"Kingdom of the Saints" by Ray B. West, Jr.

Above: "Kingdom of the Saints" - Ray B. West, Jr. - 363 Pages

I remain perplexed at why the book seems so little known (in the LDS history canon) today.

I completed reading this book today.

Before a month ago, I had never heard of this book.

This book was a very comprehensive, well written and balanced review of the history of the LDS Church from its founding through the death of Brigham Young in 1877. It was published in 1957... no reprints... by top tier publisher Viking.

The book's flyleaf contains glowing comments about the book from "Saturday Review of Books," "The New York Times," the "San Francisco Examiner," "The Boston Sunday Herald," "The New Yorker," and "Time Magazine."

A cursory internet search surfaces some information about the author. Ray B. West, Jr. was raised as a Mormon in Cache County, UT. He was a descendant of Mormon pioneer leaders. He had a typical Mormon boyhood in Utah. He served and LDS mission in Germany, 1927-1929.

Note: That's the period of anything goes Weimar Germany and the rise of Hitler. I wonder if Ray wrote down is impressions of that period. A boy from Logan, UT dropped into libertine Weimar Berlin. That's quite a leap. It's seems to have been a leap too far as Ray returned from his mission having lost his faith in the LDS Church. Post WWII, there were Mormon congregations in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands and France that received post war aid from the Church's welfare program.

West realized during the 1930s that even though he had lost faith in the Mormon religion, he could not somehow dissociate himself from Mormon society and that there was a sense in which he would forever be a Mormon, even though not active in a theological sense.

You can take the boy out of Mormonism, but you can't take Mormonism out of the boy?

West became an academic. He wrote a number of books. He edited scholarly journals on Western history. In addition to several other teaching assignments, including a stint at Utah State University, he spent twelve years as a professor of English at San Francisco State University. He retired in rural Santaquin, UT where he passed away in 1990.

West notes, "The aim that I have attempted to keep constantly before me both in my reading about the Mormons and in the writing of this book, has been to understand as completely as possible why the Mormons believed as they did, in order to understand why they acted as they did...."

I'm not a Mormon history scholar... but, I have read many of the biggies, including Richard Bushman's biography of Joseph Smith and Leonard Arrington's acclaimed biography of Brigham Young. I've read Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History," and Juanita Brooks' "Mountain Meadows Massacre," All this in addition to many LDS Church sponsored histories as I grew up in the Church.

"Kingdom of the Saints' is equal or better to anything I have read as one volume on LDS Church history... yet it seems to be, at best, an obscure book, lost to the ages. What am I missing?

I found the book while leisurely browsing through the LDS used book stacks at Eborn Books, in the south 200 block on Main Street in Salt Lake City. It was a well preserved copy. On the inside cover was a cursive written, "Property of Alga Morrison, 431 Garfield Avenue, Salt Lake City, UT." I thumbed through the copy, thought to myself "this looks like a great read," and bought the book.

Since I've grown up absorbing LDS history and have read reasonably extensivly on the topic, what did I learn new reading "Kingdom of the Saints?

One new insight.... I liked West's hypothesis of Joseph Smith's overall theological intent. I'm paraphrasing...Joseph Smith saw a purpose of his mission to link all humanity vertically and horizontally into God's plan. Horizontally, all mankind on earth at the time would be proselyted in the Mormon gospel. Vertically, all mankind who had ever lived would be linked to God's plan via rituals such as baptism for the dead. At the intersection of the vertical and horizontal axis is the Church and its prophet on earth.

A small point... by 1857, some twenty thousand immigrants had crossed the plains from Winter Quarters, Nebraska to Salt Lake City. When these immigrants spoke of the "pioneers," they were speaking only of the first wagon train of some 150 settlers, including Brigham Young, who reached the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847. I've always thought of the whole bunch of them as pioneers!

The author noted that Brigham Young never set out to expand Joseph Smith's theology... but for two doctrinal forays, both of which proved to be poor decisions that had to be discarded.

In 1856, almost ten years after the saints had arrived in the Salt Lake valley, Brigham Young became convinced that the religious commitment of the saints to the gospel was waning.

