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Religious Activities and Development in Utah, 1847-1910
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 35, 1967, No. 4
Religious Activities andDevelopment in Utah, 1847-1910
By T. Edgar Lyon
Utah has the unique distinction of being the only state in the Union which was founded primarily as a religious colony and in which the total population was almost all of one faith, perhaps as high as ninety-eight per cent, in its first decade. This condition created an unparalleled situation in which religious differences became inextricably entwined with the political, educational, and social life, both of the territory and the later state. No discussion of denominational religious activities in Utah from its founding in 1847 to the acquisition of statehood can be understood without a background of this peculiar religious phenomenon.
An investigation of religious activities in Utah during these years must recognize six divergent groups:
1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commonly referred to as the "Mormon Church," but which the non-Mormons usually designated "The local dominant church." Existing as the sole religious organization in the territory for nearly two decades, by 1895 it numbered about 200,000, or eighty-two per cent of the new State of Utah's approximately 240,000 inhabitants. With its wards (parishes) established in every L.D.S. community, it dominated every phase of territorial life. With its "People's party" it managed and won, with few exceptions, the elections; manipulated the territorial legislature; and controlled the district schools and the two territorial institutions of higher learning. This fact had led objective observers, as well as non-Mormon ecclesiastics, to conclude there was no separation of church and state in Utah.
2. The Jews. This religious community first organized itself in Salt Lake in 1866, and consisted of twenty-four adults of whom eighteen were males. They were a non-proselyting group, engaged primarily in business, and about evenly divided between Reformed and Orthodox traditions. Their growth was slow. By 1895 there were a few more than 1,200 Jews in Utah. About 1,050 of them were in Salt Lake City, where they had erected a synagogue. Ogden had about 150 members of this faith.
3. The Unitarian Society. In 1891 the first Unitarian Society was organized in Salt Lake City. Its informal manner of extending membership, its disconcern about records, and its rapid turnover of members make it impossible to list its membership or accomplishments. At the beginning of Utah's existence as a state, its total membership was less than one hundred, all in Salt Lake City. This group provided an intellectual prod to those who tended to become complacent about religion, politics, education, or social problems.
4. The Roman Catholic Church. This world-wide institution commenced work in Utah in 1864, although it was sporadic until 1871. Its efforts were designed primarily to serve members of that faith who were residing in the territory. This ecclesiastical body did not carry on an organized missionary program for the purpose of converting members from the L.D.S. Church. By 1895 the Roman Catholics had established seven chapels, three parochial schools, and two hospitals in Utah.
5. The Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1867 this church established itself in Utah under the direction of Bishop Daniel S. Tuttle. He viewed his apostolic assignment as a charge to serve his denomination and not as a proselytor among the Mormons. Throughout his administration, and that of his successors, a policy of "constructive Christian fellowship with the Mormons and other people of Utah" characterized Episcopal activities. Bishop Tuttle, as did the Roman Catholic bishop, Lawrence Scanlan, lived among the Mormons in "peaceful co-existence." By 1895 the Protestant Episcopal Church had seven parishes, two schools, and one hospital in operation.
6. The Evangelical Christian Churches operating in Utah constitute a sixth religious group. By dictionary definition, the word "evangelical" means
According to this definition, the Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Lutherans, and Church of Christ were the six evangelical Christian bodies that operated in Utah during its territorial period.
Following the Civil War the American evangelical churches turned their zeal for service, which during the war years had been channeled into relief work, into three areas — renewed missionary work among the heathen nations; among the recently freed Negroes of the South; and to the "deluded Mormons, semi-Pagan Mexicans, sun-worshiping Pueblos, [and] demon-worshiping Alaskans" of the West.
These evangelical churches came to Utah with an attitude quite different from that of the groups previously mentioned. They set out as missions to convert the "deluded" Mormons from what they sincerely believed to be a non-Christian religion. They soon discovered that conversion of adult Mormons was almost impossible. Most of these Mormons had been converted from evangelical Christian churches and to reconvert them proved to be an almost impossible task. They soon concluded the "Mormon Problem" must be attacked in another manner, as traditional Protestant proselyting techniques proved unsuccessful.
