Much like kernels of corn and barley, seeds of religion sown in the 1830s on the American frontier found fertile ground in a harsh environment.
Within this frontier setting the Church was organized, prospered and refined through the fires of adversity. And it was during a 21-year period between 1823 and 1844 that the Prophet Joseph Smith received 134 of the 138 revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. The revelations were received on the frontiers of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and Massachusetts.In February 1831, in Kirtland, Ohio, a sleigh pulled up in front of a mercantile store and a young man climbed out. Extending his hand to one of the store owners, he said, "Newel K. Whitney, thou art the man."
With these words, Joseph Smith arrived in a city that would be forever changed because of his presence. Over the next 13 years the Prophet received many revelations that influenced members in this city and other cities to depart from the ways of the frontier and organize their lives according to the standards of the restored Church. However, while the revelations were being received in Kirtland or Nauvoo, the people faced many challenges.
Even in these cities, survival was a critical issue. Money and goods were scarce. The saints faced challenges with cooperation and hard work, establishing commerce and schools. But each time the saints moved, their possessions became fewer and the number of poor among them greater. Despite the degree of prosperity eventually attained in Nauvoo, emigrants from Europe kept high the need to care for the poor. Life was often grueling at best.
The saints in their poor circumstances were surrounded by settlers in social and political turbulence, who also struggled for survival.
LDS historian Max H. Parkin observed concerning the settlers of this period, "Conquest of the wilderness was an arduous task; exacting, monotonous, and burdensome. It was wasteful of human life, especially of women and children, and it was destructive of culture and neglectful of social relationships.
"All faced the same rigorous hardships, the same deprivations, the same grueling labors," he continued. "The vigorous survived and were made stronger; the weak fell by the wayside and died."
In the face of these hardships and surrounded by freedom, the settlers' standards sank to a survival level, observed historian Horace Busnell. "They the settlersT think it no degradation to do before the woods and wild animals, what in the presence of a cultivated society they would blush to perpetrate. They are likely to look upon the indulgence of low vices and brutal pleasures, as the necessary garnish of their life of adventure."
"These standards," observed LDS historian Leland H. Gentry in a dissertation, "were compounded by the arrival of foreigners who came to America to relieve themselves of suppression, want, and over-population in Europe."
Times were also fertile for religious change because, as traditions were broken following the American revolution and freedom of religion established, many chose freedom from religion. Religions in America declined to the extent that one historian said this period was "the lowest ebb tide of vitality in the history of American Christianity."
At the turn of the century, only 7 percent of America belonged to a church. To increase their membership, eastern churches sent preachers riding the westward circuits, or alternating their time between preaching and farming.
Early preachers found newspapers were an effective tool to communicate with frontier people. They also found an effective way to reach the people was through Protestant camp meetings.
Charles G. Finney, a prominent revivalist, expressed the philosophy of many of these preachers: "It is impossible that the real religious affections should be excited to any considerable degree, without exciting the animal sympathies and sensibilities."
These "animal sensibilities" meant that sometimes at the camp meetings "the affected persons would hop like frogs, and their face and limbs underwent contortions." Others would walk on all fours, show their teeth and bark like dogs. Still others would double themselves up and roll "from side to side like a hoop."
While some frontier people expressed religion in this manner, others united to ridicule what they considered unorthodox religious behavior. Here, newspapers exerted powerful influences. The newspapers aroused public sentiment to a fever pitch.
"In reality, the tyranny of the majority often degenerated into lawlessness and became a form of mob rule," said one historian.
Mobs, riots and destructions of life and property were common in this period. During a single week in September 1835, Hezekiah Niles in the Baltimore, Md., newspaper, noted over 500 items reflecting acts of violence and disorder in the nation. He observed, "Society seems everywhere unhinged and the deamon (sic) of blood slaughter has been let loose among us."
It was among these conditions that converted members gathered with the saints on the American frontier of the 1830s and 1840s and learned the correct way as the Prophet Joseph Smith received revelations from the Lord.
"Only when the ordinary hardships of the frontier life are added to the unusual social abuse heaped upon the Latter-day Saints of the 1830s can one properly appreciate the willingness of the Mormon people to suffer for an ideal," wrote Parkin. This ideal, to them "was greater than life itself: the building of the kingdom of God on earth."