Sidney Rigdon

Sidney Rigdon ( born February 19, 1793 in St. Clair, Pennsylvania, † July 14, 1876 in Friendship, New York) was a clergyman and a major figure of Mormonism in the early years of the movement.

Baptist origin

Sidney was the fourth child of the farmer William Rigdon and his wife Nancy. Sidney looked to be on their own initiative Baptist clergyman and was " apprentice " by the Reverend Andrew Clark. In March 1819 he received his preachers license and moved to Ohio, where he preached together with Adamson Bentley, whose sister he married Phoebe Brook in June 1820. In 1822 he returned to Pittsburg, where he took on the recommendation of Alexander Campbell the pastorate at the First Baptist Church.

After lengthy discussions with Campbell to 1821 both Rigdon and Bentley joined the recovery movement. This movement strove to unite the Church as a union of all Christians in a single body, which is modeled after the church in the New Testament. This Rigdon lost his job as a minister and worked for the next few years during the week as Gerber and preached in Campbell movement on Sunday. 1826 was the opportunity pastor of a liberal Baptist church in Mentor, Ohio to become. He took this opportunity. At that time some were later prominent members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, members of his community.

As a Latter-day Saint

As learned from the Book of Mormon, Sidney Rigdon and the restoration of the original Church of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith, he took the new faith to willingly as this corresponded to his belief in a necessary restoration of the original church of the New Testament. Hundreds of members of his congregation joined him. When Rigdon December 1830 visited Joseph Smith, called him immediately that as speaker of the young church. The revision of the Bible in Smith's inspired translation Rigdon served as clerk.

On March 18, 1833 Rigdon was used as first counselor to Joseph Smith a member of the supreme governing body of the Church, the First Presidency Its importance in the early church shows, for example, by repeated mention in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants

An essential things to the church at that time Rigdon was instrumental in: construction of the Kirtland Temple, the creation and operation of the Kirtland Safety Society, a church-owned bank, in 1837, like many other banks of the borderland collapsed. 1839 Rigdon sat some time together with Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail. After the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from Missouri and their settlement in Nauvoo, the relationship between Smith and Rigdon deteriorated still further, so that Smith wanted to dismiss him as his counselor, but the members of the Church were against it.

After the murder of Joseph Smith

After the murder of Joseph Smith, June 27, 1844 Sidney Rigdon represented in the succession question the opinion that he had the first and only at that time counselor to Joseph Smith the task to take on the leadership of the church, to the son of Joseph Smith, Joseph III, the age would have managed to take over the leadership of the church as his father's heir. He sat down in contrast to Brigham Young, who took the view that he had to take over as President of the Quorum of the Twelve, the leadership of the church. In the vast majority of the members, Brigham Young prevailed. Rigdon did not want to give up his claim and was therefore excluded from the church on September 8, 1844.

Rigdon gathered some followers around and operated his own church in Pennsylvania, which was getting smaller because of disputes and finally in the reservoir of most Mormon splinter groups came up at that time, in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, in which a few years ago direct descendants of Joseph Smith the line occupied. A smaller group who hold to this day the sole line claim Rigdon and consecrated persons he is the Church of Jesus Christ ( Bickertoniten ).

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