A Modern Day Take on Strang

April 22, 2016

A Strangite Mormon Diaspora occurred after James Jesse Strang was assassinated in 1856. There was no census taken to determine what happened to his followers; they are thought to have scattered to Utah and Wisconsin and elsewhere. For a time, the Mormon religion seemed to vanish from northern Michigan.

That eventually changed. As followers of Brigham Young spread through the country, some of those followers moved to our state. Michigan elected a Mormon governor, George Romney, in 1969.

For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), as the modern church is known, Strang is a strange blip in history. The Northern Express talked to a member of the church, Lorissa K. Nelson, director of public affairs in Traverse City, about how modern members view the odd history of Beaver Island.

Northern Express: When someone asks you about Strang on Beaver Island, because they know about the connection to LDS, what do you tell them?

Lorissa Nelson: Typically, most Mormons here in northern Michigan are only going to have a real cursory kind of knowledge of that — mostly like what most people would hear. They hear “King of Beaver Island” and they think it’s interesting. It piques our attention just a little bit, you know, because they do say, “the Mormon King.” And, of course, he was Strangite and referred to himself as Mormon, but it was an off-shoot. What I typically tell them is, “I heard that story. We have affection for the people, we have compassion for what happened to them, though they did diverge from our congregation.” Back in that day, Joseph Smith was martyred and Brigham Young led the saints out west and James Strang led his group up into Wisconsin and finally to Beaver Island. There weren’t cell phones, so they really lost track of each other. Anything that they heard was such old news or it was so remote. So I tell them that we have compassion for what happened to them, but they are an independent worshiping body and we don’t associate in any way.

Express: What about in church? Does Strang ever come up during services? He certainly appeared at a critical time in Mormon history, just before the death of Joseph Smith, and he feuded with Brigham Young.

Nelson: Definitely. When we study church history and we study one of our books of stricture, the Doctrine and Covenants, we study the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and we study the transition, and so that does come up. And typically the way that’s talked about is we just present that there were times where there were people that were discontent — it was a time of turmoil, but those that followed the prophet Brigham Young were those that were in tune with the spirit. And the smaller groups that splintered off, when you look at the numbers, the smaller groups were quite a bit smaller, so the main body of the saints were firm in their testimony and they followed Brigham Young.

Express: How much of a size difference was there?

Nelson: It was about 20,000 that went out with Brigham Young and then James Strang took between 4,000 and 6,000 members. You know, it wasn’t small. It wasn’t negligible. It hurt.

They were friends. They were family members. I’m sure there were a lot of dear emotions between the membership at the time and they probably missed each other quite a bit, but they did leave to do their own thing, and that’s what they did, is their own thing.

Express: Strang was a controversial figure when he was alive and his time was characterized by tension with non-Mormons. Things are obviously much better today, but are there any remnants of that conflict between Mormons and non-Mormons left in northern Michigan?

Nelson: I haven’t felt it. In fact, I’ve felt really welcomed. I’ve felt that we have common goals with the greater community. You know, we follow Jesus Christ, we love our families, we want to help improve our communities. These are things that this community is solid on, and I feel like those common beliefs actually bind us very closely together with the community.