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Maxwell Institute Podcast #132: Joseph Smith for President with Spencer McBride

MIPodcast #132

About the Episode
Transcript

The Constitution of the United States guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Despite that promise, Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century sometimes found themselves as victims of legal and extralegal violence against their leaders and lay members alike. When Joseph Smith ran for President in 1844, he made religious freedom a central component of his campaign. In this episode of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, we speak with Dr. Spencer McBride, Associate Managing Historian of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, and the host of the Joseph Smith Papers Podcast, about his book Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press).

Joseph Stuart: Welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast. I'm Joseph Stuart. The Constitution of the United States guarantees that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Despite that promise, Latter-day Saints in the 19th century sometimes found themselves as victims of legal and extra-legal violence against their leaders and lay members alike. When Joseph Smith ran for president in 1844, he made religious freedom an essential component of his campaign. In this episode of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, we speak with Dr. Spencer McBride, an associate managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, and the host of the Joseph Smith Papers Podcast, about his book, Joseph Smith for President,: the Prophet, the assassins and the fight for American religious freedom from Oxford University Press. We'll include a link to the book in our newsletter, which you can subscribe to at mi.byu.edu/monthly-mi-news. Spencer McBride, welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast.

Spencer McBride: Thank you. It's good to be here.

Stuart: Now, you're a historian of the Joseph Smith papers. And as mentioned, you also host the Joseph Smith papers podcast, what did you explore in your first few seasons of the podcast? And what's happening in the season that you just released?

McBride: Yes, so the goal with the Joseph Smith Papers Podcast was to do something a little bit different than what was already out there in Latter-day Saint history. We wanted to produce a podcast mini-series, is what we call them, of certain events in Joseph Smith’s life. So in 2020, we released the first vision, which is a six episode podcast trying to recreate the world in which Joseph Smith had his first vision of deity. We followed it up in 2021, with the priesthood restored, which looks at the restoration of the priesthood, not as a singular moment in 1829. And shortly thereafter, but as a process that extended throughout Joseph Smith's life, this idea and understanding of what priesthood is and what its role in the church is, expands. And so we looked closely at his documents and try to tell that story, and, and our latest one that's coming out October 2021, is about the Nauvoo Temple. What did that building mean to the men and women in Kirtland? Most who worked on it and sacrificed for it had no idea what was going to happen inside. So, what role did this building play in their religious devotion while living in Nauvoo? I think the goal of… of these mini series, these podcasts mini series, is to make the academic research with the Joseph Smith papers as accessible as possible to a general church membership. There's people who see that the Joseph Smith Papers Project is happening, they cheer it on, and they want to learn from it. But ultimately, the books the project publishes are reference books, and they can be daunting and inaccessible. So, the podcast is one attempt to make our research discoveries as accessible and informative, and in some cases inspiring.

Stuart: Again, it's called the Joseph Smith Papers Podcast and we highly recommend that you listen to it after you listen to this episode of the Maxwell Institute Podcast. Now, Spencer, you've written a marvelous book about Joseph Smith's quest for the United States presidency. And in your introduction, you write that if we want to understand the persistence of religious inequality in American society, Joseph Smith's presidential campaign offers an indispensable lens. Can you explain what you mean by this?

McBride: Yeah, absolutely. So, in writing this book, I knew that Latter-day Saints would be interested in the story. But why should an American or any other reader who may not be interested in Joseph Smith as a religious leader at all, care about a presidential campaign that really had no chance of succeeding? And the story that I think is there, is the story of American religious freedom. There's a sense… there's myths that we celebrate that the American Revolution established universal religious freedom. But the United States didn't have universal religious freedom in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, and how we made progress toward that goal, and the obstacles in the way of that progress is a key part of what Joseph Smith's presidential campaign is about.

Stuart: Now, maybe it would help to define the term “religious freedom”, because I think that in some ways has been misconstrued for political ends across the spectrum in the United States and across the world. So, what do you mean by religious freedom in your book?

McBride: First, to distinguish religious toleration from religious freedom. Toleration gives people the right to worship with no criminal consequences. But religious freedom means there's no limitation to your citizenship rights based on your faith or lack thereof. And so in many ways, religious freedom means you can worship according to the dictates of your own conscience, with no limits to your rights because of that worship.

Stuart: Now, Latter Day Saints weren't the only religious group that faced persecution and violence in the 19th century. Is that correct?

