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The New England Background to the Restoration

Milton V. Backman, Jr.

Twenty-four hundred years prior to the restoration of the everlasting gospel, Nephi beheld in vision four precursors to that significant event. While guided by the Spirit of God, he witnessed, (1) the discovery and colonization of America, (2) the American Revolution, (3) the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and (4) the Restoration through the Prophet Joseph Smith (1 Ne. 13:12-20; 2 Ne. 3:6-15).

From a historian' s perspective, there could not have been a successful restoration until after the birth of a new nation. Prior to that era, many forces hindered the restitution of all things. In addition to the intolerance and indifference of organized religion, the beliefs of many Americans were out of harmony with Restoration teachings. The field became white and ready to harvest after a religious reorientation paralleled the creation of a new nation. New England, known as a cradle of liberty, was a fruitful region where seeds of political and religious liberty, new patterns of thought, and a fresh religious zeal were planted. During the decades preceding the Restoration, many of these seeds flowered and were manifest in the lives of New Englanders.

Many early leaders of the restoration movement were born in the northeastern section (New England) of the young nation. From this area emerged Joseph Smith and his family; Brigham Young; Wilford and Phebe Woodruff; Orson Hyde; Heber C. Kimball; and John, Luke, and Joel Johnson, to name only a few. Of the known members of the Kirtland Branch during the decade of the thirties, 46 percent were born in New England and another 32 percent, in New York, representing 78 percent of all Latter-day Saints who settled in that community.--> Since one of the strongest migration patterns to New York was from the northeastern United States, many born there were children of New England parents.

While a favorable religious revolt in New England preceded the Restoration, the Church was not organized in that region. New York provided a more favorable climate for such an organization. Nevertheless, multiple forces emerged in the Northeast that changed significantly patterns of life in that region; and many of these forces were transplanted to New York and were fanned westward across the new nation.

One of these important forces that led to the Restoration was the rise of religious liberty. The struggle to separate church and state by eliminating public support of religion was longer and more intense in New England than in any other section of America. Although the South was also a bastion of intolerance during the colonial period, legal religious restrictions were removed more quickly in that area than in the far north.-->

A more tolerant religious relationship among people in New England began in Rhode Island where Roger Williams succeeded in founding a colony with religious liberty. However, religious freedom was not immediately embraced by other New England colonies. Meanwhile, Pilgrims in Plymouth and Puritans in Massachusetts continued a policy inherited from England. Although many seeking religious liberty immigrated to the New England colonies, after arriving in the New World, they did not generally believe in extending freedom to others. Roger Williams and Ann Hutchinson were not the only leaders who were driven from Massachusetts for proclaiming unorthodox beliefs. During most of the seventeen century, nonconformists of Massachusetts and Connecticut suffered from intolerant legislation. In that section of America, Anglicans were banished; Baptists were fined and imprisoned; and Quaker missionaries, men and women, were not only banished, fined, and imprisoned, but some were tortured and a few were executed. According to one oppressive law that applied to Connecticut and Massachusetts, Quaker preachers were to have their tongues bored through with a hot iron.-->