Scott Woodward: The immediate aftermath of the tragic murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844 was marked by shock and grief within the church, and in the weeks that followed, an ecclesiastical crisis arose concerning who should be Joseph Smith’s successor as president of the church. As it turns out, Joseph Smith had never publicly and unambiguously designated a clear successor to the presidency of the church. And confusion arose not because Joseph had never addressed the issue directly, but because of the fact that he had made several statements at various times which seemed to open up multiple succession options—eight, to be exact. In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we’ll walk through the eight possible succession paths that were either explicitly laid out by Joseph Smith or were viewed as entirely plausible based on certain interpretations of statements Joseph made or actions he took. In addition to being historically interesting, these eight plausible paths help us understand why succession in the presidency wasn’t immediately cut and dry in the minds of many church members in 1844 and helps us understand the basis on which several other branches of the Restoration exist today, outside of the one initially led by Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. I’m Scott Woodward, a managing director at Scripture Central, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, also a managing director at Scripture Central, and today, Casey and I dive into our first episode in this series on succession in the presidency. Now, let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hello, Casey Griffiths. How are you, man?

Casey Griffiths: I’m doing great. And part of the reason why I’m doing great is we are covering something I’ve wanted to talk about for a long, long time.

Scott Woodward: Yes. We’ve had many requests from our listeners, actually, to do this series as well. So you’ve been excited about it, I’ve been excited about it, listeners are asking for it, so here we are beginning our new series.

Casey Griffiths: And to our listeners, please keep sending in suggestions, but just recognize it might be, like, a year before we get to things. 

Scott Woodward: Yeah. We’ve got a queue.

Casey Griffiths: We’ve got a queue. We’ve got a queue. So be patient. We hear everything you say, but we also have just a backlog of topics that we want to cover, and I think we’re going to pivot and talk about the Doctrine and Covenants all next year, so . . . Do you remember when we first started doing this and Hank and John invited us on their podcast, and they were like, church history, great—so when are you going to wrap that up? And we were like, never.

Scott Woodward: We just laughed, yeah. 

Casey Griffiths: There’s so much to talk about, so.

Scott Woodward: When church history stops being interesting—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —that’s when we’ll stop.

Casey Griffiths: But there’s no bottom to this well. Like, we’re just going to keep on drawing water out of it.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And speaking of church history, I want to take a moment and do a shout out to another team working at Scripture Central.

Scott Woodward: Mm-hmm.

Casey Griffiths: There’s been some excellent documentaries published by Scripture Central by a group called A Marvelous Work, and their focus is evidences of the Book of Mormon. So they travel all over the place. They’ve been to Spain. I know they’re going to Hawaii. I went with them to Palmyra and Kirtland, and they did an episode that relates very closely to church history, which is they talked about the three witnesses, and for the three witnesses, Scott, they actually had three witnesses: Daniel Peterson, Steve Harper, and myself.

Scott Woodward: That’s awesome.

Casey Griffiths: And I’m the Martin Harris of those three. 

Scott Woodward: Okay. I would have pegged you more as a David Whitmer type. 

Casey Griffiths: Oh, so rather than the guy who doesn’t think he’s worthy to be there, you think I’m the guy that’s going to become embittered and never come back, or . . . ?

Scott Woodward: Hey, he’s a complicated character. That’s interesting that you would draw that aspect of his character upon yourself. I think he’s a great witness. That’s all I’m saying.

Casey Griffiths: That’s right.

Scott Woodward: David Whitmer is the longest living witness. He’s the most interviewed witness. He has the most to say. Casey, you’re just an eloquent, loquacious witness. That’s all I’m trying to say.

Casey Griffiths: Hey, thank you. Thank you.

Scott Woodward: That’s all. 

Casey Griffiths: He also looks angry in every photo I’ve ever seen of David Whitmer.

Scott Woodward: He looks so grumpy.

Casey Griffiths: He just looks like he’s mad at the world, and I don’t think of myself that way, but I’m going to accept the compliment and acknowledge—

Scott Woodward: There you go.

Casey Griffiths: —it was my insecurity, so I apologize for my vulnerability there.

Scott Woodward: But a big shout out to the Marvelous Work team, yes.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And that has already aired, the episode you’re in? Is that correct?

Casey Griffiths: It came out June 14, I believe, and they’re doing episodes monthly where they focus on different things. Their first episode, they went to Guatemala. Like, these guys have way more of a budget than we do. We’re, like, literally recording from our office. These guys are going to Spain to study olive tree cultivation and stuff like that, but it looks beautiful, and Scott Christopher, who you’ll probably recognize from a ton of Latter-day Saint stuff, is the host, and Scott’s just a wonderful, wonderful guy. Like, we spent a lot of time together on our trips, and love Scott and even know his brother, James.

Scott Woodward: Very cool. And I have not yet met Scott Christopher, but I want to because, Casey, do you know what my middle name is, by chance?

Casey Griffiths: Is it Christopher?

Scott Woodward: It is Christopher, yes: Scott Christopher Woodward. And so every time I hear his name, I think someone’s talking about me. And then they just stop at Christopher. Like, “Scott Christopher.”

Casey Griffiths: And you think you’re in trouble, right? Because—

Scott Woodward: I know.

Casey Griffiths: —people wouldn’t use your middle name and say “Scott Christopher” unless you were doing something you’re not supposed to be doing. So I gotcha.

Scott Woodward: So one day. One day I’ll meet this man who we share two-thirds of our name.

Casey Griffiths: I’m sure you will. 

Scott Woodward: So, Casey, here we are with this new series. Do you want to tell our listeners what we’re going to be talking about for who knows how many episodes here?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and we’ve already outlined quite a few episodes, so buckle up. This is going to be a fun ride, but succession in the presidency is our topic.

Scott Woodward: Buckle up.

Casey Griffiths: And we’re going to try to be as thorough as we can possibly be—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and even explore some of the major other restoration churches that exist out there, like Community of Christ; the Church of Jesus Christ, sometimes called the Bickertonites; and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Strangites. So we’re lining up some great guests to talk about that, but today we’ve just got to kind of lay the foundation—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —for why succession is such a big deal and why we need to know a little bit about it.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. A lot of people have a lot of questions about why there are so many branches of the Restoration post-Joseph Smith era, and we want to try to connect all those pieces and connect the dots and show historically what unfolded, why it unfolded, and hopefully come to some more holistic understanding about all that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and we used to have a great big object lesson about other restoration churches, because when you went to Kirtland, Community of Christ owned the Kirtland Temple, and in Nauvoo they owned a lot of the historic sites. That’s changed in the last little while, but it’s still important for us to understand these members of the restoration family and where they’re coming from, and to be honest, the major issue that separates most restoration churches is succession: how you choose the next leader of the church.

Scott Woodward: Mm-hmm.

Casey Griffiths: And this was kind of a natural thing for us to talk about the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum and then lead directly into succession in the presidency because—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —this is where the saints were in 1844. They had to deal with this. 

