Spiritualism and Mormonism: Some Thoughts on the Similarities and Differences

View PDF

Spiritualism and Mormonism were both born in the “burned over district” in upper New York State within a generation of each another and teach that it is possible for the living to speak with the dead. Even though Spiritualists and Mormons have often recited these and other similarities – a hope for communitarian reform, a belief in humanity’s perfectibility and eternal progress, experimentation with marriage relationships, and posses￾sion of a sense of mission – in an attempt to explain Spiritualism’s attraction for some Mormons, and why certain Spiritualists were convinced that Mormon revelations were nothing more than Spiritualist manifestations, many similarities between the two are superficial.1

Not all Spiritualists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were Christians; non-Christian Spiritualists exhorted fellow believers to “oppose every effort to Christianize, Mormonise, Mohammedanise, or otherwise pollute Spiritualism.”2 In addition, Spiritualism unlike Mormonism lacked a central church organization and except for believing in spirit messages from the dead had no universal creed.3 In fact, similarities noted by one Spiritualist faction were often used to criticize another faction. For example, in 1867 one Spiritualist magazine accused another of being a grab bag of “mormon, Methodist, Shaker, Free thinker, Free lover” thought.4

Even if Mormons believed in and occasionally received visions of their dead, most such apparitions occurred only to a select few, under uncon￾trolled circumstances, and only rarely after the death of Mormonismi first generation.5 Mormons never conducted seances or took ectoplasmic appa￾ritions or spirit photographs seriously. Given these differences, similarities may have been good arguments to convince potential converts that the two movements were harmonious but not persuasive that the movements were twins.

Although the one similarity the two movements did share – that the living can speak with the dead – and its corollary – that followers can “know” rather than “believe”6 that life continues after death – was also espoused by other nineteenth-century religions, it was enough to associ￾ate the two movements in the minds of critics. Many skeptics criticized both groups – sometimes in the same book or tract,7 others in separate exposés.8 Orestes A. Brownson (1803-76), a Universalist preacher, radical humanist, and severe critic of Spiritualism, who converted to Catholicism in 1844, wrote that Mormonism was a form “of contemporary spiritual￾ism.”9 He also believed that the devil was the prime mover of Spiritual￾ism and that the Book of Mormon was a piece of literary demonism.10 Three years later, in 1857 George Templeton Strong, a New York socialite, called the Mormons a “horde of brutalized fanatics who formed a ‘Relig￾ion of Sensuality'” and argued that if that “most beggarly of delusions should prevail,” it would only be “less astounding than the reception of ‘spiritualism’ by so many thousands as a new Gospel or a Commentary on the old one.”11 That same year Alfred Pairpoint, a British traveler, criticized both Spiritualism and Mormonism and concluded that “blameable as the Spiritual creed may be, it is not cursed with the disgusting details as that of Mormonism.”12 In January 1865 Abraham Hayward, another British observer, wrote in Fräsers Magazine that the famous British medium D. D. Home “beats Joe Smith hollow; for he persuades people that they hear what they do not hear; that they see what they do not see.”13 Orthodox ministers, both Catholic and Protestant, also found themselves agreeing that the apparitions claimed by these new religious movements were either bogus14 or inspired by the devil.15

Such comparisons and criticisms created a dilemma for followers of both movements.16 Mormons eventually adopted the position of most other sectarians, that Spiritualism was a counterfeit religion (and in the Mormon mind a counterfeit of Mormonism) inspired by the devil,17 whereas Spiritualists were content to believe that the revelations of Mor￾monism were genuine and, even if not fully understood by their recipients, were additional proofs of Spiritualism.

Mention of modern Spiritualism first appeared in Mormon-owned Deseret News in 1851, only three years after the famous Rochester, New York, knockings. At first news stories appeared without editorial com ment,18 but following the conversion of a few Mormons to Spiritualism LDS authorities began to actively criticize its pretensions. In 1852 a family of British converts migrating to Salt Lake City lost their faith in Mormonism after a twenty-year-old cousin, Mary Ann, died on the plains. The family was soon visited by Mary Ann’s spirit who expressed satisfaction with her family’s decision to settle in Ohio rather than resume its trek to Salt Lake City. She also told the family that Joseph Smith was not a prophet, the Book of Mormon was not true, and polygamy was not a divinely inspired doctrine.19

