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Show The story of early Mormonism, its trials and persecutions in the East and its flight to and eventual triumph in the Rocky Mountain West, is largely the story of first Joseph Smith's, and later, his successor, Brigham Young's, quest to fulfill this latter-day prophecy for restoring Christ's gospel to earth. The vehicle for the restoration was Zion, a concept which in time would coalesce into an integrated system of beliefs central to Mormon theology and instrumental in the settlement and colonization of the Intermountain West after 1847. Millenarian religious movements have been shown to possess certain common traits, the most salient of which for this discussion being, first, the call for the uoverthrow or reversal of the present social order, 11 and second, uthe promise of heaven on earth--soon.u 8 The millenarian process is then essentially twofold: A group must first sever its relations with the prevailing order while at the same time formulating an alternative plan for the future salvation of the world. This dilemma was resolved in Mormonism through the definition of Zion as both the act of withdrawing the Chosen out of Babylon and of creating a new Kingdom of God on earth. The integration of both millenarian functions into a single concept known to the Mormons themselves as the uGathering of Zionu, not only enabled the Latter-day Saints to distinguish themselves from other prim,~ ivist sects, but also provided the institutional strength needed to endure the persecutions which plagued them- through much of the sect's early history. Wallace Stegner has convincingly argued that uno responsible historian can afford to underestimate the literalness of Mormon belief, 119 and so it must be that the study of Zion's gathering cannot be divorced from its theological underpinnings. For the Mormons, from the leaders down to 34 |
