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Oath of vengeance

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Past Mormon temple ritual promising to pray for divine retribution

For the 1944 American film directed by Sam Newfield, see Oath of Vengeance.

In Mormonism, the oath of vengeance (or law of vengeance) was part of the endowment ritual of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) implemented in 1845. Participants swore an oath to pray for God to avenge the blood of prophets. The term "prophets" wasn't explicitly clarified in reported wording of the oath, but many sources have reported it referred to the brothers Joseph and Hyrum Smith, who were killed by a mob the year before Smith's primary successor, Brigham Young, added the oath. The oath was part of the LDS endowment Temple (Latter Day Saints) ceremony for over 80 years (1845—1927).

The officiant of the ritual reportedly enjoined the participants as follows: "You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation." Participants swore to keep the oath a secret under penalty of execution as part of the temple penalties.

Incorporation into the Nauvoo endowment

The oath of vengeance was added to the Nauvoo endowment under the direction of Brigham Young by 1845 in the Nauvoo Temple, soon after the 1844 death of Joseph Smith. Participants agreed to be bound by the following oath:

You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation.

According to Smith's youngest brother William Smith the wording of the oath taken in the Nauvoo temple was in part, "You do solemnly swear ... that you will avenge the blood of Joseph Smith on this nation, and teach your children ... and carry out hostilities against this nation, and to keep the same intent a profound secret now and forever." The prophets believed by many to be referenced are Joseph and Hyrum Smith, who were killed by a mob in 1844 while jailed in Carthage, Illinois. The nation is likewise believed by many to be the United States. The existence of the oath was confirmed in an 1889 Salt Lake City meeting of the First Presidency in which they discussed "the propriety of ... more fully explaining the instructions to pray for the avenging the blood of the prophets in the Endowments."

The oath entered the endowment when many Mormons yearned for retribution for the murder of their church's founders. At least one member felt the oath to include a personal obligation that "if he had ever met any of those who had taken a hand in that massacre he would undoubtedly have attempted to avenge the blood of the martyrs." One source states members understood the oath to require only prayer.

The prayer to which endowed members obligated themselves took place in at least some cases as part of the prayer circle ceremony, which was also part of the endowment but was often performed separately.

Wilford Woodruff (the fourth President of the LDS Church) stated that this oath had been a part of the temple endowment ceremony for years prior to the assassinations of Joseph and Hyrum (Wilford received his own endowment in December 1843); rather than being inspired by the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum, Woodruff stated that this prayer was inspired by two verses in Revelation 6 of the New Testament:

Reporter—One of the aims of the proceedings now going on in court is to prove that there is something antagonistic to the government in the "Mormon" Endowments. What about that charge? President Woodruff—I have already said that there is nothing of that kind in any part or phase of "Mormonism." I ought to know about that as I am one of the oldest members of the Church. A good deal is being made of a form of prayer based upon two verses in the sixth chapter of the Revelations of St. John, as contained in the New Testament. It relates to praying that God might avenge the blood of the prophets. An attempt has, I see, been made to connect this with avenging the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and to have reference to this nation. It can have no such application, as the Endowments were given long before the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and have not been changed. This nation or government has never been charged by the "Mormon" people with the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, as it is well known the murder was the act of a local mob disguised.

Removal from Endowment

Main article: Good Neighbor policy (LDS Church)

Beginning in 1919, LDS Church president Heber J. Grant appointed a committee charged with revising the endowment ceremony, which was done under the direction of apostle George F. Richards from 1921 to 1929. Richards revised the ceremony to eliminate the oath of vengeance, and the revision was formally implemented in 1927.

Eyewitness accounts

Heber C. Kimball, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church, described the oath of vengeance in his diary on December 21, 1845.

Increase and Maria Van Duesen, a married couple, describe their participation in the oath of vengeance in the Nauvoo Temple on January 29, 1846.

Ann Eliza Young, former wife of LDS Church president Brigham Young, described, in her autobiography, her experience taking the oath of vengeance.

A woman known only as "Mrs G.H.R." attended an endowment ceremony in September 1879 in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. She provided the information for a Salt Lake Tribune article detailing the endowment ceremony. In it, she described the oath of vengeance.

In 1889, several members of the LDS Church that had emigrated from other countries applied for citizenship to the United States. Their loyalty to the United States was called into question due to rumors of oaths taken during the endowment ceremony. The following testimonies are found in the transcripts of those court proceedings.

Abraham H. Cannon, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church, wrote in his diary, December 6, 1889, the description his father, apostle George Q. Cannon, gave of the oath of vengeance.

During the Reed Smoot hearings, December 1904, in sworn testimony in front of the United States Senate, several witnesses described the oath of vengeance.

Relation to other Mormon "blood" doctrines

Main article: Mormonism and violence See also: Penalty (Mormonism)

The blood oaths in the LDS Church temple ceremony, which were discontinued church-wide in 1990, depicted a willingness to have one's throat cut from ear to ear should the participant reveal certain portions of the sacred rituals or fail to keep promises given during the washing and anointing ordinances.

The oath of vengeance is related to blood atonement in that both require capital punishment for sins regarded as unusually heinous. In early Mormonism, repentance for crimes such as murder or adultery, where restitution is not possible, involved personal sacrifice in order to make redemption possible through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Blood atonement was preached as a method of personal redemption, preferably voluntary, that could reinstate the possibility of salvation.

