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The Commencement of the Godbeite Protest: Another View
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 42, 1974, No. 3
The Commencement of the Godbeite Protest: Another View
BY RONALD W. WALKER
MORMONISM HAS NAVIGATED a series of narrow passages — crises which at the time seemingly threatened to engulf and to destroy the religious movement. The coming of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 and consequently the termination of the geographical and cultural isolation of Deseret was such a Mormon climacteric, generating in its wake the Godbeite protest or, as it is sometimes known, the New Movement. Hubert Howe Bancroft declared that of all of Zion's apostasies, this schism "was the most formidable, and wrought more harm" than any other preceding it. While it is doubtful that the Godbeite protest shook Mormonism with such intensity, at its commencement its force seemed considerable, with leading merchants and gifted intellectuals combining to challenge the authority and policies of Brigham Young.
Despite its importance, historians have frequently misunderstood the origins and meaning of the Godbeite schism. Following a seemingly full account by Edward Tullidge, a Godbeite dissenter, a common interpretation has emerged. The dissidents, this view asserts, were reformers seeking to shepherd the flock into modernity. Estranged from Brigham Young's concept of Zion, with its stress upon personal fealty, religious conformity, and economic management by ecclesiastical authority, they sought a transformed religious faith more congenial to the intellectual currents of their age. This picture has a heroic quality: the dissidents were faithful churchmen who valued their membership but refused to trade allegiance for conscience. Because of their unwillingness to accept dictation from the church in temporal and secular matters, they were severed from membership.
Actually the Godbeites were more complex and interesting. Their disaffection was deeper than often recognized, their discontent striking at the roots of traditional Mormonism. Their religious skepticism, their abjuration of all formal religious creeds, and their longing to salvage a portion of their former faith combined to find meaning in a form of nineteenth-century spiritualism which the Godbeite leaders hoped to impose upon the Saints. The Godbeites, especially their leaders, were more than reformers. They were religious revolutionaries whose aim was the transformation of Mormonism.
The origins of the New Movement lay in Great Britain, as Mormonism's fire swept through that nation during the late 1840s. Despite an unresolved skepticism concerning the Christian atonement and even the Saints' Book of Mormon, young Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison was converted to the faith by the logic of Apostle Orson Pratt and the continuing display of "the gifts of the spirit" ubiquitous in the early British Mission. Harrison's talents and enthusiasm were reflected in a series of responsible assignments: head of the church book store and business office in London; contributor to the Millennial Star, the British organ for Mormonism; church emigration agent in Liverpool; and president of the London Missionary Conference. He was in those days, it would be recalled later, "a genial and pleasant companion, witty and light-hearted, warm in his friendship and faithful in his church duties."
However, even before gathering to Zion, Harrison and his friend Edward Tullidge began to define the issues of the subsequent Godbeite schism. Mercurial and something of a mystic, Tullidge's emotions and commitments followed the deep swings of a pendulum, an instability which periodically descended into mental illness later in his life. At twenty an enthusiastic evangelist of his newly acquired faith, Tullidge several years later vigorously denounced both his mission and Mormonism, becoming disillusioned with all revealed religion. But the lapse seemed temporary. Church authorities recognized his considerable literary talent and appointed the repentant elder as the acting editor of the Millennial Star. Taking advantage of the situation, Tullidge later declared that he and Harrison filled the church magazine with "Protestant heresies," making it as heterodox as the Utah Magazine — the latter subsequently becoming the vehicle of the Godbeite protest. But if such were their intention, their approach was subtle. Harrison's prose usually expressed commitment, but by stressing individual rather than institutional worship, his articles revealed an orientation which eventually terminated in his wholesale rejection of formal religion and priesthood authority. Tullidge, in turn, who later described Mormonism as Wesleyan-Baptist with "a few peculiarities," seemed willing to minimize Mormonism's claim to a unique religious mission and emphasized instead the universality and brotherhood of mankind.
Harrison and Tullidge both gathered to Zion in 1861, but prosaic Zion-building failed to enamour them or alter their inclinations. Harrison's sense of advocacy and Tullidge's self-proclaimed revolutionary nature combined to produce in 1864 xhe Peep O'Day, apparently the first magazine to be published in the Intermountain West. Ostensibly devoted to education and culture, the magazine in truth was an organ for the editors' discontent. Later, after allying himself with the Reorganized faction of Mormonism, Tullidge would declare that the impetus for the publishing enterprise lay in the Josephite mission of 1864. Desiring to join the Reorganite movement, Tullidge claimed that a dream counseled him to postpone public advocacy of young Joseph's claims. Nonetheless, Tullidge was sufficiently stirred to commence a radical effort toward social revolution, a project Harrison accepted with alacrity. They found no difficulty with financing. John Chislett and two of the Walker brothers, disaffected Mormon merchants, gave with "munificence," realizing no doubt the potential of an unsanctioned journal for the disruption of Zion. Denied the use of the church printing press, Peep O'Day was issued at Camp Douglas through the intervention of Gen. Patrick Connor, long dedicated to the opening of the Mormon closed society.
