"The Smoot hearings are important not only to the study of Mormonism, but also the nation's interpretation of the First Amendment. Making significant portions of the hearings' 3,500-page transcript available for the first time and including rich but unobtrusive annotation, this volume should be welcomed by scholars and the general reader alike, both of whom will find the hearings as interesting and amusing as they are important." —Kathleen Flake, Professor of American Religious History, Vanderbilt University Divinity School; author of The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle

“Reed Smoot has long been a hero of mine, and I appreciate this thorough, detailed collection of his early experiences in the U.S. Senate. With Latter-day Saints more prominent in government today than ever before, it is noteworthy how this book chronicles the way Senator Smoot challenged and overcame the anti-Mormon prejudices of his day to represent Utah in Congress.” —U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch

Association for Mormon Letters, Jeffrey Needle
The 2008 Presidential campaign is in full swing. Democrats can't decide between Hillary and Barack; Republicans are up in the air about Rudy's honesty and likeableness, and still wonder about Mitt's Mormonism. This will be an exciting year, no? Someone will be sitting in the Oval Office in 2009. Will Mitt Mormon go to Washington? (Apologies to Jimmy Stewart...) Who knows?

Ask any Latter-day Saint about Mormons running for President, and I'll guess few will remember that Joseph Smith, Jr., launched such a campaign in 1844, the year of his death. And even before Joseph's run, Mormons had had an interesting relationship with civil government and with those who hold the power to guide our nation.

It is often helpful to gain the perspective of history, a view of how LDS candidates, and even elected officials, have been treated by the majority who neither understand, nor sympathize with, the complex system known as Mormonism. With this volume, we are given a solid opportunity to gain this perspective.

When Reed Smoot was elected to national office in the early 1900's, there was an uproar in Congress. They didn't want to seat the Senator-elect -- a rare event in the halls of the U.S. Senate. The reason? Smoot was an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A glimpse at a timeline of Mormon history will make some of this a bit clearer. Polygamy, a practice that was "abandoned" in 1890, was, as we all know, quietly continued until the mid 1910's when it was definitively abandoned by the Church. Although Smoot had not practiced plural marriage, there remained a distrust of Mormonism among many Americans. Members of the Church had not fully assimilated into American society as yet.

What followed was a series of hearings and, in the view of some, inquisitions, spanning the years 1904-1906. Transcripts of the hearings, more than 3,500 pages in length, document this extraordinary event in American, and Mormon, history. Many of Mormonism's brightest lights were put on the witness stand and grilled about Mormonism's eccentric (in their view) ideas and practices.

Paulos has condensed this record into about 700 pages of transcripts from the hearings. Included are testimonies from Joseph F. Smith, B. H. Roberts, and many others. Point for point, item for item, leaders of the Church defended, as best they could, the beliefs, and the very existence, of the Church they loved and served.

I will admit that I haven't read every word of this book. One can scan from page to page and latch on to discussions of interest to the reader. Without meaning any disrespect, I found Joseph F. Smith to be, well, Clintonian in some respects. Yes, the questions were sometimes leading, and often assumed a response that was not forthcoming. But it seems that leaders of the Church fully understood how sensitive these hearings were -- how the outcome of these exchanges would affect not just Senator Smoot's election, but also how the rest of the nation would come to understand an emerging American religion.

The exchange with George Reynolds, who you will remember was imprisoned for a short time for his practice of plural marriage, is a fascinating example of how Americans viewed the 1890 Manifesto, and how some members of the Church, immersed in Plural Marriage, managed to play dodge ball with the law. Reynolds is best known for his involvement in polygamy persecution. Others were involved only tangentially, as believing members of the Church. But the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, the body conducting the hearings, was determined to place not just Reed Smoot, but the entire Mormon hierarchy, on trial.

(I was disappointed that the editor neglected to list the religious affiliations of the members of this Committee. I would have enjoyed knowing their various heritages.)

The editor begins each section with a quote from media covering the hearings. It was interesting to get the point of view, say, of the Deseret News, as the hearings progressed. The transcripts are also abundantly footnoted to enhance the reading and fill in details of the story.

Also included are 14 pages of photos, including some of the wonderful editorial cartoons of the era. I will admit to being a real softie when it comes to these drawings. They say so much about the subject of the satire, and gives a sense of the times that mere words can never offer.

One can hardly miss the fact that Mitt Romney has been subjected to the same kinds of questioning that have faced nearly every Mormon candidate for public office. One member of the press actually asked Mitt if he believed the Garden of Eden was in Missouri! I don't know how Romney could have responded to this. He should have known that such questions would be coming.

But this book isn't about Mitt Romney, and in many ways, it isn't much about Reed Smoot. The apostle seems to melt into the background of the larger agenda of the Senate Committee -- a dissection of the Mormon religion, a broad unease about seating a man whose religion had long been an isolated and, in some minds, an anti-American cult -- as it grinds its way through the process.