McBride: Correct. What happened with the Latter-day Saints in Missouri is one of the most dramatic cases of violent religious persecution, but it's hardly an isolated incident. In fact, I think if we look at the long history of persecution against Catholics in the 19th century, you have a more sustained story of persecution among that group.

Stuart: Thank you for sharing that. Again, the name of the book is Joseph Smith for President by Spencer W. McBride. You begin your book by describing Joseph Smith's meeting with President Martin Van Buren. How did he end up meeting the president in the White House?

McBride: You know, these are the days when if you had a congressman willing to introduce you, you could knock on the door of the White House. So you can't even get close to doing that today. Nor do I recommend that any listener try to do that! The Secret Service will have you detained long before you even get close. But Joseph Smith was able to knock on the White House door with an Illinois representative introducing him and Eilias Higbee. And this was a time when President Martin Van Buren actually held almost daily receptions on the second floor of the White House in a parlor. And this was a chance for supplicants to interact with the President and make their case for things that mattered to them. And so sometimes this event that Latter-day Saints tend to know well, this meeting of Joseph Smith and Martin Van Buren, it's depicted in some of our illustrated church histories as happening in a modern-day Oval Office. But really, Joseph Smith had to jockey for position, to get face time with the President. And so, they finally get his attention. And they hand him letters of recommendation from prominent politicians in Illinois and Iowa territory that essentially says, the Latter-Day Saints are here to get redress for their lost property. Van Buren looks at one of these letters, reads it and responds, “What can I do? I can do nothing for you. If I do anything, I will come in contact with the state of Missouri.”

Stuart: Now, I remember reading various church history books and just hating that line, “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.” But as you point out in your book, that's just factually correct. He didn't hate the Latter-day Saints specifically, there were just limits on federal authority, right?

McBride: Yeah, that's certainly a big part of it. Because given the interpretation of the Constitution at the time and the accepted power of the presidency, this was a time before executive orders were common. They were usually issued in times of war. But it was very uncommon for a president to make law through executive order. But what's interesting is as we dove into these, these surviving documents for the Joseph Smith papers project, what became much more clear is what the Latter-dDay Saints were expecting from Van Buren or hoping from Van Buren. They weren't hoping for an executive order; their petition was going to Congress. But there's this obsession in the correspondence from the group that went to D.C. about the State of the Union address, or what they refer to as “the annual message to Congress.” And it appears very clear that they wanted Van Buren to take up their cause in his State of the Union address, that Van Buren had the power to influence the congressional agenda with the Democrats in Congress, who held control of the legislature. And that if he would speak up for the Mormons redress petition, you would have a much greater chance of succeeding. So even after Van Buren declines to help, as they're leaving, he kind of says, “Well, I'll think about it,” and that I don't know how seriously he thought about it again, or if he ever thought about it again, but it dangled this hope. And then for the next several months, as the Latter-Day Saints are waiting for Congress to take up their petition, they write back and forth to Nauvoo saying the State of the Union address isn't out yet, but as soon as it is, we'll send you a copy. And there's just this obsession over that message to Congress, because they're hoping that Van Buren takes their side.

Stuart: Right, because even as I mentioned in the beginning, it's Congress that guarantees the free practice of religion in the United States. But even when Martin Van Buren declines to include the Latter-Day Saints cause and redress petitions in the State of the Union, that doesn't mean that Joseph Smith or Eilias Higby, or other Latter-Day Saints leaders gave up on trying to get help from Washington, correct?

McBride: That's right. They went through the United States Senate, they had drafted a 27-page memorial that lays out all that had happened in Missouri, the fighting the murders, the rapes, and the attached to this memorial, hundreds of affidavits that itemize and place value upon all the loss.

Stuart: Yeah, this is something that you can actually read. The Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University brought all of these redress petitions together and you can read them, and some of them are quite sobering or even heartbreaking to read what Latter-Day Saints lost when they were forced to leave the state of Missouri or face extermination. How did the Latter-Day Saints approach working with members of Congress to try and win them over to their cause?

