A message for Joseph Smith

The assigned D&C reading I did this week was section 135, John Taylor’s hyperbolic eulogy for you. As I was deciding what to post to my blog this week, I thought: “I should write a letter to Joseph Smith, like they had us do while I was in the MTC, saying what I appreciate about his ministry.” I thought that would be a good thing, because I’ve felt like my posts have been getting more angry and negative lately, and I wanted to be more positive.

But as I started drawing up a mental list of things you taught and founded that are important to me, I still just felt vaguely angry. And my thoughts weren’t flowing in the way they do when I’m feeling moved by the Spirit.

Then about the middle of the week, during my time for daily reflection, I felt moved to open up a Community of Christ edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. And as I was browsing through it, I came to section 111, which is the statement on marriage that the general assembly voted to include in the D&C in 1835. In case you don’t already know, the LDS dropped it from their D&C after you died, and canonized your revelation on eternal/plural marriage instead. The editorial heading for that section in the Community of Christ edition had this tart comment about how “the church knows no other law of marriage than that which is set forth here”; and when I read that, I thought—Hmm, they’re alluding to the fact that the statement condemns polygamy.

And then all of a sudden I realized something. I’ve always been bemused that the Reorganization has, to this day, been unable to accept the fact that you practiced polygamy. That had always struck me as somewhat pathetically dogged wishful thinking. But reading that comment in the D&C, I suddenly realized—I felt—what a betrayal it is to those members of your movement that you did practice polygamy, behind their backs no less. What little I know of the Reorganization shows that these were people who took seriously the idea that the church is governed by common consent through the deliberations of the General Conference and the various quorums. The general assembly of the church had voted to accept as binding a statement which condemned polygamy, and the Saints had put that statement into a book they accepted as scripture. And then you go and start administering secret teachings that contradict that statement to an elite inner circle, and introducing secret ceremonies, and creating secret quorums and councils that operate outside the established quorums and other governing bodies of the church.

My God—it’s like something out of Nixon’s playbook, or Cheney’s. You weren’t just keeping polygamy secret from outsiders. You were keeping it secret from large numbers of your own followers, because you knew perfectly well they wouldn’t support you. You operated without the sustaining vote of the church. In your megalomania, you were convinced that you were above the laws of the church just as much as you were above the laws of the land. You deceived your own followers. You betrayed their trust. What kind of shepherding is that?

I looked back this week over the journaling I did when I studied the D&C four years ago. My readings were more charitable then. This year, I think my reading has made me more embittered toward you. I’m not sure why that anger is rising at this particular time in my life. Maybe it’s the excommunication. Maybe it’s Prop 8. I presume that with the passage of time, and grace, I’ll regain a more charitable perspective on your ministry. But right now, at the moment I write this, I can’t bring myself to feel badly about your death. I mean, I feel badly for your family’s sake, and for the disastrous, world-wrenching tragedy this was for your people—not that you deserved their loyalty. But your death in Carthage Jail is something you brought on yourself. (The one potentially redeeming factor I can see here is that at least you turned back to face the disaster you’d created instead of running away west across the Mississippi River.) And the schism that followed your death—that’s largely your fault, too. You divided your people when you started forming secret inner circles.

This is not a “F*** you, we’re through” letter, although it may feel that way. I have no home but Mormonism—I’ve learned that already. Until and unless God calls me somewhere else (and that hasn’t happened yet, even when I dearly wished that call would come), I have to work out some kind of place for myself in the movement you founded. That means you’re stuck with me, and I’m stuck with you.

Someday you and I will each stand before the judgment bar of Christ. You’ll be called to task for the ways you failed to live up to gospel principles; I’ll be called to task for the ways I failed. You’ll give account of your stewardships; I’ll give account of mine. Judgment will be passed on the legacy you left to the Saints; judgment will be passed on what I did with my share of that legacy. We’ll each receive grace and a way forward—a place in the kingdom, a sphere in which to serve, and magnify our talents, and continue to progress. I presume that somewhere in that process, you and I will be reconciled. But right now . . . I feel very angry toward you.

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Into your hands, O merciful Savior,
we commend your servant Joseph.
Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you,
a sheep of your own fold,
a lamb of your own flock,
a sinner of your own redeeming.
Receive him into the arms of your mercy,
into the blessed rest of everlasting peace,
and into the glorious company of the saints in light.
Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer, USA)