Scott Woodward: Yeah, in fact, that’s what sets up the crisis, right? Oftentimes the time period right after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum is referred to as the succession crisis. I mean, this was a crisis. Their death on June 27, 1844 will send shockwaves through the entire church and, you know, in the wake of the killings, the Saints’ first impulse was really shock and horror over the death of their leaders.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But then after the burial of the Smiths, important questions start to arise over the question of who the new leader or leaders of the church would be.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And what’s mind boggling is that was not a settled issue in the minds of most members of the church in 1844.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, I mean, in the immediate aftermath—I was putting together the timeline, and I think the Smiths were killed on Thursday, and they held the burial on Saturday. Like, it was that fast.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: There’s a deficit of leadership. Most of the major leaders of the church were outside of Nauvoo serving as part of Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There’s only two apostles there: Willard Richards and John Taylor. And John Taylor is in bad, bad shape, and so as word starts to spread out, everybody starts to gather back to Nauvoo, and as soon as they’ve kind of taken care of Joseph and Hyrum’s funeral, the next major question is, well, who’s going to lead the church?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And by the way, this isn’t just a big thing within the Restoration: This is a big thing in organized religion in general.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, that’s true.

Casey Griffiths: For instance, if you’re familiar with Islam, there’s two major sects: Sunni and Shia. And the reasons, the schism between the two, is over succession. It’s over who was supposed to take the Prophet Muhammad’s place after he passed away.

Scott Woodward: That’s true.

Casey Griffiths: In the Catholic Church, the question of who the next pope is going to be has resulted in all kinds of crazy things, even at one point where there were two popes for a number of decades, and by the way, there were two popes from 2013 to 2022, it’s just that one pope was really nice and kind of backed off and went home to just write theology while Pope Francis kind of took over, but that’s a long story for another day.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And with so much kind of fear and uncertainty among the saints, the church was really in a tenuous position following the martyrdom. The question of who’s supposed to lead the church is a major one.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And we’ll be honest with you: We think most of you have had this story spoiled for you. Like, you know who winds up leading the church, right? But before we even get to how that person became the leader of the church, we’re going to take some time this episode and just outline the possible methods for succession that the church could have gone with, because I don’t think this question was entirely settled when Joseph Smith was killed either.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, to your point, there are actually multiple paths for succession that Joseph had carved out, and several of them have a lot of legitimacy, actually. There was not one clear path of succession. And so you wonder as you study the history, like, how clearly was this laid out in Joseph Smith’s own mind? Was it clear to him? Because he taps multiple successors or at least has multiple avenues for succession that he lays out, and that’s what we want to kind of do a quick overview of today, is to look at those possible methods of succession that Joseph Smith authorized and legitimized or it’s likely that he could have—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —is kind of how we want to look at that. And we’re drawing from the great work of an awesome article, a BYU Studies article published way back in 1976 by Michael Quinn.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: It’s called “The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844.”

Casey Griffiths: It’s an oldie, but a goodie.

Scott Woodward: A oldie, but a goodie. Fantastic research that still holds up to this day.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so in no particular order, we want to walk through eight possible paths for succession that this article outlines and kind of walk through the logic of it, Joseph Smith’s actions, sometimes there’s scripture that backs these up as well, and just kind of throw them all out there for our listeners to think about and consider and kind of put yourself in the position of the Latter-day Saints in 1844. I mean, try to imagine what it would have been like to live in Nauvoo in the immediate aftermath of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum. And to say that it would have been confusing, Casey—like, Elder Holland once described this moment in time, this 1844, post-martyrdom moment. He said, “No one had had to face such a thought before. No one had even considered the church without Joseph as its prophet. And now this.” He said, “It was a moment of almost spiritual bedlam in Nauvoo.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And just that, in and of itself, seems to suggest that there wasn’t a clear preferred method of succession that Joseph Smith himself had kind of left behind. And there may have been, but there were also factors that kind of made it less likely, too. Like, when I was putting together this outline, I wanted to start out by saying “Plan A” and ”Plan B,” but the truth is, is there’s no order of priority that these come in. They were all possible routes, but there’s a lot of things scripturally, but also just kind of historically, that sort of led to the path to succession that the church follows today, so—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —you’ve got to attribute some of this to the hand of God as well, kind of putting the right people exactly where they needed to be so that succession would happen the way it was supposed to, but it’s interesting to explore these possible plans. So do you want to give us—like, just give us a quick rundown.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And then we’ll explore each on its own.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So here are the possible paths for succession in no particular order: number one, succession by a counselor in the First Presidency. Number two, succession via a special appointment, almost a secret appointment. Three, succession through the office of associate president. Number four, succession by the presiding patriarch. Number five, succession by the council of fifty. Six, succession by the quorum of the twelve apostles. Seven, succession by three priesthood councils. And eight, succession by a descendant of Joseph Smith. Now, there are a number of reasons why succession by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles made the most sense in 1844 and still does in our time, but we want to take some time and explore each one of these possibilities, okay? Just kind of open our minds and try to see the logic and the reason behind each of them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Of course, we know in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that succession through the Twelve became the standard procedure of the church for a number of spiritual, scriptural, and practical reasons, but these other methods, Casey, they represent some tantalizing possibilities, and they’re still followed by some churches that trace their heritage back to Joseph Smith and the Restoration.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so we want to walk through these, knowing that there are people alive today who still hold to some of these. We want to be very respectful and, again, look at all this from, like, the logic and the reason internally within the argument itself, so . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And there are some good arguments here, too, and some that even in our church still remain at least in, you know, vestigial form.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. 

Casey Griffiths: I’m going to tackle number one, which is succession by a counselor in the First Presidency.

Scott Woodward: Please.

Casey Griffiths: This is the one, obviously, that Sidney Rigdon was following. He’s a counselor in the First Presidency. He has been since 1833. When he comes back to Nauvoo this is the claim he’s going to make, and this one actually has a little scriptural support. For instance, revelation given on March 8, 1833—this is Doctrine and Covenants 90, I believe—is calling two counselors in the First Presidency, and verse 6 reads, “And again, verily I say unto thy brethren Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams, their sins are forgiven them also, and they are counted as equal with thee in holding the keys of this last kingdom.”

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So this is a key moment in the organization of the First Presidency, and seems to accord them as being equal partners: that there is a presiding officer, but the counselors have equal authority, and therefore it would make sense that if something happens to the president of the church, a counselor would take over.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And during Joseph Smith’s own lifetime, he seemed to have supported this idea that the counselors could act in his place. For instance, February 17, 1834, Joseph is organizing the Kirtland High Council—this is linked to the 102nd section of the Doctrine and Covenants. He spoke of the ancient church, and he said, “He,” meaning Peter, the apostle Peter, “had two men appointed as Counsellors with him, and in case Peter was absent, his Counsellors Could transact business . . . alone.” So Joseph is saying, hey, if Peter wasn’t there, then one of the counselors could take over, and they’d basically act as the leader of the church, which is essentially what we still do today, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: If the president of the church is not there or incapacitated but hasn’t passed away, the first counselor just takes over.

Scott Woodward: Yep.

Casey Griffiths: Prime example of this: Gordon B. Hinckley.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Gordon B. Hinckley was first counselor in several different church presidencies: Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W. Hunter—he even served with Spencer W. Kimball. And in each one of those cases the president of the church became incapacitated and could not serve, and Gordon B. Hinckley took over and led the church—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —without missing a beat because he was the highest functioning counselor, usually the first counselor. In the case of President Kimball he was the second counselor. So this one makes logical sense, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah. So, wait, how is this a claim for succession, though?

