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S2E18 · Zion Part 2
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Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 18 · 53:18

Zion Part 2

Ezra Booth was one of the few men in early Ohio who could read the Greek New Testament, and after five months as a Latter-day Saint he wrote some of the first insider attacks on Joseph Smith.

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The question ·

Why were so many disappointed when they reached Zion, and what happened to people like Ezra Booth?

Richard

Richard and Gerrit pick up the Zion series with Ari from Chillicothe, who takes Richard to task for saying "Missouruh" and gets the Legacy movie accent blamed instead. Gerrit then spends most of the episode on Ezra Booth, a Greek-reading Methodist minister so taken with the idea of Zion that he left the Church when Independence didn't match his hopes, and whose letters to Ira Eddy became some of the earliest attacks from someone who had been inside. He warns against calling people "brainwashed" to wave away their faith. The episode ends with growing strain between the Saints in Missouri and the leaders in Ohio, a thousand miles and two months of mail apart: a conference that elected its own moderator, and Joseph's letter to a terse W. W. Phelps.

Who comes upEdward PartridgeLydia PartridgeEzra BoothWilliam MillerIra EddyPhilastus HurlbutEber D. HoweW. W. PhelpsJoseph Smith
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The Partridge cliffhanger

A quick recap: Edward Partridge went to check on the Mormons, joined, became bishop, and moved to Missouri.

