In many ways, Joseph Smith is the 1800’s proto-L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology). The forerunner for b******t, batshit cults, if you will.

Scientology and Mormonism have a lot of similarities—they’re both American, they’re both highly-structured, hierarchical, pseudo-corporate entities cosplaying as a church, and most importantly for the next few editions of this series, they were both founded by military wannabes. Beyond this, they both have cosmological elements, a self-described narrative of constant persecution, and are both infamously difficult to leave and make high-demands of followers for their time, money, and free agency.

If you weren’t aware, L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction author turned religious wacko, was the failson of a Navy officer who just wanted to be a cool sailor like his dad. The military blunders/catastrophes podcast Lions Led By Donkeys has an incredible recounting of his career that better contextualizes it within Scientology. The Scientologists claim he had a miraculous career and used Dianetics alone to heal from a career-ending injury. The US Navy said he was never injured and just had an ulcer he was hospitalized with for 6 months.

1838 gave us our first look at a Hubbard-esque Joseph Smith that anyone familiar with the Book of Mormon (fraudulent holy text) should have seen coming. I didn’t spend a lot of time covering the content of the Book of Mormon (fraudulent holy text), but significant parts of the book revolve around the documentation of wars/conflicts the “Lamanites” supposedly participated in on the American continent, despite literally no evidence existing aside from the Book of Mormon (fraudulent holy text). The book discusses tactics, strategies, and describes dozens of battles. Smith was a wannabe war hero just like L. Ron Hubbard.

Before we could get the “1838 Mormon War,” Mormons were still given the benefit of the doubt that they were a persecuted religious minority seeking to take advantage of the promises of the Constitution and the frontier spirit of Manifest Destiny. The Missouri state government had a chartered militia in the Mormon-haven Caldwell County, which ostensibly was to protect the Mormons from persecution by angry mobs and locals. While Jefferson City had abandoned the Mormons during their fool’s errand to re-take Jackson County land in 1834, they were here to protect them now.

At this same time, when the state has given the Mormons land, military protection, and dozens of second chances, the consolidation of the Mormons in Far West was upending the church power structure. Tensions between leadership in Kirtland and Missouri are well-documented, and the Kirtland Safety Society crisis only fueled more unrest, distrust, and paranoia.

I can’t imagine a paranoid cult leader obsessed with war and military tactics, who was now emboldened with access to the legitimate use of force afforded to the state, would let this power get to his head?

This is Part 6 of Putting the Moron in Moroni. Buckle up, this edition is a bit heavy on the history, but these events are critical turning points for pre-Utah Mormons.

This week: Joseph sows the seeds of his own demise while putting the last nails in the coffin of the Mormon project in Missouri, the supposedly peaceful Mormons engage in some good ol’ mob violence, and we visit a holy jail. Thanks for reading and listening.

I swear on my life that I won’t be talking about Mormons in this newsletter forever. I am funny, too. Subscribe now and take my word for it.

The Mormon church had a new lease on life in Caldwell County, and Joseph Smith used it as an opportunity to weed out dissenters and further control his followers in Far West, MO.

We visited Far West a couple of weeks ago, but there was an important revelation there that led to the inscriptions on the embarrassing monument we saw. Joseph Smith revealed in April 1838:

* Far West is a holy and consecrated place,

* The Law of Tithing is now a thing,

* The church should be called “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” and

* God told Joseph Smith that his Kirtland loyalists should be installed as leaders in Far West.

We talked last week about Martin Harris’ excommunication and revolt in Kirtland. As you might recall, Harris was one of the so-called “Three Witnesses” to the Book of Mormon’s creation who later recanted (and would later recant the recantation once the Saints moved to Utah) and claimed it was all b******t.

The other two, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, were Smith’s loyalists in charge of managing the Missouri church before the Kirtland exodus. Predictably, Cowdery and Whitmer became principal targets of Smith’s reorganization, which is a pretty nice way of putting it.

In early June 1838, David Whitmer, his brother John, and William Phelps (who wrote the hymn from last week’s edition), were formally accused of heresy and were excommunicated from the church. Their crimes? Not obeying Joseph’s rules.

