in some cases. He seems like he was able to disconnect himself from it and say, this is obviously not of God if Joe is claiming that God told me that it was okay that I was fucking these women. And Ollie had a huge problem with that.

Ollie and Joe did not see eye to eye on this, and it was a fundamental point of disagreement in their friendship that I think probably served as a main pressure against their friendship. It served as one of the main driving factors that pushed Ollie away from the church. So finally, at the end of March, there's a tribunal held, and essentially the Whitmers and William Wines Phelps, Oliver Cowdery, and Lyman Johnson, and a small number of other dissenters are excommunicated. Now excommunicated, this is kind of a tough way to say it, because some of them were, some of them weren't, some of them were just disfellowshipped or had their membership removed. It was kind of a messy time. But in April at this time, Oliver Cowdery wrote his own letter of defection to Joseph. And it reads in part, quote,

This attempt to control me in my temporal interests, I conceived to be a disposition to take from me a portion of my constitutional privileges and inherent rights. I only respectfully ask leave, therefore to withdraw from a society assuming they have such right.

And that was the problem.

Cowdery saw this as an attempt to control him, to take away from me my constitutional privileges and inherent rights. Ollie saw the writing on the wall. He knew that Joseph wasn't going to stop doing what he was doing. He knew that Joe was going to go off the rails soon. And he was smart enough to jump ship before that happened. And this happened. In this horrible time of turmoil, when Joe and Rigdon come back, they have to decide who is going to be their new leadership. We had the presidency of the Missouri church, who were D-Day David Whitmer, John Goebbels Whitmer, Double Dub Phelps, and then, of course, Ollie Cowdung, who was clerk. These people were the head of the church in Missouri.

And then Joe and Rigdon come in from Kirtland, having been excommunicated from the church out there, and say, we're putting in our own presidency. We're going to reorganize everything out here so we know who we can trust. That's what happened. A purging, a cleansing of the leadership in Missouri. And Joe never looked back. Now we have a very tumultuous time in Missouri here. Because Farr West was essentially the main settlement where Mormons were settling in Missouri. It was the central hub. But there were small other cities that were being cultivated. DeWitt was one of them. We'll get into talking about those probably in the next episode or the next few episodes.

But at this time, Farr West Missouri was the focus. This was the point where they were establishing the church. The church presidency in Missouri had been residing in Farr West for a couple of years by this point. But they decided that this is going to be the new headquarters, essentially. And with these people that had dissented, these people that had fallen away, these very important individuals in the timeline had essentially left. David Whitmer, John Whitmer, and Ollie Cowdung, these people had all resigned or been excommunicated from the church by the middle of May 1838.

In fact, it wasn't just them. Here's a list of people that were excommunicated by May of 1838. We have Martin Harris, David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and John Whitmer, we talked about them. We also have Jacob Whitmer and Hiram Page. Hiram Page, who gave his own personal revelation about where Zion is. And Joe had his seer stone crushed and turned into powder. Then we have William E. McClellan, Professor Bill. Then we have Luke Johnson, Lyman Leadfoot, Lyman E. Johnson, John F. Boynton, W. W. Phelps, William I. Phelps, we knew about him. Then Frederick G. Williams, Freddie G. Williams. Those are just some of the most prominent members in the leadership.

I mean those were people that were Quorum of the Twelve. Six of those people were Book of Mormon witnesses. I mean six of the eleven Book of Mormon witnesses were all excommunicated. That's absolutely absurd. The first presidency of the church, the Whitmers and Phelps, they were the presidents in Missouri. They were all gone. I mean how the hell does a church recover from this? You just cleansed out half of the people that run the church in Missouri and replaced them with people you think you can trust. How does the church survive? By demonizing these people. Don't get me wrong, Ollie and the Whitmers had good reasons to be fighting Joe. I mean Joe was overstepping serious boundaries. He was intermingling church and state authority to the point that there was no line separating the two. Joe was the leader of Farr West. And Ollie and the Whitmers had good arguments against him. That we shouldn't intermingle church and state. That he had been fucking over people with the Kirtland Safety Society investments. That he had been fucking Fannie Alger a couple of years ago and that was adultery, not conduct befitting of a proper prophet of the Lord. So Sidney Rigdon helps insulate Joe.

Now this is my own perspective. This is how I'm looking back and seeing it here, but I feel like Rigdon began to take very drastic steps in a way that would insulate Joseph away from these people that were real dissenters, people that were causing serious problems for the church. That were, I mean, even publishing like public discourses and public letters to the church. That one that we just read that was signed David Whitmer, Phelps, and John Whitmer, you know, it's contrary to the principles and revelations of Jesus and his gospel for the laws of the land to be intermingled, blah blah blah. That was an open letter that was published publicly. A lot of people in Missouri saw and read that letter. And, well, they still had good arguments.

Now of course at this time the Danites were not really organized because they'd been organized, you know, a few months before this, but the Danites began to be used at this point. They began to become very convenient, and very useful at this point. I think this marks a turning point in our history. I gave D-Day David Whitmer a nickname nearly two years ago when he was introduced to the show. D-Day David Whitmer. It stands for Defection Day. And while we can't sum up all of these people leaving in one day, I think we can point to one small catalyst that can be seen as the single point where defection was the only answer. Defection or agreement. You can either fall into line behind Joe and Rigdon, or horribly enough, you can dissent. And who knows what happens once you dissent?

Well, Sidney Rigdon knew what would happen. So on June 17, 1838, and I think this is where Rigdon becomes the psychotic firebrand that we've been, he's been hinting at for so long. I think this is the point where we can say this is Defection Day, and this is the single point that required Defection Day to happen. Defection Day happened three days after this salt sermon was given. But this is one of Rigdon's most well-known and influential speeches. And it was different from Rigdon's many other speeches in the sense that it was proofread. They had written it out before he got up on the stand, as opposed to most of his other sermons were just him standing up and talking.

The salt sermon was published.

They proofread it before he went on the stage, then he gave it, and then they published it and sold it for, I'm not sure, I think 37 cents a copy or something. You know, a quarter and a shilling per copy.

Now, there unfortunately aren't any full copies left in existence of the salt sermon, but we do have quite a few accounts of people that discuss the contents of it. This is taken from John Corral's A Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, talking about it.

President Rigdon delivered from the pulpit what I call the salt sermon.

Now, this is quoting the salt sermon itself.

