WI: The Death of Joseph Smith lead to a religious war?

between who?

the Mormons were very small and leaderless, plus the Government (both the State and Federal) were more then willing to crush the Mormons into the dirt, the freedom of Faith we have today is fairly new so outlawing Mormonism is likely
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
What if, in 1844, the murder of Joseph Smith lead to a religious war in the US?
It would be a tiny, insignificant "war" (in the sense that the Waco Siege was a war) against one of many Christianistic cults that sprang up in the Great Plains during the 1830s-1840s that would end in the absolute destruction/discrediting of the Mormons and them being reduced to a footnote in very obscure textbooks on the history of Illinois during the early 1800s.
 
It would be a tiny, insignificant "war" (in the sense that the Waco Siege was a war) against one of many Christianistic cults that sprang up in the Great Plains during the 1830s-1840s that would end in the absolute destruction/discrediting of the Mormons and them being reduced to a footnote in very obscure textbooks on the history of Illinois during the early 1800s.


You could say that it did lead to a small war, which obliged the Saints to evacuate Nauvoo and head west.
 

Zioneer

Banned
between who?

the Mormons were very small and leaderless, plus the Government (both the State and Federal) were more then willing to crush the Mormons into the dirt, the freedom of Faith we have today is fairly new so outlawing Mormonism is likely

Indeed. I may be a Mormon, but yeah, we pretty much would have been crushed if we declared war on all other religious sects.

As it is, we were extremely lucky that we were not exterminated after the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the freakout with the "Mormon War".

We were even more lucky that several Presidents were on good terms with Brigham Young.
 

The Vulture

Banned
It probably wouldn't amount to much more than a handful of small shootouts, honestly. The only long-reaching effect I can see is that perhaps Mormons are seen as inherently violent for a while.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
between who?

the Mormons were very small and leaderless, plus the Government (both the State and Federal) were more then willing to crush the Mormons into the dirt, the freedom of Faith we have today is fairly new so outlawing Mormonism is likely
The most obvious outcome is no Battlestar Galactica in either 1978 or 2003. :(
 
What if, in 1844, the murder of Joseph Smith lead to a religious war in the US?

ASB Mormons were extremely patriotic, and one of the Articles of Faith (what a person of the LDS Church believes in) is totally based on being good citizens of the country you live in, by "Honoring and sustaining the law."

Indeed. I may be a Mormon, but yeah, we pretty much would have been crushed if we declared war on all other religious sects.

As it is, we were extremely lucky that we were not exterminated after the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the freakout with the "Mormon War".

We were even more lucky that several Presidents were on good terms with Brigham Young.

WOW!! I thought I was the only Mormon on this site. That's awesome! :D
 

Zioneer

Banned
ASB Mormons were extremely patriotic, and one of the Articles of Faith (what a person of the LDS Church believes in) is totally based on being good citizens of the country you live in, by "Honoring and sustaining the law."



WOW!! I thought I was the only Mormon on this site. That's awesome! :D

Well, if the Church hierarchy thought that a law went against their faith, and that the law could be successfully opposed, they would extort the members to resist the law with all their might.

That was one of the reasons polygamy was removed from Church doctrine, officially. The Church just couldn't avoid becoming part of the United States anymore, and they clearly were fine with that fact. Spiritually (if you are a Mormon), the Church received revelation from God basically saying "Yeah I don't want you to do that anymore, and want you to live happily with your neighbors". But yes, we Mormons do indeed place high value on obeying the law.

Also, woot! Fellow Mormon represent! :D
 
ASB Mormons were extremely patriotic, and one of the Articles of Faith (what a person of the LDS Church believes in) is totally based on being good citizens of the country you live in, by "Honoring and sustaining the law."


The bible says not to kill, doesn't stop many christians from killing in the name of god now does it?
 
The bible says not to kill, doesn't stop many christians from killing in the name of god now does it?
Depends on the Bible. Most pre King James Bibles, [Hebrew, Greek, Geneva], translate the phrase as --Thou Shall not Murder -- which is not quite the same thing.
 
WOW!! I thought I was the only Mormon on this site. That's awesome! :D

That makes three of us.

Actually, I'm not sure that the abandonment of Polygamy was mainly a question of respecting the law. After all, it was just as illegal most places during the previous fifty years that we'd been practising it, though the matter hadn't got to the Supreme Court, so maybe could be considered still "open" in some sense.

It was basically the fact that our position was ceasing to be tenable. Not only was the Federal Government getting tougher, but the economics of it were getting worse. Since the transcontinental railroad reached Utah in 1869, there had been an increasing flow of eastern manufactures into Utah, not necessities of life, but little semi-luxuries which a husband could buy for one wife, but not for several. So by the 1880s, being a plural wife essentially meant embracing a life of genteel (and sometimes not so genteel) poverty. The result was predictable. By the 1880s, only about half as many plural marriages were being solemnised as in the 1860s.

As a result, Polygamy was getting increasingly marginalised. Polygamists still dominated the leadership, but among the "rank and file", where it had always been a minority practice, it was becoming a steadily smaller one, and this threatened the Church's unity. Many Saints were increasingly unenthusiastic about getting all this hassle for the sake of something they themselves didn't practice. The writing was on the wall by about 1885, when a draft State Constitution, including a prohibition of Polygamy, won a "yes" vote not only in the Territory as a whole, but even in solidly Mormon counties. President Woodruff, who was nobody's fool, got the message, and sought the Lord's guidance as to what it meant, and the 1890 Manifesto duly followed.

Earlier, Polygamy had been a unifying force. As the leading figures of the Church were largely polygamists, they had to stick together. If you quarrelled with Brigham Young, you had nowhere to go. You couldn't just go back to Illinois with your seven wives in tow. As a result, internal splits like the one at Kirtland became much less likely. By 1890, though, it had turned from a unifying force into a divisive one , and so had outlived its usefulness.
 
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getting off topic, but I think we have another Mormon board member who is on missionary duty in S. America, IIRC... can't recall his name...
 
getting off topic, but I think we have another Mormon board member who is on missionary duty in S. America, IIRC... can't recall his name...
Hnau is his name. Did some good writing.
Couldn't remember his name. Started looking under 'n', when it wasn't there under 'h' and then realized why I thought it was n.:)
 
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