Updated at 12:48 p.m. to clarify that the Mormons went to Illinois immediately after leaving Missouri. They later settled in Utah.

Two of the most memorable figures from the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge invoked their Mormon faith in explaining the armed takeover they termed civil disobedience.

Ammon Bundy said visions from God showed him that the occupation was necessary to bring attention to federal land management practices, which he believes infringe on ranchers' "God-given rights" enshrined by the "divinely inspired" U.S. Constitution.

A well-attended memorial for Robert "LaVoy" Finicum highlighted the occupation spokesman's intertwined beliefs about God and government. "He believed that the Constitution of the United States was inspired by God and he was willing to, and did, die while defending our freedoms stated within," Finicum's obituary said.

What exactly does this movement have to do with Mormonism, a religion that has some 6 million adherents in the United States, most of whom live in the arid and largely rural West?

The church, founded in 1830, does mention in its scriptures the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1789.

We asked Mormon scholars to help us put the occupiers' religious and political claims in context. Here's what we learned.

Does the mainstream LDS church endorse the occupation?

No. Just two days after the Jan. 2 takeover, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints released a statement on its website. It read, in full:

"While the disagreement occurring in Oregon about the use of federal lands is not a Church matter, Church leaders strongly condemn the armed seizure of the facility and are deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles. This armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis. We are privileged to live in a nation where conflicts with government or private groups can -- and should -- be settled using peaceful means, according to the laws of the land."

The statement linked to an essay by Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice and one of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a group high in the church's hierarchy. In the 1992 address given at Brigham Young University, titled "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall," Oaks presents a long list of moral failings that include "all-consuming patriotism."

"I caution those patriots who are participating in or provisioning private armies and making private preparations for armed conflict," Oaks said. "Their excessive zeal for one aspect of patriotism is causing them to risk spiritual downfall as they withdraw from the society of the Church and from the governance of those civil authorities to whom our twelfth article of faith makes all of us subject."

The 12th article of faith reads, "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law."

So why did the church host Finicum's funeral, which was sure to be used by his political supporters as a platform to cast him as a martyr?

"The fact that it was held in the chapel means nothing other than the guy was Mormon," said Nathan B. Oman, a law professor at the College of William & Mary.

Although the church has a reputation for centralized governance, local church leaders have a great deal of autonomy, he said.

"It would be incredibly rare -- it would be weird -- for Salt Lake authorities to micromanage a local meeting house," Oman said.

And local leaders in southern Utah -- whom Oman described as lay people, "just local guys who were called to be the bishop" -- are likely to be sympathetic to the view that federal land agencies are acting unjustly.

In Finicum's case, that was true. "I pretty much believe the same way he did," said Bishop Ken Heaton, who leads the ward based in Moccasin, Arizona, where Finicum worshipped.

Heaton said that despite his sympathy for Finicum's political views and distress that Finicum, in Heaton's words, was "ambushed" by law enforcement prior to his death, he tried to keep the service focused on religion and not politics.

Church headquarters did send a public affairs representative to Kanab for the Feb. 5 memorial. She balked at on-camera interviews that showed the stake center in the background, requested that the news conference be held across the street and handed reporters a list of behavioral guidelines.

One item was listed in bold: "The hosting of the funeral at an LDS chapel should not be considered an endorsement of the views of this individual or the family."

More than 1,000 people attended the service. Many of them had never met Finicum, but said they admired his courage to stand up against the federal government.

The bishop concluded by exhorting the "next generation" to "carry out LaVoy's legacy." Heaton later explained, "I wasn't referring to his activities for how he fought for the Constitution, but it's kind of hard to separate them."

Finicum's daughters held a press conference immediately after the service that called for a private, independent investigation of their father's "ambush."

Daughter Tierra "Belle" Collier drew parallels between Cicero, Joan of Arc and America's founding fathers. "They all had one thing in common," she said. "They were mocked, ridiculed and called extremists. Today's defenders of the U.S. Constitution are now called domestic terrorists."

Is the view that the Constitution is "divinely inspired" a mainstream Mormon position?

Section 101 of the Doctrine & Covenants, a dictated revelation received by Joseph Smith in 1833, says that God "established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood."

The Constitution "should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles," it says.

The section goes on to lay out a parable about a widow and an "unjust judge," whose actions the Mormons appeal to the governor and then the president.

"And if the president heed them not, then the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place, and in his fury vex the nation," the text continues.