Casey Griffiths: Well, that’s the question, right?

Scott Woodward: It’s one thing to say he can operate when Joseph is not in the room or not in the city, but is it too far a stretch to say that he can now operate as the president of the church once Joseph Smith dies?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. See, a lot of this comes back to the question of what do we mean by absence? Like, does absence mean Joseph is on a trip and he’s not here? Could absence mean death? If absence means death, then, yes, it would make logical sense that when the president of the church dies, a counselor takes over. So Joseph Smith uses the word absent, but he doesn’t use the word death, and to be honest with you, he never seems to clearly directly say, if I die, one of the counselors in the First Presidency would take over.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There were some compelling things. For instance, in 1834—this is April 19, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Zebedee Coltrin gave Sidney Rigdon a blessing where they, “laid hands upon Brother Sidney Rigdon and confirmed upon him the blessings of wisdom and knowledge to preside over the church in the absence of Brother Joseph.” So there’s that word again.

Scott Woodward: There’s that word, absence.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And what’s interesting is after Joseph’s death, those who were kind of on team Sidney actually cite that blessing.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: They actually cite that 19th of April 1834 blessing where it says he is to preside over the church in the absence of Brother Joseph, so—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —you can see how this could go either way. This is an ambiguous word. Does absence mean death, or does it just mean, you know, if he’s not in town, then Sidney could take over and preside for a while, you know?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So that’s the thing.

Casey Griffiths: This may have been one route to go. I think the biggest thing working against this one, to be honest with you, is Sidney Rigdon himself. We’re going to dive into this in the next episode, so we won’t go into great detail here, but Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith have a complicated relationship by the time we get to Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: And it’s clear that in the early Restoration Joseph Smith relied on Sidney Rigdon to a large degree, and Sidney Rigdon really did play a huge role in the development of the church. We don’t want to discredit what he did.

Scott Woodward: No.

Casey Griffiths: But by the time we get to Nauvoo, it’s not an absolute certainty that, yeah, if Joseph is gone, Sidney’s the next most capable person to lead the church. And so historical factors play in here, too.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There’s scripture, there’s blessings, but, again, none of these definitively say a counselor should lead the church.

Scott Woodward: No.

Casey Griffiths: And a few things that we know about Sidney Rigdon by the time we get to Joseph Smith’s death are working against this particular idea. So that’s theory one: succession by a counselor.

Scott Woodward: Okay. You can see the claim. There’s the angle of the claim to lead the church. Okay. Number two: succession via a special or secret appointment.

Casey Griffiths: Ooh, I like this one. This is the most mysterious one.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: This one’s kind of fun.

Scott Woodward: This one sounds the most suspicious right out the chute, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But there is actually something here.

Casey Griffiths: There’s some precedent for this.

Scott Woodward: There’s some precedent, yeah. So in the confusing aftermath of Joseph’s death there were actually three men who claimed that they had received secret ordinations or appointments by Joseph Smith to be his successor: James Strang, probably the most famous one; Lyman White; and Alpheus Cutler. Now, as suspicious as those claims sound, they are not without precedent in the historical record. For example, Joseph’s journal on July 8, 1835, which you can find in the Far West council meeting minutes . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, it’s on the JSP site, too. Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: Yes. It says, “President Joseph Smith jr gave a history of the ordination of David Whitmer, which took place in July 1834, to be a leader, or a prophet to this church, which (ordination) was on conditions that he (J[oseph] Smith, jr), did not live to God himself.” Meaning if Joseph ever became a fallen prophet, which is a phrase that a lot of members of the church will use during that time period . . .

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: If he didn’t live to God, if he became a fallen prophet, then David Whitmer was to be his successor.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Now, that appointment, which is clearly articulated and recorded in church records, doesn’t seem to have been very widely known outside of a few people in the church in Missouri.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But it does help explain a few of the actions of David Whitmer. Like, for instance, in the apostasy in Kirtland, when they’re trying to overthrow Joseph Smith because they believe he’s a fallen prophet in the wake of the bank failure of—and all that that goes on in 1837, they say that David Whitmer is the man to lead us now, right?

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: So they’re actually trying to activate this particular promise that Joseph had made to him, had basically tapped David Whitmer to be his successor. So in some ways there’s legitimacy to that, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Now, the controversy there is, was Joseph a fallen prophet? And of course we would all say no, but you know, in the midst of that crisis, they were trying to activate this, so . . . Now, the problem here, Casey, comes when David Whitmer is excommunicated from the church in 1838.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: That effectively removes him as a possible successor for church leadership, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So David Whitmer is out of the picture, but more importantly, this secret or quiet special appointment of a person to be Joseph’s successor sets the precedent that Joseph could do so, that he can secretly set someone apart as his successor.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And that’s central to the succession claims of some restoration movements today.

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: And so I mentioned James Strang.

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: James Strang is the most famous and successful person to step forward and claim that he was secretly appointed to lead the church, right?

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: He claimed that Joseph had written a letter to him, appointing him as his successor. He also claimed that an angel appeared and ordained him to be Joseph’s successor. I mean, and this guy’s only a convert of, like, five months, right, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. He’s only been in the church for five months.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Initially he doesn’t really gather much support at all, but he eventually actually becomes a pretty viable threat to the main church. He has a really interesting history, and we’ll talk more about it in future episodes, but that was his claim.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Special appointment from Joseph Smith. And you can’t say, “Uh, that can’t happen,” because David Whitmer back in Far West. It can happen, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yep.

Scott Woodward: Another one, the second one that claimed secret appointment, was Lyman White. He’s actually a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. And Lyman White, he claims in a letter that he wrote in 1855 that back in 1834 Joseph Smith had ordained him to the office of Benamey. I don’t even know what that is, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know what that is either.

Scott Woodward: Benamey. Joseph had ordained him to the office of Benamey, B-E-N-A-M-E-Y—

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: —in the presence of an angel, whom he referred to as “the angel of the seventh dispensation.” And Lyman White insists that Joseph’s commission to him in 1844 to establish an LDS colony in Texas was a lifelong mission, and so he basically—when the Quorum of the Twelve tried to call him to come to Utah, he basically says, not a chance.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I’m staying here. This is my appointment. And after a while, after his belligerence to defy those repeated requests for him to come, he gets excommunicated.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And let me add parenthetically, last fall the John Whitmer Historical Association meetings took place in Fredericksburg, Texas, which is just outside of San Antonio.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And it’s where Lyman White’s colony was for a little while. Zodiac, Texas. There’s still a big marker in the middle of a field that marks the location of Zodiac, and oh my goodness. What those people went through was just heartbreaking. Like, honestly, Lyman White is neither here nor there, but what his colony suffered in Texas was just rough stuff. In fact, Kyle Walker, who’s a great scholar at BYU–Idaho, shout out to Kyle—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and I actually found one of their burial grounds while we were out there exploring, and oh my goodness, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: Lyman White, however, shows up in almost every scenario that we’re going to talk about today, and so this guy was in a lot of places doing a lot of things, no doubt.

