Prophet, Seer, Revelator, American Icon | Reid L. Neilson and Terryl L. Givens, eds., Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries

View PDF

Editor’s Note: This article has footnotes. To review them, please see the PDF below.

First, a confession and a little context. I am not a scholar of Mormonism, just a Mormon who is also a scholar (of medieval mysticism, it so happens). I am interested in but mostly unfamiliar with the growing body of Joseph Smith scholarship. As a result, I am unable to reference that tradition in this review or to argue how these essays augment or contrast with other work, although it is worth noting that the essays themselves do a fine job of that. Rather, my role, as I see it, is to respond to these essays both as an educated non-specialist and, perhaps most importantly, as a member of the Church who seeks “greater knowledge” (Abr. 1:2) regarding our founding prophet. This collection is a compelling read on both fronts, and I expect to recommend it to my colleagues in religious studies and history and to friends and family in and out of the Church. 

The striking cover art of this volume is worth as much reflection as any of the essays.The painting, Monday, 24 June 1844, 4:15 a.m.: Beyond the Events, is the work of Italian-born LDS artist Pino Drago (b. 1947) and won second place in the Church’s first international art competition in 1987. The dimensions and current exhibition location of Drago’s oil-on canvas painting are not provided on the cover or elsewhere in the book. It features a highly stylized portrait of the Prophet, who nearly fills the entire left half of the picture. He is sitting, resolutely upright and finely dressed, in an almost entirely unfurnished room, one elbow resting on the surface of a brilliant green table or counter, the fingers of his other hand spread across his knee. The image clearly evokes another well known but undated portrait of the Prophet, attributed in many sources to David Rogers. 

In Drago’s depiction, a lush, red drape falls from ceiling to floor behind Joseph, covering about one-third of the painting. Also behind the Prophet, and just past the drape, two short steps lead into another empty room that includes a small window, possibly obstructed by a few bars, and through which the Nauvoo Temple is partially visible. On the right side of the painting hangs a portrait of an Italian renaissance nobleman, whose posture mirrors Joseph’s. The image of the nobleman is unabashedly modeled on the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (ca. 1535), a Florentine humanist, by Agnolo di Cosimo (also known as Il Bronzino). 

According to a Liahona article on the Church art competition, Drago’s painting “depict[s] a decisive moment in the hours prior to the Prophet’s martyrdom.”That moment is undoubtedly the Prophet’s famous declaration that he was “going like a lamb to the slaughter . . . but . . . calm as a summer’s morning,” made in the early morning hours of Monday, June 24, 1844, as he and seventeen friends left Nauvoo for Carthage.Incidentally and unfortunately, the Drago painting is mislabeled on the back cover of the book as “Monday, 24 June, 1833,” a date that will likely cause more than a few readers to wonder what events the title references, not to mention to puzzle at the Nauvoo Temple visible through the window in the background. 

A 1992 Ensign article on symbolism in LDS art describes the painting as 

communicat[ing] some of the eternal lessons associated with the Prophet’s martyrdom. Joseph’s face is partially in shadow, partially in light, reflecting both his concern with dying and the assurance that his life is in Christ’s hands. The hand on his knee is tense, as if clinging tightly to life, while the other is relaxed as he faces the next world. The open window and the Nauvoo Temple in the background represent divine revelation and Joseph’s establishing the earthly foundation of Zion. The portrait of a nobleman contrasts the uninspired man’s limited capacity to make contributions with the Prophet’s legacy of enduring accomplishments. 

The presence of the nobleman is perhaps the most striking feature of the painting, from my perspective. Although it takes up a large portion of the wall on which it hangs, the figure of the nobleman himself, who looks toward Joseph Smith, is diminutive next to the looming figure of the Prophet, who gazes directly and piercingly at viewers. The nobleman sits with a stylus and paper in one hand, his other hand resting on a book, behind him architecture and art suggestive of Renaissance Italy. The Ensign interpretation above seeks to juxtapose the “uninspired” nobleman with the Prophet, but another interpretation, especially in the context of this volume, seems just as compelling, namely one that links Joseph to deep intellectual engagement and history-altering changes, such as those we associate with the Renaissance and which one can hardly call “uninspired.” 