If the salt has lost its savor, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men.

Now, that's the end of the salt sermon, but I'm going to continue quoting John Corral here.

It was his text, and although he did not call names in his sermon, yet it was plainly understood that he meant the dissenters, or those who denied the faith, ought to be cast out and literally trodden underfoot. He indirectly accused some of them with crime.

End Quote

That's what happened. The salt sermon, that these people should be cast out and trodden underfoot of men, because the salt has lost its savor, it's thenceforth good for nothing. Now, of course, he took that from Matthew 5, but he built an entire sermon on it, and it was a two-hour, apparently two-hour-long sermon that blew people's minds, and it scared the dissenters. It made people truly afraid for their lives.

Now, two days after that, two days after the salt sermon was given, Ollie Cowdung, Leadfoot Lyman Johnson, D-Day David, and John Goebbels Whitmer fled Farr West, headed for Richmond, Missouri. They ran the fuck away because that's how scary this was. I mean, the Danites had been threatening them, there had been various amorphous death threats up to this point, but finally, Sidney Rigdon got on the stand and gave this salt sermon on June 17, 1838, and said, the "salt that has lost its sermon", meaning the dissenters, "will be trodden underfoot". I would be terrified if I were these people. I would run so fast. This is horrifying to see this. And what is absolutely insane is the fact that Rigdon ramped it up after this.

The salt sermon was just the beginning. The salt sermon was only dealing with dissenters in Farr West, trying to get them out, chase them out. But on July 4th, holy shit, Sidney Rigdon gave his July 4th oration. And people know about the salt sermon, and the salt sermon is powerful, but it only deals with dissent, and people that were living in Farr West. But the 4th of July oration was given to everybody. It was widely published as well, and we still have many copies of it still existing. It was printed out of Farr West as well. Now, I'm going to read this whole thing because it's fucking amazing. There's no possible way that we can understand Sidney Rigdon more than by just reading through this 4th of July oration.

Now, if you support the show through patreon.com/nakedmormonism, you're about to listen to the entire sermon, the entire 4th of July oration. For those that do not subscribe to Patreon, you're about to hear just a couple of intense excerpts taken out of it. But the discussion afterward will still be the same. But please listen at patreon.com/nakedmormonism.

If you contribute there, this episode is going to be a little bit longer. You will be able to listen to the entire oration. And I really recommend it because, my god, this guy was terrifying. Absolutely scary to have a person preaching this from the pulpit. This is taken from the BYU library, online library, and it is a photocopy. I'm reading it from a photocopy of the oration. And this was printed in 1838. There will be a link for it on the show notes as a PDF of the actual speech as they were printed and distributed. About 12 pages long. It's huge. Way bigger than I thought it was. So, if you are a Patreon subscriber, you're going to get a lot more than what the normal listeners get to the show. So, I hope that you share in the enlightenment and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed reading it myself.

Alright. This is where it gets fucking insane. This is when it ramps up. And of course it has to be for the final portion of the speech. Because, holy shit. If he was getting the crowd riled up as Rigdon was want to do, this was the time when he really brought this to an ultimate crescendo. And I can't imagine that right now his dick could have become any harder than it was. Because this is exactly what Rigdon was made for. This is why Rigdon is the best preacher in all of Mormonism history. The most amazing preacher. Here we go.

Our God has promised us a reward of eternal inheritance, and we have believed his promise. And though we wade through great tribulation, we are in nothing discouraged, for we know he that has promised is faithful. The promise is sure, and the reward is certain. It is because of this that we have taken the spoiling of our goods. Our cheeks have been given to the smiters, and our heads to those who have plucked off the hair. We have not only when smitten on one cheek turned to the other, but we have done it again and again, until we are wearied of being smitten and tired of being trampled upon. We have proved the world with kindness. We have suffered their abuse without cause. We have patience, and have endured without resentment, until this day, and their persecutions and violence does not cease. But from this day and this hour, we will suffer it no more.

We take God and all the holy angels to witness this day, that we warn all men in the name of Jesus Christ to come on us no more forever. For from this hour we will bear it no more. Our rights shall no more be trampled on with impunity. The man or set of men who attempts it does it at the expense of their lives. And that mob that comes on us to disturb us, it shall be between us and them a war of extermination. For we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us. For we will carry the seat of war to their own houses and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed. Remember it then, all men.

We will never be the agressors. We will infringe on the rights of no people, but shall stand for our own until death. We claim our own rights, and are willing that all others shall enjoy theirs.

No man shall be at liberty to come into our streets to threaten us with mobs, for if he does, he shall atone for it before he leaves this place. Neither shall he be at liberty to vilify and slander any of us, for suffering we will not in this place.

We, therefore, take all men to record this day, that we proclaim our liberty on this day as did our fathers. We pledge this day to one another, our fortunes, our lives, and our sacred honors, to be delivered from the persecutions which we have had to endure for the last nine years. Neither will we indulge any man or set of men in instituting vexatious lawsuits against us, to cheat us out of our just rights, if they attempt it, we say, woe be unto them.

We this day then proclaim ourselves free, with a purpose and a determination that can never be broken, "no never! no never! NO NEVER."!!!

End quote.

The people in Missouri hated the Mormons for this. This is a quote from Ebenezer Robinson, included in Items of Personal History of the Editor, published in November of 1889. Of course, Ebenezer Robinson at the time was the printer in Farr West.

It said, quote,

A copy of the oration was furnished to the editor and printed in The Farr West, a weekly newspaper printed in Liberty, the county seat of Clay County. It was also printed in pamphlet form by the writer of this, in the printing office of the Elder's Journal in the city of Farr West, a copy of which we have preserved. This oration and the stand taken by the church in endorsing it and its publication undoubtedly exerted a powerful influence in arousing the people of the whole Upper Missouri country.

End quote.

I think this was a turning point. Before now, the Missourians didn't like Mormons. They were frustrated by what the Mormons had done and by some of their bullshit business practices, their land speculation. You know, they didn't really like the Mormons. The Missourians and the Mormons were just not very friendly to each other. But this is the point when they became hostile. This is when they went from not liking the Mormons to, holy shit, we got a serious problem in parts of Missouri. The Mormons are really becoming a problem now. We have a Mormon standing up in front of a congregation of a few thousand people saying, we will have a war of extermination between us and the Missourians. We'll follow them to their homes and their families and every drop of their blood will be spilled.

