Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alabama
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS or Mormon Church, has a global membership of more than 17 million members and 31,490 congregations. Joseph Smith founded the Church in Fayette, New York, on April 6, 1830. In 1843, the first missionaries from the Church preached in northern Alabama. Since then, the membership in Alabama has grown to approximately 41,000, with congregations across the state and a temple in Birmingham, Jefferson County. The primary beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints include faith in Jesus Christ, the restoration of his church with modern-day prophets and apostles, and a belief in the Book of Mormon as divine scripture alongside the Bible.
Before founding the Church in 1830, Joseph Smith claimed to have received multiple visions, including one in which he saw God and Jesus Christ, who commanded him to join none of the existing churches, telling him that God would restore Christ’s true church. Three years later, Smith claimed to have another vision in which the messenger, a prophet from ancient America named Moroni, revealed to Smith the location of an ancient scripture detailing the story of Israelite people in ancient America. After translating the record, Smith published the Book of Mormon in 1830, the same year he founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During the next several decades, the Church grew rapidly as missionaries were sent to preach across the United States and Great Britain. The Church initially set up its headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio, before attempting to move to Missouri. After facing persecution in Missouri, the Church and many of its followers moved to Nauvoo, Illinois.
From Nauvoo, the Church sent the first missionaries to proselytize in Alabama: John Brown, Haden W. Church, Peter Haws, John Blair, Wilkinson Hewitt, L. O. Littlefield, and Alabama native Benjamin Clapp. Clapp had grown up in Alabama but was living in Kentucky when he joined the Church.
Brown and Haws reached Alabama first and began preaching in Tuscaloosa County sometime prior to August 1843. On August 27, 1843, Brown preached in Tuscumbia, Colbert County, to residents who had mistaken him for a simple cotton picker. Brown found relative success not only among the White population of Tuscaloosa and Perry Counties but also among the enslaved Black population. In the spring of 1843, Brown baptized three enslaved individuals named Hager, Jack, and Charlotte, as well as multiple members of the families who owned them: the Arterberry and Turnbow families. After this initial success baptizing new converts, the two missionaries set up congregations, referred to as branches, in Sipsey, Walker County, and Bogue Chitto, Dallas County. On February 10, 1844, Church leaders and members gathered in Tuscaloosa County for the first conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the state of Alabama. A total of 112 members attended the conference. As the Church continued to grow, missionaries established two other branches, the Five Mile Branch located near Five Mile Creek in Hale County and the Flatwood Branch in Wilcox County. During this time, many of the members in Alabama contributed money to the Church’s efforts to build a temple in Nauvoo, Illinois.
After the murder of Joseph Smith in 1844, the missionary work in Alabama continued for a short time. By October 1844, Brigham Young, the Church’s national leader, had assigned Abraham O. Smoot to lead the Church in the area of northwest Alabama and northeast Mississippi. A native of Kentucky, Smoot would later serve as mayor of both Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah. Smoot’s son, Reed Smoot, served as a U.S. senator for Utah. Under the direction of Smoot, the Church continued to see moderate success with the establishment of the Little Bear Creek Branch in Franklin County, the Cypress Branch in Lauderdale County, and the Marion County Branch. Nearly all the growth during this time centered on northeast Alabama. Sometime during the summer of 1845, Smoot left Alabama and returned to Nauvoo, Illinois, bringing with him members from Alabama and Mississippi. (The naming of Nauvoo, Walker and Winston Counties, was inspired by a resident who had visited the Illinois city sometime in the latter 1800s.)
As the members of the Church continued to face persecution in Illinois, Young decided to lead his people west hoping to leave the United States and settle in and around the Rocky Mountains. By February of 1846, Brigham Young and fellow members began their exodus from Nauvoo. Many Alabamians decided to follow Young and Church leaders on the trek west. One group of Alabamians and Mississippians unknowingly got ahead of the main group led by Brigham Young and wintered in Pueblo, Colorado. The next year, some of the group met the advance company in what is now Laramie, Wyoming, and made their way with them to the Salt Lake Valley. This group of southern members established the towns of Cottonwood and Holladay in Utah, the latter town named after Alabama native John Holladay. Holladay and his family had converted while in Alabama and gone west with other members of the Church from the South. His family and other southern members settled outside of Salt Lake City near Big Cottonwood Canyon, where he became a prominent leader of the Church in the community.
With the main body of the Church, including many of the early members from Alabama, moving west, the growth of its membership in Alabama came to a halt. The Church sporadically sent missionaries to Alabama before and after the Civil War, but consistent efforts did not occur again until after the end of Reconstruction. As missionaries attempted to preach, they faced varying levels of violence and hostility in southern states. In 1879, Joseph Standing, a missionary from the Church, was murdered in Georgia. In 1884, three other missionaries were murdered in Tennessee. Disdain for the Church of Latter-day Saints and its missionaries stemmed, in part, from its practice of polygamy, which it abandoned in 1890. Although Alabama missionaries did not face the same level of violence, the violence in nearby states caused the Church to hesitate in sending a significant number of missionaries into the South. Despite the lack of missionaries, some early members who stayed in Alabama remained faithful adherents.
The continued presence of members and attempts at missionary work led to the establishment of a second wave of branches by the early 1900s, with new branches established in Birmingham, Jefferson County; Elkmont, Limestone County; Gadsden, Etowah County; Magnolia, Marengo County; McCalla, Jefferson/Tuscaloosa County; Mobile, Mobile County; and Montgomery, Montgomery County. In 1913, members and missionaries constructed a small chapel for the Magnolia Branch. It is considered the oldest surviving LDS chapel in Alabama and still stands today. By 1930, 2,516 members lived in Alabama. During and after World War II, membership numbers in the state rose dramatically owing to two factors: first, the Church encouraged members not to emigrate to Utah, but rather to assist in building up the Church where they lived, and second, the growth of the space industry in Huntsville, Madison County, attracted many members to the area.
As a result of this increasing growth, the First Presidency of the Church announced the construction of a temple in the Birmingham area. Unlike regular chapels at which members and non-members attend weekly service, temples in the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints are only open to active members deemed worthy by local Church leaders to perform sacred ordinances like marriages, family sealings, and baptisms for the dead. Located in the Gardendale area north of Birmingham, then-president of the Church Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the temple on September 3, 2000. It was only the third such structure dedicated in the southern United States. In 2024, the president of the Church, Russel M. Nelson, announced the construction of another temple in Alabama in the Huntsville area. Despite its humble beginnings and stalled early growth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has maintained a consistent presence in Alabama. Currently, there are more than 41,000 members of the Church in Alabama attending 73 different congregations.