McBride: Yeah, so they had a very interesting experience with Congress. I think Joseph Smith, like many Americans have in his day, if you live far from the seat of power, you had an idealized view of what happened in Congress. And he gets there and he realizes there's posturing, there's bowing, there's making speeches -not to get work done, but to show how smart one is- and he's really disappointed with what he sees in Congress. But in the Illinois delegation, he finds congressmen and senators who are willing to help the Latter-Day Saints. In part, I think, because people had written to these congressmen said, “Hey, the Latter-Day Saints need help, but also if you're a Whig, they can help us had a Whig majority in the state or if you're a Democrat that can help us keep a Democratic majority in the state.” So, so politics were at play. But I think one person who really stands out from Illinois’ congressional delegation is Senator Young. He not only feels, I think a genuine sympathy for the Latter-Day Saints, and he's willing to be the one who introduces their memorial. But what really sets him apart, is that he realizes that Joseph Smith, Eilias Higby and eventually Sidney Rigdon, joins them, that they're traveling as destitute refugees. They really don't have the money to be making the trip that they're making as they rebuild their lives in Nauvoo. And he personally finances their trip out of his own funds, he pays, he loans given the money they need to get by while they wait for Congress to hear their case. And I think that's going above and beyond. He didn't have to do that. And so the Illinois delegation was tremendously helpful for the Latter-Day Saints at this time. Sure, there were some ulterior political motives at play. But I think, at least with Senator Young, there was some genuine sympathy. And here's kind of the fun fact, Senator Young would become a Supreme Court justice in the state of Illinois, and he would be the judge who presided over the trial of those accused of killing Joseph Smith, years later.

Stuart: That's really wild to think about, about how all these connections between Latter-Day Saints and politicians continue over the years. And you mentioned the Whig Party, which was one of the dominant political parties at the time, as well as the Democratic Party and the Latter-Day Saints, although they're not successful in appealing to the United States Congress, they're able to appeal to the Illinois State Legislature and obtain a city charter for Nauvoo. What's a city charter? And what's so special about the Nauvoo city charter?

McBride: Yeah. So you know, Joseph Smith returns from Washington D.C. disappointed. His idealism in American government's shattered, he realizes that the federal government is claiming they have no jurisdiction in the case, they can't give redress. And so Joseph Smith becomes very determined to protect his people against what had happened to Missouri happening. And so with the help of John C. Bennett, they draft a bill to incorporate Nauvoo as a…an official city in the state of Illinois. And in that Charter, which results from the bill, they put some really strong municipal powers that make Nauvoo very unusual in the greater scheme of United States cities at this time. Their ability to have a militia, which wasn't uncommon, but they made sure it was in there, that the mayor is the head of judicial system in the city. So the mayor would have a mayor's court. Ordinances regarding habeas corpus, that the Latter-Day Saints then strengthened to make sure that people coming in from outside the city would have a difficult time arresting Joseph Smith and others, if they wished them harm. And all these powers are put in this charter. And Illinois is so anxious to win the support of Latter-Day Saints, that they pass it without a dissenting vote, every single person votes in favor of incorporating the city of Nauvoo with all these powers.

Stuart: That seems really unusual to have both sides of the aisle come together with that. What did both sides see as the stakes for supporting the favor of Latter-Day Saints?

McBride: This was a time when Illinois was fairly evenly divided between Whigs and Democrats. The Democrats held a slight edge and laterally since they were a minority in the state, but they became key members. They voted together, and whichever party's candidate they voted for in state elections would win. And so both sides wanted to court the favor of the Latter-Day Saints. Interestingly enough, though, the Nauvoo Charter looks more daunting in terms of the concentration of power in retrospect, than it did at the time. Every single power in Nauvoo’s charter existed in another Illinois city’s charter. Latter-Day Saints didn't invent any new city powers. But what makes theirs so unique is, other cities didn't have all those powers aggregated. And so there was no language that the State Assemblyman would have read and said, “Well, that's new.” They would have seen it before. But it's only later on, they look back at it and say, “Look how much power has been aggregated in the city of Nauvoo.”

Stuart: We're speaking with Spencer McBride about his book, Joseph Smith for President. Now, a lot of your book is about Joseph Smith's fight for religious freedom. How did religious freedom appear in the Nauvoo city charter?

McBride: Yes, so once… once the city charter is in place, and the city government comes to be with a mayor and a city council, the city government passes some very liberal ordinances regarding religious freedom and there's one famous ordinance where they declare the freedom to worship not just for Christians, not just for Protestants, but for people of all religions, including Muslims, and Jews. Now how many Muslims were there to actually go to Nauvoo at this time and, and try to worship or to test the limits of that ordinance? We don't know, but, but it's the philosophy that's been being put forth. It's this ideal that religious freedom shouldn't just be for Protestants. And it shouldn't just be for Christians. Religious freedom, religious freedom for some is not really religious freedom, it has to be for all.

Stuart: So, with the Nauvoo city charter, Joseph Smith is quickly elected mayor of the city and is also made General of the Nauvoo Legion, but the State of Missouri and those from the State of Missouri keep trying to bring him back to their state. Why do they keep doing this?

