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Concept
Theodemocracy
Summary
Theodemocracy is a theocratic political system proposed by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. According to Smith, a theodemocracy is a fusion of traditional republican democratic principles under the US Constitution with theocratic rule.
Smith described it as a system under which God and the people held the power to rule in righteousness. Smith believed that to be the form of government that would rule the world upon the Second Coming of Christ. The polity would constitute the "Kingdom of God," which was foretold by the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament. Theodemocratic principles played a minor role in the forming of the State of Deseret in the American Old West.
Early Latter Day Saints were typically Jacksonian Democrats and were highly involved in representative republican political processes. According to the historian Marvin S. Hill, "the Latter-day Saints saw the maelstrom of competing faiths and social institutions in the early 19th century as evidence of social upheaval and found confirmation in the rioting and violence that characterized Jacksonian America." Smith wrote in 1842 that earthly governments "have failed in all their attempts to promote eternal peace and happiness.... [Even the United States] is rent, from center to circumference, with party strife, political intrigues, and sectional interest."
Smith believed that only a government led by a deity could banish the destructiveness of unlimited factions and bring order and happiness to the earth. Church Apostle Orson Pratt stated in 1855 that the government of God "is a government of union." Smith believed that a theodemocratic polity would be the literal fulfilment of Christ's prayer in the Gospel of Matthew: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."
Further, Smith taught that the Kingdom of God, which he called the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, would hold dominion in the last days over all other kingdoms, as foretold in the Book of Daniel.
Official source
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