The Peep O'Day became the lineal progenitor to a generation of Godbeite publications: the Utah Magazine, xhe Mormon Tribune, and the Salt Lake Tribune. The "cardinal affirmation" of the Peep O'Day, Tullidge later conceded, "was that Mormonism was republican in its genius — a statement justly pronounced untrue by Brigham Young, and only affirmed by the editors to draw attention to its falsity." Thus employing prose suggestive of an orthodox commitment which in fact quite probably did not exist, Harrison and Tullidge sought to transform, if not undermine, Zion. "The very title suggested everything," Tullidge affirmed; "the press was intended to rival preisthood, or at least to check it."
The Peep O'Day and the subsequent Godbeite publications bore little resemblance to previous anti-Mormon journals. Primarily filled with literary composition and much which was thoroughly orthodox, only its editorials conveyed its message. They in turn, to the casual reader, must have seemed to affirm the Kingdom. Calm, judicious, and restrained, their thrust usually was implicit, with the real meaning often conveyed by several carefully worded sentences which altered its apparent message. For example, writing on the "robust republican character" of Mormonism, Tullidge wrote:
The technique was to condemn through praise. What Saint would be willing to contradict such a lofty conception of the Kingdom? Yet a more mature reading would reveal that Mormon republicanism was more a "dream" than a reality. During its short career of several months, employing such subtle methods of criticism, the Peep O'Day foreshadowed much of the Godbeite public program: a E - L - T - Harrison. rejection of the traditional Mormon theological conception of the moral decline of culture; denial of the authoritarian spirit and temporal emphasis of Zion; an attack upon formal creeds and, implicitly, institutionalized religion; and an affirmation of universalism and the desirability of rapprochement with the Gentiles in Babylon.
The Peep O'Day enterprise hardly constituted a major insurgency within the battlements of Zion. The Millennial Star later commented that "It was not more than born, when it died. It peeped, and went out." Tullidge ruefully conceded that President Young could well afford to let the Peep O'Day fail without excommunicating its editors, even if he had been so disposed. A literary magazine on the Utah frontier undoubtedly was premature, especially one with an uncertain tone and commitment. Though ably edited, its finances and production were mismanaged. The territorial scarcity of paper proved the final stroke, and the magazine suspended with less than two months publication. Yet beyond all these factors, the Peep O'Day possessed a fatal flaw which characterized all subsequent New Movement journals. Too subtle and too obscure, it failed to possess force. Justifying themselves that they had proclaimed the wave of the future, the editors temporarily separated. While Harrison remained in Salt Lake, Tullidge, always a religious chameleon, departed for the east for a brief journalistic career — and a short-term church mission.
Harrison, at least, refused to regard the demise of the Peep O'Day as a portent, a sign of heavenly displeasure. Instead, during the next several years his questioning continued and his skepticism deepened. Privately and obscurely, a small coterie of able intellectuals formed around him. Into this working partnership moved Eli B. Kelsey and William H. Shearman, but most significantly William S. Godbe. Only a month following the suspension of the Peep O'Day in December 1864, Harrison and Godbe commenced their intimate intellectual collaboration which would endure until Harrison's death thirty-five years later. Godbe was strangely drawn to Harrison's brooding intellect, justifying his friendship for him to church authorities with the claim he was striving to reclaim Harrison from his skepticism. If so, the hunter became the vanquished.
If Harrison was the Godbeite "Luther," providing impetus and intellectual stimulus to the revolt, William S. Godbe was its "Frederick the Wise," rendering balance and weight. Harrison, Tullidge acknowledged, "might have become a Reformer and a martyr," but he could not have "moved Utah society." That task lay with Godbe.
At first glance Godbe and his collaborator shared much in common. Both were British converts in their youth; each had enjoyed early profound religious experiences. They were contemporaries. Intellectual and sophisticated, each possessed literary talent, though Harrison's precise and controlled prose clearly made him the master. But if Harrison was the thoughtful sceptic, Godbe exuded practical and prodigious energy. "A man to succeed," Godbe later wrote, "must not be a theorist but must profit by practice." His life proved a testament to his creed. On the sea while yet a youth, he was shipwrecked twice; at seventeen, impatient and anxious to gather with the Saints, he walked the distance from Chicago to Salt Lake rather than await the formation of a wagon company. Entering merchandising, he rose swiftly to become owner of the Godbe Exchange Buildings, which housed the Godbe-Mitchell drug and sundry business. By the late 1860s, he had established himself as one of the ten most wealthy men in the territory. By 1884 he had experienced twenty-one Atlantic and fifty-two Great Plains crossings. In addition to his commercial activity he served his city as a councilman and his church as a president in one of the local Seventies Quorums and subsequently as a bishop's counselor in the Thirteenth Ward. Friend and protege 7 of Brigham Young, Godbe clearly possessed social position, talent, and influence.
Together Harrison's and Godbe's talents meshed perfectly — one visionary, skeptical, theoretical, verbal; the other practical and forceful. Each possessed talents necessary for the hour. Harrison at the commencement provided the stimulus and force, but as the movement passed from its theoretical and intellectual incubation, the baton was passed. Without Godbe's subsequent leadership, the schism would scarcely occasion a footnote.
