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Cover image: Audrey Callaghan, Rosalynn Carter, PM James Callaghan of the UK, and US President Jimmy Carter.

Until recently, at least, Americans have likely taken the orderly succession of presidential power for granted.  I became personally aware of this complacency in myself many years ago, while my wife and I were living in Cairo, Egypt.

Ronald Reagan had just defeated President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election.  This deeply puzzled many of the Egyptians whom I knew, since, at that time, Carter was very popular in Egypt. He had facilitated the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, for which Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s own Anwar Sadat had shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.  One day, I even saw a spray-painted graffito on a wall in downtown Cairo that read, in the Roman letters that speakers of Arabic don’t commonly use, “God Bless Jimmy Kartar!”  (Over the decades, I venture to say, pro-American graffiti have been fairly rare in foreign countries.)

Many of the Egyptians with whom I spoke wanted to know whether Carter would really leave the Oval Office on 20 January 1981, the day that his term ended and on which Reagan would assume office.  I assured them that there was no question that Carter would leave.  Ronald Reagan would not be required to surround the White House with tanks in order to ensure the transfer of power.

As I spoke to them, though, it occurred powerfully to me that, in a sense, their worries about whether Reagan would peacefully succeed Carter were completely justified—by their own experience.  Excepting Israel, very few countries in the Middle East have a consistent record of peaceful transfers of power.  And more than a few countries worldwide still struggle with the question of succession.

Thus, it’s scarcely surprising that the problem of succession has arisen for religious movements, as well.  The classic case, I suppose, is that of Islam.  When its founding prophet, Muhammad, suddenly died in 632 AD, there was no clear idea as to who should succeed him.

The understanding developed fairly quickly that he would have no successor in his role as prophet.  However, by the time of his death he was also the political ruler of Arabia, and that role definitely required a successor.  (Within the next century, Arab rule would extend from Andalusia, essentially modern Spain and Portugal, in the west and across the southern shore of the Mediterranean almost to India in the east.)

Two major factions arose, which should strike Latter-day Saints as at least superficially familiar:  I’m oversimplifying here, but the larger faction, known as Sunni Islam, was relatively relaxed about who should rule, so long as someone maintained order and enforced law.  The smaller faction insisted that the right to rule belonged to the family of Muhammad.  (The situation was complicated by the fact that none of Muhammad’s sons reached adulthood.)  This group came to be called the Shi‘a or Shi‘ites—and it has, itself, been riven by factions.  As the posterity of Muhammad multiplied, disagreements emerged about which line and which individual carried the right to rule.

It’s also unsurprising that the situation was unclear when Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered in the jail at Carthage, Illinois, on 27 June 1844.  There had never been a vacancy in the presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until that time, so there was no obvious precedent for dealing with it.

At the time of his death, Hyrum Smith had replaced the disaffected Oliver Cowdery as Assistant President of the Church.  This meant that Hyrum acted as President of the Church in Joseph’s absence, and that he would be his brother’s successor if Joseph were to die.  But Hyrum died with Joseph at Carthage; in fact, he was killed first.  So that possible model of succession was of no help.

Among the churches that claim their origin in the Restoration movement begun by Joseph Smith, far and away the largest after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Community of Christ, headquartered in Independence, Missouri.  (Prior to 2001, it was known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.)  Until 1996, the presidency of this group was restricted to direct male descendants of Joseph Smith.  But Joseph Smith III, the eldest son of Joseph Smith Jr., was only eleven years of age when his father was murdered in 1844.  So, once again, this possible model of succession was unavailable to the Saints.  What became the Reorganized Church and then the Community of Christ was only founded in 1860.

Virtually everybody reading this column, I expect, will already be aware that the leadership of the Church fell to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1844.  But they weren’t without a serious challenger.

Sidney Rigdon had been serving as the First Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church.  When he heard the news of Joseph and Hyrum’s death, he returned to Nauvoo from Pittsburgh, where he had been living, to announce that he was ready to assume the “guardianship” of the Church in their absence.

It was a plausible claim at the time.  The First Presidency was the highest quorum in the Church, and Sidney Rigdon was its highest-ranking surviving member.  The former second counselor in the First Presidency, William Law, had been excommunicated in April 1844 for apostasy.  Law soon founded his own short-lived church and launched the “Nauvoo Expositor” as a vehicle for attacking Joseph and Hyrum.

Nevertheless, Sidney Rigdon was still not quite the sole remaining member of the First Presidency.  In order to understand this, though, a bit of history is required:  As the result of a relatively brief period of disaffection, Elder Orson Pratt, one of the original Quorum of the Twelve, had been excommunicated from the Church on 20 August 1842 and dropped from his quorum.  On that same day, Amasa Lyman was called as an apostle to fill the vacancy left by Elder Pratt’s departure.  Eventually reconciled with Joseph Smith, however, Orson Pratt was rebaptized and returned to his role as an apostle on 20 January 1843.