Scott Woodward: He’s something else, yes.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay, third claimant to be Joseph Smith’s successor by special appointment was Alpheus Cutler. This leads to a group called the Cutlerites amongst the Restoration branches. He claimed that sometime prior to Joseph Smith’s death, Joseph organized and ordained what Cutler calls a quorum of seven, to whom Joseph gave all the rights, keys, powers, privileges, and blessings of that quorum, and Alpheus Cutler was specifically designated as the one, “whose right to act as prophet, seer, and revelator was to be in force upon the whole world from that very hour.” And so he now had the, “undisputed right to organize and build up the kingdom the same as Joseph had done,” quoting from a letter from Alpheus Cutler. So he parted ways with Quorum of the Twelve in Winter Quarters in 1848, and he goes out and establishes a colony of followers in Iowa. And Alpheus Cutler was—he was trusted. He was a member of the high council in Nauvoo. He was a member of the Council of Fifty.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. He shows up in a lot of early sources.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And Joseph Smith called him Father Cutler. I mean, he’s a respected man in Nauvoo who had risen to some prominence there, and then he claims that Joseph had secretly appointed him to be prophet, seer, revelator over the whole church—over the whole world, actually.

Casey Griffiths: Over the whole world. And I should mention, too, there is still a Cutlerite church in Independence, Missouri. I don’t know if you and I visited there.

Scott Woodward: I don’t think we did.

Casey Griffiths: But I dropped by one time, and they let us in and talked to us for a while. They were very, very polite. The Cutlerites—they wouldn’t call themselves that. They’d call themselves the Church of Jesus Christ. They do still practice a form of the temple endowment and baptisms for the dead, but I believe there were less than ten of them at the time that we visited.

Scott Woodward: Like, total church membership.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I think so. I think so. I don’t want to be inaccurate there, but just a handful that still remain. Interesting group. 

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So there you go. So while the claims of James Strang, Lyman White, and Alpheus Cutler to secret ordination as successor obviously contradict one another and have their own challenges—but none of them can be dismissed on the grounds of going contrary to precedent.

Casey Griffiths: Right.

Scott Woodward: Joseph had tapped David Whitmer privately, secretly, to be his successor. So each of them have a certain appeal to various church members who are looking for a shepherd in the chaotic aftermath of Joseph’s death in 1844.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And each of them kind of becomes the founder of their own movement. Some survive to this day. Some kind of die out at the time, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: This is the most mysterious one, and it’s the probably hardest one to verify.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And James Strang, when we talk about him, be ready for a wild ride. Like, some crazy stuff happens.

Scott Woodward: Buckle up.

Casey Griffiths: All right, so I’m going to do the next one. Number three: succession through the office of associate president. And this is the one that probably comes closest to being, say, Plan A.

Scott Woodward: Mm. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: That it seems like a lot of people said, yeah, this was the plan for succession that Joseph Smith most favored, and there’s some good reasons why. From the beginning, from the organization of the church, there was a first elder designated and a second elder. Like, section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the articles and covenants of the church, designates, this is in verse 2, Joseph Smith as the first elder of the church, and in verse 3, “Oliver Cowdery, who was . . . called of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to be the second elder of this church.” So it makes sense that Oliver’s designated the second elder, and the importance of his title didn’t seem to go away as the church progressed and got bigger. Oliver’s there for almost every important angelic ministration. Like, he’s there when John the Baptist shows up. That’s in Doctrine and Covenants 13.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And he’s there when Peter and James and John show up. That’s in section 27, verse 12 and 13.

Scott Woodward: Yep.

Casey Griffiths: He’s there when the voice of the Lord in the chamber of old father Whitmer tells them to ordain each other to the Melchizedek Priesthood. And the one that’s come up a lot in the last couple of months, he’s there in the Kirtland Temple when the Savior and Moses, Elijah, and Elias all appear and give the priesthood keys.

Scott Woodward: He’s there at every key moment.

Casey Griffiths: He’s there in almost every key moment of priesthood restoration that’s there.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And Oliver actually was ordained as—the title was the Associate President of the Church—on December 5, 1834. He keeps the minutes of the meeting, but this is how he explains his own duties in the minutes: he says, “The office of Assistant President is to assist in presiding over the whole church and to officiate in the absence of the president. According to their rank and appointment, Viz President Cowdery, First; President Rigdon, Second; President Williams, Third as they were severally called, the office of this priesthood is also to act as a spokesman, taking Aaron for an example.” So the associate or assistant president is kind of the Aaron to Joseph Smith’s Moses, and in that notation he actually places himself above Sidney Rigdon—

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —and Frederick G. Williams, the other members of the First Presidency. And a lot of people agree that this set the associate or assistant president up for succession. However, just like David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery is disqualified from succession when he’s excommunicated in 1838.

Scott Woodward: That’ll do it.

Casey Griffiths: And the office of assistant president is just vacant for several years.

Scott Woodward: Is it ever filled?

Casey Griffiths: It is. It is. In Doctrine and Covenants 124, this is after they get to Nauvoo, verses 94 and 96, the Lord specifically places the responsibilities that Oliver Cowdery had onto Hyrum Smith. In fact, this is verse 94: “That he [Hyrum] may act in concert also with my servant Joseph . . . and be crowned with the same blessing, and glory, and honor, and priesthood, and gifts of the priesthood, that were once put upon him that was my servant Oliver Cowdery.”

Scott Woodward: Ooh. So full transfer from all the blessings that Oliver Cowdery was heir to, as it were—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —and had a right to. Now that’s all being placed on Hyrum Smith as the new associate president.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And just to add to that, there’s another person that endorses this succession plan that’s really surprising.

Scott Woodward: Who’s that?

Casey Griffiths: That’s Brigham Young. Brigham Young actually says, this is the succession plan.

Scott Woodward: Now, why is that surprising?

Casey Griffiths: Because you’d think Brigham Young would be like, I’m the succession plan, man. But Brigham Young was intellectually honest enough to say, no, I wasn’t plan A. Here’s how he explains it: this is a discourse given about four months after Joseph and Hyrum are killed. Brigham says, “If Hyrum had lived, he would not have stood between Joseph and the Twelve, but he would have stood for Joseph.” Then he just says directly, “Did Joseph ordain any man to take his place? He did. Who was it? It was Hyrum. But Hyrum fell a martyr before Joseph did. If Hyrum had lived, he would have acted for Joseph.” So no less a figure than Brigham Young endorses this as the plan for succession that the assistant president of the church was going to take over.

Scott Woodward: So why don’t we have the position of associate president today as the succession plan? Why don’t we just follow that now?

Casey Griffiths: I was hoping you’d ask that, Scott, because I’ve got it in the outline very next.

Scott Woodward: You do?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I do, man. I’m reading your brain here. Joseph Fielding Smith, this is the president of the church in the 1970s, who’s the grandson of Hyrum Smith, so he’s got a little bit of a stake in this, actually addressed this. He said, “If Oliver was ordained to hold the keys jointly with the prophet, and after his loss by transgression this authority was conferred on Hyrum Smith, then why do we not have today in the church the same order of things and an assistant president, as well as two counselors in the First Presidency?”

Scott Woodward: That’s my exact question.