The five dissenters, later to provide the New Movement with its core leadership, were remarkably homogeneous. In the late 1860s, Harrison, Godbe, Tullidge, and Shearman were all in their middle or late thirties, and as British converts, none had either known Joseph Smith or had participated in the hegira of Mormonism — from Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, to the Great Basin. Kelsey in turn was older, a native American, and fleetingly had known the founding prophet. All five at some stage in their careers had been merchants, though only Godbe secured continuing and substantial success. Their church experience was amazingly uniform. Harrison, Godbe, Tullidge, and Shearman each described early spiritualistic experiences which propelled them into Mormonism. Four of the group had served in the British Mission, with three holding the important presidency of the London Conference. Only Kelsey would ever be charged with moral transgression, an act which blemished his English mission. In Utah each served in local church assignments. Four had held the priesthood office of seventy, with three serving as one of the seven presidents of their quorums. This priesthood calling was significant, not only implying a proselytizing assignment, but during the nineteenth century an educative and culturizing one as well. Indeed, Godbe and Shearman — along with T. B. H. Stenhouse, a subsequent Godbeite dissenter — had helped to found the Juvenile Instructor, later to become the voice of the Mormon Sunday schools. Without exception, the five were men of talent, superior education, and literary ability — tuned to the intellectual currents of their age.
II
The single issue which united and galvanized the movement, and subsequently received the most public attention, was the Godbeite opposition to Zion, the Mormon social and economic blueprint. Zion, the impetus and ideal of all nineteenth-century Mormon colonization, was a theocracy which sought to direct in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. It stressed social unity and cooperation through voluntary obedience to church counsel; dedication of private and public resources for the general commonwealth; the curbing of extravagance, luxury, and commercial profiteering; and the exclusion of any foreign influence antagonistic to the social ideal. To the church leadership and much of its membership, only a generation or two removed from the Puritan corporate policy of New England, the prospect of governmental control, whether exercised by civil or ecclesiastical authority, seemed reasonable, if only difficult to achieve. To the Godbeites — intellectually attuned to the laissez faire currents of the post-Civil War era, imbued with the mercantile antipathy toward the control of profits, rooted in a British rather than a New England heritage, and not directly familiar with Joseph Smith's repeated attempts to implement such a design — Zion seemed an anachronistic vehicle for Brigham Young's personal power. Privately they viewed the Mormon colonizer as "fanatical," "ignorant of the world," a despot who employed a subservient priesthood for unworthy purposes.
The dissenters' opposition to the corporate Zion deepened with the advent of the transcontinental railroad. While Brigham Young sought the line, he was acutely aware that its completion threatened to revolutionize Zion's economy and society. Its reduced transportation costs would open Deseret simultaneously to eastern manufactured products as well as to profitable, large-scale mining. Neither prospect seemed inviting. The first menaced Zion's manufacturing self-sufficiency, its balance of trade, and, by further enriching the Salt Lake commercial class, its social cohesiveness. On the other hand, large-scale mining promised to flood the territory with both a speculative fever and a population who had anything but a respectful attitude toward the moral aspirations of the Mormon commonwealth. To neutralize these undesirable by-products, church leaders resolved upon a severe counterpolicy, which included wage deflation (to allow the preservation of home industries), the prohibition of trade with non-Mormon merchants, and the organization of cooperative merchandising — Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution. The Godbeite dissenters reacted to the church policy with dismay. Its emphasis upon temporal considerations contradicted their idealized conception of Joseph Smith's mission. Besides, the program seemed impractical. In their view the beckoning railroad, coupled with the natural maturation of territorial society, with its growing economic and social differentiation, sealed the doom of Zion's closed, homogeneous community.
Because of the immediacy of the issue in 1868, church temporal policy dominated, colored, and gave emphasis to all their thought. But as the dissidents' previous behavior clearly indicated, their alienation prior to 1868 was by no means confined to the rejection of a temporal Zion and Brigham Young's attempts to maintain the commonwealth. Harrison and Tullidge had earlier rejected the orthodox view of Mormonism's mission.The intervening years had only deepened the group's general skepticism. Tullidge, who had rejoined the dissent, later reported, "We were settling down into a philosophic state of religion, anchoring faith in the divine mission of a world, rather than in the mission of any special prophet. . . ." He also confessed that, paradoxically, he had for many years doubted virtually everything about Mormonism, save the mission of its founder. Kelsey in turn later acknowledged that he "had long since discarded the dogma, that God had ever chosen an individual, a family, a race or a sect, to hold the Oracles, or the Keys of salvation, to the exclusion of the rest of the human family," an obvious repudiation of both church authority and church mission as traditionally defined. His views, rejected by the Saints, left him "almost utterly ignored as a teacher in Israel." During this period Shearman, who had for some time been alienated from local church authorities, narrowly escaped excommunication because of his opposition to the doctrine of what the Godbeites described as "blind obedience" to the priesthood, only the interposition of Apostle Ezra T. Benson saving his membership.
The journey of these men from orthodoxy was neither smooth nor pleasurable. The discarding of religious commitments is never psychologically easy, and for these men the process seemed especially painful. More than nominal converts, they had been fiery evangels of Mormonism, their personal faith rooted in spiritual experience. Then in life's midpassage, they found it increasingly difficult to harmonize their intellectual and spiritual experience. Intellectually au courant, their spiritual experiences seemed harshly in discord. The dissenters groped for a formula which would confirm Mormonism, but on the grounds of their new intellectual commitment.
