When Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 with no named successor, his church didn't survive intact — it split into dozens of competing churches, from Utah's mainstream body to Strang's island kingdom to the modern FLDS. This course studies that cascade as a model of institutional schism.
What you will do
Every week you'll work through one stage of a single fracture cascade: Joseph Smith's death in 1844 with no named successor, and the dozens of competing churches that argument produced. You'll read primary-source-depth accounts of contested events, apply a four-part framework — succession vacuum, charismatic claim, doctrinal pivot, institutional response — to a splinter group of your own choosing, and finish the semester having built a map of the whole movement's family tree. You walk out with two pieces of written argument (Assignment 1) and analysis (the final project), both grounded in evidence you can point to.
Who it is for
Anyone interested in how institutions actually split — not just this one religious movement, but the general mechanics of succession crises, competing claims to legitimacy, and doctrine bending to justify a decision already made. No prior knowledge of Latter Day Saint history is assumed; what's assumed is a willingness to read primary sources closely and argue from evidence rather than from what "everybody knows" about a group you've likely only heard caricatured.