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit See you in the next video.
Richard Thanks for! Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast.
Gerrit I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit.
Gerrit In this week's podcast, what we'd like to do is we'd like to follow up on Zion. And when last we left you, we were talking about Patridge and his domains and events. We had a cliffhanger.
Richard We did.
Gerrit Yeah, it was, oh wow, why is Missouri so bad?
Richard That's right, that's right. Edward Partridge was sent to Palmyra to check in to these moments and came back and said, you know what? Not only are they all right, I joined, I'm gonna be a bishop in six months.
Gerrit Yep, and by the way, we're moving to Missouri.
Richard That's right.
Gerrit So it seems like it was a pretty big turnaround there for Lydia Partridge.
Richard Now that said, speaking of Missouri, now we'll get into this in a sec, but we did receive an email from someone from Missouri who wanted to provide some correction.
Gerrit Well, really wanted to take you to task, actually. We received dozens and dozens and dozens of emails criticizing me, but we only received one that criticized Richard. And so I think because of that, we've decided to read that one.
Richard It is funny. We literally only read the ones that are like super glowingly positive or slightly critical.
Gerrit We actually don't receive very many emails. So I know we want to act like, yeah, we have a mail department that's sorting through them.
Richard So when we're publishing, every time we do an episode of the podcast, Gerrit's desk looks like the judge from Miracle on 34th Street.
Gerrit Yeah, yeah.
Richard Just letter after letter after letter.
Gerrit Yeah, it's just, there's so many of them. Yes, that is exactly what it's like. Honestly, there's not that many, but this is, I mean, I'm gonna try to do this email justice. I'm not going to be able to. This email was a great deal of time was put into this, but this is from Ari.
Richard Aura.
Gerrit No, that's why he's writing to you. Yeah. To the well-financed and incorrigible hosts. I think that we should rename our podcast the incorrigible hosts.
Richard Well-financed.
Gerrit We will have to drop that part. Yeah. People might take that for real. There was a moment in the podcast where Professor LeDuc pronounced the word Missouri with an H, or perhaps Missouri with a UH, while referring to the northwestern portion of the state of Missouri, specifically Caldwell County. Having been raised in the northern part of the state, Chillicothe specifically, yes, the seat of Livingston County. I can hear the muskets being dusted off as I type. That was in parentheses, very funny. Obviously, Livingston County is one of the violent mobocratic counties that drives the Latter-day Saints from this, in fact, the Livingston County militia, the state militia from Livingston County is the one that perpetrates the Honsville Massacre. So, you really kind of brought it down, or didn't I? I'm just assuming that Ari wasn't related to anyone who was a part of that. Yeah, but he says, I can affirm that, though we have some cultural oddities with regard to the pronunciation, such as crick and adding r's where they oughtn't to be, we still distinguish ourselves from our fellow statesmen of the Ozark and Tar Heel areas.
Gerrit That's a shot at my wife, she's a Tar Heel. Oh, for sure. With our proper pronunciation of the I and the retention of the majority of our teeth, Ari is letting us know that even though the actors on the movie Legacy pronounce Missouri with the, the Missouri, well, at the time, I mean, I doubt that there was a whole lot of research done into proper accents from the 1830s Western Missouri at the time that the movie was filmed. But Missouri has essentially no homegrown population at this point. I mean, it became a state in 1820, but nearly all of the population has moved there after 1800. So almost everyone living there is actually from other places in the deeper or upper South. And I mean, obviously there's some from the North, but very, very few.
Gerrit So maybe the accent that they were affecting was, you know, more like a South Carolina accent because the guy was from, I don't know. I doubt there was any thought put into it, but we've been duly chastised. Now, having said that, we are going to multiple times on this podcast affect a fake Missouri accent for which Ari will have to write us another email. He went on to ask some questions for future podcasts, which won't fit quite into what we're doing today, but maybe we'll get back to him at a later date. Or Ari, as you already know, obviously we never will. I think that most of our podcast listenership is based upon promising people that at some point will answer their questions and then not actually answering them.
Richard That's correct. It's the foundation of our podcast.
Gerrit Yeah, we should really call it the We Don't Answer Your Questions podcast. The standard of We'll Think About It. Anyway. But yeah, we do want to continue on with this idea, concept of Zion. And when last we left everyone, there was a great deal of disappointment in what Zion was when they got there. In all deference to our friend Ari, Western Missouri in 1833 was not the Garden of Eden paradise that it once was when it was the Garden of Eden or that it is now. It was incredibly rural, backwards and filled with, frankly, some of the undesirable aspects of frontier America. Lawlessness, gambling, things like that. Houses of ill repute or however you'd like to reference thus things. But among the people that are really offended or come to lose their faith over the fact that Zion wasn't what they thought it to be, is someone we mentioned last podcast, but I thought we might want to spend a little bit more time with them.
Gerrit And that's Ezra Booth. Ezra Booth was a Methodist minister before he joined the Church. He is enamored by the idea of a city of Zion. The idea that there is a place where there is no rich or poor, where everyone loves Jesus, where everyone treats each other good. This idea is so powerful. I mean, even as I'm saying the words, hopefully at least someone listening is thinking, how incredible that would be. If you had a place where literally everyone in it just loved everyone more than they love themselves. And we live in a world now where people are taught that the highest plane that you can get to is doing everything for yourself. The pinnacle of existence is being your best self, living your own life, doing whatever makes you happy.
Gerrit And the idea of Zion is instead this idea that what makes you happy is living the gospel and making other people happy. In a world that's filled with all kinds of sin and inequality, the idea of a city of Zion just sounds pretty good. I know several of my friends, not Richard because he's worried about it, but I do have other friends. They just will never be on the podcast because they're imaginary, who have said things like, man, with all the craziness that happened with the pandemic in the past couple years, all the economic fluctuations, I've had multiple people say things to me like, man, I'm ready for the Second Coming. You know what I mean? I'm ready for Jesus to come back again, which is a thought Christians have often had in difficult times. This is kind of how many of these early Latter-day Saints are. They are viewing this rapidly changing world. You know, 1820s and 1830s America is changing so rapidly as the United States begins to industrialize, steam engines are going on, the rapid expansion of the American frontier.
