The fall of 1838 marked the first time the Latter-day Saints engaged in organized retaliation against their enemies. The setting was Northern Missouri and the situation was what is referred to as the “Mormon War.” Here the Saints marched on some nearby settlements that were supporting and equipping their enemies and conducted raids where they pillaged stores and torched buildings. Things only escalated from there and eventually culminated in the infamous “Extermination Order” of Missouri...

In November 1833, ruthless mobs of local settlers drove over a thousand Church members out of Jackson County, Missouri, plundering their property and burning their homes to dissuade them from ever returning. These battered and scattered saints took refuge that winter in various nearby counties while local Church leaders sent desperate letters to Ohio to seek the counsel of the prophet Joseph Smith. As the prophet petitioned the Lord’s guidance on the matter he was told, among other things, to...

In the late summer of 1831, select groups of Church members began settling on the far western frontier of the United States in Jackson County, Missouri. Earlier that year the prophet Joseph Smith had received a revelation identifying the area as “the land of promise” and “the place for the city of Zion,” and shortly afterward the gathering to Zion had begun. Tensions between Church members and the non-Latter-day Saint locals in Jackson County existed almost immediately. By the spring of 1832...

Did you know that one of the best selling books in Latter-day Saint history on Amazon.com was not written by a Latter-day Saint or a historian? It was a controversial book written by atheist Jon Krakauer in 2003 titled, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which still tops the Amazon charts (in Kindle releases) in the category “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” And an adaptation of the book was released as a mini-series in 2022. One of the major premises of the...

From our brief survey of some of the various branches of the Restoration in this series, a few things have become apparent. First, it’s clear that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not have a monopoly on a love of the Book of Mormon. Many of our Restoration cousins also deeply revere this sacred text, have their faith in Christ strengthened because of it, and draw near to God by abiding by its precepts. Second, and perhaps more puzzling to some Latter-day Saints,...

Most of the main branches of the Restoration were formed within roughly two decades of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. One clear exception, however, is the Mormon Fundamentalist movement. Here’s a little backstory: In 1890 President Wilford Woodruff issued a manifesto announcing the Church’s intention to submit to those laws recently passed and declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court forbidding plural marriage. Then in 1904, as a result of the Reed Smoot hearings before the...

Among many of those Nauvoo Saints who did not choose to follow Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles into the mountains of Utah, there was an emerging hope that someone from the Smith family would step forward and begin a reorganization of the Church Joseph Smith Jr. had established. In 1851 a soft reorganization began and built up to that culminating moment of 1860 when the eldest son of Joseph and Emma Smith, Joseph Smith III, stepped forward at the age of 28 and was ordained president of...

Following the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844, Sidney Rigdon, who had been Joseph’s 1st Counselor, made the claim to Church members in Nauvoo that he was the rightful successor to lead the Church as its guardian. After his falling out with the Twelve apostles, Sidney left Nauvoo and travelled to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania where he built up a church there separate and apart from the Church Brigham Young and the Twelve led to Utah. And, today, the only branch of the Restoration that...

Who was James J. Strang? And why were his claims so appealing to so many of those Latter-day Saints who did not follow Brigham Young and Twelve after the succession crisis of 1844? Why did his movement experience so much initial success but then dissipate so quickly? Some have made strong comparisons between James Strang and Joseph Smith, but how accurate are these comparisons really?  On this episode of Church History Matters, we sit down with Dr. Kyle Beshears, a friend and expert...

After the succession crisis of 1844, not every member of the Church chose to sustain and follow Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. And many of these members eventually formed or joined alternative restoration movements which became separate, distinct, and independent churches from one another. In fact, over the last 180 years there have actually been hundreds of Churches that have branched off from the same Joseph Smith-era restoration trunk.  Today on Church History...

In the unlikely event that the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve all died simultaneously, how would that affect succession? In this hypothetical worst-case scenario, would the keys of the kingdom be lost? And, if an apostle came down with a debilitating health problem, is there any precedent for making him an emeritus apostle?  And speaking of apostles, is there a set procedure in calling them, or does the method vary from Church president to president? Also, sometimes in the Church...

Between the presidencies of Lorenzo Snow in 1898 and Russell M. Nelson today, there have been a few key clarifications relative to the inner workings of Church government at the level of the Church presidency. And on today’s episode of Church History Matters we want to talk about them! The first of these clarifications deals with the confusion introduced during Joseph F. Smith’s presidency surrounding the role and position of the presiding Church Patriarch within the Church’s hierarchy. The...