Eventually these men found relief from their inner conflicts in the solace of nineteenth-century spiritualism. Harrison and apparently Godbe led the way. The Utah Magazine, edited by Harrison and published by Godbe, clearly demonstrated their attraction to spiritualism. Launched in January 1868, the magazine ostensibly was devoted to popular literature, without the pungent editorials which characterized and gave life to the Peep O'Day. Its innocuous character, however, was deceptive, for in its third month of publication there commenced a series of articles, tinged with the supernatural and Gothic, which explored spiritualistic phenomena. Indeed, by the early summer of 1868, one of Harrison's editorials expressly granted spiritualism an efficacy which possessed divine approval.
Spiritualism seemed almost the perfect prescription for the Godbeite malady. Its parallels with Mormonism eased the pain involved in the transfer of commitment. Both movements traced their genesis to Wayne County, New York, Mormonism anteceding the Fox family rappings by a single generation. As a primary tenet, Mormonism had declared the heavens open, the veil separating the mortal and spiritual realms to be thin, if not porous. Both beliefs declared the eternal nature of the individual, with the quick and dead inhabiting the same general regions. Of course, if spiritualism and Mormonism shared some similarities, their disagreements were profound. Within these discrepancies Harrison, Godbe, and eventually the others found the spiritual-intellectual synthesis which they could not find within Mormonism. On one hand spiritualism confirmed their previous religious experience, albeit stripped of any unique Mormon connotation. Their earlier spiritual experiences, according to their new doctrine, were valid psychic phenomena, only misread. Accordingly, Joseph Smith was a gifted medium who, while sincere, frequently misinterpreted his spiritual experiences. Thus spiritualism gave the dissenters a new frame of reference which lent validity and meaning to their early evangelism. But it also possessed an intellectual appeal which fitted perfectly their orientation. Many nineteenth-century literary figures were infatuated (sometimes fleetingly) with its teachings and practices, including the Brownings, Hawthorne, Greeley, and especially Bulwer-Lytton, whose work the Utah Magazine prominently featured. Possessing prestige and appeal, nineteenth-century spiritualism, particularly its American variety, substituted social regeneration for Christian millennialism and avoided creeds and clergy. Such a formula fit perfectly the Utah dissenters' mood. Prior to 1868 they had slowly evolved a universalist position which rejected the special mission of Mormonism and the necessity of an authorized ministry.
Whether these intellectual tendencies would have culminated in a schism without the railroad crisis of 1868-69 is debatable. But the energetic countermeasures of the church forced the Godbeites from their intellectual consideration into advocacy. As the church leadership marshalled its resources to maintain Zion, the law of mutual escalation impelled the Godbeites to resist. Active opposition would surely entail social alienation and financial sacrifice, for in Zion's closed society social relationships and business intercourse were hardly furthered by resistance to church counsel. Yet as Tullidge recounted, "These men had reached a critical point in their career. Their faith in Mormonism burned in the socket. . . . They must now decide for or against the 'Lord's anointed.' " Godbe was probably aware that sometime during the October 1868 General Conference, the church would announce the organization of a commercial cooperative which he, as a leading church member and merchant, would be invited to embrace. However, the conference passed with Godbe and his friend Harrison attending "business" in New York.
Their New York journey was momentous in the making of the Utah schism, not because it marked its commencement, as Stenhouse suggested, but because it provided the revolutionary impetus to their dissent which previously had been largely private and academic. Ostensibly for business and recreation, perhaps its primary reason was to debate and resolve a course of action. Behind them, Harrison and Godbe left a Zion critically convulsed, "in travail" over the church's new economic policy. Before them lay the question of whether they should declare openly and vigorously their opposition. Stenhouse's account, perhaps erring in emphasis and tone, defined the nature of their conversation as they traveled eastward toward New York:
Their discussions were not dissimilar to the many which had preceded them, only now they proceeded with an intensity often felt when long-standing issues seek their culmination.
What followed in New York, Harrison and Godbe regarded subsequently as their personal epiphany. Arriving, apparently in September 1868, they commenced a series of seances transpiring over a three-week period. According to their subsequent accounts, on fifty separate occasions the spirits of the deceased spoke instructions from beyond the veil. Their principal instructor, it seems, was a former member of the Mormon First Presidency, Heber C. Kimball, whose spirituality during his life had strongly compelled both Harrison and Tullidge. Additionally, Harrison and Godbe claimed revelation from Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, the early apostles Peter, James, and John, Solomon, and the German naturalist Alexander Humboldt, who reportedly revealed to Harrison information which promised to advance mankind past evolutionary theory, even as Darwin had progressed beyond Moses. Punctual and consistent, their interviews usually were given "by appointment," lasting two hours during the evening. When Christ appeared, a dim light was observed, but on all other occasions the apparitions were unseen, with the visitors simply answering Harrison's previously written questions.
Harrison and Godbe were reticent to declare whether an intercessory medium was employed, though such apparently was the case. Their desire for mediumistic advice may well have been a hidden reason for their New York journey, a logical course given their fascination with spiritualism. Thirty years after the event, the Deseret News declared that Harrison had indeed visited the renowned spiritualist Charles Foster during their New York sojourn, a statement perhaps confirmed by Foster's continuing contact with the Godbeite spiritualists. Harrison broadly hinted that they had in fact employed a medium. "We are not and do not profess to be Seers," he subsequently conceded. "If that quality or organization exists in either Bro. Godbe or myself, it is at present underdeveloped. We were communicated with [in New York] by the only (or the best) method open to our organizations." Since in the Godbeite vocabulary "seers" meant the talent of receiving visitations and visions, the admission appears transparent.
