Rough Stone Rolling III: building

It's easy to forget, and also somewhat alarming, how young Joseph was. He was barely twenty-four when he founded his church; the same age when he stared down Hiram Page, and only a year older when, on merely the strength of a few dozen conversions, uprooted his family and followers to move somewhere he had never seen, and demanded the loyalty of men and women a decade and more older than himself whom he had never met. By 1832, he was a twenty-six year old leading over a thousand people in two states.

And when he moved to Ohio, he knew he had work ahead of him. He had a kingdom to build.

Joseph was a totalist. As we've learned from Peter Berger, he did not merely want to construct a religion - something people do on Sundays and plan ahead for, but don't really worry about integrating with their TV watching and daily jobs and car shopping and the like. Rather, Joseph wanted to build a world; something all consuming, all transforming that left nothing of mundane life untouched.

This was a twofold task. First, Joseph sought to transform history.

The Book of Moses (and later the Book of Abraham) Joseph called translations. But translations of what? Joseph produced the Book of Mormon without looking at the plates; he produced the Book of Moses while looking at a King James Bible.

The concept of midrash might be useful here. This is a Jewish thing, semi-canonical commentary and elaboration, explanation and clarification, that lines the margins of some copies of Tanak. What Joseph does with the Pearl of Great Price could be seen as a similar task; he's taking the unfamiliar, Jewish, very foreign Old Testament and Christianizing it, starting over and putting Christ in the Garden of Eden; making the old stories relevant to his prophetic sense and task and time. And he does it scripturally. He uses sacred language; there is no hint of Joseph, no introduction, no appeal to reason or historical evidence. Rather, they merely begin.

And more, Joseph transformed Christian history: the narrative that begins with the tragic fall and peaks with God intervening into a fallen world to save us. With the concept of exaltation, the fortunate fall of the Book of Mormon, and the hints of a God more human than he himself might have imagined in the Book of Moses, Joseph was rewriting Christianity, making it a narrative of eternal progression rather than the tragedy capped with sudden joy of Protestantism.

Similarly, Joseph transformed landscapes. He moved the Holy Land from Israel to Missouri; found Adam and Eve in a valley north of Independence, and declared his intention to build Zion there. And he was serious. Though he had a millennial bent - he expected history to end with the Second Coming soon - he was not a pessimistic millennialist as we are today. We've learned from fundamentalists to believe that history is slowly spiraling down the drain until Christ bails us out, but Joseph believed that the advent of his church indicated that God was saving history, that things could get better, and that the true Zion could be built within human history to welcome Christ to earth.

Similarly, Joseph had to build a nation. A nation in every sense - a people with a common tongue, a common heritage, a common culture, a common politics.

The problem here, first, was a paradox: too much of the water Joseph drunk so deeply of. He confronted followers who saw God themselves, who translated mystical languages vocally as Joseph did in writing. There were rival prophets, rival seerstones, rival gifts of the spirit. The June 1831 Mormon General Conference saw exorcisms, levitation, visions.

Joseph's solution here was priesthood. Bushman argues that the Melchizedek priesthood appeared in the church at this time; Joseph clearly states that for the first time the "high priesthood" was given to the elders of the church in 1831. This may seem incongruous today, because we tend to equate priesthood with the organizational authority of the church (something that is a late 20th century development) but Bushman reads it in the context of the time; Joseph was desperately trying to impose rigor and order upon his new church. Again, though, he rooted his method in history, drawing upon the currents of the Old Testament to transform Americans into biblical priests. (Incidentally, page 160 contains probably the most beautiful passage of the book). Joseph was to be the president of the high priesthood. Later, he would add counselors, and a stake president, and finally, in 1835, a quorum of twelve apostles.

It was hard. Mormonism had (as I noted in the last post) begun in a egalitarian fashion; offices were distributed like candy, men like Cowdery and Rigdon had visions of their own. But as the priesthood hierarchy slowly rose, Americans, individualist and suspicious of authority, doubted Joseph's intentions. The work stalled. Joseph expected too much out of the New Jerusalem; communities simply could not succeed as quickly as he wanted it to. The money, the resources, the manpower were simply not there. The Mormons' neighbors were suspicious of them. Sidney Rigdon, Joseph's right hand man, did not get along with Edward Partridge, the leader of the Missouri Saints. His own finances were a wreck; though he promised her a home, for years he and Emma drifted from bedroom to bedroom in the homes of their followers, or to the attic above Newel Whitney's general store. They had children, who died. For much of 1832, Joseph was frustrated, he lashed out at followers who questioned him and complained about the weaknesses of those who failed their tasks. He lost some, like Ezra Booth, who left the Church rather than deal with Joseph's temper.

But slowly, in Kirtland at least, a Zion rose, as Joseph found its center: a temple, and a community to build it. He longed to be loved, despite his temper, and the School of the Prophets was more successful as a bonding ritual than as an educative facility. The Mormons there did not gain much actual knowledge, but they became a community within its walls. They spoke in tongues, and translated, and washed each others feet. And the Kirtland temple rose.

This was a renaissance period; a brief spring. For in Missouri in 1833, tensions Mormons and the natives reached a boiling point. The Saints were driven from Zion, from Independence north into Clay County. And when Joseph turned to the Lord, there were no revelations. Joseph was confused, and distraught, and murmured against God that year. By December, he finally came down the stairs and told Oliver and Sidney, "Good morning, brethren. We have just received news from heaven." Even then, in a wash of relief, Joseph spoke in the plural. His ultimate confidence remained. He directed a new settlement in Missouri, selected two men in their forties (Rigdon and Frederick Williams; Oliver was assistant president) to be his counselors, and turned his attention again to temple building. He gained some relief in 1833. He was twenty seven years old.