{"id":7041,"date":"2026-03-07T13:28:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/?p=7041"},"modified":"2026-03-07T13:28:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:28:04","slug":"the-king-of-confidence-james-jesse-strang-prophet-pirate-and-americas-only-self-crowned-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/2026\/03\/07\/the-king-of-confidence-james-jesse-strang-prophet-pirate-and-americas-only-self-crowned-king\/","title":{"rendered":"The King of Confidence: James Jesse Strang: Prophet, Pirate, and America&#8217;s Only Self-Crowned King"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the power vacuum following Joseph Smith&#8217;s murder in June 1844, a little-known convert named James Jesse Strang made an audacious play for control of the Latter-day Saint movement. Producing a letter he claimed Smith had written before his death \u2014 naming Strang as successor \u2014 he launched one of the most brazen religious confidence schemes in American history. Physically unremarkable and barely a year into Mormonism, Strang nonetheless attracted thousands of followers, ultimately crowning himself king of a Lake Michigan island colony. His story is a frontier parable about charisma, religious hunger, and the dangerous appeal of self-appointed prophets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Uh8ISyMJ9Lw?si=-a97o2ubiYIv-kAm\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Right-click and select &#8220;Save As&#8221; to download the MP3 audio file of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/The-James-Strang-Podcast.mp3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The James Strang Podcast<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the power vacuum following Joseph Smith&#8217;s murder in June 1844, a little-known convert named James Jesse Strang made an audacious play for control of the Latter-day Saint movement. Producing a letter he claimed Smith had written before his death \u2014 naming Strang as successor \u2014 he launched one of the most brazen religious confidence&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46,44,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity","category-latter-day-saints","category-mormonism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/radio-microphone.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7043,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions\/7043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}