Now, just consider the possibility of this. I've used this example before, but let's just say Abu Bashar Baghdadi or somebody with a very foreign name to Americans moves to one of the plain states, you know, Iowa or Kansas or one of those places that has just nothing. There's nothing out there. Just grassland and cornfields and nuclear missile silos. Just nothing out there. Absolutely nothing useful. And then this Abu person begins to amass a following. It starts out with just him and a couple of his friends and then they bring in a couple more of their friends and all of their friends' families and their own families. And then all of their friends start bringing in their extended relatives and their family and their other friends. And eventually, you have an entire swath of two or three thousand people with names like Muhammad and Abu and Bakr and whatever scary foreign names that so many Americans are scared of at the time. What if Abu stands up on the stand and says, we will kill all of the Kansans or all of the Missourians or all of the Iowans for persecuting us? We will follow them to their homes, to their families and spill every last drop of their blood. We will have a war of extermination between us and them. How would people react today? How long until that little commune of, you know, this religious commune would be surrounded by tanks? Right? How long until something like that would happen? Or they just drone strike the area. Oh well, it's our, you know, they're drone striking American soil. Oh well, the people are brown and they have weird names so it's okay. As long as they aren't white Americans on American soil, we can bomb them. We can do whatever we want to them. Like this is simply scary to think about because it's entirely possible that it could happen.

Now if somebody stands up on the stand and gives a sermon like this and nothing happens, I'm not bothered by it. I'm bothered by the fact that it furthers a bullshit persecution narrative but I'm not bothered by the fact that it didn't go anywhere. In fact, I'm happy that it didn't go anywhere. However, if somebody gets up on a stand and talks like this and then a few months later there are rumors going around of fights and brawls and mobs gathering together and fighting and shooting guns at each other, you know, things at this point are escalating and there's no happy de-escalation in sight.

There's no way to knock off the level of escalation that has already happened and Rigdon saw it necessary to blow this shit out of proportion, to go absolutely apeshit insane with this. Now as I said earlier, the Missourians didn't really hate the Mormons before this. They were more of an inconvenience and a frustration and those people that believe in the wacky golden bible and are destitute and poor and drive down real estate values when they go to an area. That's all the Mormons were to the Missourians until this sermon was given. Until this sermon was not only given but it was widely published and sold and reprinted in newspapers and it gained traction. This speech went viral because it was that fucking terrifying to have somebody like Sidney Rigdon or Joseph Smith standing up leading a few thousand people and saying "we will exterminate those who persecute us". That's fucking terrifying and how would we react today? I mean there's no real analog to it that we can think of, is there? I mean there's no proper analog to this. And given some of the Danite actions that follow in the coming months after this sermon was given, the people were right to be terrified. Joe was using the Danites as his own little personal muscle squad. We'll have to get into this later just because it's so fascinating. But this marks the beginning of the vilification of the Mormons in Missouri. The beginning of when the Missourians said we really cannot deal with the Mormons right now. They really are an actual problem. This is from the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri. It's a book by Stephen C. Lesueur on page 52.

Quote,

Most Missourians were not aware of any unusual strain in their relations with the Mormons. Many believed that interaction between the two groups had become remarkably friendly. Rigdon's warnings therefore surprised and alarmed Missouri settlers who interpreted the speech as an open, defiant declaration of Mormon intentions to set themselves outside the law.

Now he is quoting from the Liberty Western Star. It was published September 14, 1838 and it was reprinted in the Missouri Argus September 27, 1838. This is a direct quote from the book, 1838 Mormon War in Missouri.

Until the 4th of July we heard of no threats being made against them in any quarter. The people had all become reconciled to let them remain where they are, and indeed were disposed to lend them a helping hand. But one Sidney Rigdon, in order to show himself off as a great man, collected them all together in the town of Farr West on the 4th of July, and there delivered a speech containing the essence of, if not treason itself. This speech was not only published in the newspapers, but handbills were struck for distribution in Caldwell and Davies counties. We have not the speech now before us, but we recollect among other threats that this author said, "We will not suffer any vexatious law-suits with our people, nor will we suffer any person to come into our streets and abuse them." Now if this is not a manifestation of a disposition to prevent the force of law, we do not know what is.

End Quote

Seriously, if not for Rigdon's little bullshit 4th of July sermon, things would have gone completely different for the Mormons in Missouri. There wouldn't have been a Missouri and Mormon War, no Liberty Jail, no possibly being reinstated to Jackson County, that whole idea just flying out the window. We can point to this one fuckup by Rigdon and say that things would have been drastically different if he wouldn't have escalated the situation. Thanks to Rigdon's salt sermon and his 4th of July sermon, and I guess what you could call the butterfly effect or something, American history is forever how it is now. Thanks to Sidney Rigdon. Yeah, who knows how things would have played out, how the history would have played out if Rigdon wouldn't have given the speech. There's no possible way to ascertain what would have happened, right? But this was an important speech because it set out the lines in the sand. It said, we are the Mormons, we will not endure any persecution. Anybody that is trying to persecute us will meet their death, essentially. That's goddamn terrifying. Now, it wasn't just this preaching that Rigdon had done. It was an amalgamation of so many things. Because once Joe and Rigdon got to Missouri, they turned their ideas of aggressive expansion towards DeWitt and towards the church that was just anywhere in Missouri at the time. They figured, we got chased out of Kirtland, let's not let that happen again. Let's establish a stable stronghold here and let's branch out to as many local areas as we possibly can so that we kind of decentralize the power, essentially. So that we can have many places that can be possible strongholds. Because that's why Joe and Rigdon went to Missouri in the first place. Why they fled to Farr West in the first place was because Kirtland was no longer safe from both legal prosecution and internal dissent. The number of members that were trying to take the church from Joe was astronomical. So they were running from that, essentially, as well as from other lawsuits that were going on. Of course, which ended up with the schoolhouse, the three-story church building in Kirtland falling into the possession of Grandison Newell and it being burned down by Lyman Sherman in January of 38. We talked about that a couple episodes back. But there were so many other problems that the saints were having and that even the Missourians were having with Joe and Rigdon. This is from the autobiography of Ebenezer Robinson.

It says, quote

on May 12, 1838, Joseph Smith Jr. and Sidney Rigdon went before the high council to appeal for financial assistance in remuneration for their services to the church, being reduced, as it were, to beggary as a result.

