In 1922, Mormon Church president Heber J. Grant pointed to a box of records and told his new secretary, “You won’t be needing those.” Inside: the Council of Fifty.
The Council of Fifty was Joseph Smith’s secret 1844 political body in Nauvoo, Illinois, and its members voted to accept him as “Prophet, Priest & King.” Jess and Hannah go through the minutes: the secrecy vow, the April 25 revelation “ye are my constitution,” Smith’s presidential campaign, William Clayton burying the records in his garden, and Brigham Young’s move west. The records stayed in church custody, including a 1981 look during the church’s dealings with Mark Hofmann’s documents, until the Joseph Smith Papers published them in 2016. Historians call the theory theodemocracy. Religious liberty sounds different when the people guaranteeing it believe revelation outranks the rules meant to restrain them.