Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith's Theology
Dialogue has a rich and long history covering Mormonism’s founding prophet Joseph Smith.
Joseph Smith’s teachings and the development of Mormon theology have had a lasting impact on religious and cultural history. Exploring the curated topics below can provide a more detailed understanding of different perspectives and scholarly discussions on Joseph Smith’s life, teachings, and historical context.
A Reflection on Joseph Smith’s Restorationist Vision of Truth
Ryan D. Ward
Dialogue 55.2 (Spring 2022): 93–102
The way of viewing truth in the Church differs from the common philosophical concept of truth as something that corresponds to the historical or present facts of a given situation.
“Truth, the sum of existence . . .”
—John Jaques, 1851[1]
The way of viewing truth in the Church differs from the common philosophical concept of truth as something that corresponds to the historical or present facts of a given situation. The Church’s version of truth is that it is something possessed by God, it never varies, is eternally fixed, and is made known to humankind through revelation.[2] This absolute view of truth is problematic because it is open to being used by those in positions of power and influence to manipulate and oppress others. Everyone is familiar with the colloquialism “history is written by the victors.”[3] This statement conveys the way that the concept of truth has been manipulated and used to oppress throughout history. The damage and trauma is littered across generations, from the ruthless persecution of so-called heretics after the adoption of Christianity as the religion of Roman empire to the Spanish Inquisition, from the Crusades to the witch hunts, from the massive slaughter, enslavement, exploitation, and oppression of Indigenous peoples throughout the world sanctioned by Christian colonizers to the use of theological and scriptural “truth” to oppress and marginalize women and other vulnerable groups throughout history and into the present day.
In some cases, the concept of absolute truth is used to explicitly oppress and exploit in the name of religion. But more often, this view of truth leads to an inadvertent discounting or marginalizing of alternative views and groups. Due to the specific gender, racial, and cultural makeup of Church leadership, some groups or issues may not be addressed or considered. At an institutional level, religious organizations, including our own, may dictate acceptable positions, doctrinal beliefs, and practices and levy penalties for nonconformity. Those with different experiences who criticize or openly challenge official teaching or narrative can be subject to informal ostracization or formal ecclesiastical discipline. Thus, tight control is maintained over the interpretation and verification of truth by leaders, and the degree to which personal experience and opinion may be held to correspond to the truth is circumscribed. Because an absolute notion of truth is vulnerable to misuse and abuse, what is needed is a way to incorporate individual, varied, and diverse human experience into our understanding and conceptual view of truth.
Truth Revealed Anew
On May 6, 1833, following the summer adjournment of the School of the Prophets in Kirtland, Ohio, Joseph Smith received a revelation that was to become section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants. The revelation taught that all humankind existed in the beginning with God and Christ as intelligences—autonomous agents organized by God: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”[4] In the very next verse comes a startling pronouncement which forms the basis of my exploration: “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.”[5]
There are three important aspects of the verse to consider: 1) truth is independent, 2) truth is an autonomous agent able to act for itself, 3) existence itself depends on this independence and autonomous agency.
Truth as an Independent Agent
For truth to be independent suggests that it exists outside of God’s control. It has not been created, neither can it be, according to verse 29. God is able to place it in a specific sphere, but, once placed, it functions as an autonomous agent that acts outside of God’s control. Aside from this verse, there is no further mention of the independence of truth anywhere in the scriptures. Teaching and interpretation of this concept by Church leaders often mentions this verse as indicative of the fact that there is absolute and relative truth.[6] Absolute truths cannot be changed, whereas relative truth refers to facts that someone discovers that are not veridical statements of reality but approximations that change with further inquiry, experience, and revelation.[7]
Absolute truths are here referred to as the unchanging reality of God’s relation to the world—even if people do not believe, they are still true. But it is unclear how this type of “truth” stands independent of a creator of the world to which it applies and by which it is circumscribed. Furthermore, according to Alma, God is also subject to eternal laws that must be obeyed or he will “cease to be God.”[8] This presents a conundrum in that it is unclear how laws that stand outside of God and to which he is subject could be “placed” anywhere by him, as is clearly stated in verse 30. For these and other reasons, truth here being independent does not seem to refer to an absolute truth of God or the universe that remains unchanging and unchangeable for eternity.