The Law of Consecration, which we’ve brought up a few times in this series, was an edict commanding followers to liquidate their property and assets to the church, and the church would lease it back to them. The Whitmers and Phelps were accused of selling their land in Jackson County, which had not been under church control. They were also accused of disobeying the Word of Wisdom, specifically, that they were indulging in coffee and tea, according to John Turner’s Joseph Smith.

On June 17, 1838, Smith’s second-in-command, Sidney Rigdon, delivered an infamous oration, the “Salt Sermon,” during what I would describe as a meeting akin to a wrestling promo. Rigdon gave a scathing rebuke of detractors/dissenters of the Church. We don’t have a one-for-one transcript, but he invoked the Sermon on the Mount from the Book of Matthew to call for sanctions against those disloyal to Smith and his church, including erecting a gallows in the town square of Far West. Wheesh.

Smith was present and spoke after Rigdon, and according to Turner, seemed somewhat apprehensive of the call for violence and urged peace. At the same time, he made the theologically incorrect claim that “Peter hung Judas” as a way to justify violence against traitors. To me, Smith’s effective endorsement was choreographed like a good heel’s promo; they had already prepared printed pamphlets of Rigdon’s remarks they had distributed to those present for the address.

In the days after Rigdon’s “Salt Sermon,” Smith loyalists in Far West drafted a letter signed by 80-some Mormons (not leadership, mind you) and demanded these wicked, designing men (the Whitmers and Cowdery) out of Caldwell County. Almost as consequentially, local Mormons established what they called the “Danites,” a fraternal order meant to serve as a kind of informal paramilitary force operating extrajudicially. They had tacit support from Joseph Smith and were focused on “self-defense” against mob violence. Within two days, the dissenters and their families had fled the immediate danger of the mob-violence-minded Mormons and left Caldwell County.

On July 4, at an Independence Day celebration, the cornerstones (now encased in glass) were laid at the Far West Temple Site (where we visited a couple editions ago). At this event, Sidney Rigdon again delivered a firebrand speech that all but confirmed the Mormons’ days of adhering to an ideology with a modicum of non-violence were over: he declared any mobs attacking the Mormons should prepare for a “war of extermination.” The pamphlet they gave out at the event had the subtitle: “Better far sleep with the dead than be oppressed with the living.” Uffda!

The speech was effectively a public declaration of “independence” from the Missouri state government and called for the Saints to fight to the death to protect themselves from “mobocracy” and set the tone for how the rest of the year would go for the Saints. Let’s see if it pays off (it won’t).

On August 6, 1838, voters in Caldwell County headed to the polls for the first time, and the premier candidate had specifically called out the Mormons as “horse-thieves” and “robbers.” The Mormons also headed to the polls—a group of thirty or so approached the polling place but were denied the right to vote. A brawl ensued, including one Mormon inciting the Danites by name, who were willing to kill for their cause.

There were no injuries, thankfully, but the event is known as the “Election Day Battle.” This was covered on our tour of Liberty Jail, where the missionaries called it “a disagreement on election day.”

Mormons had been settling in areas around Caldwell County, including neighboring Carroll County, where Mormons had moved into the vacant town of De Witt, MO. That same election day, Carroll County voters approved a ballot measure to expel the Mormons from the county. Over the next two months, Mormons would be run out of town by angry mobs who burned their houses down, stole property, threatened lives, etc.

Two days after election day, the Mormons concocted a scheme to try to force the local government outside of Caldwell to defend them. Smith led a group of around 100 armed Mormons to the house of Adam Black, a justice of the peace in Daviess County. They threatened to kill him if he didn’t sign their agreement that he would use force to prevent Mormons from being attacked by angry mobs. Joseph, a f*****g idiot, thought that a signed note had to be legitimate. The next day, Black signed an affadavit that he only signed anything to prevent his “instant death.”

The new Missouri Governor, Lilburn Boggs (incredible name), was made aware of the plight of the Mormons as both government leaders like Black and Mormon officials pleaded for military aid. Boggs obliged, partially, and sent the state militia. State leaders warned Smith and the Mormons that their militia in Caldwell County, sanctioned by the state, was not permitted to enter any other county. In response, the Mormons took the Caldwell County militia to Daviess County to “defend” Mormon settlers there. This was not their brightest move.

