Imagine that when you check the news tomorrow morning you see that Russell M. Nelson has announced that he is running for the office of the President of the United States.\u00a0 Now imagine that later the same day, you receive a call from your bishop, and he extends a calling to you to serve as a missionary\u2014specifically for the purpose of campaigning for President Nelson across the country.\u00a0 What would your thoughts be?\u00a0 How would you react?<\/p>\n
While the idea might seem a bit farfetched today, there was a time when Joseph Smith did start a campaign to become President of the United States and used missionaries to campaign for him.\u00a0 Derek Sainsbury spent years working to uncover the details of Joseph Smith\u2019s campaign and the 600-plus political missionaries who answered the call to canvass the nation, resulting in the book Storming the Nation: The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith\u2019s Political Missionaries (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 2020)<\/a><\/em>. Sainsbury recently sat down with Kurt Manwaring for a 10 questions interview and shared many interesting insights from his research.\u00a0 What follows here is a brief summary of the interview with quotes and commentary, but I encourage you to go read the full interview here<\/a>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fascinating glimpse into an oft-overlooked part of our history and how it impacted the Church for years to come.<\/p>\n In the interview, Sainsbury explained a bit about why Joseph Smith ran for president.\u00a0 He said:<\/p>\n Really it is the coming together of two different revelatory strands that both originate in Joseph Smith\u2019s understanding of Zion.<\/p>\n The Book of Mormon and early revelations of Joseph reveal that Zion was to be the New Jerusalem built in Jackson County, Missouri. It was more than just contemporary Christianity, though. It was truly all-encompassing society and lifestyle. There were religious, political, social, and economic components, requirements, and outcomes.<\/p>\n Additionally, there is this doctrine of \u201cgathering\u201d where they emigrate to one place to establish Zion. Properly instituted then, Zion would be independent, self-reliant if you will, like the City of Enoch, from the rest of society and prepared for the Second Coming of Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These ideologies put the Saints at odds with their neighbors in Jacksonian America, resulting in repeated conflicts and attempts to get the government of the United States to help, with disappointing results in seeking help.\u00a0 The Saints were encouraged then (as they are today) to \u201cvote for \u2018good,\u2019 \u2018honest,\u2019 and \u2018wise\u2019 people because when the \u2018wicked\u2019 rule the people become oppressed,\u201d but still found they received very little help.\u00a0 As a result, \u201cin 1844 when conflict seems to be brewing again, Joseph decides to run for president to protect all citizens\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, Joseph Smith began to develop a political ideology about the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 Sainsbury explains that:<\/p>\n At the same time, especially from 1842 until his death, Joseph is receiving revelation on the biblical meaning of becoming \u201ckings and priests\u201d to God. This is the other revelatory strand meant to create the governing arm of Zion.<\/p>\n He starts talking about government by aristarchy which means, \u201cgovernment by good or excellent men.\u201d He combines that with talk of merging God and democracy in what he calls \u201ctheodemocracy.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, the first aristarchic theodemocracy institution he creates is the Nauvoo Relief Society. Soon after that he introduces the temple endowment which in part relates to this idea of kings and priests and heavenly governance. His sermons and actions tie together more and more religious and political salvation.<\/p>\n Ultimately, it leads to the creation of the Kingdom of God on earth\u2014or the Council of Fifty. \u2026 They decide the best way to introduce Zion\u2019s aristarchic theodemocracy is for Joseph Smith to become president.<\/p>\n This governing arm of Zion provided the other major impetus for Joseph Smith\u2019s bid for the presidency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To help spread the word of his bid for the presidency, church members were called on political missions to campaign for the Prophet.\u00a0 Sainsbury notes that: \u201cHistorians believed Joseph sent out 300-plus missionaries, but in my extensive research, I\u2019ve found there were over 600!\u201d\u00a0 He feels that \u201cmost [Saints today] have no idea Joseph ran for president, and almost none know their ancestors campaigned for him.\u201d\u00a0 He assembled a list of the missionaries<\/a> that he posted online, so I took a moment to look through it and was surprised to find that one of my own ancestors (Lewis Robbins) was among the electioneers that he discovered during his research.\u00a0 Anyway, the electioneers were important because \u201cin Jacksonian America, candidates did not campaign for themselves, it was seen as too self-promotional. So candidates would dispatch electioneers to do the campaigning for them.\u201d \u00a0Their message, in this case, was unique: \u201cThere is a prophet again on earth. His name is Joseph Smith. God has restored his church through him. He is also running for president to save us from corrupt government. Here are his ideas for the nation.