Church

The third foundational narrative that secured Joseph Smith’s religious authority surrounds the founding of his church, the Church of Christ. It marked Smith’s prophetic voice extending beyond his personal charisma into the institutional realm of an enduring religion. Scholars have observed that Mormonism is a kind of test case for Max Weber’s theory of the routinization of charisma since at Mormonism’s founding the religion was heavily tied to Joseph Smith’s prophetic power, and such movements do not often survive the death of their founders. Weber insists that charismatic authority can easily falter in its fragile state and that such leaders rarely form long-lasting organizations. Yet Mormonism did not fade after Smith’s death in 1844. In fact, Smith was obsessed with organization from the point that he merged his charismatic prophethood with the bureaucracy of church governance in a form of hierarchical democracy. A sustainable and manageable priesthood hierarchy was not possible until he grounded his tradition within an official church where ordinations could be performed and ordinances carried out with the legitimating force of the institution. The church would form its own ecclesiastical structure that was maintained through Smith’s prophetic voice and periodically reevaluated with changes in geography, demographics, and politics. The long-lasting priesthood order led to a new phase in Mormonism and religious authority in the antebellum United States. This chapter charts early Mormonism’s development into an institutional state, beginning with the 1829 charismatic revelations for the design of the church and ending with the 1830 establishment of the church and the official ordination of Joseph Smith as its prophet. The chapter traces the trajectory of how Smith’s voice maintained its singular value while securing an institutional status within a church, how he democratized his gifts through the priesthood while monopolizing his own prophetic authority.