Casey Griffiths: That’s the question. You phrased it nearly as well as he did. His answer—he said, “The answer to this is a simple one. It’s because the peculiar condition requiring two witnesses to establish the work is not required after the work is established. Joseph and Hyrum Smith stand at the head of this dispensation, jointly holding the keys, as the two necessary witnesses fulfilling the law as it’s set down by our Lord in His answer to the Jews, see Matthew 18, verse 16. Since the gospel will never again be restored, there will be no occasion for this condition to arise again. We all look back to the two special witnesses called to bear witness in full accord with the divine law.” 

Scott Woodward: So it’s a once-in-a-dispensation kind of a thing.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a once-in-a-dispensation—and I might be wrong here, but I seem to recall that in the same chapter, Joseph Fielding Smith suggested that if Oliver Cowdery hadn’t been excommunicated, he would have gone to Carthage Jail.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, I think he did say that.

Casey Griffiths: Which not only makes logical sense, but it makes theological sense, too. But that’s Monday morning quarterbacking. That’s not what happened.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Hyrum was the one that was there, and it seems like a lot of prominent people agree that this was plan A for succession. The assistant president of the church was going to take over.

Scott Woodward: And the Lord did say to Joseph and Oliver, I think it—is it D&C 6 where he says, if the people of this generation do to you even as they have done unto me, so be it. You’ll dwell with me in glory, right? Meaning, if they kill you, that’s okay.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He was talking to Joseph and Oliver Cowdery.

Casey Griffiths: Oliver, yeah. That’s a good point. That’s a really good point. So that’s probably plan A for succession, but it didn’t play out.

Scott Woodward: So succession by assistant president.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay, number four is succession by the presiding patriarch. Hmm. This one’s interesting. So the next possible path for succession also involves Hyrum Smith, actually, who was serving as the presiding patriarch of the church since the death of his father, Joseph Smith, Sr., in 1840. Now, here’s a statement that we have to slow down and think about. So Joseph Smith, Jr. said, “The patriarchal office is the highest office in the church, and Father Smith,” speaking of his own father, Joseph Smith, Sr., “conferred this office on Hyrum Smith on his deathbed.” So, ooh, hold on. Like, this statement is undoubtedly confusing, because he says that the patriarchal office is the highest office in the church.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So there’s multiple ways to interpret that. Joseph may have been referring to the patriarchal order of the priesthood, potentially, or that the office of father comes first in the lives of all men in the church. Maybe he’s talking about it as the highest office of honor, rather than anything about priesthood keys or ability to, like, lead the church. In fact, in the Kirtland Temple, I was thinking about this, Casey, didn’t Joseph have his father sit in the highest pulpits behind him? Joseph took the middle pulpit, and his father, Father Smith, would be right up behind him as kind of this honorary position in the Kirtland Temple.

Casey Griffiths: I think that’s right, and I do remember reading somewhere that Joseph Smith, Sr. often presided in meetings in the Kirtland Temple as well, so.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. It’s an office of great honor. Clearly it’s not the highest office in the church in terms of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but I think Joseph is talking about how much honor that particular office holds.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so Joseph, you know, declares publicly on the 16th of July, 1843, that Hyrum Smith should hold the office of prophet to the church, as it was his birthright. “Prophet to the church” is what he calls that office of patriarch. Now, his remarks caused some to think that he was, like, resigning his post when he says Hyrum is now the prophet of the church. That’s not exactly what he said. What he’s saying is that by becoming the patriarch of the church, the one over the revelatory blessings of those who come and receive patriarchal blessings, he was now the church’s, like, prophet in that sense, right? So you can see the ambiguity of the language opened the possibility for misunderstanding here, but this is a viable pattern set forth in scripture, isn’t it, Casey? Like, Book of Mormon, we have spiritual leadership being passed from family member to family member.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Not just father to son, but also brother to brother, like Nephi to Jacob, but also father to son as well.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: The Almas, the Helamans, the Mormon and Moroni, but then the problem this brings up is the idea of meritocracy. What if there’s someone in your family line who’s not really the best guy to succeed you, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And that’s what happens here, actually. The big problem with this plan of succession is William Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, that’s the problem, right?

Scott Woodward: William is the only remaining Smith brother after Samuel Smith dies about a month after Joseph and Hyrum.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Now William is the last Smith brother, and he was an apostle in the Quorum of the Twelve, but, man, he showed a serious pattern of instability in his life: He was erratic, he was inflammatory, and then he was humble, but then he would bounce back, and he’d be just a really hard guy to work with, and so here’s an example of what he did after the deaths of his brothers. Shortly after the martyrdom, he petitions the Quorum of the Twelve for him to humbly take the place of patriarch now that his brother Hyrum was gone, that he would be the presiding patriarch of the church. He said, I recognize this has nothing to do with succession. I just want to be the presiding patriarch in the family line of the Smiths. And the brethren obliged him. The brethren then ordained him. The other apostles ordain him to the office of presiding patriarch on the 24th of May, 1845. And right after that, he seizes upon this succession precedent, and he claims that as Hyrum Smith’s patriarchal successor, he has the right to preside over the entire church as Hyrum would have done. So he—you know, it felt more like he was setting a trap.

Casey Griffiths: It was a bait and switch, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Where he’s now saying, ah! I’m the patriarch. I now preside over the church. Well, obviously the Quorum of the Twelve disagreed. He publishes a pamphlet in October 1845 against the authority of the Twelve Apostles to govern the church, and for that, he is excommunicated. He will bounce around from church to church. He’ll become a Strangite. He’ll go from place to place, but eventually he lands in the RLDS church, where his nephew is president of the church.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So that seems to be one way that could potentially have been a viable path to succession.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But, again, all the people that were in that position died—Joseph Smith, Sr., Hyrum Smith—and then William Smith was unfit, as it appears here.

Casey Griffiths: And we should mention that the office of presiding patriarch did endure in the church into the 1970s.

Scott Woodward: That’s true.

Casey Griffiths: In fact, the last presiding patriarch was Eldred G. Smith, a wonderful man who passed away in 2013, but, boy, the history of presiding patriarch is a complex story that might merit its own episode or series of episodes, and part of it was that it was, like, familial and—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —appointing somebody based on their family line has problems. It just does.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And the saga of the presiding patriarch of the church, in some ways, illustrated some of those challenges that happen when a person is chosen because of their last name and not because of their merits or revelation.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So William Smith is not going to be a great option for president of the church, and that kind of torpedoes that one.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Okay. Next plan is succession by the Council of Fifty, and we might need to contextualize this because I don’t know if we’ve talked about the Council of Fifty a ton.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: The Council of Fifty was an organization that was set up kind of in the last four months of Joseph Smith’s life, and they’ve always been kind of shrouded in this air of mystery, because we know they existed, and we also knew that there were minute books that the Council of Fifty kept, but until 2015 the church didn’t make the minute books available to researchers, so—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —that kind of led to all kinds of speculation about the Council of Fifty minutes. What did they say? Was there something explosive in there?

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: And then in 2015, the minutes were published by the Joseph Smith Papers. In fact, you can go read them on the Joseph Smith Papers site, and they kind of just, instead of causing this explosion, sort of landed with, you know, a quiet thud. And it’s because—now that I’ve read the minutes, I was like, why were they keeping this secret? And it seems like in the 20th century, when church leaders kind of classified documents as open to researchers or not, they were worried about Latter-day Saints being seen as patriotic Americans. And can you guess what the big secret is in the Council of Fifty minutes, Scott?