From the history we’ve covered in this series so far, we know that the succession plan of having the most senior apostle become the next Church president took time to develop and wasn’t fully fleshed out in Joseph Smith’s lifetime. In fact, it was during the decades of President Brigham Young’s presidency that this plan was ultimately finalized … well, mostly. It turns out that prior to President John Taylor’s death, there was one young apostle who challenged this plan of succession one last...

Who is next in line to become the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Today this is not a difficult question. It is well understood that whoever is the next most senior apostle to the current Church president will be the next president, should he live long enough. The singular issue is seniority. It all boils down to seniority. So, what determines seniority among the apostles? Again, today there is a ready answer to this question. But it was not always so.  In fact,...

Shortly after the Nauvoo Saints voted on August 8, 1844 to sustain the Twelve Apostles as the new leaders of Church, Sidney Rigdon was excommunicated (for reasons we will discuss in this episode). Then for more than three years, between 1844 and 1847, Brigham Young and the Twelve led the Church as a group of equals. Together they oversaw the completion of the Nauvoo temple and organized an exodus out of the United States.  Yet after leading a vanguard company to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847,...

Aside from a small handful of events, like the First Vision, the translation of the Book of Mormon, and the restoration of priesthood keys, it is possible that what happened in Nauvoo on August 8th, 1844 was the most critical, pivotal moment in our history forever shaping the trajectory of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was the day Church members in Nauvoo voted on who would lead the Church following the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. And the stakes could not have...

In August 1844, there were two major contenders to assume leadership of the church following the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. On the one hand was Sidney Rigdon, a gifted man who had been at Joseph Smith’s side as his confidante since 1830. Sidney initially proved quite effective as Joseph’s scribe and mission companion, and later as his first counselor. Over time, however, Joseph lost confidence in Sidney’s stability and, therefore, his ability to serve effectively as his counselor....

The immediate aftermath of the tragic murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844 was marked by shock and grief within the Church, and in the weeks that followed an ecclesiastical crisis arose concerning who should be Joseph Smith’s successor as president of the Church. As it turns out, Joseph Smith had never publicly and unambiguously designated a clear successor to the presidency of the Church. The confusion arose not because Joseph had never addressed the issue directly but because he had...

We are excited to announce our next series—beginning next week on Tuesday—where we will be dealing with the history surrounding succession in Church leadership, beginning with the crisis of 1844 which grew out of the immediate aftermath of the tragic murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. In next week’s first episode, Casey and I will walk through no less than 8 possible succession paths that were either explicitly laid out by Joseph Smith or were viewed as entirely plausible based on certain...

Welcome to our final episode in this series where we’ve been exploring all things related to the history of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Today on Church History Matters Casey sits down with Sam Weston, a docent at the Church History Museum who has been seriously researching the martyrdom at Carthage Jail in meticulous detail for the last 15 years. They discuss the event of the attack at Carthage from something of a forensic crime scene investigation perspective—both challenging...

In 1952 book entitled, The Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith, was published by N. B. Lundwall. Within its pages, among other things, Lundwall presented various stories describing how many of those who played significant roles in the persecution of Joseph Smith met with unfortunate ends in unnatural and sometimes gruesome ways, underscoring the idea of divine justice and retribution. Unfortunately, the historical credibility of most of these stories is seriously lacking since...

Consider the following Carthage controversy questions: Was Governor Thomas Ford complicit in the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith? When Joseph fired back at the Carthage attackers, did he kill anyone? Also, does the fact that Joseph fired back at the mob somehow take away his status as a martyr for his religion? Did Joseph and his friends in Carthage Jail drink wine together? Also, were they not wearing their temple garments in jail? Were Joseph Smith’s last words a Masonic Cry for help? Are...

It was near midnight on June 24 that Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum, and over a dozen members of the Nauvoo City council arrived in Carthage, Illinois to answer, for a third time, the charge of “riot” for their destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor press. Although the case for this charge had already been heard and dismissed by two separate judges, Governor Thomas Ford insisted that they needed to be tried in Carthage specifically in order to prove to the general public that they were willing...

In the wake of Joseph Smith and the Nauvoo City Council’s fateful decision to destroy the Nauvoo Expositor press several things unfolded in rapid succession. Charges were pressed against them for riot, brazen calls to violence against them were published in Tom Sharp’s Warsaw Signal, and Missourians began eagerly gathering to Illinois with a vow to exterminate the “Mormons;” meanwhile, Joseph wrote urgent letters to Illinois Governor Thomas Ford and US President John Tyler outlining what was...