Other features of Drago’s painting also invite contemplation and admiration. The sparsely furnished room in which Joseph sits, not to mention the bars on the window, evoke the jail that housed him before his death, even as that connection is disrupted by Joseph’s elegant attire and regal deportment. The folds of the lush, red velvet drape just behind Joseph suggest movement, perhaps evoking the veil that would close Joseph’s life only days later. Our eyes are drawn to the light on Joseph’s face but then immediately move to the partially visible temple, a concrete manifestation of Joseph’s legacy (albeit not completed at Joseph’s death) and the picture’s thematic, if not actual, vanishing point, and to which the steps in the room seem to lead. The editors should be commended for choosing this lesser known and highly evocative image of the Prophet. 

Next we can note a few features of the book’s organization and other technical aspects. Although it makes for a more visually appealing page layout, the use of endnotes, rather than footnotes, is not reader friendly. Following the notes is a fourteen-page index. I came across seven typographical errors in the volume, including one instance of “belief” when “unbelief” was intended (132). This number is small, I suppose, but nonetheless surprising for a volume of this quality. 

The fifteen essays are numbered and divided thematically and use fully into three parts: “American Prophet,” “Sacred Encounters,” and “Prophetic Legacy.” The introduction, with its own chapter number, gives a wonderfully succinct yet exuberant summary of Joseph Smith’s life, the state of scholarship, and the essays, and is thus a highly practical guide to the volume. 

Richard Brodhead’s essay, “Prophets in America circa 1830: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nat Turner, and Joseph Smith,” is the first of several essays that engage the issue of authenticity, which for Brodhead remains “in some crucial sense beside the point” (17). Although authenticity is not a major concern for Brodhead, I raise it here because it is a—perhaps the—major concern about Joseph Smith for most LDS. Was he authentic? Real? True? If not, then what else falls with him? The issue of authenticity arises again and again in this volume, sometimes to be engaged vigorously, at other times to be put aside, as by Brodhead. This putting aside of the authenticity question will likely be enough to keep many Church members from reading this book, a lamentable fact, since, as those more familiar with Joseph Smith scholarship will likely attest, a willingness to move the focus away from authenticity allows other facets of Joseph’s legacy to be given richly nuanced consideration. Indeed, perhaps the greatest contribution these essays make to believing members of the Church is their demonstration that by needing Joseph to be authentic, we obscure much else about his magnificent gifts and legacy. A more fruitful approach would be to allow the historical and human contours—both vast and intimate, messy and moving—that these essays lend to the often unidimensional Joseph of standard Church presentation to increase, rather than undermine, our reverence and gratitude for the authenticity we accept as a starting point. 

Brodhead’s essay, a comparison of Joseph Smith to two of his con temporaries, is a gripping read, laying out the very different paths taken by Turner (whose revelations led to a bloody slave uprising), Emerson, and Smith, while, in the process, using these disparate contemporaries to shed light on the “history of prophetism in their time” (18), a time that saw a “rush of prophetic activity” and in which “the category of the prophetic was unusually accessible in America” (20). Brodhead articulates a wonderfully cogent description of prophetic identity, a concept that should be of enormous interest for members of a Church that claims to continue to be led by prophets. Brodhead’s reassessment of Emerson is a major contribution, especially his analysis of the very different results of prophecy for Emerson (the dissolution of religious institutions) than for Smith (the restoration of them “as the vehicle through which the Spirit performs its saving work,” 28). 

Klaus J. Hansen’s essay, “Joseph Smith, American Culture, and the Origins of Mormonism,” argues for the emergence of Joseph’s “genius” both within and transcending his historical context. Following comparisons of Joseph to Samuel Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, Hansen argues in particular for the importance of Joseph’s “desire to redeem his father” (44) as a site where culture and religion met with particular sharpness and poignancy. Hansen’s provocative essay raises as many questions as it answers and indirectly suggests many avenues for additional inquiry. It also includes a plethora of facts and details about the early days of the Church that reminds us that, even with the flood of Joseph’s visions and revelations, the uniformness and stability of today’s Church did not (or not always) drop pre-formed out of the heavens, but rather emerged and evolved within a dynamic cultural context. 

Richard Dilworth Rust’s essay, “‘I Love All Men Who Dive’: Herman Melville and Joseph Smith,” like the two contributions that precede it, illuminates the accomplishments of Joseph Smith in surprising ways by comparing him to another contemporary. Rust, a literary critic, focuses on the writings of both men, which compels us to think of Joseph Smith not just as a passive prophetic receptor but, indeed, as a writer with creative gifts and agency. Rust contrasts in particular motifs of darkness, which both men knew well from their personal trials and which manifest in a pervasive gloominess for Melville, but which for Joseph are powerfully connected to images of light. 

