When Did Latter-day Saints Start Leaning Republican?

In the United States, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disbanded its “People's Party” in 1891. Church leaders invited members to join either the Democrats or the Republicans. These leaders wanted to become more mainstream and help the cause of Utah statehood. They also thought that political diversity could help members shape local and national elections.

That contest to win voters to the two major political parties created more heat than light. In the April 1892 general conference, President Wilford Woodruff counseled the Saints to stop fighting. “Every man has as much right—prophets, apostles, saints, and sinners—to his political convictions as he has to his religious opinions,” he said, adding, “Don't throw filth and dirt and nonsense at one another because of any difference on political matters" (“General Conference,” Deseret Evening News, 5 April 1892, 4).

At that time, many felt that believing members could only be Democrats and not Republicans because Republicans were the leaders of the antipolygamy crusade. During a priesthood session in St. George, apostle Francis Lyman said believing members were needed in both political parties. “We don't want anyone who is a Democrat to change,” he told them. “There is much less difference between the two parties than at first thought” (Francis Marion Lyman, Journal, 11 September 1982).

So when did Latter-day Saints start leaning Republican? Here's excellent analysis by my friend Joseph Stuart, a PhD student in history at the University of Utah:

In 1904, the United States Senate convened hearings to ascertain whether Reed Smoot, Utah’s junior senator and an apostle for the LDS Church, could hold his seat in Congress. Senate Republicans, largely self-identified Protestants, questioned whether Smoot could serve the people of Utah in an unbiased matter, given his connection to his church, which they argued, had never followed through on promises to Americanize. These Republicans viewed Smoot as the LDS Church’s puppet, incapable of making moral decisions because of his professed faith, which they viewed as a “false” religion. Kathleen Flake has shown in her book The Politics of American Religious Identity that Smoot and the Republican Party came to a political agreement during the trial’s three-year duration. Smoot would support their policy platforms and work to flip Utah’s residents to the Grand Old Party. In return, they would stop calling LDS leaders to answer questions about their church on the Senate floor. The deal worked for both sides. However, there’s no question as to who wielded the most power in the relationship. Mormons acquiesced to a national political party and won political influence. Republican Party leaders gained a crucial electoral constituency and did not have to recognize Mormonism as a religion on the same level as Protestant Christianity.  

Utah’s white Mormons became more Republican over time. The Beehive State and its Latter-day Saint citizens did not align strictly with Republicans or Democrats through the mid-twentieth century, despite some LDS leaders who identified the New Deal’s social safety net as bad for the nation’s spiritual health. The partisanship expressed by individual leaders did not stop Latter-day Saints from voting for Franklin Roosevelt in each of his four presidential campaigns.

Many Latter-day Saint Democrats, including Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah, promoted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, feeling that his leadership was the best pathway out of the Great Depression.

The Red Scare of 1950 changed the trajectory of the country. “In the early months of 1950,” wrote Richard Swanson, “Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin embarked on what may be recorded as a most energetic attempt to rid the United States of persons linked, even remotely, with Communist sympathies or associations. . . . Capitalizing on the prevalent mood of disgust with foreign policy failures, the junior senator offered the oversimplified explanation that Communists had infiltrated high-level State and Defense Department positions” (Richard Swanson, “McCarthyism in Utah” [master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1977], 1). Swanson wrote that “the use of slanderous insinuations to give the impression that a politician was pro-Communist was widespread and effective in Utah,” and “the first victim of this deluge of McCarthyism was the state’s senior senator, Democrat Elbert Thomas” (Swanson, “McCarthyism in Utah,” 99). 

During the 1950 senatorial campaign, attack ads “accused [Thomas] of presiding at Communist meetings and of sponsoring leftist organizations. He was cartooned as a puppet of the Communists and the radical unionists,” and “the Republican candidate, Wallace Bennett, did nothing to deter the attacks,” wrote historian Richard D. Poll (Richard D. Poll, David E. Miller, Eugene E. Campbell, and Thomas G. Alexander, eds., Utah’s History [Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1978], 518). Even though Senator Thomas was not a Communist, his critics “publicized enough implicative insinuations and accusations” that Thomas was defeated in the election cycle of 1950.

President David O. McKay and Elder Ezra Taft Benson passionately preached against communism during the 1950s and 1960s, and this sometimes led to tension within church leadership, particularly the First Presidency. Elder Benson was so vocal in his crusade against socialism that the First Presidency censured and then called him to preside in the European Mission to keep him out from US politics. When President McKay died in 1970, Elder Benson subdued his political activity until 1973 when he became President of the Twelve and spoke out against socialism (see Matthew L. Harris, Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics [Urbana: University of Illinois, 2019], and http://www.mormonpress.com/ezra-taft-benson-and-politics).

