These and other institutions gave the Latter Day Saints a considerable degree of autonomy. With the help of sympathetic non-Mormons in Illinois, in the spring of 1839 the Latter Day Saint refugees regrouped and began to establish a new headquarters in Nauvoo. . However, some Church members claimed to receive revelations that contradicted those received by Joseph Smith. With Rigdon's flight, Young and most of the Twelve Apostles assumed control of church headquarters in Nauvoo. By the mid-1840s, many non-Mormons in Hancock County felt threatened by growing Mormon political power, commercial rivalries, and a new religion with at least two elements that were hard to digest in the religious community of that time: first, Latter Day Saints had a somewhat different perspective on the nature of God from traditional Protestants; second, the claim of modern revelation, together with the claim of new scripture, opened the canon of the Bible.[6]. However, in spite of their different use of the word restoration, this movement was an important part of the culture that led Joseph Smith to become interested in religion. Black Latter-day Saints bringing Black Lives Matter movement into the religious sphere . Facebook. As a result, three of the principal claimants on the scene were: Smith’s widow, Emma, wanted Marks to become church president, but Marks believed that Rigdon had the superior claim. God and Jesus Christ appeared before Joseph as two separate persons, apparently in flesh and bone bodies. Mormons quickly adopted the book as a work of scripture of similar importance to the Bible. Early accounts of this vision describe it as a vision of Jesus in which he was told his sins were forgiven. In 1860, the eldest of the Smith sons, Joseph Smith III, said he received a revelation to take his place as Prophet/President of a "New Organization" of the Latter Day Saint church. In 1835, Smith and Cowdery stated that the angel was John the Baptist, and that the "Holy Priesthood" was specifically the Priesthood of Aaron", which included the power to baptize. When it failed, some 300 of the Kirtland membership became disillusioned, including a third of the church leadership. If you have any suggestions, questions or need help please feel free to contact us. On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and a group of approximately 50 believers met to formally organize the Church of Christ into a legal institution. Latter-day Saints have also had a profound effect on the way the game is played, said Hunter Hampton, assistant professor of history at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. Joseph Smith's descendants continued to serve as Prophet and President until the retirement of Wallace B. Smith in the early twenty-first century. The most well-known group of Mormons is the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, which was founded in the early 1800s. Soon after, Rigdon left Nauvoo and established his own church organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After Strang’s 1856 assassination, much of the remaining membership fell away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), but a small following remained loyal. A brief leadership struggle left the former heads of the Missouri portion of the church excommunicated, such as David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, William Wines Phelps and others. He declared himself to be a prophet of God. Mormon history as an academic field is called Mormon studies. The people of western New York, like the rest of the United States at the time, were also influenced by folk religion.