Scott Woodward: Is it political?

Casey Griffiths: It’s political, and it’s that they did not like the United States government very much. 

Scott Woodward: I can’t imagine. I cannot imagine, the way the government treated us, that they would have some people in their ranks that didn’t really like the government.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So the good news and the bad news is that in the 1950s, complaining about the government might have been seen as unpatriotic. Today, everybody hates the government, so no big deal.

Scott Woodward: So the Council of Fifty minutes was political in what sense?

Casey Griffiths: In the sense that they’re getting ready to leave Nauvoo. Like, Joseph Smith and all the leaders of the church have openly said, like, their next stop, if they can’t live peaceably in Nauvoo, is to leave the United States altogether—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and go west, basically. And the plan was to set up their own government.

Scott Woodward: Hmm.

Casey Griffiths: So Council of Fifty is political, essentially.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They were going to govern the Saints in their new home in the West, and in the time leading up to that, they seem to have presided over Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign. They also organized the Exodus West, in part. Like, after Joseph Smith was killed, Brigham Young took over as leader of the Council of Fifty, and the Council of Fifty, again, is interesting. The minutes reveal that if this is the model for the millennial kingdom of God, there’s freedom of religion. That’s what they spent a lot of time talking about in the Council of Fifty minutes, was that everyone’s right to religious worship should be protected.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: The Council of Fifty also deliberately included several people who weren’t Latter-day Saints because they wanted this kind of pluralistic model, where everybody would have a voice regardless of their religious background, and part of the argument for the Council of Fifty to choose is that this is the group Joseph Smith was directly involved with right before his death. The counter argument is that only for four months. And a lot of people would argue this was a political organization, not an ecclesiastical organization, so they can’t lead the church. However, there were some people who felt like the Council of Fifty was. For instance, Benjamin Johnson, who’s a member of the Council of Fifty, he shows up in a lot of early church history stuff, said, “At one of the last meetings of the Council of Fifty, after all had been completed and the keys of power committed, and in the presence of the Quorum of the Twelve and others who were encircled around him, he arose and gave a review of his life and sufferings of the testimonies he had borne,” this is Joseph Smith speaking, “and said the Lord had now accepted his labors and sacrifices and did not require him any longer to carry the responsibilities and burden of bearing off this kingdom. And turning to those around him, including the Twelve, he said, ‘and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I now place it upon you, my brethren of the council, and I shake my skirts clear of all responsibility from this time forth,’ springing from the floor and shaking his skirt at the same time.”

Scott Woodward: So he’s not just talking to the Quorum of the Twelve here: He’s addressing the Quorum of the Twelve and the Council of the Fifty.

Casey Griffiths: Well, that’s the question, is the Quorum of the Twelve were part of the Council of Fifty.

Scott Woodward: Right, right, right. Yeah. Well said.

Casey Griffiths: Is he saying this to the Quorum of the Twelve, or is he saying this to the Council of Fifty and the Quorum of the Twelve are present? Later on, the Quorum of the Twelve are going to argue, no, he was talking to the Twelve when he said this, but there were people in Nauvoo, like George Miller and Alexander Badlam, who felt like, no, he was talking to the Council of Fifty.

Scott Woodward: And you can see their point.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, like, Alpheus Cutler was part of the Council of Fifty, who we talked about earlier. Lyman White was part of the Council of Fifty.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: This is what Lyman White says: he says, “You will readily see that had not the Fifty constituted the highest authorities, it would have been a species of weakness to have ordained all the highest authorities into that number.” So Lyman White is arguing, no, the Council of Fifty was where it was at when Joseph Smith was killed. But there’s a lot of problems to this approach, too. Council of Fifty’s so new. There’s no scriptural precedent for it. If there was a revelation for the Council of Fifty, it’s never been canonized.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And even though Brigham Young presided over the Council of Fifty for a couple of years, it kind of just fades away. John Taylor starts it again, but after John Taylor, no president of the church has ever seen a need for a Council of Fifty because the church has primarily been an ecclesiastical organization since then, so not a good case to be made for that one.

Scott Woodward: There was a moment where two members of the council in 1844 come and try to persuade three of the apostles that the Council of Fifty’s role was to reorganize the church and set things up, but Willard Richards and George A. Smith, they met in council with Elder Taylor. I’m now reading from some notes on this. They meet with Elder Taylor at his house, and Bishop George Miller and Alexander Bedlam come, and they say let’s call together the Council of Fifty and organize the church, but they were told that the Council of Fifty was not a church organization.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And that the organization of the church belonged to the priesthood alone. And so that’s an important distinction that it seems like some members of the Council of Fifty did not understand, is this was the extra-ecclesiastical organization, not the ecclesiastical organization itself.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And that succession in the presidency is succession to the presidency of the church unit, not this political unit. And that was the distinction these three apostles were trying to help them to see, and I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point they’re making.

Casey Griffiths: That’s a really good point. And like I said, the Council of Fifty was in its infancy. It just really hadn’t been worked out exactly what it was going to do.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so this one’s pretty shaky, to be honest with you. But there are reasons, I guess you’d say, why the Council of Fifty could have been.

Scott Woodward: You can see the logic of where they were coming from.

Casey Griffiths: Sure. Sure. So what’s next?

Scott Woodward: The sixth path for succession to the presidency is succession by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: Spoiler alert.

Casey Griffiths: This is the one followed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And for a bunch of really good reasons. So we just kind of put it in the middle of the pack here, even though we’re just going to lay down our cards and say this is the one we favor.

Scott Woodward: This is the one. So this one’s pretty scriptural as well. So the support for this begins in Doctrine and Covenants 107, which came right on the heels of the Quorum of the Twelve even being established. The Quorum of the Twelve was established in February of 1835, and then the very next month, get section 107. And so in verse 23 and 24, I have the key nugget. It says, verse 23, “The twelve traveling councilors are called to be the Twelve Apostles, or special witnesses of the name of Christ in all the world—thus differing from other officers in the church in the duties of their calling. And they,” the Quorum of the Twelve, “form a quorum, equal in authority and power to the three presidents previously mentioned.” Ooh. So the Quorum of the Twelve forms a quorum equal in authority to the First Presidency. So, now, that doesn’t mean that under normal circumstances the Twelve has power over the First Presidency. The revelation declares a few verses later, verse 33, “The Twelve are a Traveling Presiding High Council, to officiate in the name of the Lord under the direction of the Presidency of the Church.” So when there is a presidency of the church called the First Presidency, they are subordinate to that presidency. Okay, so why give the Twelve equal authority and power to the three presidents if they are only operating under the direction of the presidency of the church? That’s a really important thing to slow down and consider here, right? And there seems like one really important possible explanation is that they are supposed to take over if something happens to the First Presidency. Let’s say, I don’t know, the president of the church dies, and the First Presidency is dissolved. Now what? Now who leads the church, right? Section 107 is saying, well, Quorum of the Twelve has equal authority with the Quorum of the First Presidency.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So that’s kind of a really straightforward reading of those verses. This is the logic that Brigham Young will assert in Nauvoo. We’ll talk about it more in our next episode, exactly what he says and how he goes into this. But this is the logic that he asserts as church members are meeting in Nauvoo and thinking about, you know, do we follow Sidney Rigdon? Do we follow Quorum of the Twelve? Like, what do we do? And Brigham Young will talk about this very point in principle.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And we’re going to dive into those reasons a little bit more. We’re just kind of giving you a preview here.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But I just wanted to emphasize, this was a perfectly viable plan for succession.