The fact that truth is referred to here as an autonomous agent that can act for itself has more scriptural and doctrinal parallels within our theology.[9] The doctrine of agency is critical to our understanding of the purpose and meaning of the existence of humanity. The interpretation that truth is placed by God in a sphere to act for itself is consistent with foundational Mormon teachings about agency and supports interpreting verse 30 as indicating that truth is crucially related to embodied mortal experience.
Truth as the Action of Embodied Humanity in History
If we consider embodied human beings as a critical aspect of truth, our understanding of truth necessarily has to be informed and conditioned by the critical and varied aspects of human existence. The embodied nature of our existence means that each individual will live out their lives in different places, countries, cities, and are subject to different life experiences, opportunities, and challenges as a function of their particular state, including the impacts of gender, race, and ethnicity, along with cultural, economic, political, and other factors. If embodied human existence constitutes truth, then truth must encompass the range of experiences, perspectives, choices, consequences, and life trajectories of all humanity. Truth was placed in the world as embodied humanity in all its infinite diversity and continues to be truth as we grow and act as agents throughout our lives.
To clarify, truth can be defined as the action of embodied humanity in history. As such, truth in the world is ever evolving and becoming. Verse 24 says that truth is “knowledge” of things as they are, and were, and are to come. I take this to mean that knowledge of these things comes through experience, either personally or through the works and words of others, or through divine gift of understanding the realities of human experience throughout history. In experiencing, we come to know the truth of human existence. Truth is, in actuality, things as they have been, are, and will be.[10] For individuals, then, truth constitutes knowledge of human action in history. From an omniscient perspective, truth is the actual, ongoing action of humanity in history.
Jesus as the Truth
Because truth cannot be separated from individual human experience, only one who fully experienced what all of humanity experienced could claim to understand and comprehend all truth. In section 88, Joseph revealed how Christ’s atonement and condescension into mortality had granted him such comprehension: “He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth.”[11] Now we begin to understand what Jesus means when he refers to himself as “the truth.” His life in mortality, surrounded by the suffering of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized, already had allowed him to “bear witness unto the truth.”[12] Furthermore, one interpretation of this view is that Jesus’ solidarity with humanity through his incarnation and atonement enabled him to experience all that embodied humanity had, would, and will experience. When Jesus personally experienced in mortality the sum total of human experience, he quite literally became the totality of truth.
Another interpretation that is consistent with the view of truth proposed here is that in calling himself the truth, Jesus was explicitly referring to his mortal embodiment. According to this view, Jesus was truth in the same way that embodied humanity is truth. By referring to himself as truth, Jesus affirmed this central characteristic of the truth of humanity. Although this idea may seem unfamiliar to many members of the Church, it has a long historical and scholarly tradition. At issue is the meaning of the phrase “son of man,” which appears numerous times in the Bible. The translation of the phrase from Hebrew and Aramaic indicates that it was a colloquial way of referring to a generic human being, or humanity generally, but with a specific contrast to deity in its emphasis on the mortal condition.[13]
Why would Jesus refer to himself in this way? Why not refer to his own divinity, or use the other names that have become common for him: Savior, Redeemer, Lord, Messiah? In fact, at every opportunity to embrace these titles, Jesus rejected them, preferring this diminutive generic term for humanity. The revelation by Joseph Smith that Jesus grew from “grace to grace” and “received not of the fullness at first”[14] suggests that he may have been unaware of his purpose and mission for a time. One might assume that once awareness struck, he would begin referring to his divinity, but this does not happen. There seems to be something very important to Jesus about his mortal embodiment and humanity in general. The view of truth taken here suggests that it was Jesus’ humanity that made him the truth, not his divinity. His referral to himself as “son of man” seems to indicate that he recognized the truth of his embodied mortal action as a part of the ongoing truth of humanity acting in history.
