Schismatical Conversations: The Excommunication of John A. Hicks

"And again, I say unto you, I give unto you John A. Hicks, Samuel Williams, and Jesse Baker, which priesthood is to preside over the quorum of elders, which quorum is instituted for standing ministers; nevertheless they may travel, yet they are ordained to be standing ministers to my church, saith the Lord."  D&C 124:137


With the excommunications of John Dehlin and Kate Kelly, I thought I'd post the story of the excommunication of John A. Hicks, the elder's quorum president in Nauvoo.  His is both one of the earlier cases of church discipline we know about and is also one of the few cases of a member whose local exoneration in church discipline was reversed on appeal to the Quorum of the Twelve.

John was my ancestor George Barton Hicks's older brother and converted with him during the great Canadian conversions in the late 1830s.  The Hicks clan emigrated to Nauvoo along with William Law.  The calling of John Hicks to the elder's quorum presidency (and William Law to the First Presidency) were, of course, politically strategic.  The hope, I imagine, is that involving the Canadian Saints in church leadership would enlist the loyalties of the mass of Saints Parley Pratt and others had recently converted, and allow the church to put behind them the betrayals of earlier Saints who were jaded by the scandals and persecutions in Kirtland and Missouri. 

The Hicks worked Law's land and were close to him and his brother.  They were also privy to much of the early polygamous activities of Joseph Smith, including Joseph's alleged propositioning toward William Law's wife (on that note, it is unsettling to consider that in the same section that John Hicks was called to be the elder's quorum president, Joseph revealed that William Law was to go on a mission with Hyrum Smith while Joseph was to stay at home).  The Hicks were also well acquainted with Parley Pratt's polygamy and harbored one of his wives in their home.  John Hicks's excommunication was a small, early prelude of the upheaval in Nauvoo that accelerated when William Law and others exposed polygamy in the church by publishing the Nauvoo Expositor.

Here's the story, according to John's nephew George Armstrong Hicks:

"My father's brother Samuel was hired to William Law and one day he drove Law's carriage to meeting on the Sabbath day.  There were two young women in the carriage who were on a visit to Law's house.  My uncle placed the carriage behind the stand (for the meeting was held in the open air) where the young ladies could hear the speaker without leaving the carriage.

"Dimick B. Huntington was at that time acting as City Marshall.  He took it into his head to move the carriage back, and he did so.  My uncle Samuel took the carriage back where it stood.  Huntington came along and ordered my uncle to take it back and leave it where he (Huntington) had placed it, when an altercation ensued.  Huntington raised his cane to strike my uncle Samuel on the head.  My uncle John was nearby and caught the cane, preventing the blow from falling on his brother's head.

"John Hicks was at that time president of all the Elders in the Church.  He was tried before the Mayor and fined ten dollars for resisting an officer of the peace.  He was also tried before the Elder's Quorum.  Although but six voted against him and one of them was Huntington, he was turned over to the general conference, and when he was absent, his case was brought up.  Hyrum Smith said he thought it would be right and proper to wait until Bro. Hicks would have time to come home, and he had no doubt that all would be made right between the brethren.  Joseph was presiding, however, and he put the motion and my uncle was condemned without being heard.  I say condemned--he was cut off from the church before a public conference, and that, too, contrary to church law.

"John Hicks was a spirited man and understood his own rights as a man and church member.  After he was cut off, Joseph Smith came to my father in person and requested him to go to his brother John and ask him to come back into the church.  My father told him it was of no use.  'John,' he said, 'Was too proud-spirited to yield to any such proceedings.'  John was a leading spirit in the family and all the brothers except my father eventually followed him away from the church."



Minutes from the 1840 and 1841 General Conferences indicate that, at least officially, there had been a history of disciplinary issues involving John Hicks.  John P. Greene had earlier alleged that Hicks had slandered him, but Hicks had apparently agreed to settle the issue and it was resolved without excommunication.

The larger issue is revealed by Dimick Huntington, who apparently the led the charge to excommunicate.  According to Times and Seasons (Oct. 15, 1841): "Bro. B. Young presented an appeal from the Elder's Quorum against Elder John A. Hicks, charging him with a breach of the ordinances of the city, and of the peace, with falsehood and scismatical conversation and behavior." 

It's not clear what the "schismatical conversations" were, but I think it's not much of a stretch to argue they probably involved inside information about polygamy.  Joseph had himself sealed to Dimick Huntington's younger sister Zina less than two weeks after excommunicating John Hicks.  Dimick, who attempted to strike John's younger with a cane to enforce an order to move his carriage, had told Zina that an angel of the Lord had drawn a sword and threatened to kill Joseph if she didn't marry him.

One can only imagine what kind of "conversations" Hicks had with Dimick Huntington while defending his little brother Samuel.  Perhaps they didn't involve polygamy at all.  On the other hand, no other subject was as sensitive in Nauvoo.  Covering up polygamy from public knowledge was an extremely high priority for Joseph and would explain the rush to excommunicate Hicks as well as the subsequent attempt to bring him back into the fold.

The later publication of the Nauvoo Expositor finally forced the issue, of course.  Cyrus Wheelock claims that John A. Hicks was in Carthage with William Law and other "apostates" and threatened to kill Joseph.   Lyndon Cook's biography of Law casts some doubt on that claim, however, as Law's diary shows he was not in Carthage at the time.  The animosity toward Hicks and Law by church members like Dimick Huntington, however, no doubt clouded their stories of what happened.  George A. Hicks claims that church members later burned down Hicks's house and the machines he created to help process Law's crops.

There are common threads here between Hicks, John Dehlin, Kate Kelly, the September Six and others (including George A. Hicks, who was excommunicated himself for speaking out about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and polygamy).  There are the obvious parallels involving access to information church leaders consider privileged, and the extent to which leaders feel that the accused are undermining the church.

In all this, however, I go back to Hyrum's counsel.  What unintended consequences did Joseph set in motion by excommunicating Hicks?  We'll never know what would have happened had the church decided against excommunicating John Hicks.  I do think, however, that Hyrum wasn't simply being naive by arguing that all could be resolved with the brethren.

We do little to prevent schisms by excommunicating the John Hicks and John Dehlins and Kate Kellys in the church.  Instead, those excommunications serve to exacerbate existing tensions in the church among those who have legitimate concerns about troubling issues like polygamy.  The issues aren't going to go away simply because we excommunicate the dissidents, not even if we threaten them with violence and burn down their printing presses.  One hundred and seventy five years of excommunications should have taught us this much.

Undertaking to cover our sins by coercing others into silence grieves the Spirit of the Lord.  Effective priesthood leadership works "only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned."  Those are the kind of conversations that heal schisms.  They're the only kind that will ever enable us to knit our hearts together in unity and love.