Membership in both parties continued to be divided fairly evenly until the mid-1970s when abortion became, for many members, a big issue leading them to affiliate with Republicans. (It is noteworthy that nearly all believing Democrats likewise oppose abortion.)

For many years Utah, like several other states, allowed abortions only to save a mother’s life. In 1973 the US Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade struck down state abortion laws. Roe v. Wade proved to be a continental divide for American political parties. Before the decision, Democrats were more pro-life because more Catholics were Democrats. More Republicans were pro-choice. After the decision, leaders in Congress helped define each party's stance, with some voters changing parties. From that time onward, as former Deseret News reporter Rod Decker noted, “more religious people tended Republican, and less religious people went with the Democrats. Utah followed that national pattern. . . . As positions clarified, Utah voters became more Republican. After Roe, Utah never voted for another Democrat for president or senator” (Rod Decker, Utah Politics: The Elephant in the Room [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2019], 56).

Rod Decker. Courtesy of KUTV.

America’s bicentennial year of 1976 was the year the vast majority of membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went Republican. “1976 was what the Republican ascendancy started, right after Roe v. Wade,” Decker said in a recent KUTV interview. That continental divide continues in Utah—and in our nation.

Philo Dibble, Faithful Friend of the Prophet

Figure 1. Philo Dibble, who is buried in the Springville, Utah, Cemetery.

Philo Dibble showed faith and courage throughout his life. He was an early convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (nicknamed the Mormons) and a close friend to the Prophet Joseph Smith who recorded several miracles and important events in Church history in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Utah.

He was born in Peru, Massachusetts, on June 6, 1806. Marrying Celia Kent in 1829, the couple moved to the Kirtland, Ohio, area (three miles west of Chardon). 

One fall morning in 1830, while the twenty-four-year-old Philo stood by his gate, two neighbors asked if he had heard the news about four missionaries with a new book called the Book of Mormon. One of those missionaries claimed to have seen an angel. Though the men ridiculed the idea of angels visiting the earth, Philo thought that if an angel had appeared, he wanted to know about it. He and Celia went to investigate.

The four missionaries were Oliver Cowdery, Ziba Peterson, Peter Whitmer Jr., and Parley P. Pratt, who were heading west to preach to the Native Americans on the western border of the United States. Attending a meeting in which Oliver taught the message of the restored gospel and bore his testimony, Philo, along with four others, believed and was baptized by Parley P. Pratt on October 16. That night, in the home of Frederick G. Williams, Philo could not sleep for joy and was filled with a heavenly influence “like fibers of fire” (“Philo Dibble’s Narrative,” 75).

Grateful for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, he penned the words to “The Happy Day at Last Has Come.”

The happy day at last has come.

The truth restored is now made known.

The promised angel’s come again

To introduce Messiah’s reign.

    

The gospel trump again is heard.

The truth from darkness has appeared.

The lands which long benighted lay

Have now beheld a glorious day:

    

The day by prophets long foretold,

The day which Abram did behold,

The day that Saints desired so long,

When God his great work would perform,

    

The day when Saints again shall hear

The voice of Jesus in their ear,

And angels, who above do reign,

Come down to speak again with men.

(Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, no. 32)

Figure 2. Elsa Johnson, whose arm was miraculously healed in 1831.

Philo witnessed Joseph Smith calling on the power of God to heal the lame arm of Elsa Johnson of Hiram, Ohio, in 1831:

When Joseph came to Kirtland his fame spread far and wide. There was a woman living in the town of Hiram . . . who had a crooked arm, which she had not been able to use for a long period. She persuaded her husband, whose name was Johnson, to take her to Kirtland to get her arm healed.   

I saw them as they passed my house on their way. She went to Joseph and requested him to heal her. Joseph asked her if she believed the Lord was able to make him an instrument in healing her arm. She said she believed the Lord was able to heal her arm.   

Joseph put her off till the next morning, when he met her at Brother [Newel K.] Whitney’s house. There were eight persons present, one a Methodist preacher, and one a doctor. Joseph took her by the hand, prayed in silence a moment, pronounced her arm whole, in the name of Jesus Christ, and turned and left the room.   

The preacher asked her if her arm was whole, and she straightened it out and replied: “It is as good as the other.” (“Philo Dibble’s Narrative,” 79)

Figure 3. The John Johnson home in Hiram, Ohio, where “the Vision”  (Doctrine and Covenants 76) was received on February 16, 1832.

