Spiritual manifestations at the dedication of the Kirtland temple

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Question

Was there really spiritual manifestations attending the dedication of the Kirtland temple? I have heard allegations that it was in fact a drunken orgy.

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 179. ( Index of claims )
• Benjamin Winchester, "Primitive Mormonism," Salt Lake Tribune (22 September 1889): 2.
• Wilhelm Wyl, Mormon Portraits Volume First: Joseph Smith the Prophet, His Family and Friends (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing and Publishing Co., 1886), 308–309.

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Answer

The Kirtland "Pentecost"

It is ironic that critics refer to the Kirtland Temple dedication as some form of "Pentecost" for the early Church, when, at the first pentecost, the Apostles were also accused of being drunken. "Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine." (See Acts 2:13-15)

4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5 And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

6 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

7 And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans?

8 And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?

9 Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,

10 Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes,

11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.

12 And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?

13 Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.

—Acts 2꞉4-13 (emphasis added)

In November 2002, an early account of the dedication of the Kirtland temple surfaced, confirming the spiritual outpouring. This account provides an excellent contemporary window into the event:

Sunday evening after joseph spoke opened & told them the day of penticost was continued the the [sic] Brethren began to to prophesy many prophesied in the name of the Lord then began speaking in tongues and it filled as it were the whole house, perhaps there were forty speaking at once cloven tongues of fire was seen to sit on many of them an hand was seen laid upon one when he spake in tongues to the lamanites many Visions seen, one saw a pillow or cloud rest down upon the house bright as when the sun shines on a cloud like as gold, two others saw three personages hovering in the room with bright keys in their hands, and also a bright chain in their hands....^[1]

Significantly, there is no contemporaneous record of drunken behavior associated with the dedication. A great deal was written about miraculous events, but the stories of drunkenness occur only later. One LDS historian noted:

...Latter-day Saints, like so many other Christians of the 1830s, regarded intemperance as a serious transgression, and there is no evidence that any of the visions described by numerous witnesses followed the consumption of large amounts of wine. Contemporary testimonies of these events are so numerous that they cannot be dismissed with such an oversimplification. ^[2]

First mention of "drunken behavior"

John Corrill, an LDS dissenter, wrote a book in 1839 that described the Church's history and gave his reasons for leaving. Of the Kirtland dedication, Corrill wrote:

At length the time arrive for this [solemn] assembly to meet, previous to which, Smith exhorted the elders to solemnize their minds by casting away every evil from them in thought, word, or deed, and let their hearts become sanctified, because they need not expect a blessing from God without being duly prepared for it; for the Holy Ghost would not dwell ini unholy temples....

The sacrament was then administered, in which they partook of the bread and wine freely, and a report went abroad that some of them got drunk; as to that every man must answer for himself. A similar report, the reader will recollect, went out concerning the disciples, at Jerusalem, on the day of penticost. This was followed by a marvellous spirit of prophecy. Every man's mouth was full of prophecying, and for a number of days or weeks their time was spent in visitng from house to house, making feasts, prophecying, and pronouncing blessings on each other, to that degree, that from the external appearance, one would have supposed that the last days had truly come, in which the spirit of the Lord was poured out upon all flesh....^[3]

This account is significant because of what Corrill does not say. At this writing, Corrill was disenchanted with the Church, and had decided that Joseph Smith was a false prophet. Corrill acknowledges that some charged that the Saints were merely under the influence of wine; he notes that each person would have to respond for themselves, but does not seem to give this story much credence. Corrill even goes so far as to point out that the pentecost at Jerusalem had similar charges made—a strange claim to make if he wishes to claim that Church members were drunk. Corrill goes on to say that to all outward appearances, "the last days had truly come"—i.e., there was nothing about the conduct of the members in those days to suggest that they were not having revelations, prophecies, etc.

Corrill would have had motive for disparaging the Saints' claims to revelations. Indeed, he insisted that he did not believe the Church's revelations, but this was because of the difficulties which the Church encountered up to his departure. He no where blames wine for the Kirtland events.^[4]

Wilhelm Wyl

In 1886, Wilhelm Ritter von Wymetal, writing under the pen name Wilhelm Wyl, published a book of lurid anti-Mormon tales called Mormon Portraits.

Wyl quoted former apostle William McLellin on the topic of the Kirtland dedication:

The "Endowments" in the Kirtland temple were nothing but a big spree, so big, that the "apparitions of angels," etc., were not miraculous at all. I quote from a letter by Dr. McLellin, one of the first quorum of Mormon apostles :

"About five hundred ministers entered that great temple about sunrise and remained fasting until next morning sunrise, except a little bread and wine in the evening. The Twelve were required to take large servers and set glasses of wine and lumps of bread, and go through the house and serve the brethren. I did my part of the serving. During the night a purse was made up and a wagon sent to Painesville and a barrel of wine procured, and then it was a time. All the latter part of the night I took care of Samuel H. Smith [brother of the prophet] , perfectly unable to help himself. And I [309] had others removed from the house because they were unfit- to be in decent company" (italics in original)."^[5]

One must then ask—was McLellin in a position to know about such things at the Kirtland temple dedication, and what did he say or do about it prior to Wyl's citation in 1886?

