Mormon Reformation

[1] During the Reformation, Young sent his counselor, Jedediah M. Grant, and other church leaders to preach to the people throughout Utah Territory and surrounding Latter-day Saint communities with the goal of inspiring them to reject sin and turn towards spiritual things.

[3] All pioneers who gathered to the Utah Territory between 1847 and the mid-1850s under the direction of Brigham Young,[1] whether members of the LDS Church or sympathetic non-members, were welcome as long as they helped to build up Zion.

"[4] Consequently, by the early 1850s, many communities within the Mormon settlement region were prosperous and secure, yet contained a segment of inhabitants whose personal practices were not within the exacting standards of the LDS Church.

Church leaders had viewed the economic disasters of the previous years as acts of God, and sensed that something was needed to assist the Saints in their quest for temporal survival and spiritual salvation.

[7] At a quarterly conference in Kaysville, Utah, Grant and Joseph Young of the First Council of the Seventy delivered various sermons over the span of four days, calling for repentance and a general recommitment to moral living and religious teachings.

[1] The Reformation was endorsed by all three members of the First Presidency, as well as several apostles, who gave fiery sermons in favor of greater orthodoxy, and rebaptism in preparation for the full practice of "celestial law" in Utah Territory prior to the Second Coming, which they suspected would be soon.

Brigham Young played a key role in the circulation of the Mormon Reformation with his emphasis on plural marriage, rebaptism, and passionate preaching and oration.

Preaching placed special emphasis on the practice of plural marriage, adherence to the Word of Wisdom, attendance at church meetings, and personal prayer.

Dissident Mormons of the time reported rumors that committees resorted to summary judgments with punishments meted out by enforcers colloquially termed "Danites" or "destroying angels".

For example, the southern Utah pioneer and militia scout of the time John Chatterley later wrote that he had received threats from "secret Committee, called... 'destroying angels'" in late 1856 and early 1857.

In a sermon given in March 1856, just before the start of the Reformation, Brigham Young preached that the death and Atonement of Jesus Christ could not cleanse endowed members of the church of certain transgressions, such as adultery, apostasy, and first-degree murder.

[9] On September 21, 1856, while calling for sincere repentance by church members, Brigham Young took the idea further, stating: "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.

[18] Among the main outcomes of the Reformation were personal recommitment, communal economic innovation, strengthened unity among church members, and an increase in the number of those entering plural marriage.

The call to repentance in the Reformation was generally heeded and as a result, in the words of historian Andrew Neff, 'the spiritual tone of the entire Mormon commonwealth was markedly raised.

[1] Stanley S. Ivins's statistical research reveals that the number of plural marriages in relation to population was 65 percent higher in 1856–57 than in any other two-year period in Utah history.

[8] Historians James Allen and Glen Leonard point out that the Reformation "may have accounted for the fact that the following year the Saints were emotionally prepared to confront the army of the United States en route to Utah.

Historians have also asserted that the emotional rhetoric of church leaders contributed to the defensive dialogue and actions in Southern Utah, which ultimately burst forth in the Mountain Meadows massacre.

[22] After some months of these missionary visits, Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City and surrounding communities who had not yet been rebaptized were asked to do so as an expression of their ongoing commitment to the church.

Jedediah M. Grant, one of the leading figures of the Mormon Reformation until his death in 1856.
Enlargement of a photograph of the northwestern corner of Temple Square, taken by Charles R. Savage from the roof of the Salt Lake Temple, ca. 1892–93. The whitened section on the wall shows where the baptistry constructed during the Reformation next to the Endowment House had stood.
A Latter-day Saint photographed with his five wives and his mother. During the Reformation, there was a measurable increase in the number of plural marriages among members of the church.