\u201d\u00a0 Those ideas, published in a pamphlet called General Joseph Smith\u2019s Views on the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States<\/a><\/em>, w<\/em>ere distributed by the thousands through the efforts of the electioneers.<\/p>\n The results were mixed and likely wouldn\u2019t have resulted in success for Joseph Smith, though his assassination in 1844 cut the campaign short.\u00a0 According to Derek Sainsbury, \u201cTheir reception was mixed, but often people liked the political ideas, but not so much Joseph, believing in all the negative press about him.\u201d\u00a0 Even though \u201cJoseph and the Council of Fifty believed the Lord would be with the missionaries, giving them power to convert and convince many to the Church and Joseph\u2019s candidacy,\u201d Sainsbury said that \u201cbarring the divine intervention they were looking for, he had only a miniscule chance of winning.\u201d\u00a0 Any discussion of outcomes is hypothetical, however, since Joseph Smith became \u201cthe first presidential candidate in American history to be assassinated.\u201d\u00a0 Due to that assassination and the fact that the History of the Church used throughout the 20th<\/sup> century was compiled and edited by B. H. Roberts at a time when the Church wanted to integrate into American society, the campaign was downplayed and has been largely forgotten.<\/p>\n What is interesting is that while the campaign was cut short, the political missionaries involved in the campaign went on to have a disproportionate effect in administering the Church afterwards.\u00a0 Sainsbury stated:<\/p>\n Not only do a disproportionate number of them follow Brigham Young in the succession crisis after the assassination, but a\u00a0very<\/em>\u00a0disproportionate number of them become the second echelon of church leadership.<\/p>\n It makes sense when you consider that they were the true believers in Joseph\u2019s vision of Zion, they had sacrificed for it, held shared trauma from Joseph\u2019s murder, and had been out working with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That vision of Zion, as described by Sainsbury, included \u201ctemple ordinances, plural marriage, and establishing a aristarchic theodemocracy.\u201d\u00a0 When the members of the Church loyal to the Quorum of the Twelve moved out to the Great Basin region, they used Joseph Smith\u2019s vision of Zion as a template.\u00a0 Since the electioneers had already been wedded to these ideals on the campaign trail, they were the go-to corpus of individuals to use as the \u201cworkhorses of the Great Basin Kingdom.\u201d\u00a0 Sainsbury summarized it this way:<\/p>\n As the church established this aristarchic, theodemocratic Zion in the Great Basin, they excel. They become many of the leaders Brigham Young and church leadership call as the aristarchy. They become the religious, social, political, and economic leaders in communities all over the Basin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hence, the campaign had a legacy separate from the original goal of electing Joseph Smith as president of the United States of America.<\/p>\n Kurt Manwaring\u2019s 10 questions interview with Derek Sainsbury is very interesting and worth the read.\u00a0 For more details than I shared in this post about Sainsbury\u2019s journey towards writing the book, the impact of the Church publishing the Council of Fifty minutes on the volume, a bit on Nancy Naomi Tracy (the only female electioneer), some fun speculation about the results of the campaign if Joseph Smith had survived, and more on the topics covered in this post, follow the link here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imagine that when you check the news tomorrow morning you see that Russell M. Nelson has announced that he is running for the office of the President of the United States.\u00a0 Now imagine that later the same day, you receive a call from your bishop, and he extends a calling to you to serve as a missionary\u2014specifically for the purpose of campaigning for President Nelson across the country.\u00a0 What would your thoughts be?\u00a0 How would you react? While the idea might seem a bit farfetched today, there was a time when Joseph Smith did start a campaign to become President of the United States and used missionaries to campaign for him.\u00a0 Derek Sainsbury spent years working to uncover the details of Joseph Smith\u2019s campaign and the 600-plus political missionaries who answered the call to canvass the nation, resulting in the book Storming the Nation: The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith\u2019s Political Missionaries (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 2020). Sainsbury recently sat down with Kurt Manwaring for a 10 questions interview and shared many interesting insights from his research.\u00a0 What follows here is a brief summary of the interview with quotes and commentary, but I encourage you to go read the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":40402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2890],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-history","category-from-the-desk"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Storming_the_Nation.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40400"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40409,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40400\/revisions\/40409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}