Catherine Albanese’s essay, “The Metaphysical Joseph Smith,” argues that metaphysical religion owes a significant and unacknowledged debt to Joseph Smith. She describes Mormonism as a “combinative” religion, like others in its day, but one that emerged as uniquely successful thanks to Smith’s “prodigious religious creativity” and corporate strengths. In her words, “Mormons did metaphysical religion in community” (71). 

James B. Allen’s “Joseph Smith vs. John C. Calhoun: The States’ Rights Dilemma and Early Mormon History” is an absorbing study that provides a fascinating look at the context that motivated Joseph’s candidacy for the U.S. presidency. In Allen’s reconstruction, Joseph saw the failure of Missouri to protect the Saints as an insurrection that deserved, indeed demanded, federal intervention. When his correspondence with the likely presidential candidates convinced him that none of them could adequately support this stance and thus be able to make a difference for the Saints, Joseph declared his own candidacy. In this essay, more than any of the others, we see Joseph in largely unfamiliar roles: activist, lobbyist, opportunistic but deeply and sincerely engaged politician, and, above all, as a fiercely protective shepherd of his relentlessly persecuted flock. 

Part 2, “Sacred Encounters,” begins with Richard Lyman Bushman’s contribution, “Joseph Smith and Creation of the Sacred.” He suggests that Joseph’s appeal to the “generation of seekers” (94) of his day (and by extension of ours) lies in the “new sites for encountering the sacred” (95) that he offered: sacred words (the Book of Mormon, the books of Moses and Abraham, the revelations that became the Doctrine and Covenants) and sacred places, both geographic centers for the gathering of the Saints and temples. In contrast to Rust’s depiction of Joseph as a creative, creating writer, Bushman suggests that the power and success of Joseph’s sacred words lie in his passivity—in fact, in his almost complete absence from his texts. He shows us a Joseph who received his own revelations “along with everyone else” (98) and presented the Book of Mormon as the product not of his own creation but rather of his obedience to divine directive. Moreover, he explains that Joseph was almost completely absent from early Church tracts, which focused instead on the sacred words of the Book of Mormon, as if they had emerged miraculously without Joseph as intermediary. 

Joseph’s conception of sacred space differed dramatically from other sacred spaces of the day, which generally appeared, Bushman explains, at sites of “repeated sacred happenings.” In contrast, “Smith’s Zion [the declaration of Independence, Missouri, as the New Jerusalem] was created in a stroke . . . on an open plain at the edge of American settlement” (102). 

Bushman’s arguments should resonate deeply with believing Saints, even though they are expressed in a novel way. For us, Joseph’s passivity—his role as a vessel rather than an agent—is generally assumed, and his success thus points not to tactic or strategy (i.e., consciously leaving himself out) but to divine wisdom. Intentional or not, Bushman’s moving articulation of these features of his success imbues Joseph with renewed richness. 

In “Joseph Smith: Prophecy, Process, and Plenitude,” Terryl L. Givens focuses on the process, not the “products,” of Joseph’s prophetic role (107). He argues that Joseph grew incrementally into his understanding of this role, having “no clear intimation of future projects and heavenly callings” (113) in the immediate wake of his first vision. Givens further presents a prophet for whom historical time—more than the moment of restoration in his own day—is everything, because of his “integration of the divine into the historical” (111). This reversal of the time line, or Joseph’s inclusion of ancient (not just Christian) truths and traditions in the restoration—what Givens calls “a gospel plenitude that transcended, preceded, and subsumed any and all earthly incarnations” (116)—is a major theological distinction, but one that has also made it hard for scholars to systematize Joseph’s work. 

Douglas Davies’s “Visions, Revelations and Courage in Joseph Smith” is a learned but somewhat bewildering articulation of “the notion of courage as a means of analyzing the part played by visions and revelations in the unfolding of Joseph’s life” (119). The confusion comes from the vast array of theories and thinkers Davies calls on to support his case—arguably too many for a single article. And although he mentions sociologist William Whyte at the outset as a major source, along with theologian Paul Tillich, of “analytical insights” (120), Whyte does not turn up until near the end of the article, while a dizzying array of other theorists appears in the meantime. 