The same year Mary Ann died Mormon authorities advised members about the dangerous implications of accepting revelations received outside the context of Mormonism and assured them that the message of Spiritu￾alism was unauthorized, confused, garbled, and self-contradictory. In February 1852 an editorial in the Deser et News warned against being “operated upon by a false spirit” and advised Mormons to “live by his creed, and ‘mind his own business.'”20 In July Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to church president Brigham Young, described “spirit-rapping” and asserted:

The invisible world are in trouble; they are knocking, and rapping, and muttering; and the people are inquiring of them to know concerning the things of God, and there is not a soul of them can tell them anything about the end of the world. They are in a dreadful situation; and in the city of Rochester, near where I used to live, the last information I received from there, there were 135 spiritual writers in that city. I have a brother-in-law here, who is a Presbyterian priest: he couldn’t inquire of God about future things, so he inquired of the spirits; but they could not tell him anything about the dead nor the living.

Nine months later at the dedication of the cornerstone of the Salt Lake temple another Mormon apostle, Parley P. Pratt, distinguished between manifestations to Spiritualists and revelations to Latter-day prophets by observing that “ministrations for the salvation and exaltation” of the world can only be obtained “[b]y one holding the keys of the oracles of God, as a medium through which the living can hear from the dead.”22 According to Pratt, Mormons must discriminate “between the lawful and the unlawful mediums or channels of communication – between the holy and impure, the truths and falsehoods, thus communicated.”23 Only in the temple is it possible for “the most holy things pertaining to the salvation of the dead, and all the most holy conversations and correspondence with God, angels and spirits” to take place.24 The next day during general conference Pratt told church members that spirits are only endowed with as much knowl￾edge as they gained on earth and that only spirits of those who had the gospel or were apostles and prophets could be expected to convey accurate information.25

Jedediah M. Grant, Brigham Young’s second counselor, also addressed this subject on 19 February 1854 when he informed listeners that he was “more or less familiar with the doings of the Spirit Rappers” and that although he was satisfied that “they are manifestations of spirits” he was convinced “the result of the manifestations of the spirits (wicked spirits) will be to combine their forces in as systematic an order as they are capable of, to successfully resist the Priesthood upon the earth.”26 When Brigham Young addressed the subject at the end of the decade (September 1859) he agreed with his counselors and apostles that the manifestations of Spiritu￾alism were unlawful, confused, and wicked but also taught that “spirit￾rapping, spirit-knocking … is produced by the spirits that the Lord has suffered to communicate to people on the earth” and that such manifesta￾tions were allowed by God to permit the devil to make “the people believe very strongly in revelations from the spirit world.”27

Given these discourses in the 1850s – that Spiritualism’s spirit voices were “inferior” and confusing to believers in true revelation – it must have unnerved LDS leaders that Spiritualists did not deny manifestations expe￾rienced by Joseph Smith but instead taught that they provided additional proofs of their own movement. In 1855 a Mormon missionary in St. Louis reported that Spiritualism was “daily adding to the ranks of skepticism. The many contradictory revelations, coming thro’ the spiritual mediums, have had a tendency to destroy all faith in true revelation. One spirit says that Methodism is the only true system; others say Presbyterianism, and others say Catholicism, and so on; and some say that Mormonism is true.”28 Spiritualists were eager to harmonize their experiences with those of other faiths. One Spiritualist writer in 1859 wrote that “the conclusions to which we have arrived are, that the Book of Mormon is to a very great extent, a spiritual romance, originating in the spiritual world, and that Joseph Smith was the medium or the principal one, through whom it was given.”29

This Spiritualist perspective on Mormon revelation was eventually adopted by a group of Mormon merchants and entrepreneurs who became infatuated by Spiritualism beginning in 1868, and it was only then that Mormonism’s current official position – that Spiritualism is a tool of the devil – was fully developed. In 1868 William Godbe and E. L. T. Harrison began publication of Utah Magazine , which disagreed with the LDS hierar￾chy on the economic development of Utah. Brigham Young had organized a system of “cooperation” under which Mormons could only purchase from Mormon merchants, and although Godbe and Harrison were both Mormons they condemned this attempt to perpetuate church control over the economic development of the territory. Most non-Mormon merchants also objected.

