Scott Woodward: Who was James J. Strang, and why were his claims so appealing to so many of those Latter-day Saints who did not follow Brigham Young and the Twelve after the Succession Crisis of 1844? Why did his movement experience so much initial success, but then dissipate so quickly? Some have made strong comparisons between James Strang and Joseph Smith, but how accurate are these comparisons, really? Today on Church History Matters we sit down with Dr. Kyle Beshears, a friend and expert researcher on the Strangite branch of the Restoration, to take a deep dive into the details of the history and the current state of this movement. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our tenth episode in this series dealing with succession in the presidency. Now, let’s get into it. Hello, Casey Griffiths.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott. We are so lucky to have a guest with us today who’s going to talk a little bit about Strangite history. This is Kyle Beshears. Say hi, Kyle.

Kyle Beshears: Hey, everyone.

Casey Griffiths: We might—well, let me read your bio, and then we’re going to pick your brain for a second, and then we’re going to dive in.

Kyle Beshears: Sure!

Casey Griffiths: Kyle holds a PhD from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is a pastor in Mobile, Alabama, and has taught courses on religion at the University of Mobile. He wrote his dissertation on Strangite history and is a member of the John Whitmer Historical Association, and he’s published two journal articles on Strangite history. So, Kyle, you’re a Baptist minister. It seems like Latter-day Saint history would be sort of out of bounds for you, but Strangite history is really specific. So tell us a little bit about how a nice guy like you ended up in a field like this.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. Well, it’s a long story, but to cut it short, I just have always found restoration history really interesting and Strang’s story even more fascinating. You talk about Baptist connections—I mean, we could start with Sidney Rigdon, but lo and behold, I was tickled to discover that James Strang’s first wife was actually the daughter of Baptists, and Strang has Baptists in his past, too, yeah. Yeah, the—we’re always two or three degrees separated from each other, but, yeah, just trying to understand the story of Joseph Smith, the Restoration, and then kind of these branches that go beyond Nauvoo, untold stories, people that have had experiences that I think are worth exploring and understanding and sharing with the world—that’s one of the big impetuses is trying to understand who they are.

Casey Griffiths: And I’m going to push you a little further, because I remember hearing a story about a Book of Mormon that was on a shelf.

Kyle Beshears: Oh! Oh, you want to go—yeah! Yeah, my earliest recollection of anything that has to do with Mormonism was in my grandfather’s study. He was a professor at Purdue Cal, which is a extension campus outside Chicago, which is where I’m originally from, and I saw this—like, this blue and gold lettering and pulled the book off the shelf, and it was that 1970s edition of the Book of Mormon that has Angel Moroni painting on the front of it. He had been through Salt Lake in the ’70s and had either purchased it or somebody gave it to him, and I was pulling it back to, you know, read it, and then he very much didn’t want me to have anything to do with it at all—at all. And I kind of got that vibe from the rest of the family, like, oh, those are the Mormons: don’t have anything to do with them. And so I think it’s part of my personality—you know, you told me I can’t do something, and now I have to, right? You told me not to go there, and now I’m obviously going to.

Scott Woodward: Obviously, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: You’re a contrary kid.

Kyle Beshears: I’m a contrary kid, yeah. Yeah. That was—that’s my earliest recollection of my encounter with restoration.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: And here you are. I want to point out the John Whitmer Historical Association meetings does sort of have a Strangite colony. Like, I noticed all of you were kind of eating lunch together at one of the JW—it was the one in Independence—

Kyle Beshears: That’s right, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —which I think is where we met, yeah.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And I came over and just thought, oh, I’m going to hang out with the Strangites for a little while, and it was interesting because the conversation turned to, like, who’s talked about them in a respectful way? Like, I brought up The King of Confidence, which is a book on Strang that was published a couple years ago and kind of did a, “How’s that?” and almost universally, no, that guy was really, like—he was playing fast and loose with things, and he wasn’t very kind, and everything like that. So I appreciate my Strangite friends and count you among them, even if you’re—you have a complicated religious background: You’re a Baptist who’s interested in Strangites, and you know a lot, so we’re glad to have you with us.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, well, I should say on behalf of that group, we were thankful that you were there because you gave us a tour of a temple lot, if you remember that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah! Yeah, that was fun! That was fun.

Kyle Beshears: That was fun.

Casey Griffiths: And can I mention, Kyle and I, dear listeners, are working on a book project where we’re going to try and do major branches of the restoration, and so that’s something that will keep us in collaboration for, I hope, years to come, Kyle, because you’re a good person to work with.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. Same.

Scott Woodward: And the fact that we have you on, Kyle, tells us about your expertise. I mean, there’s not many Strangite experts in the world today. Is that fair to say? Not—as far as, like, people who are actively engaged in scholarship, studying the Strangite community.

Kyle Beshears: It’s a small cadre, and I think we all know each other.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: And typically keep in communication with each other by email or text, yeah.

Scott Woodward: So we have today on the show, one of that small cadre of scholars on the Strangite movement, and so we feel pretty lucky to have you here.

Kyle Beshears: Oh, thank you. And I’m honored to be here. I hope this will be fun.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Okay. In a previous episode, we did kind of an overview of major restoration movements, and so, Kyle, I think we’re going to recap what we said about James Strang and his movement a little bit, and then we’ll just kind of let you answer our questions. So, Scott, do you want to give us a bird’s-eye view of James Strang and his followers and what we know about him, and then we’ll let Kyle kind of explain the specifics.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, so just to recap some of the things we talked about in our previous episode on this, in the wake of Joseph Smith’s martyrdom, the majority of church members follow the Twelve, and they head out on a westward exodus, but there is a surprising number of church members who actually remain behind in Nauvoo and other areas scattered about in the East, and they sought other alternatives to the leadership of Brigham Young. The leader of one of the largest schismatic groups for that time is generally unknown among church members, and that is this fascinating figure named James Strang. We talked about him as a recent convert in 1844, the year Joseph Smith died. Strang claimed that Joseph Smith appointed him his successor, not just through a letter from Joseph Smith, but also that he received angelic ordination, received additional scripture, both revelations and translations. He was very charismatic. Many people saw similarities between James Strang and Joseph Smith, and one of his great appeals was that he was against polygamy, until he wasn’t. So that’s going to turn some of his followers off, as it did with Joseph, and as it did with Brigham Young and the Twelve, and eventually his church will begin to dissipate as he starts to change doctrines and practices like polygamy, and declaring himself king, he will be murdered by two of his own followers. We walked through the details of that. What’s interesting is he had a few weeks before he died, and he did not name a successor, and because of that, there is no direct successor from James Strang, but the Strangites continue to hope for and wait for a successor. They believe there will be future prophets, but there has not yet been since James Strang. Kyle, how did I do? Please correct anything I just said.