God’s Glory as Truth
We understand the purpose of this life as being to demonstrate that we can keep God’s commandments, make and keep sacred covenants by receiving saving ordinances, and become progressively sanctified through the atonement of Christ. A succinct statement of this is given in the book of Moses: “For behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”[15] Here we find ourselves at loggerheads regarding what to make of a scriptural term that is used in multiple different ways. Specifically, what exactly is referred to here by God’s “glory”? At various times in the scriptures, “glory” refers to worldly fame and accolades,[16] heavenly blessing and favor,[17] exultation,[18] aesthetic beauty,[19] brightness,[20] fullness of life in the world to come,[21] and an enabling power,[22] among other things. Later in the revelation in section 93, Joseph gives as succinct a definition of God’s glory as we get in scripture, yet when considered with the view of truth explored above, it provides a key to understanding God in relation to humanity and why human existence and experience as truth is crucial to God: “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.”[23] Up until now in the revelation, Joseph has played loosely with these three terms: intelligence, light, and truth. Here he clarifies for us that intelligence, light, and truth are synonymous. Not only that, they are the glory of God. When considered in conjunction with the interpretation of truth explored above, we can interpret this verse to mean that the glory of God is the perpetual and ongoing truth being lived out in and through embodied humanity.
This definition of glory helps us make sense of Moses 1:39 in context. The way we usually read this verse is that God’s work and glory, everything that he does and the crowning achievement of his being, is to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life. But this verse comes at the end of Moses’ vision of the creation and the natural and human history of the world.[24] God has here shown Moses all of the earth’s existence and inhabitants, the whole of the natural history of the earth. He has also intimated that there are numberless other worlds and inhabitants that he has created. It is at the end of this spectacular vision that verse 39 comes. God seems to be saying that the driving force in all of creation, including humankind, is to progress toward a state of godliness. Everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and everything that will happen, is moving toward that final end. God’s glory is creation and humanity in action in history. Because this theology considers all of our experience in mortality as helping us to become like God—indeed, gods in our own right—we can therefore view God as the potentiality of humanity and creation. As such, God’s glory is necessarily incomplete and ongoing and will not be realized fully until all humanity and creation lives out the totality of its existence. As long as there is an ongoing creation that acts with agency, God’s truth and glory will continue to deepen and expand.
An Expanded Restorationist View of Truth
The view of truth as the action of embodied humanity in history cannot accommodate an interpretation of truth that includes anything less than the totality of human existence and experience. According to the current interpretation, God cannot create truth because truth is independent of God. He organizes it in creation, and it acts for itself. It is therefore not possible for any organization or religious tradition to hold either more or less truth than any other, any more than it is possible for God to create truth. This means that God also does not dictate what is true and what is not because truth is a function of embodied human experience. Intelligence, cloaked in mortal humanity, acts with agency, and this is truth. It is not something that can be revealed, verified, or witnessed to, at least not in the sense we traditionally think of. It is simply the ongoing action of humanity in history.
Rather than being a form of relativism or pointing to the belief that all truth claims are equally valid and therefore we can believe and act however we will, this position claims that truth, as understood by individuals, is incomplete because it forms only a part of the total truth as comprised by human existence. Therefore, it makes no sense to compare one “truth” to another because the sum total of all truths being lived out individually and in relation is the full truth. Thus, this view subsumes relativism within a totality of truth that is ongoing, continuously changing, and being realized in the lived experience of humanity.
Our faith tradition claims to accept all truth wherever it may be found, yet we often view and portray ourselves as holding a strict monopoly on truth. The interpretation explored here suggests that such claims are incompatible with the fundamental nature of truth as an independent agent. Thus, for our tradition to encompass all truth, we would need to recognize, accept, and claim all human experience as the ongoing truth of God. The challenge of our missionary and other efforts would not be to determine and decide how most successfully to convert others to our faith but instead how to understand and experience our lives within our covenant community in light of, and in relation to, the ongoing truth around us in our communities, cities, nations, and the world.
Within our congregations and pews, we would feel less threatened and more empowered by the diversity of experience and perspective of our members. Historically oppressed groups, such as women, racial groups, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other minorities, would be given respected places in our conversations and efforts. We would recognize that prevailing views, understandings, and treatment of some groups and individuals have been conditioned by a long history of the normalization of their marginalization and oppression in society. Failure to acknowledge this, coupled with a position on truth that denies the reality of the truth of all unique existence and experience, has amplified marginalization in our faith tradition and theology. Recognizing all lived experience for the truth it is would help us to embark on the long-needed and painful journey of justice and reconciliation. Such reconciliation would allow our faith tradition to more fully reflect and embody the full majesty and beauty of the glory of God manifest in the ongoing truth of the lived experience of humanity. I believe that the seeds of a more universal, expansive, and inclusive vision of truth were revealed, however fleetingly and opaquely, to Joseph Smith in this brief but magnificent verse. Perhaps reflections like this one can contribute to the recovery and further imagination, development, and articulation of this unique and powerful restorationist concept of truth.