Although Utah Magazine contained articles concerning the economic development of the territory, it also included occasional articles about the supernatural,30 but editors rarely compared psychic phenomena to Mormonism31 and for the most part continued to support Mormon revela￾tions.32 In September 1868 Godbe and Harrison traveled to New York City where they attended about fifty seances and communicated with various spirits including New Testament apostles Peter, James, and John, Heber C. Kimball (who died in 1859), and Joseph Smith. These spirits instructed Godbe and Harrison to reform Mormonism from within by integrating it with Spiritualism which at the same time would provide Spiritualism with an organizational structure and a common creed. Upon their return to Utah, Godbe and Harrison chose not to reveal in the pages of Utah Magazine these manifestations or their fascination with Spiritualism. Nevertheless, they both continued to object to Young’s economic policies and were eventually summoned before church authorities in October 1869 and excommunicated for questioning the temporal and spiritual authority of Brigham Young.33

Godbe and Harrison did not immediately affirm their allegiance to Spiritualism34 – perhaps because of the stigma church authorities had placed on it by condemning it as a tool of the devil; they did, however, organize the Church of Zion and privately informed church authorities that they had received spiritual manifestations. Shortly after organizing the Church of Zion, Godbe and Harrison discontinued Utah Magazine and began a newspaper, The Mormon Tribune , which allowed them to continue criticizing the economic policies of the LDS church. In March 1870, almost six months after their excommunications, Godbe and Har￾rison finally disclosed in the Tribune their belief that similarities existed between their movement and Spiritualism.35 They also responded to the LDS church’s claim that their movement was “inspired by the devil” by observing that this argument was the only way the Mormon leadership had found of dealing with any knotty subject or phenomenon which they cannot explain or reconcile with their own narrow notions … to pronounce it “of the devil” and throw it into the waste basket, there to await the rounds of the gentleman with tail and horns who is supposed to gather up such worthless trash as fuel for his grand and eternal apparatus for roasting humanity.36

To prove that Mormon doctrine regarding Spiritualism was wrong they pointed out that a former member of the church’s twelve apostles and counselor in the First Presidency had become a Spiritualist and that “[l]ook￾ing round the other day at Bro. Amasa [Lyman], who certainly looks ten years younger since the ‘buffetings’ commenced upon him, we asked how he got along with his afflictions. He replied that he had just been weighed and discovered that the Devil had ‘buffeted’ him up of eighteen pounds! Not so bad for a very miserable apostate!”37 The Godbeites also asked: “Will nothing short of the recognition of Brigham Young’s infallibility, sub￾mission to all his exactions and obedience to all his requirements save hu￾manity from the clutches of this supposed rival aspirant for universal empire?”38

That same month E. L. T. Harrison wrote another article noting simi￾larities and differences between Spiritualism and his new Church of Zion. The Church of Zion was similar to Spiritualism since “Spiritualism in its highest sense must include all manifestations of spiritual power the world has ever witnessed.”39 Harrison claimed that “a vision given to Sweden￾borg or to Andrew Jackson Davis must be produced on the same natural principles as a vision given to Paul, Peter, or Joseph Smith.”40 The differ￾ences between the Church of Zion and Spiritualism enunciated by Harrison included the church’s belief that it was given a mandate to establish a “central system of Divine Controlling Powers, and our belief in beingguided, as a Church, by them alone/’41 to unite all Spiritualists. In short, the Church of Zion believed in a central church organization which Spiri￾tualism lacked. According to Harrison,

Joseph Smith . . . was raised up to prepare the way for the establishment of a central spiritual power which, when fully developed, shall sweep all that there is valuable … in Spiritualism within its ample folds; taking its highest order of seers, its prophets, its spiritual healers, its inspirational and most spiritual natures, teaching them a higher and a greater gospel, and welding them with Zion into a grand combination for the tearing down of supersti￾tion . . 42

In short, Godbe and Harrison believed that the transition from Mor￾monism to Spiritualism would not be difficult because the Mormon church itself was “spiritualistic.”43 Mormonism taught that everyone may obtain “direct evidences of the truth of the fact of inspiration and Revelation,” and that such “light” would “never cease so long as the ages roll along.”44 Even one of the Mormon church’s twelve apostles, George Q. Cannon, seemed to agree that similarities existed. In 1869, he revealed he had read a book early in his life which contained doctrine he thought was “written by the Latter-day Saints.”45 According to Cannon,