Scott Woodward: Yep.

Casey Griffiths: And it’s scriptural, right? So . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There’s a good case to be made, but there’s also a ton of other reasons why the Twelve were the most logical choice, and we’re going to get to those next episode, so stay tuned.

Scott Woodward: OK. Teaser.

Casey Griffiths: If we’re following the logic just laid out in section 107, it does open up another interesting possibility that never gets discussed in the church, but I think is absolutely fascinating.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And that is succession determined by three different priesthood councils.

Scott Woodward: Ah, shoot.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so stay with me here, because the language in section 107 not only talks about the Twelve having equal authority to the presidency, to the First Presidency, but take a look at this: verse 25 and 26: “The Seventy are . . . called to preach the gospel, and to be especial witnesses unto the Gentiles and in all the world . . . and they form a quorum, equal in authority to that of the Twelve special witnesses or Apostles just named.”

Scott Woodward: Ah, shoot. So the Seventy are equal to the Twelve.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. If you’re doing your mental arithmetic here, the Seventy are equal to the Twelve, and the Twelve are equal to the First Presidency, therefore, let’s do a little algebra. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Seventy are equal to the First Presidency also. Interesting.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: However, however, verse 34 actually places a similar limitation. It says, “The Seventy are to act in the name of the Lord, under the direction of the Twelve or the traveling high council, in building up the church and regulating all affairs in the same in all nations.” So, again, it sort of sounds like the Seventy are, like, a worst-case scenario type thing, where if we lost the entire First Presidency and the entire Twelve, they’ve got the authority to lead the church, although they might not have all the keys.

Scott Woodward: Sounds like a problem, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Gets twistier. You ready?

Scott Woodward: It gets twistier? Oh, geez. Yeah. Okay. Let’s hear it.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, okay. In section 107, just a few verses later, verses 36 and 37, it introduces a third Priesthood group that could lead.

Scott Woodward: Whoo.

Casey Griffiths: It says, “The standing high councils, [of] the stakes of Zion, form a quorum equal in authority in the affairs of the church, in all their decisions, to the quorum of the presidency or to the traveling high council.”

Scott Woodward: Which is the Twelve, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, that’s the Twelve, right?

Scott Woodward: So wait, wait, wait: so quorum of the presidency’s First Presidency, and traveling high council is Twelve. So the stake high councils?!

Casey Griffiths: Yes. And now it even goes on to say this: “The high council in Zion,” that’s Missouri, “form a quorum equal in authority in the affairs of the church, in all their decisions, to the councils of the Twelve at the stakes of Zion.”

Scott Woodward: Uhhh . . .

Casey Griffiths: And so either, like, you could interpret this to be all the high councils in every stake or the high council in Zion—

Scott Woodward: Uh-huh.

Casey Griffiths: —but it sets up this third organization, which seems to be the standing stake high councils that exist in the church.

Scott Woodward: So the collective standing high councils in the church are equal to the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Thus saith section 107.

Casey Griffiths: Worst-case scenario, okay? The First Presidency, the Twelve, and the Seventy are all taken out. Like, a bomb goes off during General Conference.

Scott Woodward: Oh, boy.

Casey Griffiths: Could the standing high councils step forward, according to this revelation, and take up leadership in the church? They wouldn’t have the keys, but does Section 107 give them the authority? And some people have argued that the Twelve, the Seventy, and the standing high councils were supposed to form kind of this triumvirate that served under the direction of the First Presidency, but were meant to kind of operate equally. Now, that’s not how it worked out in practical matters—

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Casey Griffiths: —but it’s a tantalizing possibility.

Scott Woodward: Well, okay. So this seems like a interesting kind of hypothetical scenario, but, like, what’s wild is somebody in Nauvoo actually thought to go this direction, right? After the death of Joseph and Hyrum. And we’re not talking about just any old somebody. Tell us more about that story.

Casey Griffiths: No, this seems to have been the scenario favored by Emma Smith.

Scott Woodward: Emma Smith. 

Casey Griffiths: So according to one source, in April 1845—this is almost a year after Joseph and Hyrum are killed—Emma quoted Doctrine and Covenants 107 to argue that William Marks, who was the president of the Nauvoo High Council and the president of the Nauvoo Stake, should have been the leader of the church.

Scott Woodward: Whoa. So William Marks is Emma Smith’s choice, the president of the Nauvoo Stake.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And what gets me about this is that according to the source, she quoted section 107—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and said this, which is really, really fascinating, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: William Marks doesn’t seem to follow this, doesn’t really pursue it, and William Marks is also—well before Emma makes this argument he’s dropped from the high council of the Nauvoo Stake.

Scott Woodward: Uh-huh.

Casey Griffiths: On September 10, 1844 he’s dropped from the high council. On October 7 he’s removed as the president of the Nauvoo Stake, but that’s the reasoning that Emma uses.

Scott Woodward: Do you remember why he was dropped?

Casey Griffiths: I’m not exactly sure. I was mentioning to you before, there’s a new book on William Marks, and I need to pick it up and read a little bit more, but I don’t know the exact reason why he was dropped, except to say that later on he becomes an ardent opponent of plural marriage, and it seems like he’s not on board with plural marriage.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Which, I think, is one of the top reasons why Emma Smith would endorse him, is because William Marks is not pro-polygamy, and he’s not pro-temple.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: To be fair, those go together in the minds of basically everyone that was in the know in Nauvoo. Like, temple and polygamy would go together, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So Emma is, you know—with her struggles with that, this makes sense that William Marks would be her choice, and she’s using D&C 107 to argue for that. So interesting.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, interesting. So interesting, right? And by the way, William Marks never seems to have, at least during this time, seriously pursued a bid to be president of the church.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But he does, you know, separate from the Twelve. He follows Sidney Rigdon, then he follows James Strang, and then he’s a key player in the reorganized church.

Scott Woodward: Uh-huh.

Casey Griffiths: He serves in the reorganized church starting in 1859. He’s actually one of the people that ordains Joseph Smith III as president of that church in 1860, and then from 1863 until his death in 1872, he’s a counselor to Joseph III. So among my Community of Christ friends, because the Reorganized Church becomes Community of Christ, William Marks is an honored and respected name, and—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —he seems to have been a very, very skilled leader, but he just doesn’t end up with our movement in particular.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Wow. So interesting.

Casey Griffiths: One more to go. You ready?

Scott Woodward: Last one. Number eight.

Casey Griffiths: All right. Last one is succession by a descendant of Joseph Smith. So should the prophetic office pass from father to son? Now, this one’s a long shot in 1844 because Joseph Smith III, the prophet’s oldest son, is 11 when his father’s killed.

Scott Woodward: He’s 11 years old.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Mm. Okay. So how would succession in the presidency work in this scenario?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I mean, best case scenario, if he becomes the leader of the church, he’s a figurehead, you know? He doesn’t really have any real power. He’s just kind of there to preserve and uphold the Smith name, and then he grows into his leadership, which, weirdly enough, it seems like a lot of people would have been okay with this, would have been okay with Joseph Smith III just growing up and serving in the leadership and eventually becoming leader of the church. There’s indications that Joseph Smith felt that his family, his descendants, would have a role in leading the church.