[1] From “Truth,” a poem included in the first edition of the Pearl of Great Price. It was later set to music by Ellen Knowles Melling, titled “Oh Say, What is Truth?,” and included in the LDS hymnal as no. 272.
[2] Doctrines of the Gospel Student Manual, Religion 430 and 431 (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2010), chap. 1.
[3] This statement is generally attributed to Winston Churchill, although this claim is unsubstantiated.
[4] Doctrine and Covenants 93:29.
[5] Doctrine and Covenants 93:30.
[6] Spencer W. Kimball, “Absolute Truth” (devotional address given at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, Sept. 6, 1977).
[7] D. Todd Christofferson, “Truth Endures” (address to CES religious educators, Salt Lake Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, Jan. 26, 2018).
[9] 2 Nephi 2:13–26; 2 Nephi 10:23; Alma 12:31; Helaman 14:30.
[10] This notion of truth parallels the thought of Hegel, who asserted that to truly know something was to know its past, present, and future state. All present “truth” is but a snapshot of the “absolute” or “totality” of truth that is becoming. See Georg Hegel, The Science of Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015; first published in German in 1812). Similarly, Harold Joachim’s “coherence” theory of truth suggests that something is true to the extent that it coheres with the character of a more significant “whole.” For Joachim, there is only one “truth,” and individual judgments or beliefs are only true “to a degree.” See Harold Joachim, The Nature of Truth (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977; first published in 1906).
[11] Doctrine and Covenants 88:6.
[13] Restoration scripture has been interpreted as indicating that the name is another title for the Savior. See Doctrine and Covenants 45:39; 49:6, 22; 58:65; Moses 6:57.
[14] Doctrine and Covenants 93:13.
[16] Proverbs 25:27; Matthew 4:8; 6:2; John 7:18; 1 Thessalonians 2:6; 1 Peter 1:24; Doctrine and Covenants 10:19; 76:61.
[17] 1 Samuel 4:21; Psalm 8:5; 62:7; 84:11; Proverbs 4:9.
[18] Psalm 149:5; Jeremiah 9:24; 1 Corinthians 3:21; James 3:14; 1 Peter 1:8; 2 Nephi 33:6; Alma 26:16.
[20] 1 Corinthians 15:41; 2 Corinthians 3:7; Doctrine and Covenants 76:70.
[21] Proverbs 4:9; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Colossians 3:4; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 5:1, 4, 10; 2 Peter 1:17; Alma 14:11; 36:28; Doctrine and Covenants 6:30; 29:12; 58:3; 66:2; 75:5; 76:6; 101:65; 104:7; 124:17; 130:2; 132:19; 133:32; 136:31; Moses 6:59; 7:3; Abraham 3:26.
[23] Doctrine and Covenants 93:36.
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Was Joseph Smith a Monarchotheist? An Engagement with Blake Ostler’s Theological Position on the Nature of God
Loren Pankratz
Dialogue 55.2 (Spring 2022): 37–72
Joseph Smith’s teachings on God found in his preaching at the April 7, 1844 general conference, known as the King Follett Sermon, and Smith’s Sermon in the Grove, given at a meeting held just east of the Nauvoo Temple on June 16, 1844, have appeared to many to give strong support to this view. There, he taught that God was not always God but developed into God over time.
