Preaching to the Court House and Judging in the Temple

On the evening of September 9, 1831, two men arrived in the small county seat of Jacksonville, Illinois. It was court day, and "there were a great many country people in the village."1 Some no doubt had come to settle disputes before the state's travelling judiciary. Illinois law required that all members of the state supreme court hold a circuit court in each county seat at least twice a year.2 In their wake came the lawyers who "rode circuit" with the judges, picking up clients at the local tavern3 and hurriedly conferring with them before rising to make their arguments about this man's failure to pay on a note or the damage done by that man's wandering cow.4 Others came to watch the spectacle of the court. This September evening, however, afforded the citizens of Morgan County a different kind of performance. The first of the two men was a school teacher turned preacher named William McLellin; his companion was Hyrum Smith, brother of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith Jr.5 McLellin recorded: [A]s soon as they found out who we were, they gathered around us; we separated and talked with them about two hours. I cut some of them so close with the truth that a ruffian fellow rolled up his sleeves and swore that he could give it to me but a gendtleman prevented him and took him away.6 The two Mormon elders made an appointment to "preach next day in the Court house."7 At the designated time, a "numerous concourse of people" gathered, and McLellin recorded his trepidation at having "to ascend the judges bench, and face Judges, Lawyers Doctors Priests and people," but he added, "I arose with confidence in Elijah's God and gave them a brief history of the book of Mormon."8 Five years later, a larger group of Mormon elders gathered in Kirtland, Ohio, then headquarters of the Mormon Church. They made their way to the recently completed Kirtland Temple, which sat on a bluff overlooking the Chagrin River flowing toward Lake Erie a few miles to the north. The building differed markedly in its religious significance from the New England churches that it architecturally resembled. Anxious to avoid anything that smacked of "Popery," the Puritans had insisted that their meeting houses were just that: places to meet without any special sanctification.9 The Mormon edifice, in contrast, had been dedicated in an elaborate set of ceremonies that identified it with Old Testament temples, their priestly ceremonies, and inner sanctuaries.10 In the dedicatory prayer, Joseph Smith implored God that the temple "may be sanctified and consecrated to be holy, and that thy holy presence may be continually in this house; and that all people who shall enter upon the threshold of the Lord's house may feel thy power and feel constrained to acknowledge that thou hast sanctified it, and that it is thy house, a place of thy holiness."11 Hence the Mormon elders who made their way to the temple on March 29, 1837, were not simply "going to meeting." Rather, they were entering the sanctified center of their religious community.12 Yet despite the geographic and symbolic distance between them and the judges, lawyers, and village rowdies of Morgan County, the Kirtland elders were also essentially a judicial gathering. After opening with prayer, they turned to the case of Cahoon v. Green. Elder Cahoon charged Elder Green "1st for Disturbing the Sining Scoli several times 2nd for Swearing and calling the Complainant a liar. . . ."13 Green denied the charge of disturbing the peace, but admitted to the swearing and slander. After considering and rejecting Green's defense that Cahoon was, in fact, a liar, the assembled elders voted to withdraw their fellowship from him.14 The juxtaposition of Mormon elders preaching in the court house and adjudicating in the temple illustrates the fluidity of the boundaries between law and religion in nineteenth-century America. During the colonial period and the nineteenth century, numerous religious groups sought to opt out of the secular legal system, moving civil litigation between co-religionists into the hands of the church. …