Still, Joseph Smith emerges sometimes surprisingly, but generally uniquely elucidated, from Davies’s theological and methodological thicket. In particular, Davies casts convincing light on the emergence of the Mormon emphasis on Gethsemane as the locus of atonement as an outgrowth of the First Vision. Specifically, he argues that the powerful experience of an “impasse” (the question of which church to join), for which the First Vision provided an answer, allowed Joseph to identify directly and powerfully with the Savior’s own “impasse” experience in Gethsemane. He further suggests that this identification “was energized by Joseph’s experience of personal and bloody suffering as a child” (131) when he was held in his father’s arms during the unanesthetized surgery on his leg. Thus, Davies argues, the symbols of blood, struggle, and paternal support coalesced for Joseph in the First Vision and informed his theology of Gethsemane. 

In “Seeking the Face of the Lord: Joseph Smith and the First Temple Tradition,” Margaret Barker and Kevin Christensen partner to illuminate the deep connections between Joseph’s temple traditions and those of the Old Testament. Barker’s contribution is rich and erudite, overflowing with enlightening etymologies and lovely, literal translations of both canonical and apocryphal texts that highlight a specific instance of intentional theological muddying over time, namely of the crucial concept of seeing (and being seen by) God. In a nutshell, the Deuteronomists did not believe God could be seen; the visionaries did. Much of what has been transmitted in the canon came through Deuteronomist hands, resulting, Barker convincingly shows, in the obfuscation of crucial passages discussing theophanies. 

Christensen’s portion of the essay explores what these early debates can tell us about Joseph’s visionary experiences and LDS temple worship and scripture. A particularly enlightening section argues that Mormon theology uniquely blends the numinous (awe-inspiring experiences that stress the otherness of the divine from the beholding individual) and the mystical (experiences that stress unity and that tend to transcend difference between the individual and the divine). 

Barker’s learned contribution, which launches immediately into her “independent reconstruction of temple theology” (161, Christensen’s term) would have benefited, I believe, from a brief introduction linking the ancient and early Christian material to Joseph Smith. As it stands, those links are established only in Christensen’s essay (eighteen pages in), leaving readers to wander a bit through Barker’s fascinating, but detailed, and at times dense, analysis. 

Part 3, “Prophetic Legacy,” begins with Laurie Maffly-Kipp’s “Tracking the Sincere Believer: ‘Authentic’ Religion and the Enduring Legacy of Joseph Smith Jr.,” in which she calls the concept of sincerity into question, considering it more often a problem than a solution. Her questioning, in particular, of the frequent scholarly conflation of Joseph’s sincerity with the truth of Mormon teachings should immediately engage LDS readers, since we naturally, and perhaps unfortunately, do the same thing. The dilemma in equating Joseph Smith’s sincerity with religious legitimacy, as Maffly-Kipp succinctly puts it, “means that any personal failing of Smith calls into question the truth of Mormonism itself” (185). When put so baldly, the dangers seem both immediate and avoidable. 

Maffly-Kipp offers an array of other, potentially more useful, “framings for the exploration of Mormon history” (177), beginning with shifting the chronological focus of studying Mormonism away from the First Vision. She views the vision not as the origin of the faith but, echoing Givens, as a culminating event in the sweep of history. A second proposal is to focus the study of Mormonism’s narrative away from leaders and toward ordinary believers, which leads naturally to her third possibility: focusing on “diversity of experience rather than unity of purpose” (186). Fourth, and relatedly, she suggests a more pointed focus on family histories, rather than religious history. And finally, she argues that an emphasis on the “new geographies” that exist in the Church’s now vast cultural and ethnic landscape will “yield different historical narratives” (186) whose value is not inextricably linked to the sincerity of a single figure (what did Joseph Smith believe or think he believed?), even if that figure is the founder of the movement. Doing so, she suggests, may actually allow us to “see more in Joseph Smith and in Mormonism by recognizing that our focus has been relatively narrow” (187). 

Richard Mouw’s essay, “The Possibility of Joseph Smith: Some Evangelical Probings,” is an intriguing selection to follow Maffly-Kipp’s, since the “sincerity question” is, on a basic level, central to Mouw. But as an Evangelical who rejects Joseph Smith’s claims, he nonetheless seeks “to create . . . some space between the liar-or-lunatic options” (191). Although his stated audience is fellow Evangelicals, sensitive LDS readers will quickly find that his suggestions for openness and tolerance have profound relevance for us in our interactions with believers of other traditions. It is moving to see an Evangelical grapple with Joseph Smith as Mouw does in his attempts to “create space” for understanding. It struck me as I read that we do very little grappling with other religions’ core beliefs, and even far too little with our own. Mouw’s challenge to focus away from antagonism and fear-based interactions toward an agenda that instead allows us to ask what it is “about [others’] teachings that speaks to what they understand to be their deepest human needs and yearnings” (193) should guide our every interaction with believers of other traditions. 