Gerrit And not everyone is at the top of this very unequal society. And those who are left behind, you can see why they would say, you know what? I want the paradise that God promised. And Ezra Booth appears to be incredibly enamored with that. In fact, even after he leaves the so-called Mormon Church back then, he will continue to affiliate with other groups that are preaching this kind of utopian end of the suffering in this world. He'll actually become a Millerite for a while. And William Miller had claimed that he had calculated, we should do a whole podcast on William Miller, huh?
Richard Oh, absolutely.
Gerrit Probably never, but at some point.
Richard Yeah, after we're finished with Zion, let's do Millerites.
Gerrit After we're done with Zion and polygamy?
Richard Yeah, right after polygamy, we'll do it.
Gerrit Right after polygamy, we'll do Millerites and also probably not do Millerites, but he believed that he had calculated the exact month when Jesus was going to return by adding however many horns there were in Daniel to when the Avignon Papacy happened, when the Pope was driven from Rome and all that, right? If William Miller had had a YouTube channel, boy, it would have...
Richard Which feather?
Gerrit How many horns on the beast? I mean, it would have been just so many. How many cities of Salem we don't even know. But speaking of which, my mom just moved to Salem. So now I have a connection to Salem.
Richard It was one of the Salem's that wasn't crossed over.
Gerrit It wasn't one of the holy Salem's. If you don't know what we're talking about, you got to listen to every one of our podcasts, preferably several times.
Richard We did such a poor job indexing. We don't know which one it was.
Gerrit It was a podcast that was about...
Richard I don't know what it was about. We were talking about The Second Coming.
Gerrit So yeah, it would have been sometime last year...
Richard Between July and probably November.
Gerrit Or now, yeah.
Richard It was a good one.
Gerrit Sometime last year between July and now. Anyway, Miller believed that he had calculated it down to the month. And you'd say, you know, no man knows that day or hour, but doesn't say anything about the month. And he believed, and his followers really believed, that they knew what month Jesus was coming. That Jesus was coming and he was coming, and it was going to be this glorious thing. And of course, Jesus doesn't come. Well, after that, Booth is going to affiliate with The Shakers, which we have a whole podcast on The Shakers. Again, I can't tell you when it was, but sometime last year...
Richard Well, it's actually titled The Shakers.
Gerrit So it'll be a lot easier to find. If you were to go to our website, standardoftruth.com, and you could go to the episode list and hopefully you'd be able to search in there and find it. But The Shakers also have this ideal of this utopian community where everyone shares goods in common, where there's no rich and there's no poor. I mean, you can really see that this idea matters so much to Ezra Booth that he left Methodism once because it wasn't enough there for him, became a Latter-day Saint, well, a Mormon, because there weren't Latter-day Saints yet at the time, but became a Mormon, and practices that for about five months before he decides this isn't where the utopia is going to be and apostatizes, and then becomes a Millerite waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus. When that doesn't happen, becomes a shaker, and then eventually, it's kind of the sad end of Ezra Booth. He will eventually end up leaving religion altogether.
Gerrit So he went from being a Methodist minister preaching the Word of God to no longer, well, he might have been agnostic. I'm not going to call him an atheist, but he certainly no longer considers himself an adherent of organized religion. Why does he matter so much to early church history? Well, Ezra Booth will write a series of letters to one of the main Methodist ministers, one of the leaders of the Methodist Church in Ohio, Ira Eddy. And he will write these letters denouncing Mormonism, so-called, as he's titling it. And different things in these letters are going to just attack Joseph Smith on various points. For instance, A new method for obtaining authority to preach the Gospel was introduced into the Church. One declared he had received a commission directly from heaven written upon parchment. Another that it was written in the palm of his hand and upon the lid of the Bible. The Three Witnesses, they were formerly considered persons of veracity.
Gerrit They testified that they saw the parchment or something like it when put into the hands of the candidate. These commissions when transcribed upon a piece of paper were read to the Church. And the persons who would receive them were ordained to the elder's office and sent out into the world to preach. But this also sunk into discredit and experienced the fate of the former. So he's trying to talk about how people lost their beliefs. He's not the only one. About this time, the ministration of angels was supposed to be a frequent in the Church. The heavenly visitants made their appearance to certain individuals. They seldom made any communication, but presented themselves as spectacles for the beholder to gaze upon with silent admiration. Smith is the only one at present to my knowledge who pretends to hold and converse with the inhabitants of the celestial world. It seems from his statements that he can have access to them when and where he pleases. He does not pretend that he sees them with his natural, but with his spiritual eyes, and says that he can see them as well with his eyes shut, as well as his eyes open, so also in translating.
Gerrit The subject stands before his eyes in print, but it matters not whether his eyes are open or shut. He can see as well one way as he can the other. You've probably read the testimonies of the Three Witnesses appended to the Book of Mormon. These witnesses testified that an angel appeared to them and presented to them the gold plates, and the voice of God declared it to be divine record. To this they frequently testify in the presence of large congregations. When in Missouri, I had the opportunity to examine a commandment given these witnesses, previous to seeing the plates, they were informed that they should see and hear these things by faith, and then they should testify to the world as though they had seen and heard, as I see a man and hear his voice. But after all, it amounts simply to this, that by faith or imagination, they saw the plates and the angel, and by faith or imagination, they heard the voice of the Lord. It's interesting what he's doing there.
Gerrit Doctrine and Coven, section 17, certainly declares that the witnesses are going to see those various items and the angel after they have faith. So they're going to see them by faith not because they are imagining them, because they're having them appear in vision. It's that they have to exercise faith before they have this miraculous experience. But you can see how the very disillusioned Ezra Booth is twisting that, twisting it to make it sound like, oh, because they said they had to have faith to see them, that means they didn't actually see them. They just saw them in their mind's eye, so to speak. There are other things that he's going to attack. He's going to claim that Joseph Smith is a despot because he's the only one who can receive revelation from heaven. He's going to claim that people are led to believe these things that are true, that aren't really true. Why does this matter?
