Welcome to the official site of the Historic Enoch Association, today’s only legal implementation of the Order of Enoch. The Historic Enoch Association is affiliated with an independently operating congregation of the church — we are baptized and confirmed in the faith of the minority Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has been in continual unincorporated existence since 1830. The Order of Enoch, though, was a higher order and association, founded in 1831 in Independence, Missouri, based on the religious principles established in 1831 at Kirtland Ohio, and continued as a fledgling community farm on the outskirts of Nauvoo, Illinois in the 1840s.
The Historic Enoch Association is owned by a congregation of the remnant members of this branch in Zion, our center place. We are original Latter Day Saints who were socially called Mormons. We are led by elders with a direct and brief line of authority to Joseph Smith, who received his priesthood in the 1820s.
Our church received its initial calling in the 1820s during the Christian revivalism which swept America including Western New York. We officially organized as the “Church of Christ” in 1830. Beginning here in Missouri, we named ourselves the “Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints” in 1838, in every branch to the east coast. (In Great Britain, we began to print it as the “Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints” with anglicized hyphenation.) Our church endured persecutions and exile, everywhere they settled in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois.
Our church then split after 1844, over a historic presidential or prophetic succession crisis, and we held to our core beliefs. A large body of rejectionists branched off officially in 1846, and rebaptized and re-ordained themselves in 1847, as they emigrated to the uninhabited salt-land of Utah. In 1847, they also elected Brigham Young as their president. Today, that church says they are not Mormon anymore. They are not a legal entity, but are affiliated with a corporation sole called the Corporation of the President, which has just one member.
Meanwhile, we gathered northward to our own wilderness refuge. We continued to congregate in the Great Lakes states, where we established the Order of Enoch at Voree, Wisconsin Territory, in 1848; and at the village of Enoch on Beaver Island, Lake Michigan, in 1855. Everywhere we gathered, we experienced harsh persecution, except at our historic headquarters which was at Voree, meaning “Garden of Peace.” We overcame calamities, including the martyrdoms of our prophets Joseph Smith in 1844 and James Strang in 1856; the riotous destruction of our printing presses and unfinished scriptures in Missouri and Michigan; and the banishment of our members from their homelands across the Midwest.
Through adversities, we retained our church name, our structure, our doctrine, and our membership as Latter Day Saints. We are the only remaining 19-century church who still identifies as Mormons. We rely on the book of Doctrine and Covenants as our modern church constitution and by-laws, including membership and discipline, as well as priesthood ordination and succession.
We are a faith-based religious organization, in Independence, Missouri, as an uninterrupted continuation of the original 1830s church. We live on the principles of primitive Mormonism, with a strong emphasis on the Bible and the Book of Mormon, but also on the Book of the Law of the Lord, and particularly the Ten Commandments, with a special emphasis on the commandment to “Love thy Neighbor As Thyself.” That commandment is the core mission of our Historic Enoch Association. We are the moderate and temperate version of Latter Day Saints. We invite all to worship Jesus Christ with us, and live among us as our neighbors.
The Missouri branch of our church carries out its unique mission to society through its establishment of the Historic Enoch Association. We are charged with fellowship among one another, charitable works to our community locally, and humanitarian outreach globally — and in so doing we collaborate and mingle with other faiths in joint efforts.
But our specific congregation has a special mission to acquire, preserve and share “Missouri Church Properties” which consists of sacred spaces in Jackson County and northwest Missouri. The Historic Enoch Association, acting for our legally-independent congregation of the main church, also operates as owner, steward and caretaker of the church’s historic assets consisting of rare editions of our holy scriptures and hymnals, early church founding documents and manuscripts, sacred artifacts and relics, and historic religious art.
Members of the association contribute generously to the organization to continue a responsible acquisition policy, as well as continue museum industry best-practices in restoration, conservation, and preservation. To that end, philanthropists in our group have contributed without reservation to establish a permanent library, archive, and museum in our worshipful but scholarly setting.
We are a sabbath-keeping association. We invite you to join our Independence, Missouri, congregation on the sabbath day for scripture-study classes, followed by prayer, worship and praise. We welcome visitors or volunteers to join our professional curators and conservators throughout the week, as we continue our 200-year-old tradition as an independent religious organization committing to preserving its material culture and special identity as a uniquely American minority faith.