Kyle Beshears: I think, yeah, you hit all the high points, and I think . . .

Scott Woodward: Those are the high points?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. Yeah. Depending on what you talked about last time, maybe we can fill in with a little bit more color about those events. Yeah, I think that would be fun. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Where would you want to start in kind of filling in things there?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, I think we should start in 1813.

Scott Woodward: Oh!

Kyle Beshears: The year that James was born.

Scott Woodward: All right.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, wow! This is going to be comprehensive.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Excellent.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, yeah. Let’s start there because I think it’s important to kind of understand James’s motivations and—in his life and in his goals, because one of the most interesting facts, I think—it’s such a little tidbit, but James Jesse Strang was not born James Jesse Strang.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Kyle Beshears: He was born Jesse James Strang.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Oh. Interesting.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, to his parents in Scipio, New York in 1813. He was a really ambitious guy. One of his descendants translated portions of ciphered diary entries from him, I want to say in the 1970s, and you start to piece together a boy that wants to be this really renowned, well known, well respected man. He had four goals in particular: he wanted to be a priest, a lawyer, a conqueror, and a legislator. Those were kind of the four goals for him.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Kyle Beshears: And so by the time he turns 18, he changes his name from Jesse James Strang to James Jesse Strang, I think because at around the same time in Albany, there was a national scandal where a guy by the name of Jesse James had gotten into, an—it’s a wild story. I’ll just put it like that. And he’s thinking to himself, well, if I’m going to be a politician, I need to change my name.

Casey Griffiths: This is not the Jesse James that most people are familiar with. That happens, like, Civil War, post-Civil War, right? This is a different Jesse James.

Kyle Beshears: Correct, yeah. So if you’re—if you’ve got a boy, and you’re thinking about a name, I would steer clear of Jesse James. It just doesn’t seem to work out for him.

Scott Woodward: Tends toward lawlessness.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah! Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: But I say that because I think that’s one of the first hints we get that James is conscious of his persona. He’s always living beyond and outside of himself. He’s a brilliant guy by any standard: He enlists in the militia, he’s a teacher, he’s a lecturer, he’s a postmaster, he’s an editor of a newspaper, he becomes a lawyer, and then in 1843, he moves to the Wisconsin territory to be with his in-laws, and I think probably at that point, your listeners know, is about when he converts, right? February 1844. And then you went through the ordination. You went through letter of appointment. Did you talk about Voree plates in 1845?

Scott Woodward: We only touched on it briefly. Do you want to tell us more about the Voree plates? I think that’d be helpful.

Kyle Beshears: That’s a fascinating story because James says that he is ordained to the office of a prophet at the very hour that Joseph Smith is assassinated in 1844, and then about a week and a half later, he says he receives a letter, which is the letter of appointment your listeners are familiar with already. So James immediately sets out to a conference in Michigan, I think in an attempt to intercept some of the returning Twelve from that Eastern seaboard mission on their way back to Nauvoo—

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Kyle Beshears: —to convince them that, hey, I’m the next president, right? It’s not Sidney Rigdon. It’s not Brigham Young. It’s me. But he doesn’t ever meet any of the apostles. Instead, he goes to a conference where they kind of form this ad hoc trial and excommunicate him. So he doesn’t convince anybody at first, and one of the reasons is because people say, like, you can have a letter, but—and you can tell us you were ordained, but there are other evidences that we need to see that you’re truly a prophet, and so about a year later, in September 1845, he gets four guys, four of his followers, to dig up small set of brass plates that he finds at a place called the Hill of Promise in a place called Voree, which is in southeastern Wisconsin, and on these plates is etched this kind of farewell story from this epic battle of indigenous people who were being hunted down and destroyed, and the last remaining leader, the Raja, a Manchou of Verito, is given a promise by God that in that very place, God would continue his covenant promises and restore a leaderless flock, and James says, well, that’s me. So he’s producing evidence for people. It’s not just the ecclesiastical or the legal aspect that he’s going for, but there’s also this, you said earlier, this charismatic element to James that he’s putting forth as an argument that people would follow him. He publishes that translation nearly immediately in a newspaper in Wisconsin, and I found evidence of that story in Alabama within four months.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: Wow.

Kyle Beshears: News traveled fast, and that’s really—that’s lightning fast for that era, right?

Casey Griffiths: That’s, like, warp speed on the American frontier for it to get to Alabama.

Kyle Beshears: Remember, he’s a newspaper man, and he knows the value of getting the story out to make his case that he should succeed Joseph Smith. So I just think that that’s a really fascinating part of his story.

Scott Woodward: So the Voree plates come forth as some sort of physical evidence of his legitimacy as a prophet.

Kyle Beshears: Correct.

Scott Woodward: He felt like that was his evidence to the world—not just a letter from Joseph Smith, but look: I also translate plates like Joseph Smith.

Kyle Beshears: That’s right. And “evidence” is a great word because he actually carried those plates on his person or nearby in his home, in his office, and anybody who wanted to see them, if James had time, he would fetch them and give them to people. So they were an artifact that probably a conservative estimation, hundreds of people actually saw and were able to touch and see.

Casey Griffiths: And Kyle, correct me if I’m wrong, but we don’t currently have the Voree plates, but there are, like, pictures of them.

Kyle Beshears: That’s correct, yeah. And actually the Church History Library in Salt Lake City has a really great facsimile of them that, from my research, is only two kind of generations removed from the actual plates themselves. So you can get a really good, authentic idea of what the plates actually looked like, and they’re fascinating. I presented some research on those plates at a conference a couple of years ago, in which I made the argument that it’s potentially translatable. In other words, whether you believe this is an authentic language or James Strang just went full J. R. R. Tolkien, that’s beside the point. Like, you could potentially translate these if you had enough time.