Yeah, well, of course, they just fled from Kirtland all of their possessions and everything they owned. Joe and Rigdon were just as destitute as most of the members of the church.

The council, upon considering their request, instructed the bishop to provide for each of them an 80-acre lot of church property.

So just handed them 80 acres.

And appointed a committee of three to work out with President Smith and Rigdon proper remuneration. Not for preaching or for receiving the word of God by revelation, neither for instructing the saints in righteousness, but for services rendered in the printing establishment and translating the ancient records, etc.

End quote.

Now, I'm going to read another line from that in a second, but that's essentially what they were saying. We need money. We need some of that internet money. Rigdon and Joe were extremely poor at this time. Not only that, but they were under an immense mountain of debt. The church hadn't been incorporated, so all of the church debts were in Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon's name. Like, today, they would owe about 1.3, 1.5 million dollars in today's money, and that was just personal debt that Joe and Rigdon had accumulated. Now, that's what they were trying to say. Well, we need some money. Because not only are we really poor, we don't have enough money to buy anything, but we're also a lot of money in debt right now, so please help us out. But, of course, being as violently opposed to priestcraft as Joe and as Mormonism in general is, they had to find a way around it. They said, we're not getting this money for preaching or for receiving the word of God or for instructing the saints in righteousness. Instead, we are only receiving it for services rendered in printing these things and in translating the ancient records. That's it. That's the only reason that they had for this remuneration. Now, if you're going to be a preacher in a local area, say it. I'm a preacher. I don't have enough time to have a day job. Therefore, give me money. Like, it's very simple. Most preachers do that. They're just full-time ministers. But Joe and Reagan couldn't do that because they had ensconced priestcrafting as being so evil and viciously of the devil in the Book of Mormon and in many of their prints before now. So they always had to find some way around it, and that's how they tried to do this. But Ebenezer Robinson goes on to detail what they decided here. It says, quote,

The above named committee reported to the High Council, at a subsequent meeting, but the sum agreed upon is left blank in the history, as printed. The amount they asked for was ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS each per annum.

Wow! $1,100 per year. Now, rates of inflation, that was a fairly exorbitant amount of money. I mean, people, very few people made more than $1 or $2 a day, but Reagan and Joe were saying, give us $3 a day for every day of the year, essentially, to get us up to that $1,100. That's horrifying. That's an insane amount of money. Let me read the next paragraph in Robinson's autobiography because it really is amazing. Please look at this thing in the show notes because it's a great autobiography. It's really beautiful. And he discusses a lot of these things from a first-person account, and that's what this is. Quote,

The question was warmly discussed by the members of the Council until near sundown. George M. Hinkle bitterly opposed it, as the church had always been opposed to a salaried ministry.

Yep, priestcraft, there you go.

A majority of the Council however, favored the measure, so that when the vote was called, eleven voted for it, and one against it. But when it was noised abroad that the Council had taken such a step, the members of the church, almost to a man, lifted their voices against it. The expression of disapprobation was so strong and emphatic, that at the next meeting of the High Council the resolution voting them a salary, was rescinded.

Holy shit. End quote.

So they called for this. For this $1,100 a year. The church pastor, the leadership, the Quorum of the Twelve that had been re-established out in Missouri, said, We'll give it to you, but George Hinkle, George M. Hinkle was bitterly opposed to it the whole time. He was the one that dissented. And then as soon as everybody else caught word of it, that Rigdon and Joe were getting $1,100 salary for being the preachers of the church, people lost their shit. Just lost their fucking minds. Because how can you claim to be a pious holy prophet leading a church, railing against priestcraft, when you're asking for $1,100 to rescue you out of the clutches of your own shitty business practices? Like, that's absolutely absurd. And, and, tack on to this, the church gave each of them an 80-acre lot out of the church property holdings. I mean, I understand the church wasn't incorporated at this time, it was all still under the name of Smith and Rigdon, but, like, still, that 80 acres, that was church property, and they're just like, we're giving each of you 80 acres and $1,100 per year. I can't imagine that people took this too well, especially with the church in the financial dire straits it was experiencing at the time. But of course, as we all know, when somebody like Joe or Rigdon takes a step too far forward, they'll just take one step back, and say, sorry, we're good, they rescinded that remuneration. But that doesn't say anything about the last nine steps that they took forward before they took that one step that was over the boundaries. And this was one point that caused frustration with the Missourians, with the Mormons living in Missouri, against the leadership of the church.

So we have the Salt Sermon and the Fourth of July Oration that are riling people up, then we have Joe and Rigdon asking for money when they're extremely destitute, that's riling even more people up. Now we run into another set of problems that the Missourians had with the Mormons. This is taken, once again, out of the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, by Stephen Lesure. He says, quote, the Mormons quickly became the dominant political force in the county. Now this is talking about Davies County, by the way. By August, they numbered about one-half of the 2,000 county residents and represented at least one-third of the voting population. Ah, there's a problem. The Davies County residents did not belong to the Democratic Party, but they would vote for any candidate who they believed would protect their rights. They also tended to vote as a block and therefore held the balance of power in the Davies election. The state and county elections scheduled for August 6th stirred considerable excitement among the Davies settlers because it would be their first opportunity to elect their own county officers. So the candidates visited Diamond frequently. So, Diamond was a settlement in Davies County, and it was essentially where Joe said that Adam and Eve fled to after they were chased out of the Garden of Eden. That was, of course, in Jackson County. They fled to Diamond. So that's Diamond in Davies County. A few Mormons ran for the office so the candidates visited Diamond frequently, making promises and soliciting votes. The candidates focused their attention on Lyman White, who we know as General Lyman White from the 1834 Zion's Camp, who was considered the most influential Mormon at Diamond. Okay, so the population statistics. The Mormons were finally becoming enough of a problem in Missouri that the Missourians were losing voting power. And that is a big problem. When you talk about anybody's ability to be American, their American duty is to vote for representatives they feel will take care of and represent and address their concerns. That's the most American goddamn thing you can do is vote, right? People vote. That's all you have to do is fucking vote. It's not that hard. But when somebody's ability to vote becomes threatened by the Mormons coming in, they take notice. When there are enough Mormons living in an area that they can sway an election for a Democrat or for a Whig, or for just anybody that goes to the Mormons and said, I have your interests in mind, please vote for me, the Mormons voted for that person as a block. They represented almost one-third of the voting populace. They were almost one-half of the entire population in Davies County. There were enough Mormons living in the area that the Missourians had to take notice of this. And finally, when the Mormons come in and, let's say you're a Missourian Whig, you didn't agree with Andrew Jackson, you don't like Van Buren, you just don't like Democrats, you're a Whig through and through, a blue-blooded Whig, whatever. You have a whole bunch of people moving in in less than a year's time, and they are enough people that your horse isn't going to win the race anymore. Your representative is no longer going to be elected to their office to represent your frustrations. As soon as that happens, that's like, that is a catalyst indicative of so many strong political pressures that were pushing on the Mormons and the Missourians. I mean, I say pushing on the Mormons, but like, they were pushing back and forth against each other, the Mormons, the native Missourians, and the Mormons. They were constantly butting heads, and this is where we see problems arising, because of course, 1838 being an election year, as is every two years, people wanted to feel like they were properly represented. The Mormons wanted to feel like they'd vote somebody in that would take care of them, and the Missourians wanted to vote somebody in who wouldn't be sympathetic to those goddamn Mormons that are destroying their land, property values, and, well, essentially creating a monopoly in DeWitt and in other places in Missouri that were, you know, purely Mormon settlements, essentially.

