James Jesse Strang Essay Outline

THE STRANGITE MOVEMENT
James Jesse Strang (March 21, 1813 – July 9, 1856) was an American religious leader, politician and self-proclaimed monarch who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), a faction of the Latter Day Saint movement. A major contender for leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints during the 1844 succession crisis, Strang vied with Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon for control of the main body of Latter Day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois before his rejection by that group led him to start his own sect. While serving as Prophet, Seer and Revelator of his church—which he claimed to be the sole legitimate continuation of the Church of Christ founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1830—Strang

He was the second of three children, and his parents had a good reputation in their community. James' mother was very tender with him as a consequence of delicate health, yet she required him to render an account of all his actions and words while absent from her. In a brief autobiography he wrote in 1855, Strang reported that he had attended grade school until age twelve, but that "the terms were usually short, the teachers inexperienced and ill qualified to teach, and my health such as to preclude attentive study or steady attendance." He estimated that his time in a classroom during those years totaled six months.
But none of this meant that Strang was illiterate or simple. Although his teachers "not unfrequently turned me off with little or no attention, as though I was too stupid to learn and too dull to feel neglect," Strang recalled that he spent "long weary days ... upon the floor, thinking, thinking, thinking ... my mind wandered over fields that old men shrink from, seeking rest and finding none till darkness gathered thick around and I burst into tears." He studied works by Thomas Paine and the Comte de Volney, whose book Les Ruines exerted a significant influence on the future