On February 16, 1832, Philo went to the Johnson home while the Prophet Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were receiving a marvelous vision of the Father and the Son and the afterlife. He said that although Joseph wore black clothes, his clothes appeared gloriously white, and his face glowed “as if it were transparent” (“Early Scenes in Church History,” 81). Philo offered a first-person testimony of these events:

The vision which is recorded in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants was given at the house of “Father Johnson,” in Hiram, Ohio, and during the time that Joseph and Sidney were in the spirit and saw the heavens open, there were other men in the room, perhaps twelve, among whom I was one during a part of the time—probably two-thirds of the time—I saw the glory and felt the power, but did not see the vision. . . . Joseph would, at intervals, say: “What do I see?” as one might say while looking out the window and beholding what all in the room could not see. Then he would relate what he had seen or what he was looking at. Then Sidney replied, “I see the same.” Presently, Sidney would say, “What do I see?” and would repeat what he had seen or was seeing, and Joseph would reply, “I see the same.” (Juvenile Instructor, May 1892, 303)

While Philo and the others waited in silence, Joseph and Sidney conversed with each other: “During the whole time not a word was spoken by any other person. Not a sound nor motion made by anyone but Joseph and Sidney, and it seemed to me that they never moved a joint or limb during the time I was there, which I think was over an hour, and to the end of the vision. Joseph sat firmly and calmly all the time in the midst of a magnificent glory, but Sidney sat limp and pale, apparently as limber as a rag, observing which, Joseph remarked, smilingly, ‘Sidney is not used to it as I am’” (Juvenile Instructor, May 1892, 304). Joseph seemed as “strong as a lion,” while Sidney was as “weak as water” (“Philo Dibble’s Narrative,” 81). However, Sidney stayed up that night recording the events. Their testimony is recorded in section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants:

                The Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about.

                And we beheld the glory of the Son, on the right hand of the Father, and received of his fulness;

                And saw the holy angels, and them who are sanctified before his throne, worshiping God, and the Lamb, who worship him forever and ever. And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!

                For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father—

                That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God. (Doctrine and Covenants 76:19–24)

Although early reactions were mixed, the Latter-day Saints eventually embraced the vision:

Nothing could be more pleasing to the Saints upon the order of the Kingdom of the Lord, than the light which burst upon the world through the foregoing vision. Every law, every commandment, every promise, every truth, and every point touching the destiny of man, from Genesis to Revelation, where the purity of the Scriptures remains unsullied by the folly of men, go to show the perfection of the theory [of different degrees of glory in the future life] and witnesses the fact that that document is a transcript from the records of the eternal world. The sublimity of the ideas; the purity of the language; the scope for action; the continued duration for completion, in order that the heirs of salvation may confess the Lord and bow the knee; the rewards for faithfulness, and the punishments for sins, are so much beyond the narrow-mindedness of men, that every honest man is constrained to exclaim: “It came from God.” (“Joseph Smith, the Prophet,” Historical Record, January 1888, 402)

A Missouri Mob and a Miracle

In 1832 the Dibbles moved to Missouri and homesteaded on the Whitmer Settlement, where Philo worked a twenty-acre farm. Trouble soon erupted between the locals and the newcomers, who saw the Saints as a political and economic threat. Most of the Whitmer Settlement Saints were driven from the county by mid-November 1833. Many crossed the Missouri River north into Clay County or east into Lafayette County, while some fled elsewhere.

While fighting a Missouri mob in the fall of 1833, Philo was shot in the stomach, and the bullet lodged in the small of his back. In great pain, he went to the home of Joshua Lewis, where he spent the night. Fearing that the mob members would find him, he left to hide in Aaron Wild’s house in the woods. Ironically, the mob leader, James Campbell, knew Philo and brought a physician to attend to the wound. Dr. Marsh said it was hopeless; Philo could not possibly live. 

Shortly thereafter, Newel Knight came by. Without saying a word, Brother Knight laid his right hand upon the head of the wounded man. As he did so, the Spirit of the Lord rested upon Philo, filling his body from his head through his fingers and toes. He later testified, “I immediately arose and discharged three quarts of blood or more, with some pieces of clothing that had been driven into my body by the bullets. I then dressed myself and went out doors. . . . From that time not a drop of blood came from me and I never afterwards felt the slightest pain or inconvenience from my wounds except that I was somewhat weak from the loss of blood” (“Philo Dibble’s Narrative,” 84). Thereafter he could feel the bullet under the skin of his back, but he never had it removed, keeping it as a reminder of his miraculous healing.

