Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess

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Summary: Sidney Rigdon: The successor of Joseph Smith
Review: According to the book, Rigdon "led his own group of 500 'secessionist Mormons' in Pennsylvnia, and 'dwindled,' was later recruited by 'another Mormon faction,' his followers numbered in the hundreds, and today they number about 10,000, mostly in Pennsylvania."

Did they dwindle, or are they numbering in the hundreds of thousands?

I'm here to tell you that we did not dwindle, because I happen to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ. And it's on fire. It is blessed.

Sidney Rigdon was the first counselor of Joseph Smith and his true (and most likely) successor. After Smith died, and left the Church presidency to Rigdon, he left Nauvoo, moved to Pittsburg and the Church was organized by William Bickerton in 1862 in Green Oak, PA. The Church of Jesus Christ, restored through interpretation of the ancient record of the tribe of Joseph upon the land of America, is now world headquartered in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Find us at www.thechurchofjesuschrist.com

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Summary: Biased But Still Useful Biography
Review: Richard S. Van Wagoner's subtitle "A Portrait of Religious Excess" should immediately tell you the direction in which he's taking this book. Van Wagoner's goal is to justify the ill-treatment Rigdon has received at the hands of LDS Church historians, so he presents Rigdon as unstable and incapable of succeeding Joseph Smith, which in turn provides the justification for Brigham Young's questionable rise to power. In truth, Rigdon, as Smith's First Counselor, held the strongest claim to presidential succession, and his ouster from the church can only be justified through prevarication.

Still, that being said, Van Wagoner's book is still a useful and interesting source on early Mormon Church history. It doesn't succeed in supplanting F. Mark McKiernan's 1971 "The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness" as the definitive biography of Sidney Rigdon, but it is still a useful supplement.

Rating:
Summary: Putting Mormon History in Perspective
Review: This is a marvelous treatise on the history of the LDS church that has been largely forgotten, overlooked, and in some cases, edited right out. Sidney Rigdon was without question one of the most significant forces shaping the early Church, yet because he fell out of favor with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles following the murder of Joseph Smith, his contributions have been airbrushed out of the collective Mormon consciousness. Van Wagoner goes a long way in correcting that error.

This book will not always be a comfortable read for active Mormons. As Van Wagoner reviews the life and ecentricities of Joseph's spokesman, so, too is there a hard review of the circumstances in which Rigdon lived, most notably his association with Joseph Smith and other prominent leaders of the LDS church. It is not difficult to conclude that both men were religious fanatics, though Joseph's life was cut short and his zeal and fanatiscm may not have had the chance to develop to its fullest, as did Rigdon's. Nevertheless, the parallels are striking, and the objective reader can't help but wonder how much of what Joseph said or did was because of his association with Sidney Rigdon, rather than his prophetic call.

Because Sidney left the faith (well, left the Brighamite faith...he was true to the Book of Mormon and everything Joseph Smith taught with the glaring exception of polygamy), the conventional history of the church has little to say about Rigdon. That, then, is the very reason why this book is such an important contribution to the library of any serious student of church history. Sidney's experience in the establishment of the church begins to deviate from the standard version during the Nauvoo years, and Van Wagoner's treatment of the battle to establish primacy in the leadership of the Church post-martyrdom is something every Mormon should read.

The fact that Van Wagoner ventures an educated and thoughtful guess as to the psychodynamics of Ridgon's mind is the subject of some criticism. I found his treatment of that issue to be fair, but more importantly, only incidental to the whole story. Van Wagoner could have left his oppinions completely unspoken, and when you were finished with the book, you, too, would conclude that "all was not well" in the mind and thinking of Sidney Rigdon. That tends to raise some important questions when you consider how significant he was in influencing Joseph Smith.

Above all, Sidney Rigdon was a brilliant man with a penchant for excess, particularly when it comes to his religious convictions regarding the imminent return of Jesus Christ, the destruction of the world, and the redemption of Zion (which turned out to be in a whole bunch of places in Sidney's world). The study of his life reveals the genesis of that thinking, and suggests that much of the millenialistic thought and zeal of the early Mormons may well have been driven by none other than Sidney Rigdon.

This is a book I will recommend to all my friends. Hold on to your hat, though, because it's quite a ride!