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The Church and the Temple
"Everywhere in the Union business came to a complete standstill on the Sabbath . . . [not] a single person working at a trade, nor a single store open on Sunday."
Sundays in Nauvoo were much the same, with everyone honoring the Lord and being taught the gospel, although not necessarily the restored gospel, because not all residents of Nauvoo were Latter-day Saints. An 1841 Times and Seasons article noted that at a recent conference in the city, eighty persons were added to the Church by baptism.
Whether members of the Church or not, however, all people were welcomed in the new city. Nauvoo resident John D. Lee wrote, "All classes, Jews and Gentiles were allowed to settle there, one man's money was as good as another. . . . The outsiders were invited to join in all of our amusements."
The "outsiders" who arrived in ever increasing numbers did not remain outsiders very long. Most Gentile frontiersmen in Nauvoo's early years were not as concerned about the Saints' religious beliefs as about the economic opportunities Nauvoo offered. Many of these strangers found the faith they wanted in the Mormon church, whereas others found social and economic profits in joining with the Saints. Others never did join the Church but were good citizens of the town and friends and neighbors of the Latter-day Saints. It is impossible to know what proportion of Nauvoo's citizens were not Latter-day Saints because contemporary estimates vary so widely and no record of any religious census exists. Even the local newspapers depended on visitors for estimates. On 9 August 1843 the Nauvoo Neighbor published a report from the Cincinnati Inquirer that according to a gentleman recently returned from Nauvoo, one-third of the city's fifteen thousand residents were of various denominations. Another article in the Neighbor the following month, 13 September 1843, was taken from the New Haven, Connecticut, Herald, which reported that a non-Mormon visitor to Nauvoo was surprised to discover one-third of the population non-Mormon and "all religious sects as well tolerated as anyplace else in the state." Of course, the editor of the Neighbor was probably inclined to reprint these articles to lessen outside fears of the "Mormon City." Modern estimates place the proportion of non-Latter-day Saints somewhat lower, perhaps no higher than ten percent. Even that low estimate, however, means that between fifteen hundred and two thousand non-Mormons lived in Nauvoo. So, even though they were in the minority, these "gentiles" were numerous enough not to feel intimidated and to make more understandable the ease with which open opposition to Church authorities eventually surfaced in the city.