Gerrit Well, these letters get wide circulation, and in fact, we talked about Mormonism unveiled in a previous podcast, one again, which isn't indexed and that you wouldn't be able to find, but in a previous podcast, if you listen to all of them, actually that's our method of getting listens up.
Richard I actually do think it is in early criticisms of the Book of Mormon, I believe it's episode two or three.
Gerrit Of that one. Yes. Part two or three.
Richard Yeah, I believe so.
Gerrit The Book Mormonism Unveiled will actually republish several of Ezra Booth's letters. So they're gonna get wide circulation, and they are some of the earliest substantive criticisms of Joseph Smith from someone who was a member and knew him as opposed to someone who, like on the outside, I mean, you know, Ibra Howe was never a Latter-day Saint, right, and only knew Joseph tangentially, whereas Ezra Booth was a member of the Church, had joined the Church, went with Joseph to Missouri, was totally disillusioned with this place that was supposed to be Zion, and left the Church, and unfortunately will eventually leave his faith. One thing that I think I'll take a little bit more time is a biographer writing about Ezra Booth's daughter will talk about Booth and his dalliance with Mormonism. This biographer writes, in the midst of stirring scenes, he's talking about everything that's going on in Ohio, Ezra Booth began his career. He was a man of more than ordinary powers of mind, gentle, affectionate, impressive, impressible and deeply religious.
Gerrit His early intellectual training did not go beyond the rudiments taught in the common schools of Connecticut, but he was an inveterate reader of books. And the armful of choice volumes that lay on the shelves of his little library was probably greater number than could have been found in one house out of every thousand on the reserve, which is what they called that part of Ohio, Connecticut's Western Reserve. Possessed of a slender means, he adopted a profession which rendered the requirement of wealth well nigh impossible. He early entered into the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was assigned to a circuit of nearly a thousand miles, embracing its range, the township of Nelson. And there in 1819, he married Dorcas Taylor and fixed his home. Soon after entering the ministry, he sent 11 silver dollars to England to purchase a Greek lexicon. And he so far mastered the language as to read the Greek testament with ease. He used to say that in the early days of his ministry, he and Mr.
Gerrit Charles Eliot were the only Methodist preachers west of the Alleghenies who were able to read Greek. So you can see, Ezra Booth has been a minister for more than a decade at the time that he converts to Mormonism and has really prized understanding the language. He's not just this uneducated circuit rider. Well, with all of these, you then have to deal with what do you do about the fact that everybody knows that eventually this person became a Mormon, which at the time this biography is being written in the late 19th century, Mormons are somehow more hated than they are in the early 19th century, which is, you think you couldn't go up on the hate meter, but you can actually by the late 19th century. Talking again about his daughter, that's the point of this little biography, is how great his daughter was. They have to juxtapose her faith against her father's problems, right?
Gerrit Ezra Booth because of that. He's going to, the biographer writes, her father's enthusiastic temperament led him to study any new phases of religious opinion with a somewhat impressible credulity. The Mormon movement of 1830 to 32 swept him up for a time into its turbulent current. 10 or 15 years later, he was interested in the socialistic theories of the shakers with whom, as I understand, he united for a short time. Later still, he paid much attention to the spiritualistic philosophy. But while Ms. Booth thoroughly respected the sincerity of her father's opinions and from them doubtless became wisely tolerant and liberal in her opinions, she maintained firmly, but without bigotry, her faith in God and in the life to come. So now her dad is essentially being juxtaposed against his daughter's faith.
Gerrit He's actually the foil of it. She's lucky she maintained her faith with how crazy her dad was. So Ezra Booth is going to become the earliest, most prolific antagonistic writer from inside the church. Look, Philastus Hurlbut is doing all kinds of things speaking out against Joseph, but even Philastus Hurlbut, if you remember the good doctor, he's later than this. This is 1831 that we're talking about. Philastus Hurlbut is going to be doing his damage in 1833 and 1834. So this is early and it's an apostasy from the inside. And, you know, I feel sorry to a degree for Ezra Booth in the sense that he so passionately wanted to see the idea of this utopian, God-like society realized that when he didn't get it in the way he wanted or as quickly as he wanted, it sent him down a road of not just apostasy from our church, but apostasy from the Millerites when he didn't get it there, apostasy from the Shakers when he didn't get it there, and then eventually apostasy from religion altogether when he didn't get it anywhere, at least not the way he was looking for it.
Gerrit So while I'm not a huge fan of his constant attacks against Joseph Smith, obviously, there is at least some part of me that has a kind of a sympathy in the sense that he clearly wanted to find this peace in a utopian society. And the problem is in this world, outside of Jesus being in it, it's pretty hard to create that society.
Richard So what were some of his specific issues that he...
Gerrit Well, he has a real problem with the fact that Jackson County is supposedly Zion to begin with. He's at first a little bit reticent to actually talk about his specific issues. He actually starts off by saying that he's not going to talk about it. So in his first letter, I'll read part of that to you. He's again writing to Ira Eddy, who's a very prominent Methodist leader. They received a letter. I received yours of the second instant, and heartily thank you for the favor. It revives afresh in my recollections the scenes of past years upon the remembrance of which I dwelt with a mixture of pleasurable and painful sensation. I arrived at my home on the first of the present month, having finished my tour to the west since which time the scenes and events in the history of my life for the last few months have passed in review before my mind. So he's just getting back now in October of 1831 back to Ohio and has left the faith.
Gerrit You are not, it is probable, ignorant of the designs of the most singular and romantic undertaking sufficient to say it was for the purpose of exploring the promised land, laying the foundation of the city of Zion and placing the cornerstone of the temple of God. A journey of 1000 miles to the west has taught me far more abundantly than I should probably have learned from any other source. It has taught me quite beyond my former knowledge, the imbecility of human nature and especially my own weakness. It has unfolded in its proper character a delusion to which I had fallen victim and taught me the humiliating truth that I was exerting the powers of both my mind and body and sacrificing my time and property to build up a system of delusion almost unparalleled in the annals of the world. If God be a God of consistency and wisdom, I now know Mormonism to be a delusion.