The argument of the writer was in favor of communication with the spirit world, through the ministering of angels, being as possible in these days as at former times. He used precisely similar arguments to those used by the Elders of this Church; and quoted largely from the Bible to prove that it had been quite common for men in ancient days to have such communications and to possess the gift of prophecy and the spirit of revelation, and he argued in favor of these modes of communication in these days.46

Seven months after making this statement, in the wake of Godbe’s and Harrison’s excommunications, Cannon wrote in the Juvenile Instructor that such similarities demonstrate that Spiritualism is a counterfeit form of Mormonism inspired by the devil: “[M]en and women began to receive revelations [shortly after the birth of Spiritualism], not from the Lord Jesus but from spirits, and great wonders began to be shown plan this is of the devil to deceive people and prevent men and women from obeying the teachings of Jesus!”47 Not surprisingly, the other apostles agreed with Cannon. On 19 December 1869 Orson Pratt told an audience in the Mormon Tabernacle that he had spoken with Godbe and Harrison prior to their excommunications and was told by them about “their super￾natural manifestations, commencing some fifteen months before.”48 Dur￾ing his interview with Godbe, Pratt told him that he did not believe Godbe had received visitations from ancient or modern apostles: “I do not believe one of them has been to you, it is the devil, just the same as he has manifested himself in the world.”49 The following April, Pratt told a church congregation that the devil had introduced Spiritualism as a counterfeit of Mormonism after failing previously to convince humanity that “gifts of healing, miracles, prophecy, revelation, the ministering and discerning of spirits”50 did not exist.

Brigham Young also rejected comparison between Mormonism and Spiritualism. On 6 October 1870 he observed that Spiritualists

would like to have it considered that “Mormonism” is nothing but Spiri￾tualism; but it is temporalism as well as Spiritualism. A great many want to know the difference between the two. I will give one feature of the difference, and then set the whole scientific world to work to see if they can ever bring to bear the same feature in Spiritualism. Take all who are called Spiritualists and see if they can produce the order that is in the midst of this people. Here are system, order, organization, law, rule and facts. Now see if they can produce any of these features. They cannot. Why? Because their system is from beneath, while ours is perfect and is from above; one is from God, the other is from the devil, that is all the difference.51

Like the orthodox clergy – both Catholic and Protestant – Young and his fellow apostles were convinced that Spiritualism was a tool of the devil designed to lure away those who yearned for proof that life continues after death52 into a system with no creed or church organization. Thus, explained Young,

its members can only divide and sub-divide, produce confusion on confu￾sion, disorder following on the heels of disorder, one to the right, another to the left, another for the front, another for the rear, one pulling this way, another pulling that, sect against sect, people against people, community against community, politically, religiously, and I may say morally to a great extent . . .53

Like the devil Spiritualism was “a mass of confusion, it is a body without parts and passions, principle or power, just like, I do not like to say it, but just like the so-called Christian’s God.”54 During another dis￾course in October Young expressed outrage that “We are accused of being nothing more nor less than a people possessing what they term the higher order of Spiritualism.”

“You are right,” say I. Yes, we belong to that higher order of Spiritu￾alism; our revelations are from above, yours from beneath. This is the difference. We receive revelation from Heaven, you receive your revela￾tions from every foul spirit that has departed this life, and gone out of bodies of mobbers, murderers, highwaymen, drunkards, thieves, liars and every kind of debauched character, whose spirits are floating around here, and searching and seeking whom they can destroy; for they are the ser￾vants of the devil, and they are permitted to come now to reveal to the people. . . . That is the difference between the two spiritual systems – yes, this is the higher order of spiritualism, to be led, governed and controled by law, and that, too, the law of heaven that governs and controls the Gods and the angels.55

Ironically, Godbe and Harrison agreed with Young’s assessment of Spiritualism, that it was not governed or controlled by law. For that reason they were attempting to provide it with an organization and common creed. As such, the religious battle became a power struggle which ex￾tended beyond the economic policies of the territory. One Mormon critic, J. H. Beadle, claimed in 1872 that

there is no other form of apostasy the Mormon Priesthood so fear, hate, and curse, and no kind of mysticism to which apostate Mormons are so prone, as spiritualism. The whole body of the Church seems only to be kept therefrom by constantly hearing from the Priesthood that it is the “doings of the devil,” and nothing seems to interest a young and skeptical Mormon so quick as “circles,” seances , visions, shadowy hands, and conjurations with boxes, “pendulum oracles,” planchette , and every kind of forbidden and diabolical nonsense.56