McBride: And this is a common thread throughout Joseph Smith's time in Nauvoo, is Missouri wants to reclaim him. And they make three different attempts. Now, the first and the third, are based on old charges of treason from the Missouri war, which had actually been dismissed. And so one of the lingering questions is, if they had dismissed those charges, and they were kind of fine to let the Latter-Day Saints go, why did they resurrect them and try to extradite him? I don't know if anyone can say with absolute certainty the motives, my best sense is that once the Latter-Day Saints don't just quietly go away, they go away, but then they go to the federal government, and they just keep on raising the trumpet of, look what Missouri did. And it's then that they say, “Okay, we need Joseph Smith back.” And Joseph Smith knows that if he ever goes back to Missouri, whether under legal or extralegal circumstances, he's not coming back, he knows that that would be the end of his life. And so they, they take great pains to fight these extradition efforts, not now. The second is sandwiched between those two, the first and the third extradition attempts, there are charges that Joseph Smith had conspired for an assassination attempt of former Governor Lilburn Boggs. The evidence is circumstantial. Ultimately, the extradition attempt is denied by the Illinois Supreme Court, not trying to declare Joseph innocent or guilty, but saying the crime that they're charging him with of conspiring if it actually occurred would have occurred in Illinois, not in Missouri, therefore, Missouri has no claim on him. And so there's this ongoing effort, and that's one of the reasons Joseph Smith makes sure that the militia is strong, make sure that the habeas corpus laws in Nauvoo are extremely strong, strongest of anything in the country at that time, it's to protect him and other Latter-Day Saints from what they see as unjust arrest.

Stuart: Yeah, it seems that in this time period, there's just a level of state sovereignty that would be unfamiliar to us today. Did states have more autonomy from the federal government than they do today?

McBride: They did! And this is actually one of the centerpieces of the book is something that's forgotten in our civic education that used to be well known. Prior to the Civil War and the subsequent passage of the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the individual states; the Bill of Rights existed in its original form to protect the rights of the people from infringement by the federal government. But if a state infringed upon the rights of people, the federal government could not go in and enforce it. So even though the First Amendment to the Constitution celebrates and enshrines religious freedom, states continue to deny religious freedom to certain groups, and even condone the persecution of other groups. In the case of Missouri, issuing an order to exterminate a minority religious group if they did not leave the state. And this is a big and that's why the Senate denies the Latter-Day Saints’ petition. And this becomes the central point of Joseph Smith's political activism in the last years of his life. There needs to be constitutional reform so that the federal government can protect religious minority groups when states fail to do so.

Stuart: That seems really important to remember, that Joseph Smith is seeking to have federal authority to protect religious minorities. But how does that go from a cause that he's fighting for the Latter-Day Saints to deciding to run for President of the United States?

McBride: Yeah. So we kind of see this journey of Joseph Smith from the 1830s on, he has a really pivotal visit to Boston. And he visits the charred remains of an Ursuline convent, where this anti-Catholic violence took place. And it's this really eye-opening moment where the quest for the Latter-Day Saints religious rights is bigger than just the Latter-Day Saints. It's this bigger, more universal quest for religious freedom for all Americans. But ultimately, things get bad in Illinois. What started out as such a welcoming refuge, by 1843 it looks like what had happened in Missouri is about to happen again, and the Latter-Day Saints that are looking for every means of protection they can find. And November 1843, Joseph Smith writes a letter to the five men expected to run for president the next year, John C. Calhoun, Lewis Cass, Richard Mentor Johnson, Henry Clay and Mark Nambiar. Only three respond. Cass and Calhoun essentially write the same: We sympathize with you. We think you should have equal rights. But the federal government should not be involved in ensuring your rights because of state threats. And Henry Clay writes the most politician letter ever, and no one wants to be president more in American history than Henry Clay, wanted to be president and he essentially writes, “I sympathize with you. But I don't want to make any commitments. Because when I become president, I don't want to be tied to anything I said on the campaign trail,” is is the gist of this letter. And that I think, irks Joseph Smith just as much as what Calhoun and Cass said, and he writes public letters to all three, essentially, well, he writes one to Calhoun that's in effect, also to Cass. And then he also writes to Henry Clay just lambasted them in the press saying, “What are you talking about? I love my country. But there's something wrong if a state can order our expulsion under threat of extermination, and the federal government says, ‘We can't help you or a presidential candidate says I won't help you, I won't guarantee that I'll help you because I want to make sure I get elected. And I don't want to be held to any promises.’” And so this just really irks Joseph Smith and out of desperation in January 1844, the leaders of the church say, we can't support any of these candidates. This is the most important issue to us, we need an independent candidate, and that candidate’s Joseph Smith.