Casey Griffiths: And physically, the plates were how big? Like, you said he would keep them on his person, so.

Kyle Beshears: Tiny. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Would they fit in his pocket, kind of thing?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. I don’t remember the exact dimensions, but they would fit neatly in the palm of, like, an average person’s hand. There were three, and they were clasped together by a single ring in the upper left hand side, and they were kind of, like, bell-shaped as well. So I think one of the things that’s important to remember, too, contextually speaking, is that the Kinderhook plates were discovered only a year or so prior, and it was not known to anybody in the community at the time that they were fraudulent, and so there was this expectation at the time that these kinds of plates would continue to be unearthed, and James is kind of—I think he’s pulling from that hope and expectation.

Casey Griffiths: What’s the current theory on where they went to? Like, what happened to the Voree plates?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. It’s tough: I can only find two theories. One theory is that they went from—well, we do know for a fact that they were transferred from James to one of his plural wives, and then many years later, when the Temple Lot church was trying to make the legal case that the plot of land was theirs, for some reason, that those folks wanted the Voree plates as evidence in the trial, and so the descendant of James’s wife reluctantly gave them over to some elder, and then she never saw them again.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Kyle Beshears: And then another story has them being shown by missionaries from Utah in, like, the 1880s and then going west and then never being seen again. But it’s wild. It’s like History Channel, Ancient Alien shows type situation, because I’ve been—people have reached out to me on the internet and said, like, “I lived in Northern Michigan, and I saw the plates, too. I didn’t know what they were, and I threw them away.” So there is this, like, really deep desire to want to know where they are and what happened to them because so many people had witnessed them, had seen them. So I think the artifact was a physical—a real, physical thing. Whether or not they’re authentic, leave it up to your listeners to decide.

Casey Griffiths: Interesting.

Scott Woodward: Wow. That’s way more witnesses than the eight witnesses: hundreds of witnesses saw these—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, that there are plates. And the text that Strang says comes from the plates is readily available, I guess. You can access it?

Kyle Beshears: Sure. Yeah. You can go to the Church History Library and maybe type in “Voree plates” or something along those lines and see them. The facsimile, what you’re looking at, I’m pretty confident, is a facsimile that was mass produced—and I use that in context here: probably dozens of copies—from a guy named Wingfield Watson, who was a really staunch disciple of James Strang after his death and kind of preserved for us a lot of the material and cultural history of Strang’s movement.

Casey Griffiths: Let me bring up something: So one of the things that attracts people to James Strang is this charisma. He’s claiming new miracles, new translations, new revelations—but you already touched upon something: he attracts some high-level followers, like William Marks. Who is it from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles?

Kyle Beshears: He has John E. Page, George Miller.

Casey Griffiths: John E. Page, yeah. John Page is who I was thinking of.

Kyle Beshears: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: But a lot of it falls apart when he starts to practice plural marriage. What do we know about his initiation of plural marriage and how that came to be?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, and there’s one character of the story your listeners are probably going to be really familiar with that enters Strang’s story, and then I think that’s the pivot point. I’ll save that name for later, the big reveal, but initially one of the strong arguments to follow Strang over Young was that Strang was adamantly anti-polygamy. And so for a lot of people, that wasn’t something that they wanted to participate in, and so at the time, James Strang effectively represented the only alternative to Brigham Young that wasn’t going to practice polygamy. I think there’s other reasons, too. I mean, I think some people can’t literally—they can’t pay their way to go into the Great Basin. I think people were also fearful. And then here you have James Strang saying, well, you can just come a few hundred miles North into these fertile dells of Wisconsin to this place I’m trying to build called Voree, which he translates as “garden of peace.” I mean, you think about a people that have been kicked out time after time after time. All they know is rejection and oppression and extermination, and James is saying, you’re not going to get it if you follow me. So that exhaustion and desire for peace, mixed with this charismatic man who’s kind of echoing the things that Joseph Smith did in his early days as Prophet of the Restoration and then the anti-polygamy, but that doesn’t last long, and James Strang is actually a polygamist longer than he is a monogamistic prophet, and the shift comes, if you’re reading between the lines, when a guy named John C. Bennett—

Scott Woodward: Ah.

Kyle Beshears: —shows up in Voree.

Casey Griffiths: That’s the big reveal. John Bennett.

Kyle Beshears: That’s the big reveal, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: So James is pulling leadership from Nauvoo, and he’s doing a good job sometimes and not so good of a job at other times. So he does a good job when he’s taking people like, you know, John E. Page or William Marks or George Miller. These men had really good reputations, but then at the same time, he’s also pulling in George Adams, a member of the Council of Fifty. He becomes his first counselor, eventually. William Smith, so Joseph Smith’s younger brother, who has a checkered past, and then certainly, like, the villain of Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: The villain. Geez.

Kyle Beshears: John C. Bennett, right.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: And it’s with John C. Bennett and William Smith in particular that polygamy, I think, enters into Strang’s story in the most unusual way. I’m sure you talked about that last time.

Scott Woodward: Is this where he starts to conceal his wife, his second wife, and even has her dress up as a man?

Kyle Beshears: It’s a peculiar story, and it’s probably the one that’s most associated with Strang, aside from him being a king, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: Did y’all talk about that last time?

Casey Griffiths: We covered the basic outline that he started showing up with a young man who he usually introduced as his nephew, right? Or a personal secretary or something like that.

Kyle Beshears: Yep.