Utah, as was the case with other western territories, had no true public schools, as we understand the term today, until 1890. Its territorial schools, with few exceptions, were usually semiprivate fee schools. There were no compulsory education attendance laws, no standards for certification of teachers, and no legally defined length of a school year. Salaries for teachers were niggardly, and the superintendent of territorial schools had no supervisory authority, but only power to recommend and report. The evangelical Protestants conceived the idea that although the adult Mormons were beyond redemption, the children might be saved from the evil Mormon system by providing a true Christian education for the Mormon youth, fewer than one-fourth of whom were regularly attending school for three months a year. This they viewed as the vulnerable spot in Mormon solidarity. They believed that if they established free schools with a nine-month course of study, instructed by certified denominational teachers from outside Utah, who were provided with the most modern educational equipment, the more intelligent Mormon youth would flock to their schools. There, along with the standard curriculum of the day, biblical, moral, and Christian education would be provided. Extracurricular activities in the Loyal Leagues, Liberty Brigades, Sewing Circles, and similar youth clubs would, it was hoped, bind them to Protestantism. They believed the Mormon youth, thus exposed to "true Christianity" would grow up, see the difference, abandon the errors of Mormonism, and accept evangelical Christianity. With this conviction, the evangelical churches turned to schools as their primary mission tool. By the time most of the mission schools closed near the end of the century, the evangelicals claimed that they had taught more than 50,000 Mormon children in their schools. This was probably a cumulative, rather than an individual, number.
The Presbyterians opened their first missionary work in Utah in 1869 at Corinne, a non-Mormon town on the Central Pacific Railroad near the north end of Great Salt Lake. Two years later a church was established in Salt Lake City. By the close of the territorial period, twenty-five years later, twelve churches and forty-nine schools had been in operation in Utah, although not all of them had functioned at the same time. As many as sixty-five imported teachers and nineteen missionary-ministers had worked in the missions among the Mormons at one time. More than $1 million had been invested in their educationalmissionary effort.
Methodists had also started their work in Corinne in 1869 and then invaded the Mormon centers. A quarter of a century later they had operated twenty-six schools with twenty-nine teachers at the height of their expansion, and had forty-one churches or preaching stations staffed by twenty-two missionary ministers or pastors in the Mormon communities. Their total membership was 1,440 in 1895. Methodist expenditures were in excess of $600,000.
Congregational missionary work among the Mormons opened in Salt Lake in the spring of 1874, when the regular missionary board of the church, the American Home Missionary Society, entered the field. In 1880 an independent group, The New West Education Commission, which functioned within the framework of the Congregational Church, took over most of the schools already established and proceeded to establish more of its own. At its greatest extent, twenty-eight schools and forty-eight teachers were serving the missionary effort. About fifteen congregations had been established, presided over by ten pastors in 1893. Expenditures were in excess of $625,000.
It was not until 1881 that the Baptist Church commenced permanent missionary work in Utah, although some efforts had been made as early as 1871. At the close of the territorial period the Baptists reported only four schools and nine churches in Utah, with ten teachers and eight pastors at their greatest period of expansion. Their investment was about $230,000 and their membership numbered 478 persons,
Lutherans were late arriving in Utah. Their first church was established in Salt Lake City in 1882, and in Ogden the second church was commenced in 1888. An Icelandic Lutheran Church was organized and a chapel built in Spanish Fork in 1892. Only one school was operated, and that in Salt Lake, for a few years. The total membership of the two Lutheran Synods functioning in Utah in 1896 was less than two hundred. The Lutheran investment was approximately $60,000.
The last of the evangelical groups to establish itself in Utah was the Christian Church (also having groups known as the Church of Christ and the Church of the Disciples of Christ). This movement had its origin primarily in the work of Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone during the first third of the nineteenth century. The church in Salt Lake City was organized in 1890. The following year a congregation was organized in Ogden, but soon disintegrated because of not being able to sustain a minister. The territorial period closed with but one active congregation of this denomination, numbering fewer than one hundred. Its Utah investment was approximately $35,000.
As the years passed, the evangelical churches seemed to crystallize their attitude toward the Mormons around four major concepts. Unable to unite in their Christian endeavors on anything except their distrust of Mormonism, which they viewed as a national menace to Christianity, they announced their determination to arouse American public opinion and thus block any attempt of Utah to acquire statehood: (1) until the territory had adopted a tax-supported, free public school system, which would be removed from ecclesiastical control; (2) until the Mormon Church agreed to abolish plural marriage, or polygamy as the non- Mormons denominated it; (3) until the territory abolished the marked ballot in elections, which they claimed gave the L.D.S. Church a means of determining how anyone in the territory voted in territorial elections; and (4) until the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would guarantee the separation of church and state in Utah politics.
