There’s no Currents this week, but I wanted to share this list of questions that Mormon Church leaders — in the middle of the Mormon Reformation — asked Utah members. The information comes from historian David Bigley’s invaluable book, “Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896.”
Bishops were instructed by the LDSÂ church hierarchy to ask the following questions in every home. Apostle Jedediah Grant, the firebrand who was a fervent initiator of the Reformation, told bishops that any unsatisfactory answers from members must lead to “their names be written down and let the offence and place of residence be written against the name, that we may know who are living in sin, where they live and what their offenses are.”
The questions are as follows. Except for a few, and the fact that answers were not private, they’re not much different — except for the times differences– from questions members get today. From Bigler’s book:
Have you committed adultery?
Have you ever spoken evil of Authorities or anointed of the Lord?
Have you ever betrayed your brethren?
Have you ever stolen or taken anything that was not your own?
Have you ever took (sic) the name of God in vain?
Have you ever been drunk?
Have you ever taken any poles from the big field or fences or taken your brothers hay?
Have you ever picked up anything that did not belong to you and kept it without seeking to find the owner?
Have you made promises and not performed them?
Do you pay all your Tithing?
Do you labor Faithfully and diligently for your employer?
Do you preside over your Family as a servant of God or are they subject to you?
Do you teach your children the gospel?
Do you attend your Ward meetings?
Do you pray in your families night and morning?
Do you pray in Secret?
Do you wash your bodies once a week?
In a humorous sidenote, Brigham Young, Bigler recounts, had a problem with washing his body once a week. He did admit he had tried it, but “was well aware that this was not for everybody.”
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I can’t begin how to imagine what methods the Danites used to enforce the weekly washing of bodies!
Hmmmm…. Might the question have been phrased by Brigham Young then “Do you bathe once a week, whether you need to or not?”
It’s an interesting list of questions. Coming at it from the POV of a historian, I note that three of the questions ask “are you a thief?” in only slightly different ways. [Have you ever stolen or taken anything that was not your own?.... Have you ever taken any poles from the big field or fences or taken your brothers hay? Have you ever picked up anything that did not belong to you and kept it without seeking to find the owner?] Suggests that the Brethren were having a particular problem with pilfering at the time, else why ask everyone about it three times?
Also intrigued by this question: Have you ever spoken evil of Authorities or anointed of the Lord? It leaves much ground for interpretation. For example, would disagreeing with “Authorities or anointed of the Lord” on any matter [secular or regarding faith and practice] have been considered “speaking evil” of them and so requiring public shaming and condemnation? If so, it suggests a pretty chilling kind of Orwellian thought-police was at work, which is also suggested by the fact that only unacceptable answers were to be made public by way of shaming and punishing those who gave them.
Sounds uncomfortably un-American to me, even for the mid-nineteenth century, a part of the American experience that happily, did not become part of the American tradition handed down [legally or, more broadly, culturally] to present times.
Interesting observations, Bob. Incidentally, “speaking ill of the Lord’s anointed” is still a serious transgression in the LDS Church, and can be punished with excommunication. Also, that’s perceptive to catch the significance of the questions. Today, the questions still reflect concerns. In recent years, making sure that a member pays child support if he or she owes it is covered.
Still seems like a bunch of busybodies who can’t keep their opinions about how others live their lives to themselves.
“Saturday is special day”…
Occurs to me that a grad student looking for a seminar paper topic in Utah History could do an interesting one based on how the list of questions asked of LDS families has changed over time. The ones that remain substantively un-changed [like the "speaking evil" one] would isolate pretty clearly I’d think a set of core concerns that were considered important regardless of time or context [though I imagine interpretation of what constitutes "speaking evil of" may have changed over time].
And the questions that changed down through the decades would provide an interesting picture of how concerns about the behavior of individual saints [beyond the core set] changed over time [e.g. when did the "paying child support" question get added to the list? Was another earlier question dropped when it was added, and if so, what was it? And so on.]
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