{"id":489,"date":"2004-03-03T17:34:42","date_gmt":"2004-03-04T00:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=489"},"modified":"2004-10-01T13:33:17","modified_gmt":"2004-10-01T17:33:17","slug":"a-smoot-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2004\/03\/a-smoot-book\/","title":{"rendered":"A Smoot Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"smoot.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/archives\/smoot.jpg\" width=\"150\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" \/>Kathleen Flake of Vanderbilt divinity school has just published what looks like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0807855014\/qid=1078349113\/sr=1-1\/ref=sr_1_1\/104-1574254-6431105?v=glance&#038;s=books\">a very interesting book<\/a> with UNC press.  She traces out the history of the Reed Smoot hearings, arguing that they were a pivotal event in defining the role of religion in American public life.<\/p>\n<p>Reed Smoot was an monogamist Apostle who was elected to the Senate at the turn of the 20th century.  At the time, many Mormons continued to be polygamists from pre-Manifesto plural marriages.  In addition, there had been a large number of secret, post-Manifesto plural marriages. These marriages, along with accusations that the Church controlled Utah politics led to a challenge to the seating of Mr. Smoot.  The hearings were a protracted ordeal for Smoot and the Church, and eventually President Joseph F. Smith was called to testify before the Senate committee.  Smoot was eventually seated and served into the 1930s.<\/p>\n<p>For many years the Mormon branch in Washington D.C. met in Reed Smoot&#8217;s living room.  According to one story that I have heard, for a brief period J. Reuben Clark, who was working in the Theodore Roosevelt administration and was one of the few Mormons in DC who was not a Smoot protege, stopped attending church because he couldn&#8217;t stand Smoot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kathleen Flake of Vanderbilt divinity school has just published what looks like a very interesting book with UNC press. She traces out the history of the Reed Smoot hearings, arguing that they were a pivotal event in defining the role of religion in American public life. Reed Smoot was an monogamist Apostle who was elected to the Senate at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, many Mormons continued to be polygamists from pre-Manifesto plural marriages. In addition, there had been a large number of secret, post-Manifesto plural marriages. These marriages, along with accusations that the Church controlled Utah politics led to a challenge to the seating of Mr. Smoot. The hearings were a protracted ordeal for Smoot and the Church, and eventually President Joseph F. Smith was called to testify before the Senate committee. Smoot was eventually seated and served into the 1930s. For many years the Mormon branch in Washington D.C. met in Reed Smoot&#8217;s living room. According to one story that I have heard, for a brief period J. Reuben Clark, who was working in the Theodore Roosevelt administration and was one of the few Mormons in DC who was not a Smoot protege, stopped [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-history"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}