Review
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Title: The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings
Author: Michael Harold Paulos, Editor
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Non-fiction
Year Published: 2008 (forthcoming)
Number of Pages: 774
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-56085-152-3
Price: $49.95
Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle
The 2008 Presidential campaign is in full swing. Democrats can't decide between Hillary and Barack; Republicans are up in the air about Rudy's honesty and likeableness, and still wonder about Mitt's Mormonism. This will be an exciting year, no? Someone will be sitting in the Oval Office in 2009. Will Mitt Mormon go to Washington? (Apologies to Jimmy Stewart...) Who knows?
Ask any Latter-day Saint about Mormons running for President, and I'll guess few will remember that Joseph Smith, Jr., launched such a campaign in 1844, the year of his death. And even before Joseph's run, Mormons had had an interesting relationship with civil government and with those who hold the power to guide our nation.
It is often helpful to gain the perspective of history, a view of how LDS candidates, and even elected officials, have been treated by the majority who neither understand, nor sympathize with, the complex system known as Mormonism. With this volume, we are given a solid opportunity to gain this perspective.
When Reed Smoot was elected to national office in the early 1900's, there was an uproar in Congress. They didn't want to seat the Senator-elect -- a rare event in the halls of the U.S. Senate. The reason? Smoot was an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
A glimpse at a timeline of Mormon history will make some of this a bit clearer. Polygamy, a practice that was "abandoned" in 1890, was, as we all know, quietly continued until the mid 1910's when it was definitively abandoned by the Church. Although Smoot had not practiced plural marriage, there remained a distrust of Mormonism among many Americans. Members of the Church had not fully assimilated into American society as yet.
What followed was a series of hearings and, in the view of some, inquisitions, spanning the years 1904-1906. Transcripts of the hearings, more than 3,500 pages in length, document this extraordinary event in American, and Mormon, history. Many of Mormonism's brightest lights were put on the witness stand and grilled about Mormonism's eccentric (in their view) ideas and practices.
Paulos has condensed this record into about 700 pages of transcripts from the hearings. Included are testimonies from Joseph F. Smith, B.H. Roberts, and many others. Point for point, item for item, leaders of the Church defended, as best they could, the beliefs, and the very existence, of the Church they loved and served.
I will admit that I haven't read every word of this book. One can scan from page to page and latch on to discussions of interest to the reader. Without meaning any disrespect, I found Joseph F. Smith to be, well, Clintonian in some respects. Yes, the questions were sometimes leading, and often assumed a response that was not forthcoming. But it seems that leaders of the Church fully understood how sensitive these hearings were -- how the outcome of these exchanges would affect not just Senator Smoot's election, but also how the rest of the nation would come to understand an emerging American religion.
The exchange with George Reynolds, who you will remember was imprisoned for a short time for his practice of plural marriage, is a fascinating example of how Americans viewed the 1890 Manifesto, and how some members of the Church, immersed in Plural Marriage, managed to play dodge ball with the law. Reynolds is best known for his involvement in polygamy persecution. Others were involved only tangentially, as believing members of the Church. But the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, the body conducting the hearings, was determined to place not just Reed Smoot, but the entire Mormon hierarchy, on trial.
(I was disappointed that the editor neglected to list the religious affiliations of the members of this Committee. I would have enjoyed knowing their various heritages.)
The editor begins each section with a quote from media covering the hearings. It was interesting to get the point of view, say, of the Deseret News, as the hearings progressed. The transcripts are also abundantly footnoted to enhance the reading and fill in details of the story.
Also included are 14 pages of photos, including some of the wonderful editorial cartoons of the era. I will admit to being a real softie when it comes to these drawings. They say so much about the subject of the satire, and gives a sense of the times that mere words can never offer.
One can hardly miss the fact that Mitt Romney has been subjected to the same kinds of questioning that have faced nearly every Mormon candidate for public office. One member of the press actually asked Mitt if he believed the Garden of Eden was in Missouri! I don't know how Romney could have responded to this. He should have known that such questions would be coming.
But this book isn't about Mitt Romney, and in many ways, it isn't much about Reed Smoot. The apostle seems to melt into the background of the larger agenda of the Senate Committee -- a dissection of the Mormon religion, a broad unease about seating a man whose religion had long been an isolated and, in some minds, an anti-American cult -- as it grinds its way through the process.
There is much to be profited from reading this book. A hefty price-tag may discourage some. But, in the end, one does not judge a book by its poundage or its typestyle. Instead, we must look at the permanence of its importance, the thoroughness of its treatment of its topic. "The Mormon Church on Trial" passes all these tests.
Please consider obtaining this book when it is released. We cannot undervalue the use of history in understanding the present. And, amazingly, 100 years later, the questions asked of the witnesses sound amazingly like what Romney is being asked today. Perhaps someone will do Mitt a favor and send him a copy.
Jeff Needle
Association for Mormon Letters
jeff.needle@gmail.comwww.aml-online.orgwww.LDSBookLovers.com/Needle.html