Gerrit And this knowledge is built upon the testimony of my senses. In proclaiming it, I'm aware that I proclaim my own misfortune, but in doing it, I remove a burden from my mind and I discharge a duty as humbling to myself as it may be profitable to others. You had heard the story of my wanderings and was induced to believe that I had been visited with a species of mental derangement. You'll notice how people responded to someone who was educated, someone who has the Greek language down, someone who knows the Bible. Like we talked about in our anti-Mormon episodes, which sounds like we should probably need to rename those, that sounds... We aren't doing anti-Mormonism. There's enough people doing that for us. But we were talking about the early attempts to attack the church. What did people say? Well, he must have gotten sick. He must be crazy or he wouldn't actually believe that. You actually see this as a recurrent theme in Latter-day Saint conversion all throughout the 19th century.
Gerrit And frankly, you still hear it sometimes in the 20th century that the only reason you would convert is if you're not in your right mind. And that is certainly something that is being thrown up there by the people who are trying to figure out how did this decades-long pinnacle of the Methodist faith suddenly become a Mormon? Well, as he goes on, And therefore you had given me up as among those, friends of early association, who in the lapse of time would be as though they had not existed. You had concluded that the magic charm of delusion and falsehood had so wrapped its sable mantle around me as to exclude the light of truth and secure me a devoted slave. But thanks be to God, the spell is dissipated and that captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed and not die in the pit. When I embraced Mormonism, I conscientiously believed it to be of God. The impressions of my mind were deep and powerful and my feelings were exerted to a degree in which I had been a stranger.
Gerrit Like a ghost, it haunted me night and day until I was mysteriously hurried as if it were by a kind of necessity into the vortex of delusion. At times I was much elated, but generally things in prospect were the greatest stimulants to action. So what's really interesting is having essentially denounced the fact that his friends thought that he had all, you know, had a frenzied mind. And that's the reason why he became a Latter-day Saint. He kind of then agrees with them by saying, it was like, you know, it was a power that I'd never felt before, and I felt almost like I didn't even have another choice. It was day and night haunting me, or some might say the Spirit, working on him saying that, yeah, this really is true. He's not the first.
Gerrit We talked about this earlier with Doctrine and Coven, Section 39 and 40, that here was a minister that had been a minister for 40 years. It converted, and as soon as the realization came of how many people turned on him because he had embraced the church, he immediately left the church. And so this seems to happen a lot. I mean, ministers are giving up a lot to become Latter-day Saints. They are even today, because they're giving up their livelihood. But they also present a special problem for people who are saying, the only reason why you believe the Book of Mormon is you don't know the Bible at all. You haven't read the Bible. You don't know the Bible. If you'd ever read the Bible, then you would certainly not be making the conclusion that you're making. Well, since the only person then in Ohio who could read the Bible in Greek, at least according to that biographer, was Ezra Booth, making the argument, well, he just wasn't educated in the Bible, is not a very good argument.
Gerrit So what's the argument you have to make then? Well, he's crazy. He's obviously not in his right mind. He must have fallen and hit in his head or something like that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be dealing with this difficulty. Anyway, he's going to, you know, I don't know how much more we want to dwell on the problems that he has, but he is certainly disappointed in what he sees. And then it leads him to kind of reject all the things that he sees as being unbiblical about Latter-day Saints. And going back to his Protestant roots of they are teaching things that are not spelled out that way in the Bible, therefore those things cannot of necessity be true.
Richard So this problem, though, that he's having, many of the Saints are having this. We talked about Brigham Young receiving section 76 and the difficulty with that. That's a problem that many are having, right?
Gerrit At least the problem of trying to deal with what do you do when what is being taught contradicts the rest of the Christian world. But for Latter-day Saints like Ezra Booth, the biggest contradiction is that the Book of Mormon exists at all and that Joseph Smith is a prophet. And he spends much of his time and his criticisms talking about that. That Joseph Smith is the only one who can receive revelation for the church. And you get this impression from Booth that one of the problems is he doesn't agree with everything that Joseph Smith is teaching. And you don't really have a recourse. I mean, this isn't like a democracy where, you know, I have a real problem with what the president is doing. Oh, well, then we'll just vote him out of office. And this kind of anti-democratic criticism of Mormonism is going to, it's going to come back over and over and over again by people attacking it because it allows them to say the people following the church have to be deluded.
Gerrit They've been brainwashed. They've been almost forced to believe in it. And that delegitimizes people's individual acts of faith, right? Oh, you don't really believe because you thought about it. You've just been brainwashed. Well, you know, oftentimes when people use the term brainwash, what they really mean is you believe something that I don't believe and I don't have the ability to argue it with you. Therefore, you've been brainwashed. I mean, I'm not saying there aren't times that people aren't legitimately led astray. I mean, obviously people are and they're told things that aren't true. But the words thrown around a lot primarily is a way to win arguments that the other person doesn't legitimately hold their beliefs. They only hold them because they're stupid, essentially. And if they were smart, if they weren't brainwashed, if they hadn't been programmed, they wouldn't think those things. So we always have to be kind of careful because what it causes us to do is it causes us to delegitimize the faith professions of someone else.
Gerrit So when a Muslim woman declares that she wears a face veil because she believes that it is what Allah wants her to do, you can find quite a few Christians who will say, well, that might be what she says, but that's only because she's been brainwashed into believing that. And in doing that, what are you saying? That she doesn't have any autonomy. She doesn't have any actual faith. The only faith she has is this brainwashed fake faith. So it's a dangerous road to go down. And it's certainly the road people went down when it came to when it came to Latter-day Saints, explaining why certain people became Latter-day Saints and how they could leave the truth that they had behind them. One of the things I wanted to talk about is that it's not just Ezra Booth who has difficulties with church leadership in Missouri.
Gerrit It starts with a trickle of members heading to Missouri, and then it's going to be over a thousand by 1833. In fact, I have to apologize to Ari because we are going to multiple times probably slip into the fake Missouri accent perpetrated by the movie Legacy. I mean, how many times have you seen the movie, Richard?