United on these principles, the evangelical churches generated a great amount of anti-Mormon propaganda throughout the country through their constituent churches. Their members sent petitions containing millions of names to Congress, demanding legislation to correct these situations which they felt were incompatible with American democracy. They were convinced, judging from their press releases, that their efforts had been among the most powerful factors in the passage of the Edmunds Law in 1882, and even more important in the enactment of the more drastic Edmunds-Tucker Law of 1887.
By 1895 all four of these goals had nominally been obtained, and the churches found themselves without a common cause in their crusade against the Mormon Church. With Utah admitted to the sisterhood of states in 1896, a new era dawned for the evangelical churches as well as the L.D.S. Church.
READJUSTMENT ACTIVITIES, 1890-1910
From 1890 to 1910 the Mormon Church, the largest of all the religious groups in Utah, with a membership of perhaps eighty per cent of the population, readjusted and reoriented its religious teachings and practices in many areas. Perhaps its greatest adjustment was accommodating itself to the abolition of plural marriage as a basic practice of the church. Opposition rose within its ranks and the seeds of the later "Fundamentalism" began to appear as those unwilling to accept the new interpretation continued to advocate and practice plural marriage regardless of the publicly announced policy of the church.
Economically the L.D.S. Church entered upon a new era. In 1895 the church appeared to be hopelessly in debt. Under President Lorenzo Snow methods were adopted to materially increase the financial resources of the church. Under his leadership the outstanding bonds commenced to be paid off, first by selling replacement bonds locally rather than in eastern or western markets, and secondly by a renewed emphasis on the payment of tithing. President Joseph F. Smith continued these wise fiscal policies, and on December 31, 1906, the church retired the last million dollars in bonds. At the April conference in 1907, President Smith was able to announce the church was out of debt and operating on a cash basis. The church then started accumulating a surplus, which enabled it to adopt the policy of paying the return transportation of its missionaries. A new era, characterized by the building of hospitals, schools, and chapels, few of which had been constructed in the previous quarter of a century, was inaugurated.
Politically, the church effected a great change in abolishing the oneparty system which had existed in the territory. Quite effectively the membership divided fairly evenly on national party lines, so that henceforth Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Protestants would associate together in political activities.
The separation of church and state posed another challenge. This topic is one which is still under investigation and one which must be dealt with in greater length at a later time.
During these twenty years the Jewish community, the Unitarian Society, the Roman Catholics, and the Protestant Episcopal Church followed much the same course that had characterized their activities since they first entered the Territory of Utah. Each had enjoyed a steady growth, although small, drawn primarily from members of their denominations migrating to Utah. All were, however, small minority groups. As new industries were established, there was an increasing influx of non- Mormon people into Utah. Many of these joined the local parishes and took an active part in promoting their respective faiths. This was especially true of the Jewish groups in Salt Lake who were able to establish another synagogue so the divergent elements of that ancient faith could enjoy two forms of ritual according to their Orthodox or Reformed inclinations. Ogden was able to establish a congregation and employ a rabbi during this period.
Increased mining and smelting activities brought many Roman Catholics into Utah. The vigorous Bishop Scanlan founded parish chapels at Price and Tooele, and in addition established several missionary stations for serving the sacraments. In 1899 he undertook the erection of the present magnificent Cathedral of the Madeleine as the bishop's church for the Salt Lake Diocese. By December of 1907, the building had progressed sufficiently to abandon the old church of St. Mary Magdalene and move into the basement of the new edifice. It was dedicated in 1909 as a worthy cathedral for what was at that time the most extensive diocese in the United States.
Bishop Scanlan recognized a need among his flock, a large portion of whom were engaged in mining and smelting, for a hospital to care for the injured, nursing facilities for the disabled and aged miners, and an orphanage for the bereft children. Simultaneously with the erection of the cathedral he embarked on the construction of an orphanage. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Kearns generously backed this much needed institution, and Kearns St. Ann's Orphanage was opened and almost immediately filled.
The facilities of the Holy Cross Hospital were also expanded, but could not take care of the disabled miners and the civilian population. Largely through the generosity of Mrs, Mary Judge, the Judge Memorial Home for aged and ailing miners was opened in 1910. New safety devices and regulations in the mining industry reduced the need for such an institution shortly thereafter, but it is indicative of the untiring efforts put forth by the diocesan bishop, the priests, Sisters of the Holy Cross, and the parishioners to apply Christian teachings to the unfortunate victims of the contemporary industrial world.
The Unitarian Society, the smallest of all the religious bodies, had struggled along for years in rented buildings without the means to acquire suitable headquarters. In 1903 this society constructed and moved into Unity Hall, its first chapel.