Now, if you listened to the John Hamer interview episode, we covered a lot of the history that I'm discussing right now. If you listened to the Sidney Rigdon presentation episode that I gave at Sunstone, or if you watched the video of it with the slides, you'll recognize a lot of what we've discussed in this episode as being, you know, what was discussed very briefly during that presentation. Now, we're trying to couch these things together. I'm trying to build a cogent timeline that we can see these pressures slowly building up, and this is where we see more pressures. I mean, we have the land ownership. We have the Missourians chasing the Mormons out in 1833 and settling in Farr West. We have Rigdon and Joe calling for the remuneration that the Mormons did not like. We have them giving the Salt Sermon and the Fourth of July Oration, which the Missourians really, really hated. And then we also have land values to put in here. We have, with the Mormons settling in 1831 and being chased out in 1833 so that they can't fulfill their two-year obligation to the government, we see that happening all over the place. And the Mormons were doing it back to the Missourians. Let's not make any bones about that. This was a two-way street. It wasn't just the Missourians who were beating on the Mormons. It was a constant conflict between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. I mean, it's absolutely insane. But now we also come to more land problems, land speculation. And John and I discussed this a little bit during his episode, but when people were settling in new towns, they didn't know if where they were buying property was going to be the new, you know, the new Kirtland. You know, a huge central hub of trade and commerce, or, you know, Chicago, I guess, or Rochester, or any of these larger cities that would, you know, become well-cultivated and property values would skyrocket because people would move in like crazy. Or they might just get something like Hiram, or, you know, like one of these dinky little towns that just cropped up and then eventually went away because there wasn't really anything there.

Now, people speculated on the land based on where they thought people were going to buy and settle. You'd have a person that would buy a huge swath of land, or, you know, chunks of land, and then break it up into smaller settlements and then sell it to a small subset of people and say, Hey, move out here, move all your friends out here, I'll give you a good deal on the property, and then, of course, the property value will increase as more people move out here. But if it ends up being a ghost town, then that's a lost investment. You bought a big swath of land that nobody wants, and it's valueless, essentially. So, the question of land speculation, the, I guess you could call it an art of land speculation at the time, was very unknown. It was still not known what would be the central hubs of trade and commerce.

Well, John and I talked about DeWitt in Carroll County, and this is taking another passage out of the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri by Stephen Lesure. Quote,

Trouble between the Mormons and Missourians began in Carroll County, not as an immediate result of the excitement caused by Sidney Rigdon's Fourth of July Oration, but because Carroll settlers objected to the Mormons' settlement at DeWitt. When David Thomas and Henry Root, both Carroll citizens, invited the Saints to settle there, they informed Joseph Smith that they had been consulted on this business by others. The Carroll citizens, however, claimed they did not discover that the lots had been sold to Mormons until after the sale. The citizens of this sparsely settled county, who numbered about 1,800, immediately protested with John Murdoch and George Hinkle, Mormon leaders from Farr West, moved with their families to DeWitt in early July.

Now, this is scary stuff, because the people in DeWitt, there were, you know, a small number of people living there at the time, and these guys, Henry Root and David Thomas, sold a bunch of property to Mormons in DeWitt. Now, DeWitt, up until this point, wasn't much of anything. It was right on the Missouri River, so that was nice because it was not that far from Jackson County and from Richmond and from these larger cities that were central hubs. But of course, it was up the river, and it was not very big. It wasn't really that important of a town. But the Mormons bought it and said, this could be a big town. This could be an amazing settlement where we have direct access, you know, right down the river to Zion. We can control what trade is seen up and down the Missouri River and what flows in and out of Jackson County. Now, the Missourians, of course, knowing that the Mormons were buying up land in DeWitt and Carroll County here, thought, well, hang on, the Mormons are buying up this property, they're going to control that river. We don't like them, they don't like us. What the fuck does that mean? Where does that leave us? Where are we going to get our shit if the Mormons start seizing all of it from trade on this river? What happens then? So, I mean, a number of questions were cropping up that were causing people to become very scared of the Mormons. And of course, they began moving into Carroll County at the beginning of July, just after this Fourth of July oration was given by Rigdon saying that we will kill the Missourians that come against us. It will be a war of extermination. Man, all of these pressures coming together is terrifying. I can't imagine being a believing Mormon living through this time, having the Missourians constantly pressuring the Mormons to not be where they are or to settle in a different area. If they can't settle in Caldwell, then they'll settle in Clay. If they can't settle in Clay, they'll settle in Davies County. If they can't settle in Davies, they'll move out to Carroll County. John Hamer and I did talk about this.