Although Beadle’s distinction between “Mormon Priesthood” and “apostate Mormons” made sense in the provincial boundaries of Utah, it did not make sense to Spiritualists who were not among those who would join a church presided over by former Mormon elders. After the organiza￾tion of the Church of Zion, Utah became a stopping place for mediums and lecturers, and even if most Spiritualist writers of the period did not cite “Mormon” experiences as examples of spiritual manifestations, several prominent Spiritualist observers were impressed by Mormon sensitivity to psychic phenomena.57 Although these observers spoke of “Mormonism” they were no doubt also describing Mormon “apostates” affiliated with the Church of Zion. Emma Hardinge Britten, the famous medium who was acquainted with the communitarian-turned-Spiritualist Robert Owen and helped organize the Theosophical Society with Madame Blavatsky, wrote in 1870: Those Americans who have visited the singular dwellers of the desert, calling themselves “Latter Day Saints” or “Mormons” report that phenome￾nal gifts are abundantly poured out upon them . . . Amongst the “Mormons” resident in California and Nevada, many excellent spirit mediums are to be found, especially in the direction of prophecy and healing. They claim that these gifts are communicable by the old apostolic mode of laying on of hands, and affirm that they have received their gifts from the imposition of hands on the part of their “elders.”58

Another famous British medium and ordained Anglican minister Wil￾liam Stainton Moses,59 whose book Spirit Teachings 60 has been called the “Bible of British Spiritualism,”61 expressed admiration for Utah and the Mormons in 1882 in an editorial published in Light, a Spiritualist newspa￾per published in London. After reading a book about the Mormons by Phil Robinson62 published the same year he became convinced that Mormons were, like the Shakers, “instinctive Spiritualists.”63

One of the chief elders of these “instinctive Spiritualists,” the Society of Shakers, also agreed that “even the Mormons have had Spiritual reve￾lations.” After making this remark in 1874 Frederick W. Evans was asked whether he meant “to convey the idea that the spiritual manifestations confirm the truth of Mormonism?” Evans responded by stating, “Yea, to a certain extent.” This response surprised the interviewer who said: “Why, I should have thought Mormonism, the very antipodes of your belief.” Evans replied: “Mormonism is much better than your New York Christi￾anity.”64 In correspondence to the same editor, Evans later wrote:

I consider Mormonism a revival of ancient Judaism – the God – Tutelar Deity, of the Jews, is probably the controlling spirit of Mormonism. He allowed polygamy 2,000 years ago. Why not now? But the Mormons have abolished poverty and prostitution; and from children and youth the Social Evil. Is not that better than New York and co-Christianity? And would it not be well for Christians (?) to stop persecuting Mormons, until there are no poor – no hire of harlots – and those law suits are settled?65

The passage from Robinson’s book which most impressed Moses was: “The Saints have long ago formulated into accepted doctrines those mys￾teries of the occult world which Spiritualists outside the [Mormon] faith are still investigating. Your ‘problems’ are their axioms.”66 Robinson also main￾tained that Jacob Hamblin – a Mormon assigned to the far reaches of south￾ern Utah by Brigham Young as a missionary to native Americans and whose life was filled with stories of healings, dreams, visions, and prophe￾cies – was a perfect example of this “doctrine” because “[t]he miracles and prophecies related in connection with this phenomenal old man would . . . ‘stagger even Madame Blavatsky herself.'”67 Moses was so impressed by this description of Hamblin that he wrote, “if there be any Jacob Hamblins who have the power of their prototype and no sphere of action, let them come over to London. We want ‘missionaries’ of that type badly, and can employ a whole tribe.”68 A later issue of Light in 1884 made reference to the Godbeite schism and that “Mr. D. F. Walker, one of the leading business men in the city, is also one of the most prominent Spiritualists.” Like J. H. Beadle the article claimed that “Spiritualism is, however, gradually inocu￾lating the Mormons, or rather spreading among them, and will, no doubt, in time make itself felt. At present the great ‘Know alls’ of the Church of Latter Day Saints, like many of their brethren of the Protestant Church, at￾tribute the phenomena to his Satanic Majesty.”69