In 1896, in keeping with a policy then followed by the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal government allocated Indian reservations to various churches. Bishop Abiel Leonard of the Protestant Episcopal Church assumed responsibility for the spiritual well-being of those dwelling on the Uintah Reservation. A chapel was built at Randlett and a priest stationed there. In 1904, when the government school was moved to Whiterocks, a chapel and station were erected at that agency.
The Emery House, adjacent to the University of Utah campus, was dedicated in 1910 by the Episcopal Church. It was the gift of a widow of a wealthy mining man and was constructed to care for both the physical and spiritual needs of out-of-town students attending the University of Utah. It also hoped to provide a spiritual environment for those seeking such on the University campus. In 1910 it was the only religiously sponsored institution in the vicinity of the University. This and the Indian school were big undertakings as the Episcopal membership was small — as late as 1947 it was only 2,784, and probably numbered not more than half that in 1910.
For the evangelical Protestant churches, the period from 1890 to 1910 was quite different from the social and religious expansion of the Jews, Roman Catholics, and Episcopalians. The evangelical groups had developed very expansive school programs, which depended almost entirely on contributions from mission boards and private individuals. The funds raised locally were negligible. In 1893 the great economic panic produced a crisis in church finances in the United States, and the various church administrative units were forced to reduce expenditures. They decided to invest their money only where it was producing some visible results. The evangelical schools in Utah were subjected to careful scrutiny, and the few converts made from among the Mormons could not justify the continued outlay of money. A committee of the Methodist Church, after making an investigation of the total impact of the evangelical churches on Mormonism reported:
Retrenchment started immediately. The smaller schools were abandoned, and with them, the small churches and preaching stations were closed. The Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational boards had operated academies (later known as high schools) in Salt Lake City, Mt. Pleasant, Springville, Logan, Ogden, Provo, Beaver, Nephi, Park City, and Lehi. Only one of the three such institutions that operated in Salt Lake City survived the readjustment period. Neither of the Ogden schools survived, and the one in Logan carried on for only a few years after 1910. The Wasatch Academy at Mt. Pleasant is the only school south of Salt Lake City which survived the economy move by the mission boards.
The Presbyterians had operated an academy in Salt Lake, the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, since the 1870's. In 1895 and 1896 Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who had formerly been superintendent of Presbyterian missions in the Intermountain Area, agreed to turn over a legacy he had received to establish a Presbyterian college in Salt Lake City. A board of directors was chosen, a president selected, and the new institution was designated as Sheldon Jackson College. A large tract of land in the southeast section of the city was donated by a local Presbyterian for the proposed school. A portion of it was laid off in lots and a national real estate promotion scheme organized whereby lots were given free to donors who contributed a minimum amount. Advertisements appeared in the leading Presbyterian periodicals and in the interdenominational Christian Herald. The nature of the advertisements was a resurrection of the anti-Mormon propaganda with which the evangelical churches had raised money to support their schools ten years earlier. The headlines of one of these advertisements read:
AN APPEAL FOR WOMANHOOD MORALITY AND CHRISTIAN EDUCATION COLLEGE TO FIGHT POLYGAMY AND SAVE MORMON GIRLS FROM POLYGAMOUS SLAVERY AND DEBACHERY
Dr. Jackson carried on a voluminous correspondence -— much of it on Department of the Interior letterhead as he was an official of the Indian Service, as well as being Presbyterian Missionary superintendent for Alaska — asking for donations. He addressed one of the Vanderbilt girls of New York, who had been a regular donor to his Alaskan Indian missions. The letter indicates his sincere conviction that Utah needed education, but also is indicative of his ignorance concerning the real situation in Utah. He wrote:
In spite of such appeals, the money was not forthcoming. The national Presbyterian Mission Board condemned the real estate promotion technique. Apparently the people in the East were convinced that the "Mormon Menace" propaganda which had been so effective a decade or two earlier was not as menacing as they had formerly believed. The college was not established. Out of the movement, however, Westminster College emerged in 1902.
Another area in which the evangelical churches manifested a determination to wage a crusade against the L.D.S. Church in the period following statehood, was that of theology. In April of 1897, the Presbytery of Utah adopted ten resolutions against Mormon doctrines. These were published in pamphlet form under the heading "Ten Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church." The Congregational Association of Utah placed its stamp of approval on these resolutions on October 14th of the same year and joined in its distribution. Apparently these two churches were still convinced that the Mormons and Christians could not cooperate nor have fellowship one with the other.