Casey Griffiths: But it was eventually revealed that this was a plural wife. But fill us in a little bit here.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, sure. So her name is Elvira Field, and the Fields converted and moved to Kirtland, so they’re actually early converts to the church.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: So Elvira grew up—she spent, I think, three or four of her childhood years in Kirtland, and when most of the Saints continued on to Jackson County or Nauvoo, the Fields remained in Kirtland.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Kyle Beshears: We’re not sure for how long. It could have been a short period of time, but they eventually go up, and they buy land in Michigan, and Elvira grows up. She decides she wants to be a schoolteacher. Her parents convert to Strang when they hear about the letter of appointment, and Strang needs schoolteachers, and turns out, hey, if we need schoolteachers, you need to gather to Voree anyway, so why don’t you come on over here, and then eventually to Beaver Island? We’re probably skipping a big portion here, but they started gathering on an island in Lake Michigan. We can get back to that. Yeah, so Elvira converts to Strang, then she disappears at about the same time that James Strang goes on a mission to the Eastern Seaboard to visit Strangites there. In place of Elvira is his 16-year-old nephew, Charles, or Charlie, Douglas. I did as—the best research I could—maybe there’s some blind spots—but I could not find a Douglas at all in either side of the family. So James at this time was also married to a woman named Mary Pierce, whom he married in 1836.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: So Charlie is his traveling companion, the secretary. He’s at conferences, taking notes. Charlie is meeting with men in James Strang’s priesthood and learning from them. Charlie actually has three published articles that elaborate and expand doctrine in the official newspaper of James Strang’s church.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Kyle Beshears: So Charlie is a young and up-and-coming leader in his church, but at the same time, Elvira Field’s parents are getting worried. They’re looking for her, investigating where she disappeared to. You know, soon people start making a connection that she was last seen headed west, and people who are in the West were starting to notice peculiarities about Charlie. There’s a really big, famous confrontation in New York where people were excommunicated because they were accusing James Strang of—“spiritual wifery” is what they called it, and in one of the most audacious episodes, in my opinion, of the Strang story, Charlie Douglas publishes a scathing rebuke against people for accusing James Strang of polygamy.

Scott Woodward: And Charlie Douglas—

Kyle Beshears: Charlie Douglas is—

Scott Woodward: The big reveal later is it’s his plural wife. Oh my gosh. That’s amazing.

Kyle Beshears: It’s his plural wife, dressed up as a boy, so—

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Kyle Beshears: —I think the gig is up eventually when she becomes pregnant, and, you’re right: I think you said earlier that the movement kind of deflates after that. Yes, very much so. That was—that represents kind of the high mark.

Scott Woodward: And how old was Elvira or Elvira at this time?

Kyle Beshears: Elvira was 18 when they were married. So she would have been 19, maybe 20.

Casey Griffiths: Was Elvira the author of the things that were attributed to Charlie?

Kyle Beshears: I believe so.

Casey Griffiths: Because that is sort of remarkable, to have a woman writing and producing theological works and doctrinal stuff, which—that’s kind of cool.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: Well, not only is it remarkable that a woman is doing that in America at that time.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: But for, you know, a small, persecuted group within a small, persecuted group within America writing it, that’s absolutely fascinating to me, yeah.

Scott Woodward: But of course nobody knew it was a woman, so it was a woman with a pen name of a man, and . . .

Kyle Beshears: That’s correct, yeah.

Scott Woodward: So it goes.

Casey Griffiths: Okay. So you said we skipped over a bunch of stuff, like how they went from Voree to Beaver Island.

Kyle Beshears: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Can you fill us in on some of that background there, too?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. So there’s an archipelago in the northern part of Lake Michigan near Mackinac Strait called the Beaver Island archipelago, because people didn’t have an imagination back then. The island looks like a beaver tail, so they named it Beaver Island.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: At the time, this island was inhabited by indigenous people and Irish fishermen.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: But James Strang, in his travels back and forth to the east, has a vision or a revelation. Well, yeah, it’s a revelatory vision, in which God was calling the church to gather both in Voree and in Beaver Island. I think the impetus behind wanting to go to Beaver Island was incredibly sincere and very clever. James Strang recognizes that, being Mormon, he will inevitably face some kind of opposition and persecution.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Kyle Beshears: And so one way that he’s able to keep his people safe is by having a massive moat around Zion. And so he declares Beaver Island to be one of the few gathering places in the apocalypse. The other ones are—and he has really strong continuity with Joseph Smith here—Jackson County, Missouri, and Kirtland, Ohio. So for Strang, you can gather, it just has to be in one of these sanctioned places. Voree is going to be, like, the main place, but Beaver Island is the corner stake, I think he says. It ends up, though, becoming the headquarters of Strang’s movement. Some people find that fascinating, and actually, this is what hooked me, because I’m from the Great Lakes region, and when I found out there was a Mormon theocratic 19th century group on an island in Lake Michigan, I was—that was it. That was—I was done. It got me.

Scott Woodward: That’s what did it, huh?

Kyle Beshears: Right. Right.

Casey Griffiths: Have you visited Beaver Island? Have you been there, and . . . ?

Kyle Beshears: I have not. It’s on my bingo list. I’m almost done visiting all of the main LDS sites, and then I have to turn my attention to James Strang’s site, but I would love to go there. I’ve been to Voree a few times. I need to go to Beaver Island.

Casey Griffiths: Now, tell us, what kind of leader was he when they’re on Beaver Island? When we did our overview, I found sources that said he was very fair; I found others that said he was very dictatorial. You’re obviously more familiar with the sources than me. What’s your assessment of his leadership style?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, it depends on who you ask, and it sounds like that’s what you were reading from the sources. So some of the things that were pluses to his leadership, he was—within his own system, I think he was extremely fair. He was a teetotaler, so he was really adamant about no alcohol, which actually becomes a problem later because the Irish fishermen don’t like their whiskey being confiscated. I think that he genuinely cared about the wellbeing of his people, but if you were not his people, or you were not part of his people, he could be a bit dictatorial. The things you’re hearing that are negative about Strang were probably from ex-followers, which James Strang called pseudos, or people that were against him in the Great Lakes region. It sounds crazy, but in the middle of the 19th century in the Great Lakes, there was a problem with piracy. We think about Pirates of the Caribbean, but they were pirates of the Midwest, and a lot of people accused James Strang of duplicity and saying one thing and doing another, stealing their mail, stealing goods, and those types of things when they would come into port, so he had a pretty mixed reputation on the island. Probably the thing that overshadowed everything, though, was the fact that he had crowned himself king of the kingdom of god on earth.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about that because he set up an institution, and this is the name: the Halcyon Order of the Illuminati. And he was prince of the Illuminati. Contextualize that for us. Like, this seems to be, like you said, one of the main things that he’s known for, that he was crowned—

Kyle Beshears: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Tell us a little bit about that.

