ABSTRACT
One of the distinctive characteristics of early Mormonism was the commandment for converts to "gather to Zion." The revelation was the first explicit statement of one of Mormonism's most distinctive doctrines, that of "the gathering." Public gatherings were held outdoors in a grove of trees on Sunday afternoons and twice a year for general church conferences. A new phase of the Mormon gathering, their migration westward to Utah represented new opportunities for the Latter-day Saint movement. Utah successfully became the gathering place where a distinctive and powerfully coherent Mormon identity and community was forged. Evangelistic and millennialist, early Mormonism designed to move not only people's souls but also their bodies in anticipation of the coming of Christ. Political and legal anti-Mormonism both fed and was inspired by a wave of literary, religious, and cultural anti-Mormonism, which in turn sometimes devolved into extralegal violence.