William McLellin

McLellin was among the first apostles called in this dispensation, on 14 February 1835.^[6] McLellin was present for the dedication, but was disappointed with it. He wrote, "We passed through it [the Kirtland endowment]; but I, in all candor say, we were most egregiosly mistaken or disappointed!"^[7] McLellin went on to describe the reason for his disappointment:

In a few days I said to Joseph: "I am disappointed! I supposed—yet, I believed that during the endowment, I should get knowledge but I have not."

He said to me, "What do you want?"

I said, "I want to know for myself (italics in original)."^[8]

There is no mention here of those who claim to receive knowledge being drunk—we learn only that McLellin did not receive what he sought. The following timeline describes some of McLellin's recoreded remarks about the Kirtland dedication

Feb 1847

McLellin forms "Church of Christ" with Martin Harris and others. The new Church faults Joseph Smith for "Engineering the 'endowment' at the Kirtland Temple in March and April 1836, which failed to meet expectation because the Lord would not endow His spirit in those who had drifted so far from divine purpose."^[9]

1870

"disappointed" because he did not know for himself.^[10]

The origin of the story of "drunken behavior"

The earliest account we have is from apostate Benjamin F. Winchester, who was a friend of Joseph Smith’s, an LDS leader in the early 1840s. In 1889, he wrote that the Kirtland temple dedication “ended in a drunken frolic.”^[11] Benjamin Winchester left the Church during the Nauvoo era in the 1840s, the temple dedication occurred in March of 1836. Winchester had thus remained a member even after the supposed events in Kirtland that he later condemned. Why? Why didn’t he leave earlier if he knew that such things were serving as the surrogate for spirituality 5 years earlier?

Such an accusation conflicts with many other contemporary accounts and is inconsistent with the Latter-day Saint attitude toward intemperance. If such behavior had been manifest, individuals would have undoubtedly recorded the information in their diaries or letters in 1836, but the negative reports emerged long after the events had transpired and among vindictive critics who had become enemies of the Church.^[12]

The story spreads

In 1890 one A. Theodore Schroeder went to Salt Lake City and stayed for ten years digging through libraries and collections again looking for ammunition with which to attack the Church. He returned to Wisconsin in 1900 and donated all his books and papers to the Wisconsin State Historical Society Library, in Madison Wisconsin. He also wrote several anti-mormon articles in journals of the time. He quotes W. Wyle in many of his articles. One in particular was published in the American Historical Journal v.3 1908. In it he quotes Wyle in an article called "Mormonism and Intoxicants" (pp 238-249).

Other, more modern authors, like Richard Abanes, have quoted Wyl and Theodore Schroeder to substantiate their claims against the Church. Ultimately all their "proofs" fall upon the word of apostates.

Endnotes

1. [note]  Steven C. Harper, "Pentecost Continued: A Contemporaneous Account of the Kirtland Temple Dedication," Brigham Young University Studies 42 no. 2 (2003), 4–.
2. [note]  John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (Commonly Called Mormons;) Including an account of their doctrines and discipline; with the reasons of the author for leaving the church (Published for the author, St. Louis, Mo., 1839), 23. Photomechanical reprint available online.
3. [note]  Corrill, 48, gives as his reasons for leaving that "I can see nothing that convinces me that God has been our leader; calculation after calculation has failed, and plan after plan has been overthrown, and our Prophet seemed not to know the event till too late....But where now may you look for deliverance? You may say, in God; but I say, in the exercise of common sense and that sound reason with which God has endowed you; and my advice is to follow that, in preference to those pretended visions and revelations which have served no better purpose than to increase your trouble...."
4. [note]  Wilhelm Wyl, Mormon Portraits Volume First: Joseph Smith the Prophet, His Family and Friends (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing and Publishing Co., 1886), 308–309.
5. [note]  Larry C. Porter, "The Odyssey of William Earl McLellin: Man of Diversity, 1806–86," in The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831–1836, edited by Jan Shipps and John W. Welch (Urbana: Brigham Young University Studies and University of Illinois Press, 1994), 314. ISBN 0842523162.
6. [note]  William E. McLellin in Saints' Herald 17 (15 September 1870): 554; cited in Porter, "Man of Diversity," 320.
7. [note]  McLellin, Saints Herald (15 September 1870): 554.
8. [note]  Richard P. Howard, "Mormonism's Stormy Petrel," in Stan Larson and Samuel J. Passey (editors), The William E. McLellin Papers 1854–1880 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 2007), 19. ISBN 1560851449. Also available in Richard P. Howard, "William E. McLellin: 'Mormonism's Stormy Petrel'," in Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History, edited by Roger D. Launius and Linda Thatcher, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 76–97. ISBN 0252067312.
9. [note] McLellin, Saints Herald (15 September 1870): 554.
10. [note]  Benjamin Winchester, "Primitive Mormonism," Salt Lake Tribune (22 September 1889): 2.