Kyle Beshears: So the Illuminati and the kingdom are related, but they’re not the same. So the Illuminati was a system—roughest equivalent I could come up with would be the endowment. This was the space for James Strang’s endowment to take place. The kingdom, though, was everything else. So the Order of the Illuminati had to operate within the kingdom of God. The fact that James Strang crowned himself king—I think this is one of the most misunderstood parts of him. He’s not king like King Charles is king, right? His wives are not queens in the way that we think about them. James Strang saw himself as not only restoring the Christian faith, but the ancient order of things running all the way through ancient Israel. So he was like an ancient Israelite king in the way we think of, like, David or Solomon or Jeroboam, right? And with that came new scripture, the Book of the Law of the Lord, which is essentially a blueprint for how any kingdom that God establishes on earth should be run. So James says that this Book of the Law of the Lord was available to the ancient Israelites. It was delivered to him miraculously by angels. He translated it by Urim and Thummim and prints two versions: one in his lifetime, and one was printed shortly after his death, and it has biblical feasts in it. It has days of worship, sacrifice . . . It has everything you’d think about maybe, like, Levitical law, but in kind of a condensed format. It’s pretty small.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: But it also had really remarkable things in it. Like, one of the things that really struck me when I read it was—the only thing I can describe it as—it was proto-conservationism.

Scott Woodward: What do you mean?

Kyle Beshears: So, like, it’s really, really particular that you take care of the forest. The king has a responsibility to make sure the environment is taken care of and stewarded well, which is fascinating to me, and little tiny tangent or side note, he also kept weather logs and would send them to the Smithsonian, and that actually is data that’s still used today by people who study meteorology in that area for historical sake, so, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Casey Griffiths: I’ve had a Strangite tell me that one of the most appealing parts of his revelations was kind of the environmentalism that was in it. That . . .

Kyle Beshears: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: He was very much about stewardship and taking care of the earth and things like that, which is admirable.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. Yeah. See, that’s what I mean. Like, he had a pretty mixed reputation.

Scott Woodward: So can we go back to what you said about him considering his kingship, like, part of his endowment? Because I’m unfamiliar with James Strang’s understanding of the temple. In fact, I’ve heard that he called the temple in Nauvoo a “monument to materialism,” and so he kind of thought about it in sort of a condescending way, so I was kind of taken aback when you said that he thought of his kingship as an endowment. Would that be in the same context as Joseph Smith used the term endowment?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, no, I would tease those two apart. So within the kingdom of God on earth is an endowment, and in that endowment, or in the Order of the Illuminati, is—I don’t think James Strang’s theology of progression was well developed during his lifetime, just as I don’t think the idea of eternal progression was as developed in the Nauvoo period shortly thereafter, right? It takes a few years for the dust to settle. What is the meaning of the endowment? What is its purpose? Is it instructive? Is it actually saving us? So these are a lot of questions that Latter-day Saints are asking. The Strangites are asking them, too. With that regard, they’re both put on this similar trajectory, it’s just one terminates in one way, and the other terminates in another way. Now, the king has responsibility. He calls himself the prince of the Illuminati. He has the responsibility of oversight for it, but it’s not necessarily connected to his kingdom. As far as temples are concerned, Strang’s followers started, but never completed, two temples: one in Voree and one on Beaver Island. They were temple Mormons, they just didn’t have them. They practiced baptism for the dead, proxy baptism, in a lake on Beaver Island, what they called Font Lake.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Kyle Beshears: So they were certainly on the trajectory to get there, but never got there. I think probably Strang’s critique of the temple in Nauvoo is because he’s much more of a commutarian, simple man, right?

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: He doesn’t want to see funds going to, like, making buildings elaborate, at least according to what he thinks would be elaborate.

Scott Woodward: So calling the temple in Nauvoo a monument to materialism was more of a commentary on its elaborateness rather than the temple theology itself.

Kyle Beshears: I think so, yes.

Scott Woodward: Oh, interesting.

Kyle Beshears: Because he had temples. He had every intention of having temples himself.

Casey Griffiths: And Kyle, can I ask: the elaborate nature of Strang’s coronation, you know, with the paper crown and the scepter, which Community of Christ still has.

Kyle Beshears: That’s right.

Casey Griffiths: I’ve heard a lot of that attributed to George J. Adams, who was sort of theatrical, right? He was an actor, wasn’t he?

Kyle Beshears: Well-known actor, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And he kind of staged these elaborate rituals as a way of providing majesty. Is that accurate to say, that some of it comes from Strang’s followers and maybe not necessarily from Strang himself, too?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, if I know James as well as I think I do, I don’t think he is that kind of a person. Like, he’s more of, like, the introvert, B type, doesn’t really want to be in front of people, but recognizes that if there’s a monumental moment in his theology, let’s say the reestablishment of the kingdom of God on earth—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: —he’s going to go ahead and go all in. And so he has George Adams, who is, by profession, an actor, create—and other people help him—create this stage, and there’s this kind of air of mystique around it. If I remember correctly, the setting was in the unfinished temple on Beaver Island. And yeah, he has a paper crown that’s made, if I remember correctly, by Elvira Field—like, we’re really getting in the weeds here—a wooden scepter. These things are elaborate for Beaver Island, but they would be simple if we’re looking at them today. But I think, probably—how is that received by people? Every possible reaction you can imagine. Some people were just, like—they were awestruck. They couldn’t believe, brought to tears, that finally God’s kingdom had been established, and that James Strang, as this viceroy of Jesus Christ, is just one more evidence that Christ is returning soon. The advent of the Second Coming is just around the corner. Other people, when the curtain is pulled and George Adams introduces James as the king of the kingdom, are just beside themselves in bewilderment. Like, what is this dog and pony show? This is insane. And for some people, like, that’s it. Like, I’m checking out. I don’t want anything to do with it. That part is, I think, as powerful as a pivot as the revelation that he’s practicing polygamy, because it’s around that same time that he begins to become a polygamist, and I think part of the reason why is he’s also got it in mind to translate the Book of the Law of the Lord, and in that project it allows kings to have more than one wife so long as they’re able to take care of them, and it allows kings to receive concubines. So this is both an apologetic for explaining why David and Solomon could be righteous people, and yet they have all this concubinage, but then also kind of, like, setting the stage for explaining why he was monogamous but now has become a polygamist.

Scott Woodward: It flows out from his kingship.

Kyle Beshears: Right.