In the years that followed, the Missouri Saints sought legal help to regain their lands, but to no avail. On July 4, 1838, the Saints gathered to speak of the freedoms they sought but did not possess. A liberty pole had been erected at Far West, but during the course of the day a thunder cloud passed over, and a bolt of lightning struck the pole, shattering it into splinters. As the Prophet walked around the shattered pole, he said, “As that pole was splintered, so shall the nations of the earth be!” (“Philo Dibble’s Narrative,” 88).

Tragedy in Illinois

In the spring of 1840, Philo moved to the Church’s new gathering place: Commerce (Nauvoo), Illinois. The next year his wife died and left him with five children: two daughters and three sons. Discouraged, he decided to find homes for his children and then travel and preach the gospel. On February 11, 1841, he married Widow Smith from Philadelphia. The Prophet Joseph performed the ceremony, and Emma Smith gave them a wedding supper.

On June 27, 1844, a mob stormed the Carthage Jail and killed Joseph and his brother Hyrum. George Cannon (father of future Church leader George Q. Cannon) cast the death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and Philo kept the masks safe for forty-one years.

Figure 4. The death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith were kept by Philo for forty-one years. Photo by Kenneth R. Mays.

The Utah Years

Although the Saints began leaving Nauvoo in 1846, Philo and his family lacked money to travel, and they lingered there for many years. They eventually crossed the plains with Philemon C. Merrill’s wagon company in 1851 and settled in Bountiful, Utah. 

Philo married three times and became the father of eight children. He served as director of a co-op store in Centerville, Utah (Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History, s.v. “Philo Dibble”). He also traveled around showing a gigantic mural of scenes from Church history along with relics from the time of the Prophet Joseph Smith. 

In 1857, when President James Buchanan sent federal troops to put down a supposed rebellion in Utah, the Dibbles moved south to Springville, Utah, and decided to settled there.

Philo's oldest daughter, Eliza Ann, married Mormon Battalion veteran Henry Wells Jackson, who eventually fought and died in the Civil War, becoming the first known Latter-day Saint Civil War death and the only Utah battle death in that war.

Figure 5. Receipt showing sale of the death masks on November 1, 1885, to Harris (Harrie) Brown of Logan, Utah. Courtesy of Alexander L. Baugh.

Eighty-nine-year-old Philo Dibble died on June 7, 1895. That very day the Deseret News offered a fitting tribute to this faithful friend of the Prophet:

     Elder Philo Dibble, an aged and respected Utah veteran, died at his home in Springville at 2 o’clock this morning. Elder Dibble had been failing for some time past and was perfectly resigned to his position. He was in the ninetieth year of his age, and had very remarkable career.

     In his death it is thought the oldest member of the Church has passed from mortality. He was baptized [October] 15th 1830 by Parley P. Pratt. He was wounded by a mob during the troubled times of 1833 in Jackson County, Missouri. He was shot in the abdomen. The ball passed through his body and lodged near the backbone just beneath the skin where it remained up to the time of his death. On May 27th, he was visited by some Elders of the Church and among other things he said at that time: “I know, he said, the Church was established by divine revelation, Joseph Smith being God’s Prophet, Seer and Revelator. With him I was familiar and closely associated during his life from 1833 until 1844. When I beheld him as a martyr, shot with four bullets, even unto death; and I now lie here on my death bed with lead in my body at the age of 89, and I shall soon go to meet the martyr, for I now feel that my work here on earth is done, and my desire is that I may soon go in peace where I shall see many others who, like myself, have suffered many tribulations for Christ’s sake.”

References

“An Old Respected Veteran Passed to His Final Rest at Springville This Morning.” Deseret Evening News, June 7, 1895.

Dibble, Philo. “Early Scenes in Church History.” In Four Faith Promoting Classics. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1968.

———. “Philo Dibble’s Narrative.” In Early Scenes in Church History. Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1882.

———. Juvenile Instructor, May 1892, 303–4.

———. The Happy Day at Last Has Come.” Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, no. 32. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985.

Garr, Arnold K., Donald Q. Cannon, and Richard O. Cowan, editors. Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint Church History. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000.

“Joseph Smith, the Prophet.” Historical Record, January 1888, 402.

Parkin, Max H. Missouri, vol. 4 of Sacred Places: A Comprehensive Guide to Early LDS Historical Sites, edited by LaMar C. Berrett. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2004.