The election of B. H. Roberts, a known polygamist, to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1898 was not only a political problem, but one heavily weighted with religious implications. With the financial and moral support of the evangelical ministers of Utah, who drew up a petition of protest against his seating, Dr. Thomas C. Iliff, Methodist superintendent for Utah, traveled throughout the nation urging Christian people to demand that their congressmen vote to deny Roberts a seat in the national legislature. When Roberts was deprived of his congressional office, the evangelicals thought their campaign had been one of the most powerful factors in this action. Because of the effort he had spent in this campaign, Iliff was promoted by his church to a coveted position on one of the national Methodist boards.
In 1903 when Reed Smoot was elected to the Senate, the Christian evangelicals of Utah organized for a similar defeat for Smoot. Dr. John L. Leilich, who had succeeded Reverend T. C. Iliff, attempted the same thing Iliff had done. He toured the country, proclaiming Smoot to be a polygamist and demanding that he be refused admission to the Senate. His charges, however, were not proved, and he and every Methodist minister in Utah, except two who had refused to support his crusade, were replaced by men who were instructed to stay out of politics.
The Baptists entered the Roberts contest in a different manner. They circulated two flyleaves entitled "The Mormon Octopus." Each had a map of the United States showing an octopus with its head in Utah, but its tentacles extending into Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. Its massage was that the Mormon Church had a stranglehold on the Intermountain Region and was destroying American freedom. Below the map and the octopus, one of the flyleaves contained a purported pro-polygamous hymn, which it claimed the Mormons sang, beseeching God to destroy Congress for passing anti-polygamous bills. The other handbill, in place of the hymn, had a drawing of what it proclaimed to be the Great Seal of the State of Utah. Around the outer edge of the seal were the words, "Utah for Mormons Only." In the center of the seal was the inscription "In Polygamy We Trust."
The impact of these leaflets apparently was almost nil, and the evangelical churches in Utah commenced to see that their strength could not come from attacking the L.D.S. Church but would have to arise from building on a solid foundation by developing a stronger Christian community life among the denominations. With one unsuccessful exception, which occurred immediately following 1910, such attempts to return to the nineteenth century religious practices were abandoned.
The evangelical Christian churches of Utah from 1890 to 1910 were going through a transition period which had not led them to a solution of their problem of expanding their religious services in Utah. A number of attempts had been made to produce cooperation among them, but they were not yet ready to readjust their denominational consciousness to the extent they could unite their efforts to expand their usefulness. They were trying to maintain three and four competitive denominations in small Mormon towns where the combined non-Mormon population was too small to support effectively one Protestant church. The hope of supporting three Protestant churches in such places as Lehi, Monroe, Scipio, Midway, Parowan, Millville, Moroni, and Benjamin was preposterous, but they persisted in the attempt.
It was not until 1915 that the Protestant churches of Utah formed the Home Missions Council. By this cooperative arrangement it was agreed that no church would establish a church in a community where another was already functioning. Furthermore, the weaker churches were urged to move out of the small towns and leave the largest there to take care of the religious needs of the populace. It was also agreed that if a person moved from one town to another where there was no congregation of his denomination, his membership would be transferred to whatever church existed in that town. The idea of a community church was commencing to grow. This technique has enabled the evangelical churches to establish flourishing churches in many of the small Utah towns which they could not have done by competing for members and thus dividing the potential flock. Denominational consciousness was too strong until after the first decade of the twentieth century to achieve this logical solution to their problem.
At the close of the period under discussion some noticeable changes had taken place in the religious climate of Utah. Tax supported free public schools had become a reality; plural marriage had been officially abolished in 1890; the marked ballot had been replaced by the secret ballot; and the separation of church and state had been written into the state constitution. In contrast to the situation a half century earlier, when non-Mormons first commenced their missionary efforts, the Jews, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Unitarians, and Evangelical Protestants had sunk their roots deep in the soil of Utah. Although their parishes and congregations were neither numerous nor large in numbers, they were firmly grounded, some having become self-supporting and no longer mere missions of their respective national organizations. Their members were actively participating in the social, economic, political, and religious life of their communities. They were to be found cooperating with the Mormons in civic endeavors, moral problems, and community projects.
. . . Pres. Brigham Young having tendered the use of the Tabernacle to the Rev. Mr. Vaux, chaplain at Fort Laramie, he held service according to the form and order of the Episcopal Church, Dr. Forney reading the responses .... {Deseret News [Salt Lake City], June 19, 1859.)
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