Customer Reviews

The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcript of the Reed Smoot Hearings

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Originally published along with other government business in four volumes spanning over three thousand pages, The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings is an abridged, annotated, one-volume collection designed to make the Reed Smoot hearings (1904-06) accessible to readers of all backgrounds. The Reed Smoot hearings were, of course, a turning point in this history of the Latter-Day Saints Church (commonly called the Mormon Church). Reed Smoot was the first Mormon to be elected to the U.S. Senate; his election proved that Mormons could be enticed to abandon the Democratic Party and vote for the (widely hated) Republicans. Smoot himself was a modernist, seeking to bring his faith into the American mainstream with more emphasis on business and less on theology. In turn-of-the-century Utah, he was also unusual in that he was a monogamist. The Senate committee hearings were held to block Senator-elect Smoot from his position - hearings that were to unearth many a skeleton in the closets of Utah politics and the Mormon Church. Among the many ecclesiastical leaders subpoenaed to testify were Joseph F. Smith, then president and prophet of the Mormon Church. Perhaps the most far-reaching fallout of the hearings was the renewed pressure on the Church to abandon polygamy, and take action against any of its members who entered into a new polygamous marriage regardless of their rank. An excellent primary source of American history, made thoroughly readable due to the extensive annotations (including even a few political cartoons of the era), enthusiastically recommended for public and college libraries.

The book was an insightful look into the Reed Smoot hearings. The footnotes were erudite and contextual. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in religious history and politics.

I found this book incredibly interesting, and learned something new on every page. The footnotes are amazing, and provide a new perspective on the difficulties. Smoot encountered behind the scenes while trying to save his Senate seat. Any history buff will find this relatively unknown episode in American history fascinating.

The first review of Paulos's book by the cryptic "Orson" is silly. Orson is transparently straining at gnats to get us to swallow his camel of pseudo-scholarship. The LDS church owned newspaper gave a resoundingly positive review of this book, to which I heartily concur--

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695253301,00.html

This book is a valuable resource to investigating the transitional period of the LDS church from its cloistered territorial days to the globally focused modern church. While the entire Reed Smoot hearing transcript is available elsewhere, this volume seems to hit the high notes. My reservation only comes from the perplexing manner in which the editor approached some of the footnotes. To his credit, he does a good job of identifying and describing the participants in the hearings. But his footnotes, while generally helpful in providing context, still lack in strength, detail, and (to some extent) correctness. For instance, in describing what the "Endowment House" was, the editor's only citation is to "a graduate-level history" paper that is "privately circulated." (p. 156 .12). This is a weak and strange citation for such a well-researched and well-known piece of history as the Endowment House. Elsewhere he relies on unpublished sources for propositions that are developed more soundly in scholarly publications.

Some footnotes are plainly wrong. In identifying Francis M. Lyman (p. 159 n. 14), the editor comemnts that his father had been removed from the Quorum of the Twelve for "questioning the doctrine of blood atonement." Elder Lyman did more than that - he was removed for being censured for preaching that Christ's atonement was essentially unnecessary and then not changing his teaching. The whole affair was much more complex than the editor's misleading explanation. I have to wonder if the publisher should not have had a heavier hand in editing.

Also, I felt that the book did not provide enough context to the issue of post-manifesto polygamy. Scholarly studies of the plural marriages performed after the Manifesto are numerous and detailed, but the editor here seemed almost to avoid discussing the issue. Some references to post-manifesto polygamy are in the footnotes, but they by no means treat the issue adequately to understand the context of what was going on. Also, they are found so late in the text that they do not provide context to the testimony of the earlier witnesses, such as Joseph F. Smith.

In the end, what the editor adds to the text is enlightening, but unfulfilling. This book is preferable to reading the cold transcript, but does not do all that it can to flesh out the historical landscape against which the hearings occurred. The book suggests that Mr. Paulos has a good grasp of the historical record, and could have included more to enhance the background of the hearings.