History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Smith gained a small following in the late 1820s as he was dictating the Book of Mormon, which he said was a translation of inscriptions found on a set of golden plates buried near his home in Upstate New York by an Indigenous American prophet named Moroni.

After his death, a succession crisis ensued and the majority voted to accept the Quorum of the Twelve, led by Brigham Young, as the church's leading body.

Eventually, the church adopted a policy of excommunicating members who were found to be practicing polygamy, and today seeks to actively distance itself from polygamist fundamentalist groups.

One of the official changes to the organization during the modern era was the participation of black members in temple ceremonies, which began in 1978, reversing a policy originally instituted by Young.

[11] While the main church body was in Kirtland, many of Smith's followers attempted to establish settlements in Missouri but were met with resistance from other Missourians who believed Mormons were abolitionists or who distrusted their political ambitions.

While in state custody, he and his brother Hyrum Smith, who was second in line to the church presidency, were killed in a firefight with an angry mob attacking the jail on June 27, 1844.

Later, adherents bolstered their succession claims by referring to a March 1844 meeting in which Joseph committed the "keys of the kingdom" to a group of members within the Council of Fifty that included the apostles.

[19] Under the leadership of Brigham Young, church leaders planned to leave Nauvoo, Illinois in April 1846, but amid threats from the state militia, they were forced to cross the Mississippi River in the cold of February.

Notable cities that sprang from early Mormon settlements include San Bernardino, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Mesa, Arizona.

Jedediah M. Grant, a counselor in the First Presidency and a well-known conservative voice in the extended community, preached three days of fiery sermons to the people of Kaysville, Utah territory.

On September 21, 1856, while calling for sincere repentance, Brigham Young took the idea further, and stated: I know that there are transgressors, who, if they knew themselves and the only condition upon which they can obtain forgiveness, would beg of their brethren to shed their blood, that the smoke might ascend to God as an offering to appease the wrath that is kindled against them, and that the law might have its course.This belief became ingrained in the church's public image during that period and drew widespread ridicule in Eastern newspapers, particularly in connection with the practice of polygamy.

The Edmunds Act prohibited not just bigamy, which remained a felony, but also bigamous cohabitation, which was prosecuted as a misdemeanor, and did not require proof an actual marriage ceremony had taken place.

The Act also vacated the Utah territorial government, created an independent committee to oversee elections to prevent Mormon influence, and disenfranchised any former or present polygamist.

[33] Mormon leaders, including Woodruff, maintained that the Manifesto was a temporary expediency designed to enable Utah to obtain statehood and that at some future date, the practice would soon resume.

[34] Nevertheless, the 1890 Manifesto provided the church breathing room to obtain Utah's statehood, which it received in 1896 after a campaign to convince the American public that Mormon leaders had abandoned polygamy and intended to stay out of politics.

In the earliest days of Mormonism, Joseph Smith had established a form of Christian communalism, an idea made popular during the Second Great Awakening, combined with a move toward theocracy.

As a secular political leader in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith introduced collective farms to support those lacking property, ensuring sustenance for the poor and their families.

The circular, signed by the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency, cautioned that continuous wealth concentration among the rich and deepening poverty among the poor could lead the nation toward disaster.

Prominent early socialists such as Albert Brisbane, Victor Prosper Considerant, Plotino Rhodakanaty, Edward Bellamy, and Ruth & Reginald Wright Kauffman showed great interest in the successful cooperative communities of the church in Utah.

For example, while doing research for what would become a best selling socialist novel, Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy toured the Church's cooperative communities in Utah and visited with Lorenzo Snow for a week.

During this time period, priesthood editorial oversight was established of formerly priesthood-auxiliary-specific YMMIA, YLMIA, Relief Society, Primary, and Sunday School magazines.

[59] During and after the civil rights movement, the church faced a critical point in its history, where its previous attitudes toward other cultures and people of color, which had once been shared by much of the Anglo-American mainstream, carried racist and neocolonialist connotations.

The mid-20th century saw the church critiqued over its positions on Black and Native American matters, especially the institution's bias towards European standards or norms at the expense and disregard of other racial or ethnic backgrounds' identity and humanity.

However, the commission rejected these accusations and found that the program was beneficial in many cases, and provided well-balanced American education for thousands, allowing the children to return to their cultures and customs.

[63] In 1981, the church published a new LDS edition of the Standard Works that changed a passage in The Book of Mormon that Lamanites (considered by many Latter-day Saints to be Native Americans) will "become white and delightsome" after accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This view, based on the belief that a dichotomy of thought on the subject of evolution existed between B. H. Roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith, has become common among pro-evolution members of the church.

This letter, reportedly discovered by a scholar named Mark Hofmann, alleged that the Book of Mormon was given to Joseph Smith by a being that changed itself into a salamander, not by an angel as the official church history recounted.

They assert that the LDS "rediscovery of the Book of Mormon in the late twentieth century is strongly connected to their renewed emphasis on the person and nature of Jesus Christ.

The church also announced its opposition to political measures that "confer legal status on any other sexual relationship" than a "man and a woman lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

[104][105] The next day, in a video interview, apostle D. Todd Christofferson clarified that the policy was "about love" and "protect[ing] children" from "difficulties, challenges, conflicts" where "parents feel one way and the expectations of the Church are very different".