Mormon Apostle Reed Smoot's Senate Candidacy Stirs Utah
By L. A. S.
POLITICIANS in Utah are stirred by the entrance into the political arena of a high official of the Mormon church—“Apostle” Reed Smoot, who is a candidate for election to the United States Senate. It is believed that he has the support of his church in his efforts to gain this high office in the national government. The arguments advanced by those favoring his candidacy are such as are often heard in defense of Protestant or Catholic church officials or religious bodies seeking for political power. It is declared that there is no harm nor danger in it. One Utah senator being a non-Mormon, it is argued that the Mormon element ought to be represented by the other senator. By the same logic the adherents of each of the various churches in the United States ought to be represented, each class by its particular leader, in the national legislature. This would be representation not as citizens of the State and nation, but as church members, and would be entirely contrary to republican principles of government. A non-Mormon senator represents the Mormon citizens of his State as fully as would a Mormon senator. There can be no reason for urging the election of a Mormon to the senate, to represent the Mormon element, save the claim that Mormons ought to be represented in the senate as Mormons, which would mean nothing else than the union of church and state. The position of those who oppose “Apostle” Smoot’s election is stated by Judge C. C. Goodwin, and is a clear and correct presentation of the evil which the former’s election to the senate would involve. He says:— The teachings of the Latter-day Saints are well known in Washington, the particular teaching that the Mormon creed covers a claim that the Mormon church is not only a celestial kingdom, but a kingdom of God on earth; that its claim is not only a right to religious but to temporal rule—a something higher than, and altogether independent of, the government of the United States. And if Apostle Smoot is elected, every one in Washington, as well as in Utah, will know that it was because the chiefs of the church willed it to be, or at least permitted it, and that will be a notice to the senators in Washington that a man is about to come to them claiming equal privileges with them, who, even after he had taken the oath of office, would, were a command of his chiefs here in Salt Lake to run counter to a command of the president of the United States, that command confirmed by congress, and its legality affirmed by the supreme court of the republic,—this man would, as higher authority than all three branches of the government combined, obey the first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A Mormon apostle is set aside in a priestly office in the secrecy of the temple. The world knows nothing of the obligations he takes upon himself, but we all know that by the claims of the creed he is in the most solemn form sealed in citizenship to a temporal government, not that of the United States. It means a union of church and state, with the state the lesser factor. And what is said here of the Mormon church applies equally to the papal church, which likewise claims to speak with the highest authority on earth, both in spiritual and in temporal matters. If the Mormon church alone were seeking political power in this nation, the danger which threatens it from a union of church and state would be vastly less than it is. L. A. S.