Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young

Rating:
Summary: Readable Account of Mormon Dissenters
Review: The Godbeites were a group of Mormon intellectuals and businessmen who dissented from the allegedly autocratic rule of LDS President Brigham Young during the 19th century. Ron Walker, a professor of History at Brigham Young University, probably knows more about the Godbeites than anyone else alive. This book is the summation of his career-long researches into the controversy. Previous accounts have emphasized the dissenter's platform of capitalism, free speech, and separation of church and state (features which finally became part of Utah life 30 years later.) Walker stresses a lesser-known and lesser understood aspect of the Godbeites: their adventures into 19th century spiritualism. They were fond of seances and contacting the dead. In Walker's view, this made them unstable and too subject to their own subjective whims, and cut them off fron mainstream Mormonism. This book is partially sponsored by the Smith Institute of Church History at BYU which suggests they want to present a less flattering portrait of the Godbeites, as an indirect way of commenting on more recent dissenters from the church. This possible agenda, however, doesn't really detract from a fine job of history-writing.