For reasons unknown, possibly morbid curiosity, I've been doing some reading on the other branches of Mormonism. Though they are all 100% as bullcrap as the SLC church, it is strangely fascinating. And not just the Fundy groups (e.g., FLDS, AUB, etc.) but the other ones (e.g., Strangites, etc.)

Anyone else do a "deep dive" into the topic? What did you find interesting?

What, specifically, are you calling the "other mormonisms"? The "Fundy groups" are much closer to the mormonism that founded Utah than the stuff from the COB.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2019 07:56PM by stillanon.

stillanon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What, specifically, are you calling the "other
> mormonisms"? The "Fundy groups" are much closer to
> the mormonism that founded Utah than the stuff
> from the COB.

I gave some examples in the OP. And agreed the "fundies", disgustingly, are closer to 19th century Mormonism.

But to answer your question groups, some examples:

Community of Christ
The Bickertonites
The Strangites
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Apostolic United Brethren
Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times

Wikipedia has a list of denominations if you are curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_denominations_in_the_Latter_Day_Saint_movement

Cheers. :)

Copycats. They saw the wealth, power and women that Joe Smith created, and BY improved on, and decided to branch out. The one common denominator was ignorant followers that put the "prophet" over themselves, their wives and children.

Not true - Bickertonites, CoC and Strangites have very little to do with Brigham Young. CoC got most of the Smith family, Strang was more like Smith than Young was... Other than hating the Brighamites and being confused with their "Big Brother", they are separate.

FLDS and First Born - whole different story - they come straight from Brigham's legacy.

I studied the "break off" churches.

Two others of note. Sidney Rigdon's group and David Whitmer's group. Both defunct.

You will notice that EVEN The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - says to refer to it as "The church of Jesus Christ" - in news articles.

That is the Legal Name of another Mormon group.

Talk about "take advantage of another because of their words".

I lived in the Midwest long before the internet became a good reference for mormon history. I had a friend who had a few books about the Strangites and I got quite interested for a while. I have an ancestor who lived on Beaver Island. My wife and I visited sites in Michigan and Wisconsin. I don't remember all about Strang, but do remember he appointed himself king and moved a number of people to colonize Beaver Island. I've paddled to Beaver Island in a kayaking group of hardcore Lake Michigan paddlers. It's about 25 miles of paddling in a day, and Lake Michigan can be treacherous with storms that seem to come out of nowhere, so not for the inexperienced paddlers. There are remnants of the colony on the island and you can get there by ferry, the parts I visited did not seem to have any connection to the modern day Strangites, as of the 1980s there were still Strangites in Voree WI and would talk to you about the church and history, the ones I met seemed to be "out" of the church.

Interesting read. I've always wanted to look deeper into who were Cochranites who joined the Church. I suspect I may have some Cochranite ancestors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Cochran

is that they never really amounted to much. Love it or hate it, there is no denying that the portion of the church that Brigham Young moved out to Utah really did amount to something in terms of wealth, influence and numbers. Although it appears to have reached its high-water mark some decades ago (I generally peg its peak at being around 1984), it's still something...even a major and occasionally dominating force to be reckoned with in states like Utah and Idaho.

In terms of global prestige and influence, it's never really been much more than a footnote. But compared to all of the other Mormonisms that can be traced back to Joseph Smith, the Brigham Young church still is a behemoth.

Brigham Young was a thug, a fraud, a conman, a shameless harem builder and a dishonest businessman. But he took over a decapitated religious organization and movement that easily could have disintegrated and imploded into nothing and turned it into a well-organized theocracy that for a time dominated territory stretching from northern Mexico all the way up to southern Alberta, Canada...and included Arizona, Utah, Idaho and significant parts of other states such as Montana, Wyoming, Washington and Nevada.

The next closest contender, the Community of Christ never managed to hold sway over anything more than a few acres of land in Illinois and Missouri.

True that. On that topic of what BY built, there is a good book entitled "Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896", by David L. Bigler. I read it years back and got a better idea of the early years of Mormonism.

Excellent book.

On my mission in Australia, there were Reorganized CJCOLDS branches....so they did make it out of Missouri...

confined to Missouri. But they've never "held sway" or influence in any significant geographical area.

I met an RLDS missionary in Taiwan once. IIRC, they had a group of about 10 to 15 people who had meetings in a small rented space. Some were probably transient Taiwanese who were just curious and liked having the chance to practice English with a few native speakers.

And I'm sure that RLDS/CoC probably at different times and places may have a few healthy congregations, possibly even owning their own church buildings, outside of Missouri.

But contrast that to Brigham Young's church and the fact that the entire apparatuses of local and territorial governments throughout the entire Rocky Mountain region, and especially in Utah and Idaho, were either monopolized or, for practical purposes, completely dominated by members of Brigham Young's theocracy/church organization (which still exerts often decisive influence on local governmental affairs in 2019) and members of Brigham Young's church up until this very day have had representation via multiple senators and HofR congress critters in the U.S. congress.

For a partial list of other "Mormon" prophets, see my article "Mormon Prophets After Joseph Smith" (other than the Salt Lake "official" prophets):

http://packham.n4m.org/prophet2.htm

(with many links to their websites and websites about them)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2019 10:18AM by RPackham.

I read Steven Shields' "Divergent Paths of the Restoration" back in the '90s and it made me aware of how many splinter groups there are out there. A more recent book, Scattering of the Saints, also covers similar ground.

https://www.amazon.com/Scattering-Saints-Schism-Within-Mormonism/dp/1934901024

If you spend any amount of time around Independence, MO you can't help but run into a few of these groups, notably the Temple Lot, RLDS (Stone Church), Restoration Branches, Cutlerites, and a couple of others that are within blocks of the original Temple Lot.

The Strangites are mostly up in Wisconsin. I corresponded with them years ago but they are only a handful of people. They're interesting because it seems like Strang deliberately copied Joseph Smith almost point by point and it seems he knew he was doing it. He even came up with his own hidden metal plates (Voree Record, Plates of Laban), a book of revelation, and they were planning on building a large temple at the time Strang was assassinated. Like Joseph, he was shot.

The Culterites are an interesting group too founded by Alpheus Cutler who was much given to visions ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheus_Cutler