When Whitmers and Double Up Phelps and all the cow-dung were out running the church in Missouri, especially Double Up Phelps and the Whitmers, they had an agreement set out with the Missourians that we'll settle in Caldwell and Davies counties, in Liberty and in Farr West, and those will be our towns. Those will be the Mormon towns, the Mormon counties, essentially. We won't bother you. You don't bother us. We're good. And I think John just described it as like a handshake agreement or like a gentleman's agreement, right? Well, this wasn't good enough for Joe because when Joe came in, he excised the members of the church that had that agreement. So suddenly the people that were in Jackson County and other counties in Missouri that were not friendly to the Mormons but had this agreement with the Whitmers and Double Up Phelps, they're like, oh, well, those guys are gone, and Joe and this crazy Rigdon bastard are in here talking about exterminating the Missourians, and now they're moving out and settling other cities? Now they're buying up land in other counties? They're violating our agreement, our gentleman's agreement. So that was another pressure that was pushing on the Mormons and the Mormon leadership that the Missourians really didn't like the Mormons for. Now at the end of 1837, we had what was organized The Brother of Gideon Society, and it was, sorry, at the end of 1836, beginning of 1837, when the Church was organized when the Kirtland Safety Society was organized, they also organized The Brother of Gideon Society essentially at the same time, and they were the archetype for the Daughters of Zion, which were referred to as the Danites. I'm going to read a little passage out of Ebenezer Robinson's autobiography again, and he discusses what was one of the final main pressures that caused tension between the Missourians and the Mormons. Quote,

After having gone through with the form of a trial by the High Council, the cases of David and John Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, William Winesfeld, and Lyman E. Johnson were disposed of, and Joseph Smith Jr. and Sidney Rigdon had written that unfeeling letter to John Whitmer, unbecoming of gentlemen, much less professed saints, and after having that remarkable revelation stating that Farr West was holy ground, a society was organized by the Church members, at first called the Daughter of Zion, afterwards Danites, or from which came the secret order called Danites, to be governed by the following purported Bill of Rights and Articles of Organization.

Now this is the title of that article, it's Bill of Rights of the Daughters of Zion and Articles of Organization. And he lists out the entire Articles of Organization of the Danites. Now I don't want to get into them because that'll be another two hours of talking about them, but the Danites were essentially the extra-legal force for Joseph. Now we've heard references to the Danites, I've mentioned them quite a few times in the show. This is the time when the Danites actually begin to exert influence and become an important piece of this puzzle. This is from page 46 of the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri. Quote,

One other point deserves mention, beginning in early September, the Missourians wrote letters to Governor Boggs,

that's Lilburn Boggs

and printed articles in local newspapers describing the militant nature of the Danite band. The existence of the Danites became so well known that non-Mormon settlers asked Mormons questions about the secret society. It is difficult to believe that Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders knew little about the Danites when the groups, teachings, and activities were common knowledge and a "chief source of anxiety among the citizens of Northwestern Missouri."

End quote.

There's no way we can understand this from our perspective. Let's go back to that analogy from earlier. Let's say this Abu al-Bashidah guy, or whatever I said his name was, is leading this, you know, this commune of three or four thousand people, and then claims that he has a militia, his own mob of a thousand, let's say a thousand armed men, are ready to enforce the will of this religious sect, of this, let's call it a religious cult. Now, let's say if Abu had set up this Islamic caliphate, essentially, in Iowa, Kansas, wherever, and people had taken notice, but they didn't want to say or do anything, because Abu and his people weren't really breaking any laws. Particularly, they're just not white, and they just don't have American names, and they don't worship the Christian god. You can't march on them, you can't bring an armed mob up against them, you can't reign any of their leaders in for tyranny or for treason if they just do that. They're only exercising their religious freedom, their right to speech, their right to practice any religion that they choose or none.

But as soon as Abu stands up on the stand and says, this is what we have planned, these are the people that we will kill if they come upon us, it will be a war of extermination, we will follow them to their families and to their houses and kill them and spill every drop of their blood, and Abu has a 1,000 man strong army, armed with all kinds of guns, grenades, who knows what, you know, the cutting edge of technology at the time were cartridge guns at the time, if I'm not mistaken, I mean, they were just converting from good old shot, black powder guns to actual cartridge guns, and I would assume that if they were doing that, that some of these men had them, so you know, what's the pinnacle of armament technology that typical people can own today? Let's just say every one of these 1,000 men had Armalite AR-15s, you know, fully loaded with holographic sights and portable grenade launchers and all kinds of really scary, intense stuff, you know, stuff that we only see in video games or in the armed services, if any of us serve, what if these 1,000 men are armed with all of that? They are marching around in uniform and practicing drills and target practicing. You know, more than 1,000 men, or more than 2,000 men that are ready to march and fight at a moment's notice.

There's no way to understand what this was like. We can't put ourselves there, we can't understand what it must have felt like to be the Missourians watching this Mormon cancer growing in Missouri and slowly engulfing more and more counties and becoming weaponized and militarized, ready to fight or kill anybody that opposes them. And the scariest part is, the Danites, they weren't just this idle type of amorphous shadow agency that was meant to just scare you. They were used. The Danites were employed by Joe and Rigdon in order to sway their own political leanings, in order to cause certain things to be done that they thought should be done. Of course, I can't talk about those now because we'll have to go into those next episode.

Maybe that's what the next historical episode will be, is just, we're going to begin with reading about the Danites, founding the Danites, the Articles of Organization, and then talk about exactly how this weapon was used in the hands of Joe and Rigdon in order to cause political strife. It's endlessly fascinating.

You know, I'm looking back on this time, I can't help but think, Joe and Rigdon were fucking idiots when it came to running a church. I mean, there are so many great ways to run a church that don't involve amassing an army and giving a speech that says, "I'll kill everybody who comes against me". Like, that's not the way to run a church. It's the way to run an insurrection, you know, an actual militaristic uprising. I mean, many changes in political spheres were brought about by one man or woman saying things just like Sidney Rigdon had done with an army of a thousand or less people behind them. I mean, many political changes that have happened throughout all of human history have been waged with nothing more than what Joe and Rigdon had in their pocket already.

But it was so flashy, it was a grandiose way of doing things. If you're going to incite riot and persecution and people fighting publicly in the streets, this was the way to do it. Rigdon and Joe did an amazing job of creating this facade of being a pariah to the Missourians, to the native Missourians living in the area. And the Mormons just being refugees there were not seen as hostile until Joe and Rigdon made some of these certain steps towards militarizing these people, towards organizing the Danites and using them, towards giving speeches saying that we'll kill all the Missourians that come against us. I mean, it's a great way to make headlines. It's a great way for people to take notice, to stand up and take notice and think about the Mormons and what Joe and Rigdon are doing. But it's not the way to get actual things done. Because the more energy and fire that Joe and Rigdon were adding into the system, the more frustration and energy it was giving back out to them. I mean, it was this positive feedback loop of crazy, of escalation, of intensity, and viciousness that didn't let up. The only way that it was solved was by locking these people up, by throwing them in prison for a few months. I mean, that's the only way.