Casey Griffiths: And you say this is a major turning point. Does this sort of lead to his eventual death? I mean, Strang was murdered by several of his followers. What’s the path and road to that day?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, so that day, in July 1850, he still has another six years, almost to the day of his death. So when he’s sitting on the throne, he’s got approximately six years left, almost to the day. There’s a lot going on. It—to boil it down, it comes down to, like, internal dissension and anger against James Strang for the way that he was ruling over his kingdom now, his “little fiefdom,” as his critics would say, and then external pressure, people that don’t want Mormons in their backyard. Like, they’re—fine if they go out to Utah. We don’t want them here. Because you have to understand, at the time, the Gentiles don’t understand the difference between Mormons who are in Utah and Mormons who are hanging out on a lake in Lake Michigan. They’re all the same to them. So whatever you’re hearing about Brigham Young is being inappropriately applied also to James Strang, and vice versa, right? It’s all the same to them. These stories of people’s assassinations always end—the catalyst moment, it’s always the most unexpected thing, and for James Strang, he was assassinated in 1856, partly because of a controversy over women’s clothing on Beaver Island.

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay.

Kyle Beshears: So at the time, Elvira Field was wearing what are called bloomers, and it’s difficult to describe them, but they’re just, like, puffy pantaloons, and it was an icon of feminism at the time. It was a way that women could kind of rebel against this feminine presentation of the corset and the dress and having your hair perfect all the time, and the pantaloons were just, like, we’re not going to do that anymore. One of the women who was adamant about not wearing bloomers—because James Strang said all women on the island are going to wear bloomers.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Kyle Beshears: Well, one of the women was not going to have it. Her husband’s name was Thomas Bedford, and James Strang basically said, you need to get your wife in line or there’s going to be consequences, and Bedford said, you’re not going to tell me what to do, and Strang has Bedford publicly flogged.

Casey Griffiths: Wow.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, this is—

Scott Woodward: Whoa.

Kyle Beshears: —point of no return, where the dominoes are pushed, and Bedford is furious. He conspires with other people, in particular a young man named Alexander Wentworth and the United States Navy, and in a port call in July or—no, June of 1856, the USS Michigan comes, the captain calls for James Strang, he’s escorted by one of his lieutenants, Strang’s walking down the dock to get on the Michigan, and Bedford and Wentworth come out from a pile of cordwood, shoot him, beat him. James Strang does not die, but he is paralyzed and pretty badly beaten.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: And then Bedford and Wentworth are actually evacuated and escorted to Mackinac where they face a mock trial. They pay—I think it was, like, 15 bucks, and they, like, they both walk scot-free.

Casey Griffiths: That’s how the US Navy is involved. They’re the getaway driver.

Kyle Beshears: That’s how the US Navy is involved, because they were there, and they saw the assassination, and they were the getaway driver, yeah. So, like, one of—like, this is probably—I want your listeners to feel the weight of this moment, because it’s not just that he was the leader of this church, but at the time he was on his second term as a Michigan state legislator.

Casey Griffiths: Whoa.

Scott Woodward: I didn’t know that.

Kyle Beshears: So imagine this for a moment, that somebody in the Utah state legislators, was murdered with the assistance of one of the military branches. That’s insane, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Wow.

Kyle Beshears: So say what you will about Strang, but wow. That’s crazy. And the fact that this hasn’t become, like, a Netflix series is beyond me.

Casey Griffiths: He’s not boring. I’ll give you that.

Kyle Beshears: No, every chapter he’s got something else interesting, yeah. But, yeah, he’s evacuated to Wisconsin, Voree, and he dies in July, like I said, nearly on the anniversary, yeah, sixth anniversary of his coronation.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: And then my understanding is that after his death, there’s a kind of persecution. Like, his followers are swept off the island? Tell us a little bit about that.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, and this is one of the, like, the really sad parts about it, but it does need to be known. It does need to be told. Shortly after Strang’s assassination attempt and he’s evacuated, the Gentiles catch wind, and it was clearly a premeditated plan to come in and basically invade the island and evacuate all of Strang’s followers off of it without their property. So they came in, knives, pistols. It was mainly a bunch of young guys who were, according to a lot of eyewitness accounts, drunk for most of the time, rounding up all of the followers, telling them to bring as much as you can and meet us at the dock, and then once they got to the dock, they had them put all their belongings in a big pile, put them all on different boats, and then deposited them in Wisconsin or Illinois without any of their belongings. One of the stories is of a family that I followed that got deposited in Chicago in July, which is pretty hot, and they didn’t have anything but the clothing on their back and had no clue how they were going to—he had a couple of kids at the time and a wife that had just given birth, and he didn’t know where he was going to get his next meal for his family. So one of the things I like to bring up, especially to, like, a largely LDS audience, is, like, Strang’s followers experienced every category of persecution that the Nauvoo-era Saints did, and if they were a Nauvoo-era Saint, they experienced it twice.

Scott Woodward: Double, yeah.

Kyle Beshears: They had two presidents assassinated. They had their settlements pillaged more than once. There was abuse, and then extermination from their property, but unlike Utah, or later the RLDS, the Strayingites didn’t have the luxury of gathering in a community to heal because once they were scattered, there’s a dispersion, and still, to this day, they’ve not fully regathered, even though that seems to be kind of one of the desires. So that’s a really sad part in the story.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Wow.

Casey Griffiths: That is rough. Shameful.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So a lot of people see similarities between Joseph Smith and James Strang, and I think at a superficial level, that seems to be true: claimed angels, translated some plates, plural wives, was martyred.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But on a deeper level, like, what comparisons do you see in terms of the James Strang/Joseph Smith side by side? Do you see a lot of similarities when you really zoom in on these two?

Kyle Beshears: No. They’re radically different men. All of the similarities, like you say, I think are superficial. Not to, like, denigrate them, but from a critical and a skeptical perspective, James Strang is copying and pasting what Joseph Smith did and then plans to continue in continuity with what he started.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: From a faithful perspective, of course, you know, God’s going to do the same thing that he did with Joseph to prove that, you know, he’s the prophet. But when it comes to, like, who they are as men, I don’t think they would have gotten along.

Scott Woodward: Oh, why is that?