Not surprisingly the revelations confirmed the theological and intellectual position of the participants, producing a new system which was neither Mormonism nor nineteenth-century spiritualism, but a Hegelian synthesis of the two. "The whole superstructure of a grand system of theology was unfolded to our minds," Harrison later wrote. "The object was not to make a grand display of words, but to remove superstition and ignorance, and teach us the laws governing the science of revelation, the facts of another life, and the philosophy or doctrine which should govern the Church of Zion."
This new "grand system of theology" radically altered fundamental Mormonism. There were, what must have seemed to them, small and technical departures from the faith. For instance Solomon during his "visit" contradicted both the Bible and Book of Mormon by suggesting that he had no concubines, only wives.
Indeed, the spirits told Godbe that the Doctrine and Covenants (and apparently the remainder of the Mormon canon) was unreliable. The printed revelations of Harrison and Godbe, probably their most bland and noncommittal, clearly departed from the spirit of traditional Mormonism. "God" became the "Highest Authority," an appellation which prefigured an early rejection of a personal God. It was a "suffering humanity" rather than a "sinful" one. Christ's mission was described as a demonstration of love, not one of atoning sacrifice. The denial of Mormon dogma became more apparent as the movement progressed. While still nominal Mormons Harrison and Godbe laced their prose with the esoteric, hidden in virtually all their public writing, which hinted broadly of their spiritualistic beliefs. Upon their expulsion from Mormonism, with a speed which betrayed a preconceived plan, the two leaders substituted a pantheistic for a personal God, rejected the Christian atonement, denied the literal resurrection, refused scriptural authority, and declared the notion of Satan dead and buried.
The heterodoxy of the New York instructions extended to a new conception of the missions of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Later both Harrison and Godbe bore fervent testimonies to the callings of each, even during and after their excommunications. All this sounded orthodox until the meaning behind their words emerged. To be sure, their New York seances confirmed that Joseph Smith had been a prophet — or more properly a medium — but an imperfect one who strained divine light through frontier ignorance and whose revelations were childish when compared to the "new light" which Godbe and Harrison had received. Brigham Young's contribution, according to Harrison, had been that of preserving and gathering "an inspirational nation, who, no matter what they may do to-day, can at any moment be awakened by the electric touch of communication with the invisible worlds; and what that fact means 'tongues cannot tell.' "
What tongues could not express prior to their excommunication could later be made more explicit. Their great religious experience had informed them, Harrison and Godbe wrote in explaining their departure from their former church, that
Thus as a result of their New York revelation, they saw Mormonism's purpose as only a preparation and prologue to their own higher revelation. Joseph had been an imperfect medium. Brigham, far less, had performed his mission by shepherding the Saints westward where they might be molded to the new heavenly purpose. But Mormonism had done more than just gather an "inspirational" people, awaiting the flame of spiritualism to ignite them to their higher mission. Its doctrines had elevated those whom it had touched, and more importantly, it had bequeathed the world its superb priesthood organization. Spiritualism in contrast was anarchistic and chaotic. Harrison predicted that spiritualism would so remain until "the Priesthood, with its greater enlightenment, shall sweep . . . [the spiritualists] within its ample folds." This priesthood of promise was Mormon organizational structure, purified and refashioned, for the new revelation.
The New York blueprint, then, called for an evangelical spiritualism grafted upon Mormon roots. Mormonism would provide the system — the priesthood — to vitalize the world with a new spiritualism. This new spiritualism was not too different from the old, only being reworked into a Mormon mold. While Harrison and Godbe acknowledged the validity of rappings, tippings, and planchettes — the popular and faddish elements of the spiritualist movement — they believed such manifestations conveyed only limited truth. According to their view, these devices usually communicated with undependable spirits. The higher truths were secured only by seeking the most worthy spirits, usually through the use of mediums or seers. Thus the trustworthiness of the message primarily depended upon the messenger, with Biblical figures, deceased Mormons, and celebrated intellects of the past being the primary conveyers of religious and philosophical truth. The key lay in a purified priesthood, shorn of its temporal aspirations and disciplinary power. Such a priesthood would unite the mortal and immortal worlds and provide spiritualism for the first time with a system capable of self-regulation and proselytizing.
The vehicle for this movement was to be the Church of Zion, whose name, mission, and teachings flowed from these seances. Because the proposed program departed radically from their former faith, Harrison and Godbe could not have been overly optimistic concerning the permanence of their Mormon membership. Thus from the beginning, they seemed to have understood that their spiritual odyssey would ultimately terminate in the Church of Zion. Nonethless, they were instructed by their band of spirits to "make almost any personal sacrifice" to retain their church membership. Until excommunication they would disseminate "such advanced truths as would elevate the people and prepare them for the changes at hand." 4The Church of Zion then was a conspiratorial design. Its program would be advanced as rapidly and smoothly as the Saints and their church leaders would permit.
