Saturday, July 31, 2021

The Use of Prayer Circles to Curse Enemies of the Church

  

In 1880, Wilford Woodruff was president of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The church was under immense pressure from federal government to end the practice of plural marriage. Woodruff recorded that God spoke to him, promising plagues, wrath, and judgment against the church’s accusers. God’s anger was kindled against those in positions of government authority, such as:

 

The Preside[nt]ts of the United States, The Supreme Court, The Cabinet, The Senate & House of Conress of the United States The Governors of the States and Terrotor/ies\ The Judges & Officers sent unto you and all the men & persons who have taken any part in persecuting you or Bringing distress upon you or your families or have sought your lives or sought to hinder you from keeping my Command[men]ts or from Enjoying the rights which the Constitutional Laws of the Land guarantee unto you. (Woodruff, Journal, revelation copied following Dec. 31, 1880)

 

In an effort that bears striking resemblance to the oath of vengeance, a list was compiled of over 400 “Names of Persons, to be held in Remembrance before the Lord, For their Evil Deeds, and who have raised their hands against the Lord’s anointed.” The list included four U.S. presidents: Martin Van Buren, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James Buchanan (Buerger, Mysteries of Godliness, unpaginated image and text). To secure God’s judgments against those on the list. Woodruff was instructed to gather the Twelve and wash their feet as a testimony against their enemies (Woodruff, Journal, revelation copied following Dec. 31, 1880 [originally given Jan. 26, 1880]. This revelation was given a second time to Woodruff only days later, again emphasizing “the duty of the Apostles and Elders to go into our Holy places & Temples and wash our feet and bear testimony to God & the Heavenly hosts against the wickedness of this Nation. My pillow was wet with the fountain of tears that flowed as I Beheld the Judgments of God upon the wicked.” See Woodruff, Journal, Jan. 27, 1880). The apostles were then to clothe themselves in temple robes and form a prayer circle.

 

Woodruff describes the eventual performance of this ordinance in solemn terms:

 

O Pratt was vary feeble yet we all performed the ordinance of washing our feet against Our Enemies And the Enemies of the Kingdom of God according to the Commandmet of God unto us.

W. Woodruff opened By Prayer And John Taylor was Mouth in the washing of feet. At the Prayer Circle Lorenzo Snow was Mouth at the opening and Presidet JOHN TAYLOR was mouth at the Altar, and Presented the Prayer written By W. Woodruff (By request of Presidet Taylor) And the names were presented before the Lord according to the Commandment.

It was truly a solomn scene and I presume to say it was the first thing of the Kind since the Creation of the world. …. We were 3 hours in the Meeting & ordinances. (Woodruff, Journal, Jan. 19, 1881)

 

The actual prayer, written by Woodruff and read by John Taylor, reads in part:

 

Now O Lord our God we bear our testimony against these men, before Thee and the heavenly hosts and we bear testimony unto thee Our heavenly Father that we according to thy Commandments unto us we have gone alone by ourselves and Clensed our feet in pure water and born testimony unto Thee and thy Son Jesus Christ and to the heavenly hosts against these wicked men by name as far as the spirit has manifested them unto us. We have borne our testimony against those who have shed the blood of thy Prophets and Apostles and anointed Ones, or have given Consent to their death and against those who have driven thy saints and imprisoned them and those who are still ready to deprive us of Life, Liberty and the privilege of keeping the Commandments of God.

And now O Lord our God Thou has Commanded us that when we have done this we should gather ourselves together in our holy Places and Clothed in the robes of the Holy Priesthood should unite ourselves together in Prayer and supplication and that we should bear our testimony against these men by name as far as wisdom should dictate.

 . . . O Lord hear us from heaven thy Holy dwelling place and answer our Petitions Sustain thine anointed ones and deliver us from the Hands of Our Enemies. Overthrow the Evil designs of the wicked and ungodly against thy Saints and break Evry weapon formed against us. (Woodruff, Journal, revelation copied following Dec. 31, 1880)

 

This episode is notable for a shift in the provocation to curse. In the past, curses had been performed primarily against those who rejected a proselytizer’s message. Here the curse was called down upon the church’s political enemies.

 

On one other known occasion, a prayer circle was formed with intent to curse. In 1889, a prayer circle was convened to curse R. N. Baskin, a non-Mormon lawyer who was actively engaged in the anti-polygamy crusades of the time (“Mormons’ and Citizenship,” Deseret Weekly, Nov. 23, 1889, 684-93). According to the journal of new apostle Abraham H. Cannon, a group of nine church leaders convened on December 23, 1889. All but two of them were dressed in their temple robes. Each member took a turn acting as mouth for the prayer circle. Joseph F. Smith “was strongest in his prayer and urged that Baskin should be made blind, deaf and dumb unless he would repent of his wickedness” (Horne, Apostle’s Record, 119). Diary entries from participants do not indicate that feet were dusted or washed in connection with this prayer circle. The church was struggling to beat Baskin the courtroom, and church leaders expressed their frustration by requesting that God stop the trouble at its source. (Samuel R. Weber, “’Shake Off the Dust of Thy Feet’ The Rise and Fall of Mormon Ritual Cursing,” in Bryan Buchanan, ed., Continuing Revelation: Essays on Doctrine [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2021], 199-226, here, pp. 218-21)

 

Further Reading


Refuting the Tanners on Old Testament Practices and Mormonism: Cursing One's Enemies