Like, this did not de-escalate at any point. There's no point that we can step back and say, it's a good thing that Governor blank did this. That Governor Carlin or Boggs or Joe or Rigdon or anybody in a leadership position, or Brigham Young, there's no point we can say, they did that and that's a good thing because it de-escalated the situation. It stopped the armies from marching against each other. At no point in all of this history did that happen. It only became worse every day. It only became more self-destructive and stupid and downright absurd as the days passed. Nothing got fucking better from here. Only, things only became worse. Everybody, whether you were just a typical Mormon living, breathing under the yoke of Joe and Rigdon, you know, being protected by the Danites, whether you were just a typical Missourian, whether you were in the leadership of the Missourian government or the Mormon church, every single person was affected by what happens here. And we have a lot more to talk about in Missouri before we actually get to the standoff that led to Liberty Jail. That will happen in a couple of episodes because there's still a lot more to discuss.

Still so much going on. We still have to talk about the foundation of the Danites and who they are, what they are, and how they were used. But all of this together just shows us that nobody knew what they were doing. The church had its time of being the firebrand crazy cult that people would forcibly persecute. Mormons were tarred and feathered and beaten in the streets and shot at and whipped because the leadership of the church. They had their firebrand phase. They had their coming out of their own mold phase. We have them falling into their proper way of lying phase. In the early 1900s, Utah was gaining statehood, and the twins of barbarism, polygamy, and slavery were outlawed. And they stopped practicing polygamy. The church was hitting its PR-friendly stride at that point. Which makes me think about what the church does today. Like, they're so goddamn smart now. They already had their phase of the persecution and the fighting and the armies that are marching against other militias. They had their time in the spotlight of doing that, and nothing good came of it. Now the church decides to move with money instead of with armed people, instead of with mobs. The dollar is more powerful than the bullet. Public opinion is more important than what you can get one or two firebrand parishioners to do for you. And the church's moderation wins out every time over zealotry. And the church knows that. They're fucking brilliant at it. I mean, we've seen in just the past few years, very small political moves that the church has engaged in. Political or monetary, either way really. The two are so tightly interwoven, they're basically synonymous at this point. We've seen their moves when it comes to acquiring new land or building new church houses and new temples in places that don't fucking need these massive, white, Victorian, Gothic-almost-looking buildings that don't serve any purpose but for people to do rituals in and say passwords and secret handshakes. It's the only reason why those fucking things exist. And the church still puts them up at an incredibly alarming rate because they're smart about it this time.

Farr West was dedicated as a holy land. They were going to build a temple there, but they didn't live in Farr West long enough to do it. They went the firebrand way. They went the fuck-you-we're-doing-whatever-we-want kind of way, and they were squashed. They were squashed over and over again. The Mormons could not win with going the crazy way, so they decided to go the way that could win. And we see Brigham Young creating the foundation of that by moving the saints out to a place where there is no policing. Nobody can keep him in check. He's the power. He's the undisputed king of Zion. And as that happens, I mean, Brigham Young runs into a fair amount of mob and militia violence as well, but he handles it much smarter, and he moves on from that. And he continues doing things in a much more businessman perspective, much more of a business mind to it as opposed to a religious firebrand or a religious zealot. And Brigham Young was necessary in order to keep the church going.

At the end of the Rigdon presentation that I gave at Sunstone, I gave a quote by Wycliffe Rigdon. Wycliffe, of course, was Sidney Rigdon's son, and he said, I can find, I'm paraphrasing, I can find no fault with the church doing what it did and following Brigham Young because my father was in no state to lead a church. He was crazed by sickness and mental health disorders. He was, he had a bilious temperament, which means he was usually sick, usually vomiting, and unable to even leave the house, probably from malaria, and a bit of his manic depression as well. And every time that Rigdon tried to run a church for any extended period of time, it usually collapsed on him, or shit changed, like Joe coming in, and then things are completely different forever.

I mean, Rigdon never really ran a church by himself as his own Rigdonite church for longer than a few years successfully. He was not a fit leader. Brigham Young was. Brigham Young was the leader. And we can look at like the, maybe the Strangite church today or something, you know, one of the churches that follows more of a prophetic bend, one that claims that they have the one true revelation, and they are much smaller, they are a subsect of, you know, less than a thousand people at this time, that would, I assume, that would claim themselves as part of the Strangite Mormonism. But you have somebody like Brigham Young that comes in and runs this shit like a boss, like a businessman. Well, we see what the church is today. We still see the vestiges of the Brigham church in the LDS Brighamite church today. Brigham didn't run it like a church. He ran it like a goddamn business, and that's how the church is run today. And that's how they really get shit done. By throwing around money and politicians and judges and public officials. Throwing around people and money and influence in ways that don't ever involve a gun or an army or a fiery sermon from the pulpit.

Everything that the church does now is all behind closed doors. We don't see any of it. And I say the church here as like this amorphous, you know, demonic entity in and of itself, but it probably doesn't operate with as much solidarity and direction as I'm trying to vilify it with right now. But that being said, we still see the church operating in political and monetary spheres that it shouldn't belong in. I mean, why the fuck does a church need a five-billion-dollar shopping mall? Why does it need a multiple hundred million dollar amusement park in fucking Hawaii? Why does it need another multi-billion dollar shopping mall in fucking Florida? Why does the church need so much of what is not church-related? It doesn't. It just has it. It doesn't need any of those things. It doesn't need any of the thousands of subsidiary companies that operate under the umbrella of the corporation of the president of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The church doesn't need any of that shit, but it has all of it. And when it has all of that, it has more power and influence on all of those things. So what we see on the very face of Rigdon and Joe in 1838, that they were, they were villains. They were opposed to the status quo of the Missourians. They were, they were the enemy. They were that crazy religious guy that just decides to do whatever he wants to say that it's in the name of God. They do the same thing today, but they just don't broadcast it from the pulpit. They just don't say we're going to kill everybody that opposes us from the pulpit. They don't say any of this. They don't act this way anymore. They act with money and power. And I would argue that every single time that a corporation or a single entity decides to act with its dollar, as opposed to using its members with guns in their hands, I think that's a lot more terrifying. When there's a standing mob of a few thousand people with guns in their hands, you know who your goddamn enemy is. But when nearly every elected official in Utah is a believing Mormon, when most judges are, when most people walking along the streets in Utah are all members of the church, they don't realize that they're small pieces of this massive entity that exerts influence through them. The church is so smart today. It's so smart.