Stuart: So, in these meetings in January 1844, is Joseph Smith meeting with the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, is he meeting with other groups? If so, who were they?

McBride: Yeah, early on, it's mostly the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. They're the ones who nominate Joseph Smith to be their presidential candidate. But very quickly, that effort expands. As they adopt a campaign platform, they're going to need electioneering missionaries to go out. But once we get later into that spring, Joseph Smith forms what becomes known as the Council of 50. And at the very beginning, this has nothing to do with presidential politics. Because even as Joseph Smith's running for president, the Latter-Day Saints are saying, “If things get too bad, we need to leave the United States altogether.” And so the Council of 50 begins as a conversation of “should we move to the Republic of Texas?” But then those conversations expand and kind of snowball, and they begin talking about what the political kingdom of God looks like in the millennial era. And how can they begin to build such a government ahead of the prophet cycle? And then this Council of 50, then, in addition to having these conversations, begins to take on kind of a campaign manager type role. They oversee a lot of the aspects of the campaign, in part because the Quorum of the 12 is also part of the Council. And, but, but yeah, the Council of 50 really kind of grows to cover a lot of things. But it really begins with this one question, “Should we move to Texas? And if so, how do we do that?”

Stuart: So, you mention Joseph Smith's presidential platform, what are some of the planks that he is staking his reputation on? What are some of the policy decisions that he's advocating for?

McBride: Yeah, I've often said that one issue drove Joseph Smith into the presidential race, but it wasn't a one-issue candidate. I mean, the issue was religious freedom, the government needed to be empowered to protect religious minorities, when states fail to do so. But he puts together a really robust and progressive campaign about looking out for marginalized groups. In fact, in the very first paragraph he invokes race, and says, you know, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. Yet some 2 to 3 million men, women and children are enslaved, denied their freedom. Because, and these are his words here, “the color of the skin that covers their souls is different than ours.” And so he's calling for racial justice. He calls for the end of slavery, but has a really unusual and very pragmatic approach. Rather than just saying the government should just announce that all the enslaved men, women and children are free, the federal government should purchase their freedom from their enslavers from the proceeds of federal land sales. This is a really kind of innovative idea. It wouldn't get any traction, but it's an innovative idea. He’s thinking outside the box. He calls for territorial expansion. The…the hot questions of the day were should the United States annex Texas? He says “yes.” Which I think is an easier thing to say when you're announcing the end of slavery. And also should we claim all of the Oregon country which was contested with Great Britain. He calls for the end of the rising penitentiary system. He says we need criminal justice reform. And essentially, to paraphrase what he says is, the current system punishes people for crimes in a way that doesn't reform them. So read through the lines, essentially, we're creating a permanent criminal class, our criminal justice system needs to reform.

Stuart: Was there anything that surprised you, as you closely analyzed Joseph Smith's presidential platform that you didn't know before you started researching?

McBride: Yeah, you know, I think I knew his call for criminal justice reform, but looking more deeply into it is each of his positions. There's a national relevance, but there's also a personal relevance. We can see Joseph Smith's understanding and ideas on race and slavery evolve through his life. They're not static. He rethinks things and changes his mind. We see… even talking about prisons. Joseph Smith has been incarcerated, he talks about ending incarceration for debt. His father was in debtors' prison. These are all things that are nationally, nationally relevant, but also personally. So I think sometimes people can say, “Hey, he was a one-issue candidate and he just threw together a campaign platform because that's what you need.” But as I read through it, I see a lot more issues that really mattered to Joseph Smith.

Stuart: Where did Joseph Smith fit in, in national party politics? Was he more like a Whig, more like a Democrat or somewhere in between?

McBride: Yeah, he's somewhere in between. I think he's truly independent. But there's certain issues that he sounds very much like a Whig. He calls for the reestablishment of a national bank, and that had been a position defended by the Whigs for a long time. His idea of a stronger federal government fits with Whig ideas of divided sovereignty, but then some of his ideas of personal freedoms very much fit with the Democratic platform of the time. So, it's really hard to pigeonhole him. And even in saying he's an independent candidate, because he doesn't fit either party with his campaign seen as a whole, individual issues, you could actually very well fit in one or the other.

Stuart: So you mentioned before that the Council of 50 was running the Prophet Joseph's Campaign for President of the United States. What did that look like on the ground?