III
Upon returning to Salt Lake sometime in the middle of November 1868, Harrison and Godbe secretly gathered an active opposition to church rule. Including Kelsey, Tullidge, and Shearman, they recruited about a dozen sympathizers. Most of the new members of the group had had previous but not intimate contact with the dissent. Among them were: (1) T. B. H. Stenhouse, editor of the pro-Mormon Salt Lake Tele gram; (2) Fanny Stenhouse, his wife, estranged over polygamy; (3) John Tullidge, musician brother of Edward; (4) Fred A. Perris, merchant; (5) Joseph Salisbury, labor leader and writer; (6) George Watt, church recorder and former personal secretary to Brigham Young; and (7) Henry Lawrence, partner of Kimball-Lawrence, a leading Salt Lake merchandising firm. These converts to dissent accurately bore the image and likeness of their leaders. Most possessed British origins and mercantile connections. While prominent and prestigious, none of the group commanded major influence within the community, Harrison and Godbe having been comforted that they would not have to seek such men to ensure the movement's success. Of all the additions, Lawrence was probably the most significant. As a bishop's counselor, city alderman, and prosperous merchant, he was clearly a young man of promise. More political than religious in his orientation, Lawrence was estranged by Zion's temporal policies. He left Mormonism not because his views changed, he later said, but because he could no longer support the policy of its leaders. Of all the Godbeites, Lawrence seems best to fit the traditional picture of the movment. He discarded his faith primarily because of a conscientious objection to church temporal policy.
It is doubtful that any of these conspirators fully appreciated the ultimate design and purpose of the nascent movement. "This little band did not number altogether a dozen persons," Stenhouse revealed, "and what they knew, or thought they knew, of the purpose of others, and the design among themselves, were matters secretly kept within their own bosoms." Indeed, the secrets concealed within their bosoms were not necessarily the secrets of Harrison and Godbe, whatever the dissenters "thought they knew." Yet as the movement progressed toward its predetermined goal, only several of the dissidents resisted its outcome. When the magnitude of its spiritualism became apparent, Tullidge vigorously objected and later explained the movement's demise in the loss of its integrity, the discrepancy between its professed reform of Mormonism and its hidden spiritualism. But with the exception of the two leaders, probably no one completely perceived its spiritualist commitment as the conspiracy was joined.
Most within the group possessed accumulated personal grievances, but the central thread which united them was opposition to the temporal Zion. On this issue their protest was rooted, partly because of their own shared opposition, but also because the church seemed vulnerable on the question. Their strategy was by no means straightforward. Publicly they chose to support the "cooperative movement," apparently to ensure themselves an issue. "For it had been resolved," Tullidge conceded, "that Brigham should be allowed to work up the movement against himself in the public mind." Accordingly, in December 1868 Godbe spoke on "the benefits of cooperation" before the School of the Prophets, an educational and policy-implementing committee composed of the principal churchmen of the community. Lawrence in turn put $30,000 in the proposed Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution.
In this, according to Tullidge, there was no personal malice intended. The Godbeites loved Brigham Young "better than his apostles did or do," he later wrote, denying that "a conspiracy in the dark" against the venerable leader ever existed. Truly, as the movement unfolded, especially within Utah, little rancor was publicly displayed toward the church and its leaders — though when concealed from the Utah stage, their sentiments were often more ambivalent and protean. Apparently the "higher revelation" of Harrison and Godbe could best be demonstrated by outward charity, whatever the character of their private thoughts. Yet, if restrained in demeanor, their secret purposes could only have served to undermine the man they claimed to revere. Prior to their excommunication, the Godbeites secretly revealed their conspiracy to create a schism in Brigham's Utah — first to members of a Chicago trade delegation and later to the visiting vice-president, Schuyler Colfax. If they loved the church leader, their devotion was obviously tempered by a higher loyalty.
The vehicle for their opposition was a refurbished Utah Magazine. Prior to the New York seances, it had been hastening to an inglorious end, and during Harrison's absence in the East, Tullidge, as acting editor, further alienated public support. While sustaining the church's new economic measures, Tullidge explicitly restated his universalian heresy and declared his opposition to what he believed to be the chauvinist tendency of Zion. Upon returning, Harrison assured his readers that Tullidge was in truth "unorthodoxically orthodox" and jocularly suggested, with perhaps intended prescience, the postponing of Tullidge's roasting as "a heretic to a more convenient season." With declining public support, clearly the magazine required radical alteration if it were to serve the Godbeite dissent. Accordingly, by the early spring of 1869, contemporaneous with the opening of ZCMI, its appearance was drastically altered, revived by additional financial transfusions by Godbe and apparently by Lawrence and the Walker brothers. "The originality of its matter, appearance, quality of paper and workmanship," the unsuspecting Deseret News enthused, bares "not the least affinity between it and the preceding volumes. . . ."
With the revised format, the magazine's attraction to spiritualism persisted, usually in veiled and shadowed passages, but at least on one occasion the New York spiritualist blueprint was virtually laid bare. If spiritualism persisted in the revived magazine, the rest of its content was radically altered. No longer a bland literary magazine, it now became a trenchant vehicle for social and religious commentary, which "essayed a careful wellplanned revolution." At first philosophical and abstract, as the crusade gained momentum its articles became more explicit, centered increasingly upon the temporal aspirations of Zion. The magazine in succession implicitly rejected Mormon millennialism, challenged its readers to think "freely," suggested the limited truth of all religions, including Mormonism, and repeatedly revealed an antinomian strain which rejected all standards of authority save the inner soul.