Richard Oh my gosh, 50, 100, 4 million times.
Gerrit It was like the only movie you were allowed to watch when you were a child?
Richard Well, actually, when I was a child, it was only actually in Salt Lake in the theater at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. So it wasn't even in wide circulation.
Gerrit What were you watching instead?
Richard We had Together Forever. We watched that. My mother had a fairly strict Sabbath Day television policy. And so it was church videos with an occasional Disney movie that snuck in there from time to time. But to answer your question, 4 million times.
Gerrit 4 million times. Well, and there's a very iconic scene in Legacy, which we'll make reference to over and over again. And the person will not be using the appropriate Missouri accent as Ari has demonstrated. We're going to need him as our consultant on all things Missouri. Although given the fact he's from Livingston County, we've got to be careful. You never know. Ari could tomorrow show up with a bandolero like he's Willard Richards in Carthage Jail and filled with guns. We never know. But the reality is, is as more and more members are moving to Missouri, they are not just kind of causing unsettled feelings among the Missourians who are there, but there starts to be a strained relationship between the Latter Day Saints who have moved all the way to Missouri and the leadership of the church that is back in Ohio. As I've stated before, and I'll state it again over and over, it is a thousand miles away.
Gerrit We think of when we're just thinking of Ohio and Missouri in our heads, we think of them as being states very close to one another, except for Ari, who's like, no, I've never thought of it being close. I get it, I get it. Although... Relax, Ari. Ari, man, all the criticism just coming from Ari. Anyway. But it's the furthest western reaches of Missouri that the Saints are moving to in Independence. And it's the almost the furthest eastern reaches of Ohio where Kirtland is. And there's not a super highway leading between the two or trains or anything like that. And so it is at least two months to get any response from either place. If you're in Missouri and you write a letter back to Joseph Smith saying, hey, we don't know what to do about this Ezra Booth guy, whatever, right? Ezra Booth left, just as an example. If Joseph was in Ohio when that letter came in and if he responded to that letter as soon as he got it, the soonest those Missourians would get that answer, those Missouri Saints would get that answer, would be two months.
Gerrit That's the fastest they could get it. They might not get it for three or four months. And so there starts to be this kind of feeling of disconnection. Joseph Smith appoints leaders of the church in Missouri to kind of govern the church there as opposed to the church in Ohio. But you can see some of this tension that's starting to creep up in 1832. So 1831, Joseph declares that Jackson County is the place where the temple is going to be built in the New Jerusalem. Latter-day Saints begin immigrating there. A year later, 1832, it's actually literally a year later, in July of 1832, there is a conference that's convened in Ohio that is going to criticize some of the actions that have taken place. Sorry, it's in March that this conference took place.
Gerrit They've received the minutes of one of the meetings of the church in Missouri, the elders in Ohio have, and they proceed to point out all the things that that Missouri church presidency did that are not actually okay by the guidelines of the church. I won't go through all of them, but for instance, first, we deem it of primary importance that every order and regulation in the Church of Christ be established in wisdom and for its government should be preserved in violet, as with the proceeding of this conference reported in its minutes relative to the appointment of a moderator are illegal, as that office by revelation was conferred upon an individual, namely our brother Edward Partridge, Bishop of the Church. We therefore charge the conference in this act of appointment with assuming a power with which it has not been invested.
Gerrit So apparently, at least the understanding was at the time, and you know, our friend Brady listening to this will be like, yes, the understanding at the time was the Bishop, Edward Partridge, was supposed to conduct the conference of the Church. And instead, the conference of the Church kind of did a parliamentary procedure and elected someone to preside and be the moderator over the conference. So when the minutes of that meeting get to Ohio, the response is, what are you doing? You don't elect who's leading you at this. God elects who's leading you at this, and he already did. And his name's Edward Partridge. His name's Partridge and he watches slux games. He probably pronounces Missouri incorrectly, Ari. In fact, there's no doubt about it. I don't know how he's pronouncing it, probably with some kind of main accent. We don't know, right? In Missouri, we don't know. We don't know how he's saying it, right?
Gerrit But there's a list of these things, which honestly you would see them as relatively minor things. But it's kind of a demonstration that there is this kind of growing tension between the saints in Missouri who feel isolated, they feel cut off, and they feel like the leaders of the church back in Ohio don't fully understand the circumstances that they are in. Now, I'm not trying to say these people aren't faithful. Obviously, you know, Edward Partridge is faithful. I mean, that's not a question of that. But there's a kind of a strain, I think, that develops because of a lack of communication. Communication is essential to having good relationships. And basically, they are in a place where it's pretty hard to have a good relationship. Joseph Smith in July of 1832 is going to write a letter to WW. Phelps. Now, WW. Phelps is one of the people who's been called by God to go to Missouri.
Gerrit And there he's commanded by God to establish a print shop and to also help with the curriculum for children. We don't really know what he did with that. But he is going to start the Evening and Morning Star newspaper in Jackson County there in Independence. The Jackson County newspaper, Evening and Morning Star, is the first church newspaper. Now, up to this point, there have been several things that were published in newspapers from the church, but usually by antagonists. So the Painesville Telegraph will publish D&C 20 and then attack it and make fun of it the whole time. But the church establishes its own newspaper and they begin publishing their own articles and their own revelations.
Richard So that's an interesting name for the paper. Where does it get its name?
Gerrit Well, the idea of Jesus being the morning star actually comes from Revelation, the Book of Revelation, Chapter 22, verse 16. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright and morning star.
Richard Oh, very cool.
Gerrit So that's where that, and then some people have also theorized that people took the idea of Venus being the morning and evening star as a symbol of Jesus because it was there before the sun comes up and it's there after it goes down and that kind of, Jesus is always there, right? But at any rate, the newspaper is going to be a big deal for the church and WW Phelps, who already ran, if you'll recall, our Masonry episode, and you have to go back and listen to all those. In fact, most of the podcasts at this point will just be us saying, you need to go back and listen to the others. We've got to drive those numbers. Just got to drive them. Drive them for what? I'm not even sure why. I guess so that my mom isn't the only person listening. At this point, both of our wives are asleep. I don't think Rachel's mom's listening anymore. Ari's mad at us because we can't pronounce Missouri correctly.