McBride: Yeah, so this is a time when presidential candidates did not campaign for themselves, they did not go and make stump speeches, but it was also right on the cusp of that changing. And in fact, for a long time, a presidential candidate wouldn't even give the impression that he wanted to be president. At this point, you could kind of say, “I want it,” you still don't go out and make speeches for yourself, but you send surrogates. And Joseph Smith had an advantage that most outside, you know, third-party candidates didn't have. You had an experienced corps of missionaries who are used to going and traveling without persons script to preach the gospel, who could then be asked to go and do the same to campaign for his election. That's exactly what they do. And so Joseph Smith prints this pamphlet called General Smith's Views on the Powers and Policy of the United States Government. They print thousands of copies and electionary missionaries take it almost as a political track and canvass the country campaigning for their prophet to be president.

Stuart: Now moving the story forward a little bit. Joseph Smith doesn't escape political problems at home, even as he's campaigning to be President of the United States. Did his presidential campaign contribute to the atmosphere that led to his assassination in June 1844?

McBride: Yeah, and this is a really interesting question, because it… because it brings up an important point, Joseph Smith has a distinction that nobody wants. Nobody wants to be the first assassinated American presidential candidate. But he has that distinction. But there's an asterisk next to it. From all that I've read and researched, Joseph Smith was not murdered, to prevent him from becoming president. It wasn't because he was running for president that he was murdered, in as much as it may have contributed to his eventual assassination. His critics who are already willing to kill him, saw his running for president as a sign of unfettered ambition. But really, the political calculations that are, that contributed to his assassination, are local Illinois politics. It’s not national politics. No one said he needs to be assassinated, or he's going to be president. So he is the first assassinated presidential candidate, but he was not assassinated to stop him from being president.

Stuart: Now, you're a historian for the Joseph Smith Papers Project. But what are two or three things that you think about in the aftermath of writing this wonderful book that you think Latter-Day Saints would do well to think about in the big picture today?

McBride: Yeah, I think it's easy to think about religious freedom, in terms of your own religious freedom. It's very easy to stand up and defend your own right to worship under the dictates of your own conscience. But I think Joseph Smith calls us to look beyond that. He was asking Protestant Christians who had universal religious freedoms to say, “Look at us, we don't. Shouldn't we have those same rights?” And so now we're at a time where Latter-Day Saints maybe not entirely mainstream, but we're not being hounded by mobs anymore. We experience a pretty good level of religious freedom in the United States right now. But can we look and see other groups that don't? And is it enough for us to say, well, we have it and that's good enough. Is Joseph Smith's campaign really saying, “The fight for religious freedom has to be more than your religious freedom?” Because religious freedom for some isn't really religious freedom at all.

Stuart: Now, at the end of every podcast, we ask our guests to name three of their best books thinking about the verse in Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which requires that we learn out of the best books, what would you suggest for our audience?

McBride: You know, I was thinking about this. And this is like naming your favorite movie, right? It's almost impossible. The angle I'm going to take is what are three books that I read, either recently, or related to what I wrote that I think are really worth reading. So it's essentially about religious freedom. The first one is David C. Hat’s book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom, which is excellent. Kind of takes you through the legal history. It's really focused on the 20th century. But it's important to understand what changed in the 20th century that Joseph Smith had been fighting for in the 19th century among others. Tisa Wenger who I know has been, I think on this podcast, but also has spoken at the Maxwell Institute, her book, Religious Freedom: the History of a Contested Idea, again, later than Joseph Smith's era, but essential for understanding this idea of religious freedom that we like to champion and we should champion. But we need to understand it's, it's complicated history better. And thirdly, and this isn't directly on religious freedom. But Abraham Van Ingan wrote this phenomenal book called City on a Hill where he takes that language that is so prominent in American politics, especially talking about religion, of the United States being a city set on a hill. He traces the origins of that, of that phrase from the Puritan phrase in colonial New England and how it's been used and adapted and forgotten and remembered throughout the course of American history. And I think for Latter-Day Saints who are interested in genealogy, it contains a fascinating section on how genealogy becomes an important pursuit in the United States and why.

Stuart: Spencer McBride thank you so much for stopping by the Maxwell Institute podcast.

McBride: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Stuart: Thank you for listening to the Maxwell Institute Podcast. Could you do us a favor and recommend this show to others, review and rate the podcast on Apple Podcasts or other podcast providers, or share the episode on social media? Thanks so much and have a blessed week y'all.