Just as Moses failed to unify British Spiritualists through the London Spiritualist Alliance, and Shakers began to decline after the death of Anne Lee, the Church of Zion failed to fulfill the aspirations of the spirits which had directed Godbe and Harrison in 1868. Despite the efforts of Godbe and Harrison, every Spiritualist remained a law unto him- or herself, a criticism Mormon leaders emphasized in speeches against Spiritualism and the Church of Zion in the 1870s. Initially, Godbe and Harrison hoped to recruit Joseph Smith’s eldest son, Joseph III, president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to become the leader of the Church of Zion, but it soon became evident that young Joseph’s infatuation with Spiritualism in the 1850s had subsided by the time the Church of Zion was organized in 1870.70 The Church of Zion was short-lived because it failed to attract Mormons when it abandoned too much of Mormonism, including its leadership, but was unable to attract Spiritualists because it was located in far-away Utah and retained too much Mormonism, including its practice of plural marriage.71

The demise of Spiritualism in Utah did not deter the next generation of Spiritualists, who awoke amid the devastation and death of World War I, from making similar comparisons between Spiritualism and Mormon￾ism. One of the most prominent Spiritualists of this new breed, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, adopted a perspective toward Mormon revelation in both his memoirs and History of Spiritualism which was similar to that developed by the Godbeites and popularized by Spiritualists such as Hardinage and Moses.72

When Doyle visited Salt Lake City in May 1923 he was struck by the points “which Spiritualism and Mormonism have in common”73 and was pleased that more than five thousand persons attended his lecture on “psychic phenomenon” in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Doyle thought it significant that both movements originated within a short distance of each other in upstate New York; that Joseph Smith like many Spiritualists saw apparitions of extra-terrestrial beings74; and that the message of the first Mormon prophet was similar to that of Spiritualism, since it taught “that the Christian Creeds had wandered very far away from primitive spiritual truths and . . . that ritual and forms have completely driven out that direct spirit-communion and power which are the real living core of religion.”75 Doyle also believed that Joseph Smith had experienced “psychic exhaus￾tion” (which a Mormon might call being “overcome by the spirit”), one of the “known signs of mediumistic power.”76 During his reading of the Book of Mormon he also recognized “many passages which seem to me to be true, as they coincide with the spirit-information which we have ourselves received.”77 The Mormon doctrines with which a Spiritualist like Doyle could agree included teachings that “death confers no knowledge upon a man, but he finds his mental outfit the same as before,” “that spirit is itself a superfine matter,” and that “[t]rue marriage carries on, but the tepid or cold marriage dissolves.”78 Doyle later referred to some of these similarities in The History of Spiritualism which he published three years later.79 In another book, published in 1930, Doyle recorded psychic experiences which had occurred in Utah and which proved the validity of Spiritual￾ism.80 (Shortly after his death Doyle took his proselytism to new heights by appearing in spirit to confirmed believers,81 but there is no evidence he reappeared in Salt Lake City.)

Doyle was one of the most famous Spiritualists of the twentieth cen￾tury. Other believers of his generation who shared his view that Mormons were adapted to psychic phenomenon include Nellie Beighle, a sometime medium, who in 1893 wrote that “Mormonism must be set down as one of he disorderly phases of American Spiritualism . . . there can be little doubt that the thing has originated in real spirit agency, but not of the purest kind . . . Whatever of error and folly there may be in Mormonism, this at least is genuine and gospel truth”82; and the Boston Society for Psychic Research which in 1928 cited “[a]n apparition seen, heard and felt” by the wife of T. B. H. Stenhouse, Fanny Stenhouse (who for a brief time cast her lot with the Godbeites), as an example of psychic phenomena.83 Although Spiritu￾alism is much more fragmented today than it was a hundred years ago, Spiritualist mediums, sometimes known as channelers, occasionally re￾ceive manifestations from the same spirits who visited Joseph Smith as well as from Joseph Smith himself.84

Just as Spiritualism’s acceptance of some Mormon revelation has not changed since the demise of the Church of Zion, Mormonismi current rejection of Spiritualism is consistent with the policy developed during the Godbeite schism. In 1893 George Q. Cannon wrote in the Juvenile Instructor:

Spiritualism professed to make it easy for all to obtain spiritual mani￾festations. No faith in Jesus, no repentance, no baptism, no laying on of hands, needed to obtain them. Purity of life was not essential. The wicked and the reprobate, as well as those of better lives, could receive spiritual communications. In this way Satan used Spiritualism to counteract the influence of the Gospel.85

Six years later another Mormon apostle, James E. Talmage, wrote in a church-approved text, The Articles of Faith, “[T]he restoration of the priesthood to earth in this age of the world, was followed by a phenomenal growth of the vagaries of Spiritualism, whereby many have been led to put their trust in Satan’s counterfeit of God’s eternal power.”86 Two decade later, during Doyle’s visit to the United States in 1923, Mormon presiding bishop Charles W. Nibley, who later became a member of the First Presi￾dency, wrote that Spiritualism was “the product of dimly-lighted seances” and that it was “born in darkness and is not light to me.” He also claimed that “[b]ringing up evil spirits or devils is not new” and that the spirits which talk with Spiritualists are “figments of the devil.”87 A more recent treatment of this subject by Bruce R. McConkie, who also became an apostle, reflects the previously expressed sentiment by Brigham Young and other church authorities. In 1958 McConkie defined Spiritualism as:

[o]ne of the forms of witchcraft is called spiritualism. This doctrine, that departed spirits hold intercourse with mortals, is one of Satan’s substitutes for the true doctrine of communion with angels and righteous spirits in paradise. … It is true that mediums do make contact with spirits during their seances. In most instances, however, spirits are the demons or devils who were cast out of heaven for rebellion.

He concluded that “Spiritualism is among the vilest of abominable and iniquitous practices.”88 Although his definition was altered in the second edition published in 1966 to exclude reference to witchcraft (except as a related reference), Spiritualism remained a tool of the devil.89

It may be true that Spiritualism provided some dissatisfied Mormons an attractive alternative in the nineteenth century, particularly since spiri￾tual manifestations appeared to decline after Joseph Smith’s death. Some Mormon converts who were sensitive to supernatural experiences prior to joining the church and aligned themselves with it in anticipation of such experiences may have been disappointed when Mormonismi spiritual gifts seemed to decline after 1844. Nevertheless, belief in the supernatural is not unique to Mormonism or Spiritualism. Even mainstream Protestants and Catholics do not insist that all forms of heavenly intervention are impossible. One year before the president of the Mormon church, Joseph F. Smith, received his famous vision of the dead, which has since been canonized as church scripture (D&C 138), three young Catholic children saw the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal. In fact, much higher profile converts to Spiritualism than Godbe or Harrison have come out of churches such as Catholicism (Doyle); Anglicanism (Moses); Universalism (Thomas Lake Harris90 and James Martin Peebles91); and Seventh-Day Adventism (Moses Hull92). Nevertheless, as new religious movements which began in New York’s burned over district both Mormonism and Spiritualism became anathema to skeptics and believers alike and were thus often compared. They both actively proselyted and successfully claimed converts from Protestants and Catholics. Their claim to new revelation was so central to their belief system and missionary message that it was only logical for detractors to claim that their revelations were satanic. Mormons also believed all revelations out￾side their church were unauthorized, whether a Spiritualist, Catholic, or Protestant revelation. Spiritualists were not so strict. As long as the appa￾rition was not faked, it proved that they were right in claiming contempo￾rary communication with spirits. It was more central to their message than that of the Mormons that everyone could see and speak with the departed and that such manifestations continued and could occur on a daily basis – and not only to a chosen few.

Thus it was easier for Spiritualists, who had no creed or central organization, to adopt an integralist perspective concerning Mormon reve￾lation. According to this view, all revelations (including those proclaimed by Mormon prophets) if properly understood (which the Mormons did not) support modern Spiritualism and its teachings that the living can speak to the dead, and any attempt to interpret psychic experience beyond this simple truth, by organizing a priesthood or developing dogmas, are misguided. On the other hand, it was much more difficult for a new religious movement, like the LDS church, which had a creed, organiza￾tional structure, and claimed divine authority to act in the name of God, to accept competing revelations in the same manner. To do so would increase the likelihood that the leaders’ authority would be challenged and their status as the “true church” doubted. While it is likely Joseph Smith will continue to visit Spiritualists and channelers, it is unlikely that Sweden￾borg, Samuel Bowles, or Arthur Conan Doyle will reveal themselves to the Mormon hierarchy.93