Under the leadership of one of his apostles, Jedediah Grant (father of Heber J. Grant, later a president of the Church), a reformation of sorts was begun.

Church members were admonished to attend church more often, read the scriptures, and live their religion more righteously. An apparatus was set up to check on members' fidelity to the Church: the home teaching program, where elders, two by two, would, on assignment from church leaders, visit homes to check up on overall church activity.

The particular aspect of the reformation (goof #1) which aroused the gentiles most was the emphatic declaration of the hithereto little-known Mormon doctrine of blood atonement. It expressed the familiar belief in the atonement of Christ as a blood sacrifice for the sin of Adam and combines it with the Hebraic injuction, "Who so sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." And, so in reformative ferver, the doctrine said, final absolution for murder can only come through blood sacrifice.

To the gentiles in Salt Lake City, the words sounded like an announcement of, or an invitation to, ritualistic murder. In the end, preaching of this doctrine of blood atonement toned down and disappeared. And there were no rash of killings in Utah to suggest that the doctrine had been taken seriously.

On another occasion (goof #2), Brigham Young once conflated Adam with God. There was no support from the Bible, The Book of Mormon, of other of Joseph Smith's writings to draw this conclusion... the "doctrine" died a slow death.

West describes in poignant and detailed prose the various stages of Mormon progress - and persecution - from Ohio, to Missouri, to Illinois, to Nebraska and finally to Utah. Personal diaries of real participants are used frequently to describe the events they experienced/endured. The Mormons even today are fervent diarists.
For example, the author's description of the Martin and Willie handcart Mormon immigrant companies, which were waylaid in central Wyoming by early 1858 winter storms, was moving and poignant.

Five years ago I motorcycled a section of the Mormon trail in Fremont County, WY and stopped at the site, near Rock Creek, where the handcart pioneers were forced to stop in a blizzard.

I read from the story boards there how freezing immigrants waited several days for a rescue mission from Salt Lake, which did not arrive in time to save fifteen people from the party of 400 from freezing to death.

Brigham Young and the Church met with some of the same type of opposition in Salt Lake City they had experienced in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. As Mormonism gained its footing in the mountain west, federal officials became concerned that the Church's objectives were not in synch with those of the United States. Federal officials - even once an army - were sent to Utah to ensure that perceived ideas about Brigham Young's desire to create a theocracy in the west weren't actualized.

After the California gold rush of 1849 many "gentiles," (non Mormons) established residence in Salt Lake City. Many federal officials and gentiles believed that the Mormon religion would die out as Salt Lake City became more integrated into the American scene... or at least Mormonism would collapse when the man that held it all together, Brigham Young, passed.

Brigham Young died in 1877. By 1889 the Church had been brought to its knees, disenfranchised, due to its resistance in complying to a growing number of federal laws and regulations designed to outlaw polygamy. In 1889, then Church President, Wilford Woodruf, signed a "manifesto" renouncing the practice of polygamy, if not belief in "the principle."

After the turn of the century, the Church regained its footing. Utah became a state and the LDS Church has moved from strength to strength ever since. The Church has "gone international" with half of its now nearly 20MM membership living outside of the borders of the United States. It will be interesting to see if this international cohort, most of whom come from third world countries where the practice of Christianity remains replete with zeal and aspiration, can propel the western segment of the church, where members live in an environment where Christianity and religious zeal wanes.

How does a poor, not formerly educated teen age boy in up state New York in the late 1820's and early 1830's start a movement that ultimately results into a major world religion with nearly 20 million members? Whether you are Mormon or not, if you live in Utah, you could do a lot worse than to read this book to gain insights to the answer to this question.

As I grew up, the Church leaders were always wary about members reading any of the plethora of anti Mormon literature out there. Its been sixty years since "Kingdom of Saints" was published. Perhaps, sixty years ago the fact that West was an "apostate" might have encouraged some Church leaders to suppress this book. But, I found nothing in the book that would challenge a faithful Mormon's testimony.

I remain perplexed at why the book seems so little known (in the LDS history canon) today.