Mouw further encourages us to “at least try to show that some of the features [of another religion’s beliefs] are not unlike elements” that we accept in other contexts (196), including our own. His comments reminded me of an experience I had several years ago, when, as a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame, I accompanied a group of BYU students who were visiting Church history sites in the Midwest on a tour of our beautiful campus. We stopped at the grotto, a replica of the site at Lourdes where the Virgin Mary is reported to have appeared repeatedly to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, less than forty years after Joseph’s first vision. I stood at the back of the group as an LDS graduate student thoughtfully explained the significance of the site for faithful Catholics and was stunned to hear a student ahead of me guffaw audibly and say to a companion, “They actually believe that?!” The irony of a Mormon’s scoffing at a vision struck me as more than a little profound. Mouw’s compassionate essay gives us sorely needed approaches for gentler, more Christ-like encounters with believers from other traditions. 

“The Prophethood of Joseph Smith,” a powerful essay by non-Mormon Wayne Hudson, takes Joseph Smith’s role as a prophet of God “as the beginning and not the end of our investigations” (202). Here again the question of Joseph’s sincerity arises repeatedly, but Hudson deftly and confidently diffuses it by claiming that “even someone who has a testimony of the truth of his revelation” can admit that “Joseph was not perfect, and his inspiration varied in quality and reliability” (203) and that “taking Joseph’s prophethood seriously does not imply . . . adopting an uncritical attitude toward more controversial aspects of his career or an unwillingness to undertake forms of inquiry that may not immediately benefit his reputation” (206). Fascinatingly, Hudson also advocates that Mormons study prophets of other traditions as an avenue for more fully understanding the innovations of our own. 

Reid Neilson’s essay on “Joseph Smith and Nineteenth-Century Mormon Mappings of Asian Religions” provides an intriguing look at a particular historical moment in the decades following the organization of the Church. That moment was the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, attended by the First Presidency (Wilford Woodruff, George Q. Cannon, and Joseph F. Smith) and B. H. Roberts. Neilson paints an arresting picture of the parliament, at which “the Mormon leaders were awed by the exposition’s international spectacle and astonished by the richness of the Asian religions they encountered,” most notably by the “striking Christian parallels” (218), for which they now had to account. Previously limited encounters with Asians or Asian religions meant that the Church had espoused what Neilson calls the “light and spirit of Christ theory” (216), which originated with Joseph Smith and includes the belief that God’s children in all traditions had access to di vine inspiration and would thus be given the opportunity to enter God’s kingdom. In a nearly tectonic shift in response to the World’s Parliament, the Church adopted a “diffusionary hypothesis” (218), in which Christian teachings originated in the Garden of Eden and became increasingly diffuse through generations of apostasy and wickedness. Moving the origins of Christianity back to the creation (the expanded timeline also discussed by both Givens and Maffly-Kipp) allowed Church leaders “to avoid the timing issue of Christian parallels found in non-Christian religions” (219). Neilson notes that the huge theological and rhetorical shift resulting from the parliament was undertaken by “unfazed Latter-day Saints” (220) who later evangelized across Asia. 

The volume concludes with David J. Whittaker’s “Studying Joseph Smith Jr.: A Guide to the Sources,” a remarkable compilation that consists of useful sections categorizing and describing the wide array of gen res and media among the sources (manuscripts, journals, letters, etc.). It concludes with an extensive and enormously useful bibliography of published sources, which is similarly organized by genre/media. If this marvelous guide is not already available as a stand-alone and also as an online publication, it should be. 

It would be gratifying to see this book on the shelf of every ward library, not to mention at every LDS bookstore. This volume has enormous potential to dramatically increase our respect for Joseph Smith. We may already see him as chosen and prophetic, but the fact that he influenced American history, not just American religious history, makes him a figure worthy of study as a great man, as a harbinger of huge social and cultural shifts, even as a genius—without apology and by non-Mormons with no religious agendas. This view may be news to many Latter-day Saints, but it is news that we should all hear. The professional experience and disciplinary diversity of the scholars who contributed to this collection are dazzling, as is the range of theoretical and methodological approaches they bring to their reappraisals of our Prophet. As a scholar and a believer, I am deeply grateful for their efforts. 

Reid L. Neilson and Terryl L. Givens, eds. Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ix, 284 pp. Paper; $24.95. ISBN: 978–0–19–536976–2