The Reed Smoot hearings were a serious test for whether the promise of religious freedom in America would be realized even for religious minorities. It certainly looked as though Protestants were trying to cut out Mormons from First Amendment protections and keep it all to themselves.
The conflict, though, was not quite so simple. It wasn’t merely that the Mormons were seeking religious freedom — they were also seeking the ability to continue with religious practices while ignoring state authority over civil matters:
- “America’s problem with the Latter-day Saints was not simply or even primarily a matter of unlawful action, but of conflicting authority. The Latter-day Saints appealed to the law of their god, given through prophets, to justify their resistance to the law of the land. ...The Mormon Problem made it obvious that, by not establishing any religion, the Constitution had subordinated every religion’s authority over believers to the state’s authority over citizens. ...Because Protestants had always enjoyed the liberty that comes from writing the law, they were confident that no difference existed between one’s duty to church and to state.”
Smoot himself was not polygamous, although there was evidence that he was sympathetic to polygamous marriages. If, however, it could be shown that he was aware of polygamy or illegal cohabitation among fellow Mormons — especially among fellow Apostles — then he could be charged with contributing to unlawful activity and therefore unfit for public office.
Moreover, Protestant government officials would have all the excuse they needed to confiscate Mormon property and basically shut the church down. They already had large numbers of their leaders in jail for violations of anti-polygamy laws, so this would effectively seal the fate of their church.
So what happened? The Mormon Church was faced with a choice: they could stand behind their traditions of polygamy and theocracy or they could take a chance and back a young, monogamous, would-be Senator Smoot. The former would allow them to remain true to their origins while the latter would allow them not only to survive, but to even better integrate with the rest of society.
Naturally, they chose the latter.
Aspects of Mormon history when monogamy was the norm were emphasized. Polygamous traditions and history were all but written out. Polygamous leaders were punished and shoved aside. The shift in emphasis away from polygamy drove away many — some as far as Mexico, where their polygamous descendants remain to this day — but the emphasis on different traditions allowed the church to maintain a sense of continuity that was necessary if they were to retain the bulk of their members.
After his critics failed to muster enough votes to kick him out, Reed Smoot would represent Utah in the Senate for about thirty years. Mormons became more American — so American, in fact, that many other Americans began to romanticize the Mormon patriarchal traditions, turning away from so-called “feminized” politics. Religious minorities gained a bit more liberty to exercise their rights and practice their traditions — at least, the burden of proof was less and less on them to prove that they were “real” Americans simply because they didn’t follow the dominant religious tradition. Today, that is pretty much reserved for atheists (and it’s remarkable how similar the critiques of atheists today are to the critiques of Mormons of the early 20th century).
People today no longer remember the Smoot hearing, especially Mormons themselves, but as Flake is able to demonstrate, they were a pivotal moment in American religious history. We all have something to learn from them — something about religious liberty in America and the relationship between church and state.
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