Kyle Beshears: Because James Strang was, like, an introvert, he was reserved, he was intellectual: he read Volney. He read Paine. He’s a phenomenal wordsmith. Reading his stuff—like, I’ve read one of his sermons, and I had to stop halfway through, and I was like, you’re turning me into a follower. Like, he’s very persuasive, he’s a lawyer, and Joseph Smith, man, he’s just not that guy, right? Like he is—in the Gentile Protestant world, we have a—we call it the beer test. Like, who would you want to have a beer with? And to be honest, like, if I had to choose Joseph or James, like, who do I want to have a beer with? It’s Joseph because he seems like he’s the more laid back, easy going, “How’s your kids? How’s your family? What do you like to do?” And James is just—he’s a politician. He’s a lawyer.

Scott Woodward: Rigid and business.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, more rigid, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Huh. Fascinating.

Scott Woodward: The beer test.

Kyle Beshears: Bet you never thought anybody would ever decide between those two men by a glass of beer.

Scott Woodward: I’m adopting that, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: My next class at BYU: which prophet would you most want to have a beer with, class?

Scott Woodward: Uh . . . root beer, that is.

Kyle Beshears: Root beer. Yeah, of course! Of course. What did you think?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, who’d you want to hang out at Swig with? Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Oh, that’s funny. But Joseph Smith was not above having the occasional beer.

Kyle Beshears: No. Uh-uh.

Casey Griffiths: Well, he wrote it in his journal, you know? So . . .

Kyle Beshears: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. That was fun.

Casey Griffiths: So, Kyle, you probably more than anybody I know has worked a lot with members of James Strang’s church, which is, I should note, also called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That’s the official name. Give us a snapshot on how many of them there are and where they’re at and what the current state of the movement is, especially since they haven’t appointed a prophet since James Strang’s death.

Kyle Beshears: Great question. It’s really hard to know with any amount of certainty how many Latter Day Saints there are, and you said the name of the church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, that’s capital D, no dash.

Casey Griffiths: That’s correct, yeah.

Scott Woodward: No British hyphen.

Kyle Beshears: No British hyphen, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: That’s a big deal.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: So I pastor a congregation of roughly 500 people, and there’s less Strangites than that. Pretty confident to say that. James Strang’s church has undergone a series of schisms itself, which is a unfortunate and frustrating reality of, like, every religious institution, right?

Scott Woodward: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: So the largest concentration or the largest congregation of Strang’s followers is there in Burlington, and I would be shocked if it was over 200 people total on the roster. But then there are other people that identify with James Strang and his prophetic succession as priesthood holders under him, whether they’re kind of individual on their own or they’re in different groups. I’m aware of some converts that are African. So a guy flew over to Istanbul and met some folks from Africa and gave them James Strang’s priesthood. So no clue how many, but it’s really, really small.

Scott Woodward: I’m curious about, since there’s no successor since James Strang, like, how do they organize? Do they have bishops? Do they have, like, local lay leaders? Pastors? Like, how do they kind of—

Kyle Beshears: Yep.

Scott Woodward: —interact on the day to day as a congregation or congregations?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, there’s a priesthood organization that’s established in the Book of the Law of the Lord, and that, in combination of their interpretation of certain passages from Doctrine and Covenants, they believe that the lesser cannot ordain the higher. So what the RLDS did was shocking to a lot of Strang’s faithful. So that means when Strang dies, and he’s only—he only had a handful of apostles at the time. They all started dying out. Last one dies out in 1898, Lorenzo Dow Hickey. He ordains a guy named Wingfield Watson, who becomes the presiding high priest, and that is their highest office to this day. So Watson ordains the next guy, the next guy, and there’s a presiding high priest today.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Kyle Beshears: But, yeah, so it sounds weird to Latter-day Saints, but the Strangites are waiting for the third prophet. They’re just waiting. Yep.

Scott Woodward: Joseph Smith, James Strang, and whoever’s next.

Kyle Beshears: So, yeah, so some—my guy, Wingfield Watson, that’s who I did the dissertation on, he has a theory that the third prophet is actually going to be the resurrected Joseph and James.

Casey Griffiths: Whoa.

Kyle Beshears: They’re both going to come back at the same time.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. That’s a plot twist.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. And so, and then—so then, so here’s—here was Watson’s idea: this is wild. Jesus Christ comes, and he’s the president of the kingdom of God on earth, the church, and then his first and second counselors are Joseph and James.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Kyle Beshears: That was his—that was his idea, yeah.

Scott Woodward: That’s his idea.

Casey Griffiths: That’s symmetrical. I like that a lot, actually.

Kyle Beshears: He was a very symmetrical guy.

Casey Griffiths: So you mentioned Bill Shepard, who’s a Strangite historian, a wonderful guy who’s done some great work and authored some of my favorite books, including Lost Apostles, which is great, but the reason why we came to you is Bill’s retired, and you’ve been doing new work in this field. Tell us: if a person wants to know a little bit more about James Strang and his movement, who are some of the best sources they can go to, and where would you go to learn a little bit more?

Kyle Beshears: Yeah, I think your first stop, and for many people it might be the only stop, but it’s definitely worth making it, is Vickie Cleverley Speek’s God Has Made Us a Kingdom. It’s a phenomenal biography of James Strang that tells the story from start to finish, but then has this great appendix about what happens to all of Strang’s wives after Strang’s death. One of the most interesting facts about James Strang’s death is that all of his plural wives—not his legal first wife, but all of his plural wives—were pregnant at the time that James Strang died.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Kyle Beshears: And some of his—some of his descendants through those women play a role in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some remain loyal to their father. So Strang echoes through his family and descendants, and Vickie was very careful to ensure that those stories were told. After that, it kind of becomes piecemeal: an article here, another biography of James Strang there. So I would save your time: read Vickie’s first. But, yeah, I’m hoping to put in a book proposal for—in the Introduction of Mormon Thought on James Strang. I’d like to explore kind of his doctrine and theology and philosophy, which is an area that hasn’t really been written about a lot, but, yeah, shameless plug for John Whitmer Historical Association: That’s where you’re going to find most of the cutting edge research on James Strang as well. So if you’re not a member yet, go ahead and sign up. Come to our conference.

Casey Griffiths: Every September, right?

Kyle Beshears: Every September. That’s right, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And full disclosure, Kyle and I are on the board of the JWHA, so . . . We don’t get paid, though, so we’re not making any money here. We just do it for the love of the wonderful people that we get to meet and associate with. So, Kyle, one of the reasons why we brought you on is you’re not only a good scholar about this, but you work with the current Strangites quite a bit, and you’re familiar with them, and you’ve always been good to them. Tell us about your experiences and what Strang’s movement is like today. Like, what are your impressions?