Many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold a view of God in which “God became ‘God’ at some first moment through obedience to moral principles that were given by a prior god, the Father’s Father.”[1] This supposition follows the teaching of many erstwhile theologians and authorities of the Church who have understood Joseph Smith to teach that God became God at some moment in the past, having been exalted to his divine stature by another being due to his obedience to eternal laws.[2] Joseph Smith’s teachings on God found in his preaching at the April 7, 1844 general conference, known as the King Follett Sermon, and Smith’s Sermon in the Grove, given at a meeting held just east of the Nauvoo Temple on June 16, 1844, have appeared to many to give strong support to this view. There, he taught that God was not always God but developed into God over time. Eschewing this traditional notion, Blake Ostler defends a view of God in which the head God (the Monarch) leads all other subordinate gods.[3] He argues that this kingship monotheistic view is the proper interpretation of Joseph Smith’s teaching on God. Ostler seeks to harmonize this monarchotheist viewpoint with Smith’s teaching both generally and, more specifically, in the King Follett Sermon and his Sermon in the Grove.[4] Ostler is not just making a theological argument but a historical one about what Joseph Smith’s own views were. This paper demonstrates that Ostler’s monarchotheist construal of Joseph Smith’s teaching is not supported by the evidence.[5]
An 1840 Sermon of Joseph Smith
To be successful, the monarchotheist must reconcile this theological position with the teaching of Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo period and the tradition that developed from it. One of the most important issues is reconciling the notion from classical theology that God is eternal and unchanging with Smith’s idea that God was not always God. Ostler develops an important solution to this that allows him to hold both that God was always God and that God was at one point a human. He argues that Joseph Smith’s teachings support the position that “There was an interval of time from T2 through T3 during which the Father was mortal and not fully divine, but the Father was fully divine eternally prior to T2 and forever after T3.”[6] In this argument, T2 and T3 represent time markers in the life of God. His claim is that while God the Father may not have been fully divine in one period of time, namely that period we can symbolize as between T2 and T3, still he was fully divine both prior to T2 and after T3. In the argument, the time between T2 and T3 is to be thought of as a mortal sojourn of some sort. Thus, Ostler’s contention is that Smith’s teaching is consistent with the view that God the Father was fully divine prior to and following his mortal sojourn. It is Ostler’s contention that this view is consistent with Smith’s later teaching that God was not always God found in the 1844 King Follett Sermon.
Ostler begins his argument for a rereading of the King Follett Sermon that is consistent with the monarchotheist position by first seeking to add context to this position. He points to a sermon Smith preached on February 5, 1840. In this sermon, Smith was preaching in Washington DC, describing his religious beliefs to outsiders.[7] Here Smith taught, “I believe that God is Eternal. That he had no beginning and can have no End. Eternity means that which is without beginning or End.”[8] Ostler admits that this seems to contradict what Smith says in the King Follett Sermon, in which he claims, “for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and will take away and do away the vail, so that you may see.”[9] There appears to be a contradiction between what Smith taught in 1840, in which God is said to be God eternally, and the 1844 teaching, in which the eternal divinity of God seems to be denied. Ostler’s solution to this seeming contradiction is to argue that, in fact, both of these claims are in harmony with the monarchotheist position and that the 1840 sermon helps one interpret what Smith meant in 1844.
I agree that there is not necessarily a contradiction between Smith’s two statements, but on different grounds from Ostler. Rather than supporting the monarchotheist position, the February 5, 1840 sermon appears to confirm the notion that God has not been fully divine from all eternity. In this 1840 discourse, Smith does not merely claim that God is eternal but also that souls in general are eternal and have no beginning. Just after claiming that God is eternal, having no beginning or end, he said, “I believe that the Soul is Eternal. It had no beginning; it can have no End.”[10] Matthew Livingston Davis, the scribe of the February 5 sermon, understood Smith’s point to be that neither God nor the human soul had a beginning, and they will not have an end.[11] Smith does not highlight an attribute of God in distinction to what is common to humanity; rather, he is claiming that the “soul of man” is as eternal as God is.[12] Thus, rather than setting up a seeming contradiction that needs to be resolved, the 1840 sermon supports the interpretation of Smith’s teaching in which God is thought to have eternally existed (as have all souls) but was exalted to divinity at some point in the past. This sermon shows that Smith, in 1840, taught that humans share God’s same trajectory, at least potentially. Contra Ostler, this sermon does not show that Smith taught that God was divine from all eternity. There appears to be no conflict between Smith’s 1840 sermon and his later teaching on God as understood and espoused historically by Church theologians and authorities. Having addressed this preliminary matter, I now turn to Ostler’s specific interpretations and revisions of Smith’s King Follett Sermon.
