7 - Assessing the Saints

Summary

Reed Smoot represented Utah in the United States Senate from 1903 to 1933. During his tenure, he became the most senior member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and the head of the equally important Senate Finance Committee. Within his party, Smoot was instrumental in seeing that Warren G. Harding secured the 1920 Republican presidential nomination, and was also a close confidant of presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft (Flake 2004).

Smoot’s career, however, had an inauspicious start. Upon arriving in the nation’s capital, there was vehement opposition to his seating in the Senate. The question of whether his religion disqualified him from service in the U.S Congress was debated in the Senate, and around the country, for years. That Smoot was a Mormon was controversial enough. But Smoot was also a member of the Mormon hierarchy – a “prophet, seer, and revelator” – and, as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of a small number of men in line to become the Church’s president. At the time that Smoot was elected by the Utah State Legislature, Mormonism still met with widespread disapproval nationwide. Polygamy – which had not yet been fully extinguished – remained controversial, but that did not exhaust the concerns raised about Mormonism. What did Mormons do in their temples, out of public view? Did they place loyalty to their Church over fealty to flag, country, and constitution? Would Smoot be a puppet controlled by the president of the LDS Church?