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Luke William Gallup was born on 27 February 1822 in Ledyard, Connecticut. Although his journals do not indicate what level of educational training that Luke attained, his entries clearly manifest a love for learning, a talent for composing poetry, an interest in religious matters, and an unending search for the "truth". In 1840 Gallup commenced to compose poetry and two years later he wrote his initial journal entry. Prior to his departure from his Connecticut home in 1845, Luke attended several services and programs in Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, and Quaker churches and meeting houses. After residing briefly in New York state where he worked on the Erie Canal, Gallup began his journey westward in 1846, arriving the following year in Iowa where he was employed in a variety of jobs. While in Iowa Luke became interested in the maltreatment of Native Americans, the study of phrenology, and Universalist religious ideas. He decried religious intolerance, attempts of religious institutions to control the thoughts and actions of believers, and humanity's material acquiistivensess and monetary greed. It was at this juncture in his adult life that Gallup expressed a sense of alienation from his father, the first of two significant alienations which he experienced during his lifetime.

At the end of 1849 Luke became acquainted with Mormon residents in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and within three months he was baptized into the L.D.S. faith. In his second journal Gallup explained this sudden conversion as a result of listening sympathetically to heart-rendering stories of anti-Mormon persecution. While developing empathy for such a poor and downtrodden community, he also was influenced to join these friendly Iowan Mormons in their trek to Utah with their descriptions of Utah as the "Promised Land". Gallup and his new bride departed Iowa as part of a wagon train headed for Salt Lake City in June 1850. The immigrant party arrived at its destination in October and the Gallups moved to Springville the ensuing spring. Luke was enrolled in the local militia and became involved in church affairs serving as a home teacher, as a meetings record ward clerk, and as a clerk in the tithing office. To support his family Luke engaged in farming, raised livestock, manufactured clay adobes, sold fruit, and worked in Springville's recorder office.

Gallup communicated with his Connecticut family frequently during the initial years of residency in Springville. His famiily perceived these missives as "conversion correspondence". Luke's favorite topic was polygamy, an institution which he deemed to be divinely-sanctioned, ancient in its origins, superior to monogamy, and as the salvation of mankind. Another subject which filled his letters was that of a manichaean view of the world, a world in which non-Mormons as a satanic force were engaged in a titanic struggle with the Mormons, God's chosen people, for control of the earth. A third issue appearing in Gallup's journals was the role of apostasy within Mormon society and its connection with the church's obedience principle. President A. O. Smoot is quoted in 1869 as saying "the first step to greatness is obedience without questioning our superiors".

Luke's plural marriage advocacy became reality in 1868 when he married his third wife, Emily Peirce (his first wife having died in 1861). Three years later both of his wives left his abode and thus commenced a very contentious divorce which led to a soul-searching experience, an experience which contributed to Luke's alienation from the Mormon religion. The genesis of this estrangement revolved around the involvement of Springville's bishop in the divorce proceedings affecting Gallup and Emily Peirce. Luke accused the bishop and his entourage of striving to rob him of his property and of his reputation. Although feeling that he was being persecuted, Luke continued to attend church services regularly until 1880 when he began to voice critiicsm of compulsory tithing to the church. In Gallup's mind forced tithing under the threat of disfellowship was a blatant effort to impoverish the brethren and to enrich the hierarchy. Contemporaneous with Luke's gradual disaffection from Mormonism was his gravitation towards secular, anti-religious, and anti-clerical ideas. By the end of 1885 Gallup informed church authorities that he was relinquishing membership in the L.D.S. church and that he was joining the American Secular Union, a recently created free thinking organization. At a meeting of the High Council of the Utah Stake of Zion in early 1887 Gallup and eight others were expelled from the L.D.S. church because of apostasy and unchristianlike behavior.

In a lengthy commentary and criticism of Mormonism in particular and of organized religion in general, Gallup recognized the influence of the writings of Thomas Paine, De Robigne Bennett, and Robert Ingersoll, the "Great Agnostic", in the evolution of his views. Admitting that he indeed was an apostate, Luke argued that all Mormons also were apostates since they had disavowed their affiliation with their former Christian faiths. A persistent thread of thought in his analysis is the contention that Mormons and all Christians demand total obedience of their followers in an effort to enslave them mentally. Religious leaders created a culture of fear in which they threatened the would-be apostate with eternal damnation, societal ostracism, and the loss of the love of family members and friends. Freedom of thought, according to him, would liberate the mind and assist one in discovering and in embracing the "real truth".

Luke W. Gallup died on 10 April, 1891.