moksha wrote: ↑Tue Jul 18, 2017 6:46 am
Are there any charts that show the early church quorums and organization?
I can't graph a chart here, but D. Michael Quinn has one in his Origins of Power.
It is very simple, and I plan on using the following analogy in part 2. (If you can think of a better, I am all ears!)
In a county prosecutor's office, there are two divisions. Most people think first of the criminal division that has all the deputy prosecutors that prosecute crimes, because they are generally the ones in the news.
But there is another side to the prosecutor's office--the civil side. The civil division is composed of deputy prosecutors who primarily defend the county against civil actions by other parties.
Two completely different divisions comprised of different deputy prosecutors doing very different things.
But the elected prosecutor is over both divisions.
Now, with that in mind, the church Joseph Smith organized had two divisions, as well.
The first division is the government within the organized stakes of Zion, which were in Kirtland and Missouri and finally in Nauvoo. The stake high councils had control over what transpired in the organized stakes.
The second division is the government outside the organized stakes of Zion--or in other words, the mission field. The twelve apostles were over this division, with the Seventy helping them out.
That is why the Q12 is referred to as a "traveling high council," and why they were sent on missions to England; whereas the high council is referred to as a "standing high council." It is also why Joseph Smith made it clear that the apostles have no authority over any of the stakes of Zion. If you read D&C 107 and 124 in this light, it will become apparent that this is what is going on.
The First Presidency, though a quorum "equal in power and authority" to the Q12 and the Seventy, presided over the church
both in the stakes of Zion and in the mission field. (Like the elected prosecutor in a county prosecutor's office is over both the criminal division and the civil division.)
Interestingly, D&C 107 says that the stake high council is "equal in power and authority" to the Seventy, the Q12 and also to the First Presidency. But in church we seldom get to that part of D&C 107, generally stopping at the Seventy.
The Nauvoo stake president, William Marks, had a very strong position to make a bid for control of the church, at least where stakes were organized, which is what most people today generally think of as the church.
This is why Brigham Young dismantled not only the Seventy (because he perceived it as a threat, being "equal in power and authority" to the Q12), but also dismantled the Nauvoo stake high council and when he couldn't get the high council to excommunicate the stake president, made sure he was run out of town by the "whistling and whittling brigade."
Unlike the romanticized version handed down in modern day church lessons, the "whistling and whittling brigade" was not composed of young lads whittling sticks with pocket knives, but rather full grown men whittling sticks with bowie knives. The idea was that if the person they were following and whistling at didn't get out of Dodge (or Nauvoo), they would end up resembling the sticks being "whittled."
Brigham Young was intent on making sure that anybody and everybody who didn't support the Q12 leading the church did not stay in Nauvoo, and he employed the "brigade" to take care of business.
So that is my "word diagram" of the way the church was organized in Joseph Smith's day.
Brigham Young not only took over leadership of the church in the mission field from the First Presidency and Seventy, he also took over leadership in the church in the stakes of Zion from the high councils and stake presidents.
THAT is what really gets interesting.