And it's more terrifying now, I would say because we no longer have that mob, that standing mob of people with guns that we can call enemies or that we can say are in the wrong. Now it's like, who does the church influence? Who do they exert their influence on? And how is it done? It's all in the shadows. It's all behind closed doors, and none of us see it today. So take whatever church you want. We can have a church like the Joe and Rigdon Mormonism, that if they were acting the way that they acted in 1838 today, they would be surrounded by tanks and, you know, flown over with drones constantly, and they would have all kinds of public opposition. There'd be probably, you know, various militias that form outside that are not part of the military that stand there armed waiting for some kind of big battle to break out, you know. Any of these, like, the three percenters or sovereign citizens or whatever that you could picture being at one of these standoffs, you know. Do we want that church, where there's a clear line in the sand, who's doing what, what's going on, and why we're scared of them? Or is it better to just be constantly chasing a ghost, and yelling at a multi-billion dollar entity that doesn't seem to give a shit what anybody says about them, and just exerts its influence and does whatever it wants, just because they have the money and power to do it? I mean, really, who is a better enemy? If you have to pick one of these enemies, which one is better? I don't know. I don't even know how to answer my own question. Which one is really better? Obviously, we see which one gets more shit done. One gets the leadership thrown in jail, the other one gets the leadership of multi-million dollar houses in downtown Salt Lake. I mean, the church is smart enough to see which one is more effective. Hopefully, we are too. Would you prefer to get a letter that reads like this?

To Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, John Whitmer, William Muntz, Phelps, and Lyman E. Johnson,

Greetings, There are no threats from you, no fear of losing our lives by you, or anything you can say or do will restrain us. For out of the country you shall go, and no powers shall save you. You shall have three days after you receive this, our communication to you, including 24 hours in each day, for you to depart with your families peaceably, which you may do undisturbed by any person. But in that time, if you do not depart, we will use the means in our power to cause you to depart. For go, you shall. We will have no more promises to reform as you have already made, and in every instance have violated your promise and regarded not the covenant which you have made. You put both it and us at defiance. We have solemnly warned you, and that in the most determined manner, that if you did not cease the course of wanton abuse of the citizens of this country, that vengeance would overtake you sooner or later. And that when it did come, it would be as furious as the mountain torrent and as terrible as the beating tempest. But you have effected to despise our warnings and to pass them off with a sneer, a grin, or a threat, and still pursued your former course. Vengeance sleeps not, neither doth it slumber. And unless you heed us this time and attend to our request, it will overtake you at an hour when you do not expect it, and in a day when you do not look for it. And for you there shall be no escape, for there is but one decree for you, which is, depart, depart, or else a more fatal calamity shall befall you.

End quote. Do we want the church issuing that kind of rhetoric to dissenters? Or do we want them to just excommunicate us? Fuck, I don't even know how to answer that question. I'm so conflicted. And I guess it's not that simple, right? It's not like it's an either-or. It's not like the church either has to act this way in violence and vengeance and warning people to depart or a fatal calamity will befall them, or it has to operate as this shadow, demonic, evil entity that doesn't, you know, this amorphous being that moves and sways people according to its will. I guess it doesn't have to be either-or, really, does it? I mean, the church is made up of the people that attend it. I mean, even the crusty old fuckers that run the 15 offices at the highest level, even those guys, like, they are still believing members in this church. I'm sure that many of them have read this stuff before and know what I would be talking about here, and I don't think that acting in this way is necessarily out of the realm of possibility for the church today. They just find so much more success in acting the way that they do, in running these through, you know, having the same type of idea in a letter and then running it through a team of attorneys to have it, you know, changed into proper legal speak. I mean, they get a lot more done now, and the church wouldn't be what it is today if not for their current business model.

And I guess I'm most excited about what the next few episodes hold with Brigham Young, because we want to talk about the Danites and what happened with Liberty Jail and Joe and Rigdon being locked up because that creates a vacuum that Brigham Young can step into and manipulate to be the office that he wants it to be. The Quorum of the Twelve essentially rises to be the leader in the absence of Joe and Rigdon, rightfully so. That's what Joe put the Quorum of the Twelve into place for, to run the church in his absence. And that's when Brigham Young becomes bloody motherfucking Brigham. That's when he becomes the leader that the 1847 pioneer trope needed to lead them to Utah.

I'm so excited for this. I just fucking love Mormon history so much. It's so good. This stuff is much better than fiction. You cannot make this shit up. And I'm glad that I've had access to people like John Hamer and Lindsay Park, who have been able to shed light on these situations and help inform me on what I'm studying here. I'm reading about these situations across multiple books, and I'm starting to piece things together, but just to sit down and talk with somebody that knows how all of this played out, to put this into context, I think is so incredibly helpful. And it helped me a lot. And it helps to offer a sense of direction through which this podcast will wade through this wasteland of historical confusion and competing narratives. And I'm elated.

I'm stoked about the next few episodes because this is an intense time in Mormon history. Not just Mormon history, we're approaching the Missouri Mormon War, the Battle of Crooked River. We're talking about things that actually have an impact on the greater history of the American continent. And that's the most exciting part of it. The people that experience this, we're reading the first-hand accounts from people like Ebenezer Robinson in this episode, that actually experienced that. They're actually here during this time to feel what we are reading about, to understand what it was like to be living in Carroll County when mobs were marching on the town, threatening the Mormons with violence. It's sad that we can't put our minds there now. We can't see what it was like. But we can use these accounts to offer some level of insight, slanted as they may be. And it's still amazing. It's wonderful to read through these accounts. Oh, the Danites. I'm just reading another passage on them here. The Danites are amazing. I cannot wait to start to get into them, because that's when Lyman White and George Robinson and Porter Rockwell, and a few people really come into their own. So be watching now for that next episode, the Danites. And, you know, some people say that the Danites exist today as a shadow society. I don't know where they're getting that from or what they're using as a basis for that, or even if it's possible. But I've heard people say it. Maybe we'll jump into that someday. Seems absurd, right? We will never know.

Copyright Ground Gnomes LLC subject to fair use. Citation example: "Naked Mormonism Podcast (or NMP), Ep #, original air date 12/01/2016"