FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Question: When was the Danite band formed and why?
FAIR Answers—back to home page
Question: When was the Danite band formed and why?
Sidney Rigdon gave a speech against dissenters on 17 June 1838 in Far West known as the "Salt Sermon"
Rigdon's speech was directly targeted at dissenters within the Church, and strongly implied that they should leave.
Leland H. Gentry,
The first official encouragement given to removing these "dissenters" from Caldwell County came in the form of a speech given by Sidney Rigdon on Sunday, 17 June 1838. Familiarly known in church history annals as the "Salt Sermon," Rigdon's address remains one of the controversial events of the period.[1]
Gentry notes John Corrill's description of the sermon,
President Rigdon delivered from the pulpit what I call the "Salt Sermon;" 'If the salt hath lost its savour, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men,' was his text; and although he did not call names in his sermon, yet it was plainly understood that he meant the dissenters or those who had denied the faith. He indirectly accused some of them with crime.[2]
The Danites appear to have been formally created about the time that Sidney Rigdon gave his “Salt Sermon” in Far West
The Danites were led by Dr. Sampson Avard, and the group appears to have been formally formed about the time that Sidney Rigdon gave his “Salt Sermon” in Far West, in which he gave apostates an ultimatum to get out or suffer consequences.[1] According to Avard, the original purpose of the band was to “drive from the county of Caldwell all that dissented from the Mormon church.”[3]:25 Once the dissenters had left the country, the Danites turned their attention to defending the Saints from mobs.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Leland H. Gentry, ""The Danite Band of 1838"," Brigham Young University Studies 14 no. 4 (1974). 423. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "gentry" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Commonly Called Mormons) (1839), 31. Cited in Gentry, "The Danite Band", 423.
- ↑ Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders &c. in Relation to the Disturbances with the Mormons; And the Evidence Given Before the Hon. Austin A. King, Judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit of the State of Missouri, at the Court-House in Richmond, in a Criminal Court of Inquiry, Begun November 12, 1838, on the Trial of Joseph Smith, Jr., and Others, for High Treason and Other Crimes Against the State., (1841) U.S. Government Printing Office.