By September 1869 the attacks became even bolder. In "Our Workmen's Wages," the magazine challenged the extent of the church's deflationary wage policy. Thinking that Brigham sought to establish a religious dynasty, "The 'Josephite' Platform" declared the Saints would never allow "Joseph Smith's, nor any other man's son, to preside over them simply because of his sonship" and went on to deny the efficacy of priesthood ordination. "Women and Their 'Vanities'" argued that Zion's stress upon simplicity of dress surely could never combat the inherent desire of women for finery. Denying one of the church leaders' favorite images, "Steadying the Ark" invited the Saints to "think freely" and "think forever," for God Almighty never "intended the priesthood to do our thinking. . . ."
There could be no question by the first of October that the magazine possessed an uncertain if not heterodox spirit. Yet with the exception of Joseph Salisbury, whose open opposition to the church policy among the city's laborers resulted in his excommunication,the church took no formal action. However, a semiprivate caution must have been extended, for in the October 2 issue, Harrison and Godbe assured their readers that the magazinewould continue with its "same energetic spirit," despite "certain Church requirements lately made on us. . . ." The following week, during the General Conference of the church, Harrison, Kelsey, and Shearman, along with other leading men within the community, were called to missions, apparently in their case to renew or test their commitments. The tone of the magazine, however, for several weeks became muted, its pages containing nothing more controversial than a call for purity in plural marriage. Whether its repose signaled hesitancy or merely a pause for a renewal of strength is uncertain. But the October 16 issue was a virtual declaration of hostilities, for Harrison and Godbe "had resolved to force a controversy with the president and the Twelve." The article which sounded the clarion call was entitled, "The True Development of the Territory," which cogently, if rebelliously, argued for the mineral development of the territory.
Of course, in matters of apostasy things are seldom what they appear. Concealed from the surface lies the double entendre which conveys the significance and meaning of the event. No one at the time questioned the logic of Harrison's treatise— Utah with a questionable agricultural endowment could achieve increased prosperity through the development of her mineral resources. What church leaders found objectionable was its timing and consequently its purpose. Within four years, Brigham Young was urging a similar policy. But during the crisis-laden months of 1869, with non-Mormons openly declaring the railroad and mining to be the twin instruments of Zion's destruction, the article seemed aimed at the church's vitals. Countering clearly stated church policy, it was obviously a repudiation of Brigham Young's leadership.
The Godbeites of course were not innocent of these implications — and in fact intended them. Their advocacy of immediate mineral development, more than a difference of opinion concerning policy, was designed to strike at the heart of the temporal Zion. The New York revelation had revealed that mining would be the means of overthrowing the Mormon theocracy, and accordingly the article was given the attention its importance required, being carefully read and reread by the dissenters before its printing. "There was a general feeling," Stenhouse wrote, "that the hour of struggle was at hand."
They were not to be disappointed. With a speed that perhaps they had failed to anticipate — only hours after the fateful article made its appearance — Brigham Young, speaking as the "prophet of the Lord" before an emotionally charged School of the Prophets, angrily declared the existence of a secret rebellion which he predicted would shake the entire church. Citing Godbe, Harrison, Stenhouse, Tullidge, Watt, and two others for nonattendance before the School and for "other causes," he peremptorily disfellowshipped all seven pending explanations for their conduct. From the old Tabernacle, sensation spread throughout the city. Obviously the patience of "the Lion of the Lord" had worn thin. "For months," the histrionic Stenhouse wrote, "the events of that day had been anticipated, and longed for." At last the Godbeites would have their confrontation.
The church leaders, however, proceeded deliberately, apparently hopeful that a church trial could be avoided. The following day a committee composed of Orson Pratt, Wilford Woodruff, and George Q. Cannon, along with the Thirteenth Ward block teachers, were dispatched to counsel with Harrison, Godbe, and Stenhouse. The delegation was carefully designed. The Godbeites admired no man in Mormonism more than Pratt, and he, with the saintly Woodruff and brilliant Cannon, seemed a perfect combination to effect a reconciliation. But the committee found them in "the dark and Harrison especially with a bitter spirit."
But by now the Godbeites had thrown down the gauntlet and had resolved to duel. On October 23, the date determined for their appearance before the School of the Prophets, the Utah Magazine continued its attacks unabated. Harrison denounced the temporal emphasis of Mormonism, while Shearman, with thinly veiled prose, attacked the disposition of men to grasp unrighteously for power. Before their examination, the dissidents met to plot their course. While "it was not altogether tasteful to either Mr. Harrison or Mr. Godbe to follow anyone to the block in their own movement," Stenhouse resolved to be the first martyr before the school. But their aspirations for martyrdom were temporarily frustrated by Brigham Young, who apparently sought to avoid a confrontation. If the thousand elders assembled anticipated thundering anathemas, they were disappointed, for Brigham had shed the mantle of Jeremiah. Surprisingly, he proceeded by dismissing the charges against everyone but Harrison and Godbe, defusing Stenhouse simply by suggesting that their difficulty was a family matter which could be settled privately (Stenhouse was father-inlaw to the president's eldest son.) He greeted Godbe's testimony with mimicry and refused it gravity. But he could not ignore Harrison, who electrified the congregation by directly and dramatically challenging the president. Given little alternative, the church leader announced that the two recusants would be tried for their membership and called for the School to refrain from reading the Utah Magazine, to which all agreed except Harrison, Godbe, Lawrence, Perris, Kelsey, and the Tullidge brothers.