There is much to be profited from reading this book. A hefty price-tag may discourage some. But, in the end, one does not judge a book by its poundage or its typestyle. Instead, we must look at the permanence of its importance, the thoroughness of its treatment of its topic. "The Mormon Church on Trial" passes all these tests.

Please consider obtaining this book when it is released. We cannot undervalue the use of history in understanding the present. And, amazingly, 100 years later, the questions asked of the witnesses sound amazingly like what Romney is being asked today. Perhaps someone will do Mitt a favor and send him a copy.

As president, he said, he would "put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law."

For months, he vacillated over whether to give the speech or not, and when he sought advice, he received conflicting opinions.

The man was Reed Smoot and, a little over 100 years ago, he stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate to defend his right to serve there as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Smoot gave what historian Michael H. Paulos describes as a "JFK speech before JFK gave it," a 30-minute address that passionately refuted claims against him, the LDS Church and "unequivocally pledged" allegiance in "civil affairs to my country."

Smoot delivered, in other words, a speech that prefigured the one presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave this morning in Texas.

Smoot spoke a day before the Senate voted on whether to let him retain his seat, culminating two years of hearings on his fitness to serve that proved tumultuous and painful for Smoot and for the LDS Church.

Now, as Romney faces similar questions about his faith, there is renewed interest in Smoot's experience, which is recast by Paulos in a newly edited transcript of the 1907 Senate hearings.

The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings will be published Jan. 25 by Signature Books. Paulos has whittled the 3,432 pages generated during the hearings, held from 1904 to 1906, into a still hefty tome of 744 pages.

Paulos' treatment makes the record more accessible, using extensive footnotes that draw on journals, letters and recent research to provide valuable clarifications and context.

In Smoot's day, the fervor and anti-Mormon sentiment was "stronger and more acceptable," Paulos said.

But that the "Mormon question" has been renewed at all with Romney at its vortex disturbs some historians.

"The questions concerning Romney's religion are doctrinal and we have traditionally taken a position that creedal beliefs were not a basis for judging political opportunity," said Kathleen Flake, a Vanderbilt University historian and author of The Politics of American Religious Identify: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle. "This is not a proud moment in our process."

Today, 16 LDS Church members serve in Congress - four Democrats and 12 Republicans.

Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, is not the first Mormon to make a presidential bid, but he has the momentum of a contender, which is perhaps why he has drawn a level of scrutiny others escaped.

Still, Smoot was the man who paved their political paths.

The Utah Legislature elected Smoot to the Senate in 1903, three years after he was ordained an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Complaints were filed immediately by the Salt Lake Ministerial Association.

The Protestant group alleged - incorrectly - that Smoot was a polygamist and condoned the practice; had taken an oath against the U.S. in temple ceremony; and would take direction from LDS leaders.

The Senate let Smoot take his seat but launched an investigation.

Paulos said that while Smoot was at the center of the hearings, the real focus was the LDS Church itself and each day, "shocking" new revelations emerged about the controversial faith.

Then LDS Church President Joseph F. Smith, called as a witness on the hearing's opening day, was the touchstone for much of the sensational coverage that followed. Smith was at times evasive as senators grilled him about statehood, politics, business relations and church practice and belief - including polygamy, which the church had disavowed in 1890 as a condition of statehood.

The Smoot hearings were "essentially a tribunal on the Mormon church and an opportunity for senators in the country to take a closer look at whether the church had kept its word when Utah became a state and [whether] it was legitimate," Paulos said. "The answer, effectively, was yes."

Historian Harvard Heath, in the book's introduction, said Smoot was caught between "trying not to offend the enemy and not embarrass or criticize his church."

He succeeded, Heath said, by projecting the image of a "new kind of Mormon - monogamous, business-oriented, civic-minded" and free from the older generation's world view.

Smoot's speech, which is not included in the new book, was key in that campaign. Paulos said Smoot "cogently" rebutted claims against him and the church, while describing the need to let existing plural families fade away. He was vehement in his opposition to the practice.

Smoot denied that the faith's endowment ceremonies contained any "act of hostility" toward the government. And he gave a passionate defense of Mormons as loyal patriots, describing their contributions on battlefields from the Spanish American War to the Philippines.

"And so far as I am concerned, I formally and solemnly aver that in every vote and action as United States Senator I shall be governed in the future, as I have been in the past, only by my convictions of what is best for the whole people of the United States, under my oath to support the Constitution and laws of this nation," Smoot said. "I owe no allegiance to any church or other organization which in any way interferes with my supreme allegiance in civil affairs to my country - an allegiance which I freely, fully and gladly give."

A day later, the vote to unseat Smoot failed and he and the LDS Church had won "political legitimacy," though not "social and cultural acceptance," Heath writes.

Romney echoed Smoot on Thursday, telling his audience: "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions," Romney said. "Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin."

As president, he said, he would "put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law."