The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS, for short) has a common history with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, for short). Both organizations claim the legacy of the prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. and both view their founding date as April 6, 1830. They both claim the history and practices of the church founded by Joseph Smith up until the time of Joseph Smith's death at the hands of a mob in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844. In the late 1820's, Joseph Smith dictated a "translation" of writings he said came from ancient American metal plates. This became the Book of Mormon. After completing this work, there was no way a supplemental scripture was going to be accepted by any of the established churches. So Joseph and 5 others started a brand-new church in Palmyra, New York, in 1830. Missionaries went out to spread the news about the Book of Mormon. Given that the protagonists in the book were the ancestors of the native Americans, some went all the way west what is now Kansas to share the news with the indigenous people there. Some happened into Kirtland, Ohio, where they found Sydney Rigdon and his followers who converted to the new church en masse. With that, the population center of the church shifted to Ohio and the first members moved there from Palmyra. The message of the church was apocalyptic so most converts would move from the place of origin to be with other Saints to await the completion of the latter days. The missionaries in the Kansas territory were kicked out by the administrators over the Indians and retreated to the area around Independence, Missouri. In a visit to Independence, Joseph declared that it would be the eventual final center of the church. Converts then began to converge there. But the original Missouri settlers were not comfortable with this influx of arrogant Yankees that threatened to overwhelm them. The Saints were driven out of Clay County to Daviess County to the north. Eventually, Governor Boggs issued his extermination order and the Saints beat a hasty retreat out of Missouri, altogether. The Missouri Saints found a new home back across the Mississippi near Quincy, Illinois. The remaining Saints in Kirtland abandoned Ohio and joined with the Missouri exiles to build the city of Nauvoo.
In Nauvoo, Joseph's thinking continued to evolve. The persecutions spurred the Saints to consider the acquisition of secular political power. Jospeh Smith even campaigned for the U.S Presidency in a bid to gain some concessions for his peculiar settlement. By the same token, Joseph and the folks closest to him set up a Masonic lodge in Nauvoo. The idea was that the Masonic connections could be exercised to help protect the Saints out in the secular world.
But at the same time, the distinctions between the Saints and the outside world became stronger as the Saints worked to build a self-sufficient and independent community. To deal with the usual sort of squabbles and dissensions that come up inside an insular community, Joseph began to control people with a heavier and heavier hand. People looked to him as the ultimate authority and he was compelled to fulfill that role lest the church disintegrate from within. Power was concentrated around his person rather than in an institutional organization. Early stalwarts like the Whitmers, Sidney Rigdon and Oliver Cowdery were muscled aside by new, more ambitious actors. The Masonic lodge advanced members in rank so fast that it was considered a renegade by the broader organization and disconnected from the Masonic main stream.
Then came the principle that became the biggest barrier between the Church and the rest of the world. The Church had always had an apocalyptic emphasis with the belief that the end times were near. With that came the idea that only those in the Church would be participants in the heavenly glory soon to be visited upon the earth. Some languished for the fate of loved ones who had passed on before having the opportunity to join with the Church. In response to that desire, the practice of baptism for the dead was instituted. This practice solidified the thinking that circumstances in eternity could be affected by rituals in the here-and-now. The next eternal concern became the family unit. Another ritual was established by which a couple could be assured that their marriage relationship would continue in the hereafter. A fact of life in those days was that many women died in childbirth and in was quite common for a man to be left with a pack of children. Typically, men quickly found someone new to marry to help raise the kids. Men were already serial polygynists. Taking that fact and combining it with rituals that established eternal marriage units, the hereafter families became to be thought of as eternally polygynist. It wasn't a large step to move from eternal polygyny only to here-and-now polygyny. Of course, not everyone liked that idea, especially the women. It was one thing to think about sharing a husband in heaven, but the reality of sharing him on earth was not a comfortable thought. The women's organization of the Church, known as the Relief Society led by Emma Smith, had participated fully in the rituals surrounding eternal marriage, became a hotbed of resistance to it. At the same time, plural marriage was kept as secret doctrine only exercised by those closest to the center of power. The Church didn't need to put another weapon into the hands of their persecutors. Eventually the secret could not be kept and many in the Church were repulsed by it. Some of them set up a printing press to broadcast the secret. After its first edition, Joseph Smith had the press for the Nauvoo Expositor destroyed. But that was the beginning of the end for him. The destruction of the press was the charge for which he was arrested and booked into the Carthage jail that a mob eventually stormed and assassinated him.
The Joseph Smith era was 14 short years. For some strange reason, few prophets seem to be able to anticipate their demise. That certainly was the case with Joseph. After Joseph was killed, there wasn't a clearly understood procedure for succession. Over the 14 years, the authoritative structure of the church was constantly changing. At one time, Sidney Rigdon was seen as Joseph's closest lieutenant. At other times, Joseph seemed to think in the long term and designated his son, Joseph III, to be his successor. Unfortunately, when Joseph was killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois in 1844, the question of succession was an open one.
Unexpectedly, the Church was left with a vacuum in leadership. After a period of power moves, Brigham Young was able to establish himself as the leader in the Nauvoo community. Given her opposition to the secret plural marriage doctrine, Emma Smith did not join him. And knowing that there would be no way to practice plural marriage within the confines of the United States, Brigham set about organizing the exodus of all those who would follow out to some yet-to-be-specified region in the West. Those who rejected plural marriage were glad to see him his followers go. But without the power center that had grown up around Joseph and no clear legitimate way to organize, those who remained behind drifted back into a non-churched existence. It wasn't until 20 years later when young Joseph Smith III became of age, that this scattered remnant began to think that the church could be established again, this time with an essentially pre-Nauvoo theology that left out the troublesome Masonic-style temple rituals that had led up to the uncomfortable practice of plural marriage.
But despite the shared history and because of the thinking that led to the split, the mind sets of the two organizations are quite different. In the Mormon tradition, the history of the church is basically a hagiography in which church leaders do no wrong and the outside (or Gentile) world persecutes the faithful because of their faithfulness. My view of the history comes out of the RLDS tradition which claims to be more intellectually honest. The degree to which it achieves that can be disputed. However, there is enough respect for that principle that it has been used to dismantle several dearly-held traditions to the chagrin of the more traditional adherents. The RLDS church found it easy to reach out to people of color. While Utah Mormon evangelism in Africa was restricted to white in South Africa and Rhodesia, the RLDS church established congregations in Kenya and other predominantly black countries. When the role of women in American society began to show an evolution in the 60's, people in the church began to question the assumption that ecclesastical leadership should be a male-only preserve. Women became equal participants in all church ministerial offices. Today, with the growing awareness of discrimination suffered by LGBT members, the church has found it necessary to subdivide at national levels so that some nations, like the U.S., can fully assimilate LGBT members into its leadership, while other national organizations can comply with the sometimes harsh discriminatory legal restrictions peculiar to that nation.