The trial followed two days later on October 25,1869. The Salt Lake High Council conducted the hearing, with Apostle George Q. Cannon prosecuting the formal charge of apostasy. The official transcript of the proceeding never has been made public; the fullest available accounts were written by the Godbeite dissenters themselves and subject to the caprice of memory and selfjustification. But the general lineaments of the trial are clear. In addition to Cannon, Orson Pratt, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, and Brigham Young himself defended the temporal and spiritual authority of the priesthood, while the recusants refused its authority when the "inner light" of the soul failed to confirm its teachings. Godbe and Harrison denied any allegiance to spiritualism, bore witness to the missions of Joseph and Brigham, and read a vigorous statement demanding freedom of thought and expression within the church. Its peroration sought to frame the issues of contention on the highest ground possible:
Despite their protestations, the trial terminated with the High Council unanimously declaring for excommunication.
But the proceedings were not at an end. Immediately following the trial, all present were requested to sustain the council's decision. For in attendance were many local church authorities as well as friends of the accused. Kelsey, Lawrence, the Tullidge brothers, and two others — Joseph Silver and James Cobb — refused. Kelsey, apparently because of the vigor of his continuing opposition, was then summarily denied his membership. With that, deliberations concluded after occupying much of the day.
The question of the spirit and equity of the proceedings lay of course in the eye of the beholder. Apostle Wilford Woodruff felt that Harrison and Godbe had "manifested a dark wicked spirit." Harrison and Kelsey, years following the hearing, continued to believe that they had been dealt with arbitrarily. Yet Stenhouse's assessment was closer to the truth. "The trial was as fairly conducted as these things ever are," he wrote. Privately Godbe admitted as much. In an apologetic letter to Brigham, he acknowledged his conduct toward the church leader seemed filled with duplicity and confessed knowing "for some time" the inevitability of his excommunication. Indeed, the evidence was abundant and overwhelming that the two defendants no longer sustained an orthodox commitment, despite their public declarations.
The issues of their trial —those explicit and implicit— were broader and more profound than often supposed. The central contention was not solely freedom of expression within the church, nor even the temporal aspirations of the Kingdom, but whether Mormonism was prepared to accept an organized and revolutionary opposition to its spiritual and temporal authority. By October 1869 the Godbeites had drifted far from the moorings of traditional doctrine; they were prepared to deny obedience to the priesthood in "all subjects — secular and spiritual," which their inner light failed to confirm. But only when they sought to implant their beliefs upon Mormonism were they checked. Cannon, who prosecuted Harrison and Godbe, later defined the church standard which apparently was employed during the trial:
The two Godbeite leaders were convicted more for conspiracy than heresy.
The church trial did not presage a wholesale purging. Almost as if to belie the Godbeite charge of intolerance, the church leaders failed to proceed vigorously against the other dissident leaders — many of them eventually forcing their own excommunication. Two days following the hearing, Edward Tullidge resigned his membership. "I see no virtue in multiplying words in justification," he confessed to Brigham Young in a letter intended for publication, "knowing myself to be heterodox. For years I have tried to shun the issue of this day, for theoretically I have been a believer in republican institutions and not in a temporal theocracy." Similar letters within several weeks came from the pens of John Tullidge and William Shearman. Lawrence had more difficulty in severing his ties. Although within a single week he publicly opposed the church leadership three times — once at the trial and twice before the School of the Prophets, no action was taken against him. Presidents Young and Wells reportedly spent hours attempting to dissuade him from his course, but by December, Lawrence forced a church trial before the Eighth Ward, in which he had served until only recently as a bishop's counselor. The Stenhouses in turn waited almost a year before submitting their letters requesting church termination; George Watt finally declared for the Godbeites and spiritualism in April 1874.
The sequel of events following the trial is another story, but its outline can be traced. For a few months during 1869-70 the New Movement seemed formidable, allying the Godbeite intellectuals with the prominent anti-Mormon merchants. In succession, the Godbeites formally commenced the Church of Zion; transformed their magazine into an opposition press, the Mormon Tribune and subseqently the Salt Lake Tribune; founded, along with the Gentile dissenters, the Liberal party; and even sought to organize American spiritualism. But the threat of a major Godbeite schism soon dissolved. The movement failed to recruit a significant following among either the Saints or the spiritualists. Financial reverses forced the sale of the Tribune, and the Liberal party proved no more successful a vehicle. For though the party endured, eventually securing power during the Mormon disfranchisement of the 1880s, it eventually cast adrift most of the Godbeite dissenters because of the timidity of New Movement "reform." Silenced by failure, the small band nonetheless continued well into the 1870s, spiritually nourished by visiting mediums and frequent seances. Before the Liberal Institute, their intellectual forum, appeared nationally renown lecturers whose cultural ministry in "backward" Zion was obvious. But what then remained was only a cinder of the bright flame which had burned so expectantly during the months of early 1870. By the close of the decade, the New Movement cooled even further and then disintegrated.
Mormonism rejected the skepticism and spiritualism of the Godbeites. But they eventually proved prophets at least in one sense. Brigham Young's temporal Zion would not be realized in territorial Utah — partially because modern communications would force the opening of its closed society but certainly also because most men simply will not yield themselves to the requirements of an ideal community. In this the Godbeite leaders were proof of their own prophecy.
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