The members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are commonly known as Mormons. Despite their explicit reference to Jesus Christ, their polytheistic doctrine and their conception of an evolutionary process between God and man differ essentially from the beliefs of the Christian churches.

Historical Development

The Church of the Latter-day Saints was founded in the state of New York by Joseph Smith Jr. in 1830. According to his own testimony, Smith, guided by a revelation from the angel Moroni, found and translated the Book of Mormon in 1827, which constitutes the main sacred text of the sect. This book told how the tribes of Israel emigrated to America centuries before the birth of Christ and lived through experiences similar to those narrated in the Bible.

After emigrating to Kirtland, Ohio, where the preacher Sidney Rigdon joined him, Smith founded a collectivist-type society that also spread to Missouri. The settlement of the Mormons, with their peculiarities and their group encampment, provoked the hostility of their neighbors, who tarred and feathered the prophet and destroyed the community’s property. Nevertheless, despite outside rejection, internal rivalries, the non-fulfillment of some prophecies, and some economic failures, the Mormons developed rapidly. Expelled from Missouri, where Smith had considered the city of Independence to be the new Zion, they founded a new city in Illinois, Nauvoo, whose government Smith himself assumed. Once again, internal rivalries and external hostilities provoked a military intervention that ended with Smith’s lynching in June 1844.

After Smith’s death, a division arose among his followers. The majority followed Brigham Young, who founded Salt Lake City, in Utah, in 1846. Young promoted missionary expansion, chiefly in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, and established polygamy in 1852. His claims to organize a theocratic autonomy led him into confrontation with the government of President James Buchanan; the Utah War, in 1857, marked the end of Mormon rule in the region. In 1890 the church renounced polygamy.

A minority had remained in Iowa and Illinois after Smith’s death, together with his first wife and his son Joseph Smith III. This group founded the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Independence in 1852. Other groups likewise broke away under the presidency of one of Smith’s early disciples.

Sacred Scriptures and Doctrine

The Book of Mormon, presented by Smith in 1830, is the principal sacred work. The Mormons accept the Bible, but in the version of their founder, who incorporated his own prophecies into it. The book of Doctrine and Covenants (1835) is a selection of the revelations to Smith, to which were added the revelations to Young and the decree abolishing polygamy. The Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses, made known by Smith, have been recognized by experts as translations of Egyptian funerary texts.

The essential divergence between Mormon doctrine and Christian beliefs consists, as stated above, in their polytheism, in their conception of God as an evolution from man, and in the belief that men may become gods. Christ would have come to earth for the salvation of men, but their future depends on each person’s works. Salvation is achieved through faith and obedience to the church. The return of Christ would inaugurate the first resurrection and the millennium of his reign on earth, during which he would undertake the “work of the temple” and baptism on behalf of the dead would be performed; afterward a second resurrection would take place.

In their rules of conduct, Mormons practice a certain rigorism (prohibition of alcohol, tobacco, tea, and coffee) and an ethic of work and commercial, civic, and charitable activity, while at the same time encouraging cultural values such as education, sports, dancing, and other amusements. Worship is carried out partly in public, but also in secret form, with rituals that Smith took from Freemasonry.

The ecclesial structure also combines egalitarianism with a strict hierarchy: a president with two counselors, the council of the twelve apostles, the council of the seventy disciples (for the missions), bishops and patriarchs, but also a general conference open to all Mormons.

Persecutions, decades of polygamy, and baptism on behalf of ancestors have strengthened Mormon identity. Their religious and civil organization, their discipline, and their industriousness have facilitated the spread and prosperity of Mormon communities.

Source: Hispanic Encyclopedia