They did much more than “defend” property: they pillaged and destroyed non-Mormon communities in Daviess County.

There was widespread looting, property damage, and lawless chaos that the Mormons were finally inflicting on others. Of course Mormons, always the victims, made accusations locals had burned their own houses and stores down simply to blame the Mormons.

There were accounts from Mormon civilians, however, that showed concern over the ease at which a Mormon mob could form, become bloodthirsty, and quench it. You might imagine, the Mormons were not unified in their newfound love for mob violence. Thomas Marsh, the first-ever President of the Q12 (a stupid Mormon council) left the Church the day after the Daviess County attacks. The Missouri government turned on the Mormons for their illegal offensive. The cordial goodwill given to the Mormons by the people of Missouri all but disappeared.

In October, a skirmish between the Missouri militia in Ray County (south of Caldwell) and the Mormons (who instigated it) turned deadly, with 4 dead on both sides at the Battle of Crooked River. I don’t find battles particularly interesting so go get your war documentary crap elsewhere.

The accounts of the Mormon offensive were exaggerated, but this was still an era with little-to-no mass communication, and the Missouri government had decided enough was enough.

Governor Boggs ordered a militia of 2,500 men to head to the area to put down the Mormon revolt and restore some sense of peace to the area, but upped the ante by turning Rigdon’s warning of a “war of extermination” for the Mormons’ foes into a promise. On October 27, 1838, Gov. Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the “Mormon Extermination Order.”

“Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operation with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description. If you can increase your force, you are authorized to do so to any extent you may consider necessary.” - Gov. Lilburn Boggs, Executive Order 44

Three days later, an unauthorized militia of Missourians surrounded Hawn’s Mill, the one historical site in the area we did not get to visit, and attacked the Mormon settlement there. This attack was the bloodiest and arguably cruellest; 17 Mormons were slain, including children. The most shocking aspect, aside from the deaths, is that he militia likely hadn’t even heard about the extermination order at the time.

On November 1, it was all over. The Mormons had retreated to Far West where they were surrounded by the state militia. Joseph Smith allegedly “begged like a dog” for peace terms, and the terms were wildly one-sided and required the Mormons to leave Missouri. The Mormon leaders were arrested on treason charges. Joseph Smith’s hubris and eagerness to test the waters of democracy and cast a wide net of economic, military, religious, social, and political power over his followers and the non-Mormon locals had failed; was the Mormon project in Missouri over?

The government arrested dozens of Mormons and took a victory lap at Far West. A court martial actually demanded Smith be executed publicly, but the local general refused, and he would get a trial.

After a preliminary hearing, Joseph and his brother Hyrum, along with Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight (the man who owned the land at Adam-ondi-Ahman), and a couple others, were taken to the jail in Liberty, the county seat of Clay County and just outside of Independence, MO.

Much like Joseph and his accomplices, we made our way through semi-rural Missouri, but unlike the Mormons, we were coming from Jackson County because we had successfully avoided pissing off the locals.

There wasn’t much to see on the way there. There’s something to be said about the kind of rah-rah patriotism one could only get from visiting places called Independence and Liberty in the same day. It is not lost on me that Liberty’s claim to fame is a jail.

Speaking of, we pulled up to a somewhat chaste-looking stone building. I’d contextualize it within Liberty but I don’t remember anything about it other than I just wanted to get in and out as fast as f*****g possible.

Against our better judgement, we went in. Timeline-wise, we went here the same day as Temple Lot and Far West, but Liberty Jail was between the two. This was our first guided tour. I don’t know what I expected, but I really hoped we could just…walk in and wander around and read exhibits.

When we walked in, I immediately felt my fight or flight instincts kick in. Mormon facilities have a very clinical, very American feel, like if you tried to inject patriotic jingoism into a funeral home. The carpet was hideous, the wallpaper drab, and the decorations tacky and classic Mormon core.

Walking in, we were greeted by a group of young sister missionaries, probably all aged 18-22 or so, along with two much older men who really put the elder in Elder. They greeted us and, much to my chagrin, my two companions immediately bailed on me to use the bathroom. So much for sticking together in the cult facility.