Richard We keep teasing him about it, this whole podcast.
Gerrit Gina's probably mad because we haven't mentioned Vermont.
Richard Look, this is the last time we're going to mention Vermont right now.
Gerrit We're done. From where the sun now stands in the sky, we will mention Vermont no more forever. Anyway, Joe's going to write a letter to W. Phelps. Phelps has converted, he leaves his newspaper business in New York, comes with the Saints, gets immediately sent to Zion, and is just going to be this real help in the church trying to publish its scriptures there. Joseph really feels a very strong kinship to him. But in the summer of 1832, so again, this is just a year after the church has established itself in Jackson County at all, Phelps has apparently written a relatively terse letter to Joseph Smith, that Joseph, responding to it, essentially tries to pass over it by saying, because I know all of the difficulties you're laboring under, I'll excuse the quote cold and indifferent manner of your letter.
Gerrit And what is Joseph referring to? There's apparently a lot of things going on, not just the not following the church protocols when it comes to the conference, but church members in Missouri are not helping themselves with their prophecies of things that they say are going to happen and boldly declaring to the inhabitants of Missouri that they are going to be the ones controlling their land. At one point in this letter that Joseph writes back to Phelps, he talks about the fact that members of the church in Missouri are stirring up other people because they're writing to their family members and saying things that haven't been revealed to the church. For instance, the weak members who are acquainted with your evil hearts of unbelief to write wicked and discouraging letters to their relatives who have zeal but not according to knowledge and prophesy falsely, which excites many to believe that you are putting up the Indians to slay the Gentiles, which exposes the lives of the saints everywhere.
Gerrit You observe that God has been merciful, very true. Then never forget to revere His holy name forever, that circumstances are as well with you as they are. You requested me to preserve all the original copies of the Commandments, my reasons for not sending the remainder and also the vision. I think I will give you satisfaction towards me, as I have much care and tribulation calculated to weigh down and destroy the mind. And in times past, they have been snatched from under my hand as soon as they are given. I will send them to you as soon as possible, but I will exhort you to be careful not to alter the sense of any of them. For he that adds or diminishes to the prophecies must come under the condemnation written therein. So one of the things that apparently Phelps has been relatively terse. We don't have this original letter, unfortunately, whatever Phelps wrote to him. So we have to kind of surmise by Joseph's response, what it is that Phelps was mad about.
Gerrit And one of the things he seems to be angry about is that Phelps needs material for his paper, like any good journalist, he wants to be able to publish the revelations. Obviously, the revelations being published for the first time ever in the newspaper is, you know, that's a pretty hot commodity newspaper item, not only among Latter-day Saints who now have a copy of a revelation from Joseph, but even the antagonists of the church also want to hear what this John Smith guy is saying, even though he's not John Smith. And Joseph tells him that, you know, no, I'm not just sending every single initial copy of a revelation I receive. They are sometimes taken from me as soon as I dictate them. So he's kind of saying, look, I need to let a little time age on these a little bit. And also, you know, is a little worried that Phelps might try to improve upon them, you know, oh, maybe your grammar is not the best, let me fix that as I publish it.
Gerrit So you can see that there's that going on. The other thing that Phelps is anxiously awaiting is he's waiting for Joseph to finish the translation of the Bible that he's working on. Because the plan is to publish the Bible translation along with the Book of Commandments, which is this, the forerunner to the Doctrine and Covenants that again, we talked about in a previous podcast, that you'll have to go back and find somewhere near the beginning.
Richard I think that one is November.
Gerrit I think you just say November for all of them.
Richard I do.
Gerrit I could say anything right now. Do you remember when we did the one on polygamy?
Richard Well, that was November of 2038.
Gerrit Yeah, November of 2107, when my days are lengthened to that of a tree. At any rate, he's explaining to them all of the difficult things that they're going through and why they're not able to respond. So, this is kind of an evidence of these kind of growing tensions. Now, I don't want to overstate them in the sense that, oh, the saints in Missouri were apostates. It's not coming to that. But there are certainly tensions on both sides. In Missouri, it's easy to feel isolated. It's easy to feel like they're not getting enough support from the headquarters of the church and that they're being unfairly criticized for making decisions on the ground. Okay, well, yeah, thanks for letting us know that we needed to have the bishop run the conference, but you weren't here to tell us that. So, we just did what people normally do in meetings and you elect someone to be the leader of it. Now, it's very democratic, very American and just not very Mormon, right?
Gerrit It's not what you do. I mean, very few of you have gone to a sacrament meeting lately where, you know, the way it started was someone stood up and said, all right, let's vote on who should preside over this conference, right? Probably there's several bishops out there who are saying, please, let's not go to that. Let's not go to that model. I'm worried about what the result of the vote might be. But what's going on with them? So, you have that going on. You've got some of these little bit internal tensions. The church is trying to grow there. But what about with the Missourians? What's going on with them? So in our next podcast, I want to talk about how the Missourians are reacting to this trickle that's becoming a small stream that soon, at least to them, starts to become a type of a flood of these religious fanatics that unlike most of the Missourians populating Western Missouri, that were from Virginia and Tennessee and Arkansas and places that Ari has claimed don't have all of their teeth, these Latter-day Saints are coming from New York and Ohio and Vermont, and they have very different values than the Missourians who were there.
Gerrit And so, they're not only outsiders, they're outsiders who bring with them a toxic value system as far as the Missourians are concerned. And so, we will pick that up in our podcast next week. Thank you so much for listening.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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It is funny. We literally only read the ones that are like super glowingly positive or slightly critical.

