Wednesday, March 3, 2021

W. Jeffrey Marsh on Joseph Smith and the Constitution of the United States

  

The Constitution of the United States

 

In December 1833, the Savior affirmed in a revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith that he had established the Constitution “by the hands of wise men whom I raised up into this very purpose” (D&C 101:80). He also told the Saints that they were justified in befriending the constitutional laws of the land (see D&C 98:5-10). And in the 1837 dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple, the Prophet pled, “May those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever” (D&C 109:54).

 

In another revelation, the Savior further declared that this Constitution was given for the “rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles; that every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I [God] have given him, that every man may be accountable” for his own actions (D&C 101:77-78).

 

Shortly thereafter, the governor of Missouri issued an extermination order against the Saints in that state. They were mercilessly murdered and driven from the state by mobs during the winter of 1838-39; the Prophet Joseph and others were unjustly imprisoned in the ironically named Liberty Jail. Despite these unlawful and unconstitutional assaults, the Prophet Joseph later affirmed his faith on the Constitution: “The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner; it is to all those who are privileged with the sweets of its liberty, like the cooling shades and refreshing waters of a great rock in a thirsty and weary land. It is like a great tree under whose branches men from every clime can be shielded from the burning rays of the sun . . . The Constitution of the United States is true” (Smith, History of the Church, 3:304).

 

The Prophet was inspired to warn, however, that if such abuse of the law were to continue unchecked, it would lead to the loss of much freedom and liberty. The first known statement of Joseph in this regard was made July 19, 1840: “Even this nation will be on the verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground and when the Constitution is on the brink of ruin this people will be the staff upon which the nation shall lean and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction” (Joseph Smith Papers, Church History Library, Box 1, March 1, 1844, as cited in D. Michael Stewart, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, June 1976, 64-65).

 

Eliza R. Snow later recalled: “I heard the Prophet Joseph Smith say, if the people rose and mobbed us and the authorities countenanced it, they would have mobs to their hearts’ content. I heard him say that the time would come when this nation would so far depart from its original purity, its glory and its love of freedom and protection of civil and religious rights, that the constitution of our country would hang as it were by a thread” (Eliza R. Snow, quoted in Edward W. Tullidge, Women of Mormondom [New York: Gullidge and Crandall, 1877], 401). As early as 1843, Joseph noted that the Constitution was already under siege: “The different states, and even Congress itself, have passed many laws diametrically contrary to the Constitution of the United States” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 279).

 

Despite the corruption and challenges in our country, modern Presidents of the Church have called the Constitution a “sacred document” and have continued to bear witness of the increasingly important role the divine principles of the Constitution will play for the future of America and for the entire world. During World War II, at the dedicatory prayer for the Idaho Falls Temple in September 1945, President George Albert Smith prayed:

 

As we look about in the world among the various countries, we find philosophies and forms of government the effect of which is to deprive men of their free agency, but by reason of thy timely warning to us, we know that they are not approved of three. Since the God of this choice land is Jesus Christ, we know that his philosophy of free agency should prevail here. Thou didst amply demonstrate this great principle to us by raising up wise men for the very purpose of giving us our Constitutional form of government . . . There are those, our Heavenly Father, both within and without our borders, who would destroy the constitutional form of government which thou hast no magnanimously given us, and would replace it with a form that would curtain, if not altogether deprive, man of his free agency. We pray thee, therefore, that in all these matters thou wilt help us to conform our lives to thy desires, and that thou wilt sustain us in our resolve so to do. We pray thee that thou wilt inspire good and just men everywhere to be willing to sacrifice for, support, and uphold the Constitution and the government set up under it and thereby preserve for man his agency . . .

 

We pray that kings and rulers and the peoples of all nations under heaven may be persuaded of the blessings enjoyed by the people of this land by reason of their freedom under thy guidance and be constrained to adopt similarly governmental systems, thus to fulfil the ancient prophecy of Isaiah that “ . . . out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (George Albert Smith, “Dedicatory Prayer . . . Idaho Falls Temple,” Improvement Era, October 1945, 564). (W. Jeffrey Marsh, “A Prophet-Statesman: Joseph Smith in the Public Square,” in Mark E. Mendenhall, Hal B. Gregersen, Jeffrey S. O’Driscoll, Heidi S. Seinton, and Breck England, eds., Joseph and Hyrum: Leading as One [Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2010], 205-31, here, pp. 215-17)