While I was waiting, I was really trying to avoid talking to the Mormons. I was taking pictures of some of the surroundings—there was a portrait of White Jesus, White Jesus visiting the Americas, and I’m pretty sure the classic “First Vision” art of Joe on the ground looking up at two identical, but distinctly separate holy beings.

I did, however, eavesdrop. The crowd of Mormons dissipated as I’m guessing shifts were changing over, and it was just a very young sister missionary and an old man making the most uncomfortable NPC-ass small-talk dialogue I’ve ever heard. Once again, Mormons left in their idle spaces will make small-talk like Red Dead Redemption 2 characters.

She pointed out a book he had sitting by him, which was I think an Ezra Taft Benson book (horribly evil right-wing head of the church for the mid-20th century), and she feigned excitement so poorly I really had to keep from interjecting or laughing or otherwise reacting.

“Elder Benson? That’s so cool!” she said half-heartedly. He then went on a diatribe about reading and told her to read more and then asked some probing borderline inappropriate questions about her life. I was uncomfortable. Thankfully, my partner and our friend did eventually come back to me, and the sister missionary pointed us towards a large waiting room.

The room was a pretty typical historical museum orientation room: there were some interactive maps about the 1838 Mormon War (all technically correct information, mind you) juxtaposed with Mormon art about Joseph Smith being held there, the exodus to Illinois after being kicked out of Missouri (next week!), but my favorite piece was this extremely ridiculous looking portrait of Joseph on his knees with a comically large frowny face on as he prays for freedom or whatever.

They made us wait for literally 20-25 minutes before they’d take us on a tour. In their defense, we did have a number of pilgrims join us, a few families, a very young couple, and an elderly couple, all True Believing Mormons (TBMs). Some were in classic road trip clothes but others, like the young couple, were dressed to the 9s with a beautiful dress and fitted suit. Truly bonkers stuff.

We were eventually joined by another missionary, who said she was from Hawaii. She was far less enthusiastic. If you aren’t familiar, missionaries pay their own way, don’t get to choose where they go, and are forced to be around another missionary 24/7, where they constantly police each other’s behavior because “obedience” is considered one of the most important virtues for a missionary.

Anyway, we got an orientation, which was really awkward because the chairs in the room they had us sit in were in two lines, back-to-back, meaning if someone was speaking on the other side of the room you had to turn your whole body around. It’s okay, though, there was nothing worth listening to.

Liberty Jail does a great job at showcasing the Mormon doublethink. The jail was presented as both a holy place where revelations were made and a desolate hellhole. It was “maximum security” according to a missionary, but we were later told they were allowed to leave and walk around, people brought them pies (I’m not kidding), and even their families were permitted to stay with them.

After the orientation, they took us to a smaller room with “art” for us to look at, which was just low-resolution historical photos blown the f**k up and printed on canvas, like some Redbubble s**t. The room was tiny and we were in there all of 30 seconds.

They then led us down a hallway, which felt remarkably similar to the hallways at the Washington, DC temple I toured in 2022; it felt more like an orthodontist’s office than a church facility. The doors were also really creepy—they were all steel doors like you’d find at any public place, but they had these tiny 5"x5” square windows that basically only showed you if the light was on in the next room. They were on every door!

They took us to a large room that housed the historic jail. It was presented as a cutaway, like one of those Dorling Kindersley kids books. We were told photos were fine, but no flash or videos permitted because it would interfere with the “audio-visual presentation.”

The presentation was a series of voiceovers about Joseph et al’s experience at the jail. They talked about the isolation and brutal conditions, while again, simultaneously mentioning the various liberties afforded to the Mormons, particularly by the kind jailers who lived upstairs. There were three parts to the tour, an upper level, and two lower-levels on either side of the jail. It was mostly pre-recorded voiceovers with the occasional interlude by the missionaries.

The highlight was when we got to hear the voice of God speaking to Joseph Smith through a beam of light in the window in the basement. While consuming the heresy, my faithful Catholic partner was having a bad time, because believe it or not it feels wrong to hear fake testimony from a man a missionary literally just told you is “second only to Jesus Christ” in terms of what men have done for humanity.

I haven’t mentioned my favorite part of this tour, which will come up at Carthage Jail too, which is that our friend was moving and had their cat with them in a cat backpack. None of the Mormons ever acknowledged the cat and it was very difficult to not laugh as the cat quietly meowed through the presentation.