RichardBanter

So when we're publishing, every time we do an episode of the podcast, Gerrit's desk looks like the judge from Miracle on 34th Street.

RichardBanter

Yeah, we should really call it the We Don't Answer Your Questions podcast.

GerritBanter

And the idea of Zion is instead this idea that what makes you happy is living the gospel and making other people happy.

GerritInsight

It's that they have to exercise faith before they have this miraculous experience.

GerritInsight

And the problem is in this world, outside of Jesus being in it, it's pretty hard to create that society.

GerritInsight

Well, you know, oftentimes when people use the term brainwash, what they really mean is you believe something that I don't believe and I don't have the ability to argue it with you.

GerritInsight

Oh my gosh, 50, 100, 4 million times.

RichardBanter

My mother had a fairly strict Sabbath Day television policy.

RichardBanter

From where the sun now stands in the sky, we will mention Vermont no more forever.

GerritBanter

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
People only join the Church because they are brainwashed, or because they don't know the Bible.
Tension between Missouri and Ohio meant the Missouri Saints were apostates.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Zion is the idea that what makes you happy is living the gospel and making other people happy.

Ezra Booth wanted a perfect society now. Gerrit says that outside of Jesus being in it, it's pretty hard to create that society in this world.

Be careful with the word "brainwashed." It takes away the real faith and choices of the person you disagree with.

Distance strained the early Church; good relationships, then and now, need communication.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Ari and the Missouri accentAri corrects "Missouruh," then gets teased all episode, named consultant on all things Missouri (2:37, 34:54, 35:59, 37:04, 40:18, 43:42).
Mailbag loreDozens of emails criticize Gerrit, only one criticizes Richard, so they read that one; Gerrit's desk looks like Miracle on 34th Street (1:35, 2:04).
Episodes promised, never madeA William Miller episode right after polygamy, so probably never; "the We Don't Answer Your Questions podcast" (6:09, 10:42).
Not indexedEvery past episode was "sometime last year" or "November," and listeners should just listen to all of them, several times (11:28, 17:50, 49:49).
November of 2107The polygamy episode was November 2038, or 2107 when Gerrit's days are lengthened like a tree (49:59).
Legacy, 4 million timesRichard's mother had a strict Sabbath Day television policy (35:20, 35:41).
Vermont no more foreverGina is probably mad they haven't mentioned Vermont (44:46, 44:52).
The audience: Gerrit's momThey drive the numbers so his mom isn't the only one listening; the wives are asleep (43:42).
Tar HeelsAri's dig at Tar Heels is a shot at Gerrit's wife (4:11).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
General ConferenceGeneral Conference talks that cite a scripture read in this episode.

In General Conference

Talks from the latest General Conference that cite a scripture this episode reads or names on air
October 2026 General Conference · cites D&C 76Come to the Lord in His Holy HouseElder Gerrit W. GongElder Gong lays out three doctrinal foundations for temple worship: eternal families, moral agency, and the Holy Spirit of Promise, which makes honored covenants binding.

Summaries, themes and lessons for every talk are on What Did They Say?

Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Ezra Booth's letters to Ira Eddy, reprinted in Mormonism Unveiled (13:38, 18:17).
D&C 17 and what it means that the witnesses had to have faith before they saw (16:49).
William Miller and the Millerites' expected return of Jesus (10:42).
The Evening and the Morning Star, the first Church newspaper, published by W. W. Phelps in Independence (42:20).
How the Missourians reacted to the Saints, which the next part covers (51:04).
SOT Litner · S2E18.