Notes

  1. Buerger (2002, p. 135)
  2. ^ Carlson, John D.; Ebel, Jonathan H., eds. (2012). From Jeremiad to Jihad: Religion, Violence, and America. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-27165-4 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ Bagley, Will (2004). Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3639-4 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ Beam, Alex (April 22, 2014). American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-61039-314-0.
  7. Buerger (1987, p. 53)
  9. Buerger (1987, p. 52), citing United States Senate (1906, pp. 6–7); see also United States Senate (1904a, pp. 741–43, 791–92); United States Senate (1904b, pp. 77–79, 148–49, 151–53, 160–62, 181–83, 189–90, 759, 762–64, 779); United States Senate (1906, pp. 68–69, 495–97); Krakauer (2003, p. 196) harvtxt error: no target: CITEREFKrakauer2003 (help).
  10. ^ Wicks, Robert S.; Foister, Fred R. (September 26, 2008). "'To avenge the blood that stains the walls of Carthage jail'". Junius And Joseph: Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet. Utah State University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt4cgn0s. ISBN 978-0-87421-526-7 – via Project Muse.
  11. Deseret. Remonstrance of William Smith et al., of Covington, Kentucky. Against the Admission of Deseret into the Union (PDF). Washington D.C.: 31st United States Congress. December 31, 1849. pp. 1–3 – via United States Government Publishing Office.
  12. Buerger (2002, p. 134)
  13. Buerger (1987, p. 53), citing the example of Allen Stout, a former Danite, who upon seeing the coffins of Joseph and Hyrum, vowed that he "would never let an opportunity slip unimproved of avenging their blood."
  15. Buerger (1987, pp. 53–54).
  16. Buerger (1987, p. 54)
  17. Testimony of disaffected Mormon August W. Lundstrom before the United States Senate, as reported in United States Senate (1904b, p. 161).
  18. Bancroft (1889, p. 358)
  19. Vogel, Dan, ed. (2015). "5. Appeals to General Government for Protection". History of Joseph Smith and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A Source- and Text-Critical Edition. Vol. 6: 1843–1844. Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation. p. 113. ISBN 978-1-56085-245-2.
  20. "President Woodruff Speaks". Deseret Weekly. Vol. XXXIX, no. 24. Salt Lake City, Utah. December 7, 1889. p. 1. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
  21. Buerger (2002, pp. 139–40)
  22. Buerger (2002, p. 135) "I have covenanted, and never will rest ... until those men who killed Joseph and Hyrum have been wiped out of the earth."
  23. Van Duesen (1846, pp. 3–9). "We are required to kneel at this altar, where we have an oath administered to us to this effect; that we will avenge the blood of Joseph Smith on this Nation, and teach our children the same. They tell us that the nation has winked at the abuse and persecution of the Mormons, and the murder of the Prophet in particular; Therefore the Lord is displeased with the nation, and means to destroy it; and this is the excuse for forming this league or conspiracy."
  24. Young (1876, p. 368), "e swore that we would use every exertion to avenge the death of our Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum upon the Gentile race, and to teach our children to foster this spirit of revenge also".
  25. Mrs. G.H.R. (1879, p. 4). "We were then made to swear to avenge the deaths of Joseph Smith, the martyr, together with that of his brother, Hyrum, on this American nation, and that we would teach our children and our children's children to do so. The penalty for this grip and oath was disembowelment."
  26. McMillan (1903, pp. 10–11). John Bond: "The second one, I was put under, was to avenge the blood of the prophets against the Government of the United States, teach that to my children and my children's children from generation to generation, and everlastingly keep them after them. The penalty, I believe, was that the heart, or the bowels, would be torn out,—something to that effect, so far as my memory will carry me."
  27. McMillan (1903, pp. 16–17). Bishop Andrew Cannon: "Well, as near as I can remember I was sworn to avenge to blood of the prophets, that was understood, indirectly, to refer to Joseph Smith. ... The understanding was, that any parties who were guilty, or consented to their death, as near as I understand it. "
  28. Buerger (2002, p. 135) "Father said that he understood when he had his endowments in Nauvoo that he took an oath against the murderers of the Prophet Joseph as well as other prophets, and if he had ever met any of those who had taken a hand in that massacre he would undoubtedly have attempted to avenge the blood of the martyrs."
  29. United States Senate (1904b, pp. 79, 149–149). J. H. Wallis, Sr.:"That you and each of you will never cease to importune High Heaven for vengeance upon this nation for the blood of the prophets who have been slain."
  30. United States Senate (1904b, pp. 152–53, 161). August W. Lundstrum: "We and each of us solemnly covenant and promise that we shall ask God to avenge the blood of Joseph Smith upon this nation. There is something more added, but that is all I can remember verbatim. That is the essential part. ... It was in regard to teaching our children and children's children to the last generation to the same effect."
  31. United States Senate (1904b, p. 189). Mrs. Annie Elliott: "One, I remember, they told me to pray and never cease to pray to get revenge on the blood of the prophets on this nation, and also teach it to my children and children's children."
  32. Buerger 2002
  33. Buerger 2002, p. 141
  34. Journal of Discourses, vol.4, pp. 215–21.

References

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