Sam Brannan in 1846 headed west under direction of Brigham Young to establish a colony in what was then Alta California.
The one-time publisher of the New York Messenger had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints several years earlier. Young was the second president and LDS prophet.
Brannan had a group of 200 join him in his trip around Cape Horn sailing from New York to Yerba Buena that would later be rechristened San Francisco.
Brannan had sent a company of 20 men with supplies up the San Joaquin River in a bid to establishment a settlement in the interior. They landed near what is today Mossdale Crossing where the massive 1.2 million square-foot Mayfair distribution is now located.
Long story short, Mother Nature did not cooperate. Heavy January rains in 1847 caused the rivers to burst their banks creating a flow of water that reached three miles in width at one point. It led to the colony being abandoned.
Across Manteca, Ripon, Lathrop and elsewhere in the San Joaquin Valley people gather in houses of worship just like Mormons. They include Catholics, Baptists Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterians, Sikhs, Jehovah Witnesses, the Baha’i Faith and other various faiths.
Look beyond the surfaces of any of those religions and churches and you will find a common truth.
They help weave the fabric of communities together using the thread of faith.
Deny it if you must, but the foundation America was built on relied heavily on an underpinning of faith — both divine and secular.
Given how the Age of Skepticism in some quarters has turned into an all-out assault on all religions it is not politically correct these days to give the role of churches their due in building and sustaining not just communities but civilization itself.
There’s no defense for those that twist words and faith to do evil. But that should not obscure the bigger truth that about the boundless good that those in faith do whether they are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Protestants, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Catholics or others.
Believing in a higher authority, building on those who went before us and being in their debt, sharing, comforting, reaching out to the less fortunate, and helping build a common community for all — the benchmark of virtually every religion — is viewed by some as an act against humanity these days when you could argue churches are what helped keep the all-encompassing concept of humanity flourishing on this earth.
That doesn’t sweep the warts and checkered history under the carpet. There are dark impulses everywhere because the 8.3 billion currently walking on the face of the earth are flawed creatures called humans. And you’d be hard pressed to find a religion that hasn’t gone astray from its own principles over the course of history.
To expect anyone who gathers in a house of worship to be perfect misses the entire idea behind organized religion. We gather because we are not perfect. We are fallible. We are human. We gather to work toward who we should be.
As a society we are all too quick to focus on the aberration. We go nuclear on the Boy Scouts when we discover that a 40-year-old murderer was once an Eagle Scout but we ignore the millions upon millions act of kindness and goodwill done by almost every other Eagle Scout ever to live.
In a way, it’s a compliment. The expectation is that those who are touched by the church — any church — in a meaningful way will go forth on a straight path never straying and certainly never going off the deep end.
Some 180 years the floodwaters may have forced the retreat from New Hope, but there is little doubt the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is part of the foundation that makes Manteca strong.
Their handiwork outside the church can be found everywhere whether its helping with a free community Thanksgiving dinner, supporting the Boys & Girls Club, being advocates of public education, or in a multitude of ways to numerous to list on this page. They do this while raising their own families, helping others through the impressive church welfare plan, and strengthening faith in God.
Take away the churches and you rip apart the soul of a community and severely damage its heart.
They are doing more than the work of a greater being. In the secular world they are building stronger communities, stronger families, and stronger individuals.
It’s why 20 men who worshipped using the Book of Mormon made their way to the wooded wilderness six miles south of Manteca and five miles southwest of Ripon.