One point they made was that the door on the jail was not the original door, but that in 2024 the LDS Church had acquired the actual door and that we shouldn’t worry, because it’s in safe keeping in the church’s archives. Thank God for that.

The whole presentation was extremely culty. Joseph had a whopping three revelations at Liberty Jail, and none are as important as those at Far West that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. But we still had to hear about how holy this place was and how divine providence kept Joseph and his spirits up.

In the spirit of Mormon doublethink, we were told that eventually, Joseph and the gang were being transferred to a different jail when their escorts simply…let them go. The general Mormon theory is that the guards got drunk and Joseph was able to escape, something to reinforce the Word of Wisdom.

More realistically, it was a conspiracy to avoid more scrutiny against the Missouri state government’s treatment of Mormons. Boggs’ political career was irreparably damaged, and after Rigdon-led Mormon refugees fled the state, they found safe haven in Illinois, where the town council of Quincy welcomed them with open arms:

“Resolved: That the governor of Missouri, in refusing protection to this class of people when pressed upon by an heartless mob, and turning upon them a band of unprincipled Militia, with orders encouraging their extermination, has brought a lasting disgrace upon the state over which he presides.”

But what was most disarming, what pissed me off the most, what made my blood boil, was learning that this supposedly very holy site of great persecution, where Joseph was allowed to freely leave, visit with family, and again, were brought pies by supportive locals, is not only not the original jail (it’s a recreation, and not a particularly accurate one at that), but that Joseph was only there for four months. FOUR MONTHS??? WHY IS THIS A HOLY SITE?

The Mormons treated it like we were visiting the f*****g Lorraine Motel or Nelson Mandela’s prison cell. It was a f*****g jailhouse, literally just somebody’s house, that had very little security and was generally a far more positive experience than one might think of when they think about the modern justice system.

When the presentation ended and the lights turned back on, we noticed multiple TBMs also attending were full-on crying about the religious experience they had. Horrified, we bolted out to a vestibule where we were finally alone, I said “what the f**k was that” multiple times, snapped a pic of a giant statue of Joseph Smith, and took a free copy of the Book of Mormon (fraudulent holy text) from the table.

Afterwards, we had one last Mormon cultural site to visit in Liberty: a Swig drive-through. If you’re not familiar with Swig, you’re almost certainly familiar with the “dirty soda” fad of the past few years. Of course it’s a Mormon thing, and we had to stop because we don’t have one anywhere near Minnesota.

Or we would have loved to, but the drive-through line (I s**t you not) was at least 20 cars long and wrapped around multiple sidestreets in the strip mall complex we were in. We instead, opted for the much cheaper and essentially same product that’s offered at Sonic next door. Sorry Swig-lovers, maybe another time. Maybe we’ll stop next time and bring a Swig for Joseph in the jail cell for old time’s sake.

So yeah…the Mormons are kicked out of Missouri, and we are done with the Kansas City region. I’ve stretched this out to multiple weeks, but just know that this, Independence, Far West, The Country Store, and Adam-ondi-Ahman were all done in one day. It was brutal but the history is just so stupid and sooooo 1830’s that I needed to cover it, both to share how insane it all is, but also to rationalize how much money I spent to make this happen by grasping at straws to understand what the f**k is going on.

Next week, the Saints arrive in Nauvoo, Illinois, the hub of the last five years of Joseph Smith’s life. In a couple weeks, we’ll wrap up the tour part of the series in Carthage, Illinois, where Joseph Smith met his timely death in 1844.

I have a couple of other articles in the hopper. I want to cover the 2025 dating show Are You My First? which is predicated on being Love Island but all the people are virgins and it’s only 10 episodes. It’s also full of Mormons. There’s also a whole newsletter worth of content to cover one of the most bizarre and consequential delusional episodes of Joseph Smith’s life: his 1844 campaign for the President of the United States.

Thanks again for reading and listening, and I’ll see you next week.

Wavering Mormons with a history of violence have been in the news a lot this week (see: The Bachelorette), help your curious friends learn that it’s nothing new and share this post.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit uffdatimespicayune.substack.com