Kyle Beshears: I’ve never had anything but positive experiences with any of the members. They’ve always been extremely hospitable and charitable to me. They have a small archive in one of their largest facilities, which is—I say large: It’s a small church building built in, like, the fifties, I think, outside of Burlington, Wisconsin. Yeah, their hospitality is great. They’re very kind. They’re very open to exploring their own history. When I finished my dissertation, I was invited by them—this is during the COVID days—to speak to their whole church over Zoom and give a presentation about my findings. There was no anticipation or expectation that I say anything but what I wanted to about their own history. And as an outsider, like, I really appreciated—like, that’s a hard thing to do, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: It’s hard for Latter-day Saints to do that, but then it’s even harder, I think, for followers of Strang to do it as well. But, yeah, I think probably my closest relationship in that movement was with a real scholar and a gentleman that maybe some of your listeners might know. His name is Bill Shepard.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: He’s, you know, the de facto historian of the church. He’s written and published a lot on his own movement. He was the president of the John Whitmer Historical Association, and he’s been a lot of help for me personally, always there to take a phone call no matter what, and we’ve even had just personal private conversations about faith. One of my favorite ones I ever had with him was, like, our mutual love for Paul’s letters, and we were talking about Pauline scripture, so . . .

Scott Woodward: And so as you stand back, Kyle, and look at the legacy of James Strang, what are some of the positives? What are some of the negatives, as you see it?

Kyle Beshears: It’s hard to say. As an outsider, I’m putting, like, a quality statement on a legacy of a man whose—shouldn’t come as any surprise, like, I don’t follow him, right? I don’t believe in his claims.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: But I think as objectively as possible, I think James Strang was far forward thinking and far ahead of many of his peers as far as leadership is concerned in his day and time. Some of the things like environmentalism, the role that he allowed women to play in leadership positions, today we take for granted, but in, you know, the middle of the 19th century was extremely rare. So when I look at him in that light, I think that’s a positive. I think another—a positive is that he was extremely consistent in his doctrine making and articulation, and as a pastor, I know that it’s a skill that you have to develop, and it’s a skill that you’re developing out of concern for your followers. You want to be heard and understood in a way that there’s no question about where you stand as their leader, and that seemed to be a natural trait of his. Negatives: the—he didn’t have a good judge of character, and I think he had enough good people around him to warn him, but for whatever reason, he didn’t heed that warning, and I think that’s a testament to all of us to, like, really discern who are the wise and peaceable people in your life, and, like, lean into them.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: When two or three of them say, like, hey, John C. Bennett’s not a great addition to the club. Like, listen to that. I do think towards the end of his life, that ambition that he had from even when he was a young boy—I mean, you think about, like, he wants to be a priest, he wants to be a lawyer, he wants to be a legislator. He did it. And then once you meet those goals, you’re kind of like, well, what’s next? Like, where’s the ceiling? There is no ceiling. And I get the kind of sense that he may have allowed his ambition to run too rampant and got too comfortable with that power, which ultimately led to his downfall. So that’s a negative, but I think also it’s a tale that we can walk away from his story kind of with self reflection in mind.

Scott Woodward: And credit to John C. Bennett for fooling not just Joseph Smith and most of the leaders of Nauvoo, but then doing it a second time with James Strang and many of his followers. Wow, that guy, huh? That guy was something else.

Kyle Beshears: He was talented at that. Right.

Casey Griffiths: Real piece of work.

Scott Woodward: Real piece of work, that guy. Yeah, John C. Man. Well, this has been fun.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And Kyle, I want to take a moment and just ask you: you know, you come from outside of our faith tradition. You’ve always been perfectly open and straightforward about it, but you also are interested in exchange. Like, every year you come out to BYU and Utah with a group of students from your church. Tell us about interfaith exchange and why that’s meaningful to you in particular with Restoration faiths.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. Thank you for asking that, because that’s a big part of my life and has been for ten years now, and I hope it never ends. I’m a big advocate for interfaith dialogue between Latter-day Saints and what I call, like, traditional Christians, so your Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, because two—I think—well, I’d say three primary reasons: one, in the history of our movements, we haven’t done it very well, but both of us have a common scriptural conviction that we’re supposed to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Kyle Beshears: And so I kind of feel as, like, members of those two communities, we ought to step up to the plate and try to obey Jesus in that command as best as possible, and getting to understand each other and what we love and what we think and how we behave is really important to loving your neighbor as yourself, because if you—you can’t love somebody that you don’t know. Second, I am personally edified when I spend time with Latter-day Saints. So there’s a lot I disagree with when it comes to the faith and practice of Latter-day Saint tradition, but there’s a lot that resonates with me, and in those moments I get to kind of, like, be vulnerable and let my guard down a little bit, and I get to find out that, like, oh, hey, you’re a dad who struggles with the same things that I do as a dad, or you’re a husband or—and you struggle with the same things that I do as a husband. Like, how can I pray for you? How can I help you? And then here’s something I get with Latter-day Saints that I don’t get with my own tribe: How does your faith inform how you’re trying to improve yourself as a father or improve yourself as a husband? And then I kind of take that: I’m like, is that missing or is it present in my own faith tradition? So it actually helps me personally see the blind spots, but at the end of the day, I guess those are the two. I said there were three, and I totally forgot what the third one was, but—but, yeah, those are the two big—those are the twin pillars for me, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Well, we admire what you do, Kyle, and like you said, we’re with you. We hope that this lasts for many years to come. I only see good things happening and coming out of this kind of humble and ecumenical dialogue between those who have so much in common, and for you to take so much interest in our tradition as to study the Strangite movement with so much skill and grace, deeply appreciated, and we’ve benefited from it right here today on this program, so we thank you so much.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, thank you.

Kyle Beshears: Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Casey and Scott. I consider it an honor. It was a great joy.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. And, again, a big thanks to our friend Dr. Kyle Beshears for an insightful interview. In our next episode, Casey sits down with Joshua Gehly, a friend and ordained evangelist in The Church of Jesus Christ, also known as the Bickertonite Movement, headquartered in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. You won’t want to miss this one. If you’re enjoying and gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it, or by taking 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. And 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.