Scott Woodward: Like, he has a lot of family in various leadership positions in the church.

Casey Griffiths: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Right? I mean, this isn’t a stretch, to suggest that he would want one of his own family members to—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —succeed him, right? Like . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, just to run quickly through it, his father was presiding patriarch, and Hyrum was assistant president, presiding patriarch. His uncle, John Smith, has a prominent leadership role. He has two cousins, Amasa Lyman and George A. Smith, who are both apostles in the Quorum of the Twelve. And there’s even a revelation: section 124 verse 58 told Joseph, “In thee and in thy seed shall the kindred of the earth be blessed,” which seems to indicate his descendants have a role to play. But this is the one that kind of becomes the flashpoint for one of the biggest schisms of the Restoration, which is between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Reorganized Church, which becomes Community of Christ.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Community of Christ argued for over a century that Joseph III was supposed to be the leader, that the prophetic office was supposed to be lineal, passed from father to son, and they had a lot of people in their church that kind of supported that. For instance, Lyman White, his name pops up again. Lyman White said that when Joseph left Liberty Jail he designated a youth, that’s the word he uses, but he’s implying it’s Joseph III, to take his place. There’s a guy named James Whitehead who later on joins the RLDS church but serves as private secretary to Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. He wrote, “I recollect a meeting that was held in the winter of 1843 at Nauvoo, Illinois, prior to Joseph Smith’s death, at which the appointment was made by him, Joseph Smith, of his successor. His son, Joseph, was selected as his successor. He was ordained and anointed at that meeting. Hyrum Smith, the patriarch, anointed him, and Joseph, his father, blessed him and ordained him, and Newell K. Whitney poured the oil on his head, and he was set apart to be his father’s successor in office, holding all the powers his father held.” And then Whitehead says that this meeting was ratified in a general meeting in Nauvoo attended by 3,000 church members, which, there’s a few problems with that, too.

Scott Woodward: So let’s talk about this source, James Whitehead, because in that BYU Studies article that we’re pulling the bulk of this information from, Quinn gives a critique on this source. Maybe this is helpful at this moment. He said, “There are certain problems with Whitehead’s testimony that bear consideration. First, no contemporary minutes of the 1843 ceremony or ratifying meeting are extant.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay? “Moreover, no reference to either the 1839 ceremony or the 1843 ceremony has been located in the diaries of the principal men involved or in the available journals of Joseph Smith’s private secretaries. In addition, Whitehead’s memory about his own role in Nauvoo seems to have been faulty. Rather than being the only private secretary to Joseph Smith from 42 to 44, Whitehead was a clerk on the Nauvoo Temple Building Committee and also a clerk in the office of the trustee-in-trust.” He says, “Despite Whitehead’s claim that he alone kept Joseph Smith’s private journals, letterbooks and correspondence and journals are in the handwriting of Willard Richards.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: “And [in the] others in the handwriting of William Clayton who, in fact, did serve as the prophet’s private secretary from 1842-44.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And one more thing: he says Whitehead in 1874 privately admitted that he actually didn’t witness the 1843 ordination of Joseph Smith III, but instead had heard it discussed by others. So Quinn just says we’ve got to take this witness pretty cautiously.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Because of some of the things he’s claiming, right?

Casey Griffiths: And his name just doesn’t pop up with the kind of frequency that William Clayton or Willard Richards or John Taylor or any of the people that were working closely with Joseph Smith do, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And his claim is a big claim. Like, this would be a big deal. Others would have probably talked about this, at least a few of those 3,000 witnesses that saw it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. But the idea that Joseph’s boys would grow up and take leadership positions in the church wasn’t something that was really controversial in 1844. It seemed like everybody was fine with it.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: In fact, Brigham Young in 1860—this is just after Joseph Smith III takes over as president of the RLDS church—Brigham Young gives a discourse where he says, “What of Joseph Smith’s family? What of his boys? I have prayed from the beginning for Sister Emma and for the whole family. There is not a man in this church that has entertained better feelings towards them. Joseph said to me, ‘God will take care of my children when I am taken. They are in the hands of God, and when they make their appearance before this people full of his power, there are none but what will say, ”Amen. We are ready to receive you.”’” And so Brigham Young is basically saying, yeah, if they would come to the leadership of the church and present themselves, we’d welcome them with open arms.

Scott Woodward: In Utah.

Casey Griffiths: In Utah, yeah. But a few years later, after Joseph Smith III had demonstrated sort of open hostility towards the church in Utah, Brigham Young was still hopeful that one of his children would come forward and join the church. For instance, in another discourse, Brigham Young said, “Long before his death, Joseph the prophet had said to me all about his son, that he should have a son born to him, and his name should be called David, and on him in some future time will rest the responsibility that now rests upon me. This is Joseph’s declaration to me and others sometime before his death. I can produce plenty of witnesses to the truth of this if necessary.” This might be where you hear a lot of those strange rumors in the church about a man named David leading the church. Joseph does have a son named David. It’s David Hyrum. It’s the child that Emma is pregnant with when Joseph Smith is killed, and he’s still held in warm affection by Community of Christ, too. Like, I’ve seen his journals and things. He was an artist and just a really sort of simple, beautiful soul, but David Hyrum never comes to Utah, never joins the church, never becomes part of church leadership. In fact, a number of difficult things happened to him, and he ends his life in a mental asylum. So, again, I just use that to illustrate that even Brigham Young wasn’t hostile to the idea of succession by a child, but I think Brigham Young also had a healthy balance of this idea of a meritocracy that, yeah, they have a place with us, they’re part of our family, but we’re going to go through the proper channels. They have to come. They have to be part of the church, which Joseph’s sons never do. They remain in the reorganized church and stay there. So that one’s, on a practical level, just not going to work, you know? You can’t have any of Joseph’s sons lead the church. They’re not old enough. Many of them grow up to become remarkable people in their own right, but it just doesn’t seem like in 1844 that’s going to fly. It’s not going to work.

Scott Woodward: Sure. Okay. So there are the eight possible succession paths, either explicitly charted out by Joseph Smith, or you can kind of infer that they were a possibility. Is that a fair way to characterize all that?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So in 1844, there are a few possible options. Some are not realistic, like having a child take over at that time. Others just weren’t pursued. For instance, it seems like the Seventy and the stake high councils will never really vie for the leadership of the church in any real way, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so if we go back to this time period of 1844 and just kind of lock into this time, particularly in the months just after the martyrdom, really, there’s only two contending options for church leadership, correct?

Casey Griffiths: Correct. Yeah. The only two realistic options in 1844 are Sidney Rigdon, that’s succession by a counselor in the First Presidency, or Brigham Young and the Twelve.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So in our next episode we’re going to zoom in on those two contenders.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Stay tuned, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week Casey and I take a close look at the viability of the claims for succession of Sidney Rigdon versus those of Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. In other words, we’ll discuss the crucial backstory to the moment it all comes rushing together to a head at a watershed church meeting held on the 8th of August, 1844. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. While we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.