Oman, the William & Mary professor, said the mainstream takeaway from the parable is to appeal unjust actions through all available legal means, then to leave further justice in the hands of God.

Mormon historian Matthew Bowman said it is common to hear Mormons use the phrase "divinely inspired" Constitution to mean that the document "was written by people who were inspired in order to set up a government that God wanted."

Most Mormons consider the phrase to refer to some of the Constitution's core principles -- especially freedom of religion -- and do not consider the document a sacred text.

Oaks, the former Utah justice and current apostle, wrote an essay titled "The Divinely Inspired Constitution" in which he said he didn't see the Constitution as scriptural.

"For example, I find nothing scriptural in the compromise on slavery or the minimum age or years of citizenship for congressmen, senators, or the president," Oaks wrote.

"President J. Reuben Clark, who referred to the Constitution as 'part of my religion,' also said that it was not part of his belief or the doctrine of the Church that the Constitution was a 'fully grown document,'" Oaks wrote. "'On the contrary,' he said, 'We believe it must grow and develop to meet the changing needs of an advancing world.'"

Why did the occupiers' have such a different takeaway?

The revelation in Section 101 of the Doctrine & Covenants came in the context of extreme religious persecution, scholars said. It was a real-life example of Mormons petitioning for their grievances to be redressed and being unsuccessful in getting relief.

Mormons were driven out of Missouri during the 1830s due to suspicion about their religious beliefs and their tendency to vote as a block. A village was massacred, women were raped, families were driven onto the prairie in the winter and Joseph Smith and his associates were held without trial, Oman said.

They appealed to President Van Buren to defend their constitutional right to practice their religion, and he told them that he would not intervene. "They were told to go to a court in Missouri and file a lawsuit," Oman said. "At the time, the governor had issued an extermination order against Mormons."

They left Missouri, starting over again in Illinois, and later moving west to Utah, suspicious of the federal government they saw as having abandoned its responsibility to protect their fundamental rights.

"It's kind of the same story over and over again," said Bowman, a history professor at Henderson State University and author of "The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith."

"What happens when that system turns on Mormons, when they perceive they are being treated unjustly? That's kind of an unresolved tension."

The Bundys are tapping into a strain of Mormon thought whose origins are in the 1950s when Communism was considered a major threat, Bowman said.

They have seized on the ideas of Ezra Taft Benson, a former church president whose books and quotations were prominently featured at LaVoy Finicum's funeral.

Benson was church president from 1985 until his death in 1994 and before that was a longtime apostle and secretary of agriculture in the Eisenhower administration.

After World War II, the church sent Benson to Europe to oversee its recovery efforts, an experience that radicalized him, said Oman, the law professor.

Benson began to write prolifically about the evils of Communism and became affiliated with the ultra-conservative John Birch Society during his time in Washington, D.C., though never a member.

Benson also came to know W. Cleon Skousen, another Mormon who wrote prolifically about the Communist threat, though he had less ecclesiastical cachet and was therefore less influential than Benson, Oman said.

Skousen went on to form a group that came to be named the National Center for Constitutional Studies, which prints the pocket-sized Constitutions that Bundy and his supporters often carry in their shirt pockets.

Although Benson moderated his views during his time as church president, he gave a memorable talk about the "divine Constitution" in 1987 in which he said he viewed the Constitution as sacred.

Some of the lines may sound familiar to those paying close attention to the words of Ammon Bundy.

"To me its words are akin to the revelations of God, for God has placed His stamp of approval upon it," Benson said of the Constitution.

A bit later, he said, "May God give us the faith and the courage exhibited by those patriots who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor."

The Independent American Party, to which Cliven Bundy, Ammon's father, has pledged membership, cites Benson's essay "The Proper Role of Government" as foundational.

Bundy and his supporters "sort of translate who the threat is from Communist agents to other parties," Oman said.

They see federal land management and a growing emphasis on conservation as "an existential threat to their livelihood and way of life," Oman said.

"I think the main causal force is federal land policy, not their faith," Oman said. "What's the language you use to talk about an existential threat to your life in the face of a corrupt and malevolent government? Ezra Taft Benson gave them that."

The language would be familiar to any Mormon, especially in less cosmopolitan parts of the West, he said. "But it would be embarrassing, like a crazy uncle."

-- Carli Brosseau

cbrosseau@oregonian.com

503-294-5121; @carlibrosseau