The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle

"Mormonism goes through this fascinating transition at the turn of the 20th century. For much of the 19th century Mormonism was on the outside of American acceptance. They were polygamists, theocrats out in the American West. But then, after they give up polygamy in 1890, and accept America’s two-party system, and Utah is admitted as a state, they start going through what scholars termed ‘the Americanization process’, where they become much more assimilated to American culture. Perhaps the best bellwether of that transition was when Utah elected Reed Smoot, who was a Mormon apostle, to serve in the United States Senate. This happened in the first decade of the 20th century, and it drew lots of national attention, lots of national scorn because people questioned whether someone who served in the highest offices of the LDS Church could truly pledge allegiance to America loyally and serve in the American Senate. This sparked a five year Congressional hearing in which the United States investigated not so much Reed Smoot, but rather the Mormon church in general. During this time, they uncovered that Mormons were still practising polygamy, even though they had promised they weren’t. They also tried to unpack what was really going on in the Mormon temples. They tried to decide to whom Mormons pledged true loyalty, the church or the state. And, in the end, both sides had to make compromises. The Mormon church had to act more like an American denomination, and the American Senate and politicians had to stop acting like a proto-Protestant denomination themselves. So we come out of this fascinating case study, where there are lots of fascinating characters on either side, with a church that was more assimilated to American culture and an American culture much more willing to assimilate the Mormons. They believed that Mormons could not truly be patriotic because their full allegiance was to the Mormon hierarchy. There’s this great political cartoon from this period of the nefarious Mormon patriarch with the long beard and the ragged clothes, who looks like an Old Testament prophet, dangling Reed Smoot as a puppet into the American Senate, saying that this guy is just going to be our own plant in America. They didn’t think that Mormons were truly loyal to America and they did not think Mormons could truly hold American principles. And if that’s the case, then here is their representative who is the fox in the henhouse, and he can’t be trusted with one of America’s highest offices. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter So Mormonism had to bend over backwards. The Mormon leader, Joseph F. Smith, who was the President of the Church at the time, came to Washington DC and testified in the Senate trial, arguing that Mormons were no different from any other American denomination. Then, at the same time, there were other people coming to testify that the Mormons were nefarious and were doing lots of bad stuff. In the end, it came down to a political compromise, but one that really changed both the church and the state. He served in the Senate for 32 years. In fact, he became known for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff , which was an influential tariff a few decades later. He became known as a staunch partisan Republican, who in many ways was a bellwether for how Mormons became Republican in general."