Zion's Camp and quiet dissent

This week I read the revelations written during the first Missouri crisis, when the Saints were driven out of Jackson County (D&C 101, 103, 105). In the spirit of declaring the things that I have seen (1 Ne. 1:18), here's what I see happening in those sections.

Joseph is trying to make sense of this unexpected disaster. At first he is convinced that God is telling him: Stick with the original plan. The Saints are to keep buying up all the available land, and once they've done that, then the Lord will send Joseph at the head of an army to conquer their enemies and take back what's theirs. The setback, he's convinced, is due to the Saints having been slow to carry out the plan, contentious, etc.—but if the Saints will keep raising money to buy land, and raise an army for Joseph to lead, then from this very hour things are going to start turning around. At the same time, there are signs of doubt: What if the Saints won't raise an army big enough? So right there in the middle of the revelation, expectations downshift: Raise an army of 500... well, see if you can get 300... or maybe 100... at least 100, minimum. And then when Joseph finally gets his little army to Missouri and it becomes clear that they're not going to be able to prevail by force—then a revelation comes that says: Actually, you don't need to fight for Zion; God will wipe out your enemies for you in his own time. Anyway, Zion can't be redeemed until you've been endowed with power from on high in the temple—so go back to Kirtland and get that finished. At the same time, the new setback is once again blamed on the Saints' disobedience—though the revelation hastens to clarify that this condemnation doesn't apply to Joseph and other church leaders.

If I were telling this story about the charismatic leader of some other religious sect, instead of about Joseph Smith, I trust that Mormons would readily recognize the self-serving nature of these revelations. On the other hand, there's a sense in which I can't fault Joseph. He's doing what anyone does who tries to live by ongoing revelation, including me: He tries to discern God's will according to his best lights, and when events don't unfold as he expected, he adjusts his understanding. And given human nature, it certainly shouldn't come as a surprise that there's a self-serving dimension in all this. I'm sure readers of this blog wouldn't have a hard time pointing out the self-serving dimensions of my efforts to seek personal revelation.

But of course there's a hugely important difference. Joseph is professing to receive revelation to guide an entire community. People's lives are at stake in this process. And it's therefore dangerous that the revelatory process being followed is so unilateral. Whatever Joseph thinks God is telling him to do, that's what the commnuity's supposed to do. There's no check-and-balance for the perfectly human tendency for Joseph to conclude that his will is God's will. Clearly not all the Saints were convinced by Joseph's revelations on this subject. That's why the revelations keep complaining that the Saints aren't doing what they're told. Significant numbers of Saints aren't convinced that they should keep on raising money to buy land in a region where their coreligionists are being driven out by mobs, and they're hanging back from enlisting in Zion's Camp. They're not convinced this is God's plan.

Joseph is completely uninterested in other Saints' reservations. He knows what God wants them to do; end of story. The doubters need to fall in line—and when they don't, well, that's why things didn't work the way the revelations promised. That's how Joseph understands the situation, and how his loyalists understand the situation—and it's the loyalist account that becomes offical church history, since it's the loyalists who stick with Joseph through the schism produced when the continuing deterioration of the situation in Missouri, coupled with crises in Kirtland like the failed "anti-banking society," convince many Saints, including high-ranking church leaders and long-time friends, that Joseph has become a fallen prophet.

I wonder: How might things have been different if Joseph hadn't insisted on making pronouncements about God's will unilaterally? What if he had followed the principles laid out in D&C 88:122: "Let not all be spokesmen at once; but let one speak at a time and let all listen to his sayings, that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all, and that every [one] may have an equal privilege"? What if Joseph had sat in council with other church leaders—or even better, if he'd held an even more public forum, a "town meeting"—in which he said to the Saints: "Here's what I think the Spirit is telling me God wants us to do in response to this crisis... But what do you think?" And then all the Saints who had reservations about Joseph's understanding of God's will could voice those reservations, and Joseph would listen, and people would express differing opinions back and forth—and then Joseph could go reflect prayerfully on what he'd heard and come back to the leading councils of the church and said, "All right—as the person ultimately responsible to seek God's will for leading this church, here's what I think God wants us to do."

But that scenario would have required a lot more humility on Joseph's part than the historical record shows he had.

I'm intrigued to know more about the Saints who quietly dissented from Joseph's revelations on this subject—who didn't donate money to buy land, who didn't enlist in Zion's Camp. I'd like to know how they understood the nature of Joseph's prophetic calling. I'd like to know what they understood as the essence of being Mormon. Clearly they did not take the loyalist view that being Mormon means committing to believe and do whatever Joseph Smith tells them they're supposed to believe and do. So what did their commitment to Mormonism consist of? From the point of the loyalists—then and now—these quiet dissenters were simply uncommitted, unfaithful, apostates, unwilling to make the sacrifices God required of them. But I'd like to have the chance to hear what the dissenters (would it be too much of a stretch to call them "conscientious objectors"?) would have had to say for themselves—"to listen to [their] sayings, that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all, and that every [one] may have an equal privilege."