This left Amasa Lyman, the most junior apostle, as the thirteenth member of the Quorum of the Twelve.  Accordingly, on 4 February 1843, roughly two weeks after Orson Pratt’s return, Elder Lyman was called to serve as an additional counselor in the First Presidency.  (The case of William Law, erstwhile second counselor, was still not quite resolved.)  Probably because of the turbulence in and around the Church during the years 1843 and 1844, however, Amasa Lyman was never actually sustained to the First Presidency by a conference of the Church.

Accordingly, when the Twelve returned to Nauvoo to stake their claim to leadership of the Church, Sidney Rigdon was their principal challenger.  And the stakes for the future of the Restoration were considerable:  Whereas the Twelve wanted to continue with the program set forth by Joseph Smith—including, yes, plural marriage but also (and more centrally) the completion of the Nauvoo Temple and taking the Latter-day Saints to refuge far away, in the west—Sidney Rigdon had little enthusiasm for finishing the temple.  He rejected Joseph’s teachings on marriage.  (One of the common denominators among the groups that emerged out of the crisis of 1844 is their overall disdain for the doctrines and practices introduced by Joseph Smith during the Nauvoo period.)  This may help to explain why, when Rigdon called upon Amasa Lyman to speak in support of his bid to become the Church’s “guardian,” Elder Lyman in fact endorsed the leadership of the Twelve.

Moreover, Rigdon questioned the doctrine of “gathering,” since, in his view, it had always drawn persecution—of course, it was also necessary for the building of temples—and he opposed the idea of going west.  He would, himself, eventually found a new church in Pennsylvania, and he spent the rest of his life there and in New York.

However, John Wickliffe Rigdon, one of Sidney’s sons, did go west.    He visited Utah Territory — where he unimpressed by what he saw — and later discussed it with his father:

“Soon after I got home, I told him the state of affairs in Salt Lake and, as it was all a humbug, I wanted to know how the Book of Mormon came into existence, for he owed it to his family to tell all he knew about it and should not go down to his grave with any such grave secrets. He said, “My son, I will swear before God that what I have told you about the Book of Mormon is true. I did not write or have anything to do with its production, and if Joseph Smith ever got that [i.e., the Book of Mormon], other [than] from that which he always told me ([that is,] that an angel appeared and told him where to go to find the plates upon which the book was engraved in a hill near Palmyra), Smith guarded his secret well, for he never let me know by word or action that he got them differently, and I believe he did find them as he said, and that Joe Smith was a prophet, and this world will find it out some day.” I was surprised, [for he was] smarting under what he thought was the ingratitude of the Church for turning him down and not having been with them for over 25 years. I must believe he thought he was telling the truth. He was at this time in full possession of his faculties. What object had he in concealing the fact any longer if he did write it? My father died in 1876 at the age of 83, a firm believer in the Mormon Church. After my father’s death, I told Mother what my father had told me about the Book of Mormon. She said, “Your father told you the truth. He did not write it, and I know, as he could not have written it without my knowing it, for we were married several years before the book was published, and if he wrote it, it must have been since our marriage. I was present and so was your sister Athalia Rigdon, who was a girl of about ten years old when the book was presented to your father, and she remembers the circumstances as well as any recollections of her life.””

In the summer of 1904, John W. Rigdon did in fact join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being baptized in the Hudson River.

Today, Latter-day Saints understand very well the principle of apostolic succession by which, unless revelation dictates otherwise, the senior apostle becomes president of the Church upon the death of his predecessor.  A story told by President N. Eldon Tanner, who was serving as First Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church at the time, nicely illustrates the calm orderliness of the process:

President Tanner was visiting in Arizona when the news came, first, that President Harold B. Lee was seriously ill and, then, that President Lee had died.  Marion G. Romney, the second counselor in the Presidency, was still in Salt Lake City.  “President Romney, who in my absence was directing the affairs of the Church, was at the hospital with President Spencer W. Kimball of the Council of the Twelve. Immediately upon President Lee’s death President Romney turned to President Kimball and said, “You are in charge.” Not one minute passed between the time President Lee died and the Twelve took over to preside over the Church.”

We may take such seamless transfers of authority for granted.  But the Latter-day Saints of 1844, under pressure from apostates within and enemies without, had no clear guidelines and no precedents to go by.  The fascinating and dramatic story of how the Twelve prevailed during the succession crisis that followed the death of Joseph and Hyrum is told in a new feature-length film, “Six Days in August,” produced by the Interpreter Foundation (https://witnessesfilm.com).  It will be released into theaters on Thursday, 10 October 2024.

**

See Karl Keller, ed., “‘I Never Knew a Time When I Did Not Know Joseph Smith’: A Son’s Record of the Life and Testimony of Sidney Rigdon,” in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1/4 (1966): 15-42.

N. Eldon Tanner, “Administration of the Restored Church” (https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/n-eldon-tanner/administration-restored-church/)