The King Follett Sermon
At the April 1844 general conference, Joseph Smith delivered a funeral oration for a man named King Follet to a crowd of Latter-day Saints estimated to be around twenty thousand in number.[13] This sermon, known as the King Follet Sermon (KFS), has become one of his most important theological discussions. In that sermon, Smith preached,
It is the first principle of the Gospel, to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us––yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did, and I will show it from the Bible . . . What did Jesus say? (Mark it Elder [Sidney] Rigdon;) the Scriptures inform us that Jesus said, ‘as the Father hath power in himself, even so hath the Son power’, to do what? Why what the Father did; the answer is obvious, in a manner to lay down his body and take it up again.[14]
It is not part of the historical teaching of the Church that each human was fully divine prior to our mortal life. Thus, when Joseph Smith taught that God was “once a man like us,” he seemed to imply that God had not been fully divine prior to his mortal sojourn. Ostler acknowledges that passages from the KFS, like this one, can be interpreted to support the notion that “there was a time T2 at which the Father first became fully divine, but that he was not fully divine prior to T2.”[15] That is, this passage appears to be consistent with the belief that God, like humans generally, was not fully divine from all eternity, and that he was later exalted to his present fully divine stature after being resurrected from the dead. This interpretation is also consistent with the belief taught in 1840, that the Father, like all souls, has always existed without beginning and will always exist without end. However, Ostler moves the discussion of this passage in a different direction. He claims that “it is uniformly taught in Mormon scripture and by Joseph Smith that Christ was a fully divine person prior to mortality.”[16] Ostler reads the KFS to support the view that the Father was fully divine prior to his mortality. He claims that “the Father’s mortal experience was like Christ’s, and thus it is more consistent to interpret Joseph Smith to assert that the Father, like Christ, was divine before his mortal sojourn.”[17] Ostler’s contention is that the above passage of the KFS only teaches that there was a time (i.e., during his mortal sojourn) when God was not fully divine, while remaining open to the possibility that God was fully divine prior to that time. He bases this on his understanding of Jesus as being in possession of all the essential properties of divinity prior to his mortal life.
This interpretation seems far from secure. First, Smith is claiming that there is something Jesus has in common with the Father, not something the Father has in common with the Son. He is pointing out specifically that just as the Father had the power to lay down his body and take it up again, so the Son has the power to lay down his body and take it up again. This comparison says nothing of God’s ontological status prior to his mortal life. The KFS is aimed to give comfort to those grieving the loss of a beloved member of the community. This funeral sermon provides hope for those who have not been divine from all eternity by teaching that they can follow the example set by God and Jesus. Smith claims that both the Father and Jesus laid down their lives and were later exalted, and in this sermon he extends that hope to all humans generally. Ostler takes this quotation from the KFS to mean that if Jesus was divine prior to his mortal life then God was divine prior to his. However, logically speaking, Jesus’ claim to follow the Father’s example does not necessarily imply that the Father was fully divine before his mortal sojourn, even if Jesus was fully divine before his mortal existence. When predicating some distinctive attribute of person A to person B, one is not thereby committed to predicating some other feature of person B to person A. The passage does not say that what is true of Jesus is also true of the Father. Rather, it only claims that what is true of the Father is true of the Son. Thus, Ostler’s contention that this passage implies that the Father was fully divine prior to his mortal life is not substantiated.
Secondly, Ostler’s interpretation of this passage from the KFS, if correct, disproves his main point. While it may have been uniformly taught in Mormon scripture and by Joseph Smith that Christ was a fully divine person prior to mortality, it is also taught that there was a time when Jesus was first exalted. That is, Jesus was the firstborn spirit child of God in the premortal existence and progressed to divinity. For example, in the winter of 1834–35, lectures were given in Kirtland, Ohio that served as an early attempt to “formulate a systematic Latter-day Saint theology.”[18] These lectures were published in the Church’s newspaper in May of 1835, and “All seven lectures were published together later that year in the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, the lectures constituting the ‘doctrine,’ and Joseph Smith’s revelations, the ‘covenants.’”[19] While it is debated whether or not Joseph Smith personally delivered all of the lectures, the “inclusion of the lectures in the Doctrine and Covenants in 1835 strongly suggests that Joseph Smith approved of the content of the lectures.”[20] These lectures have been said to represent the “breadth and depth of the mind of Joseph Smith.”[21] “Lecture Fifth” of the Lectures on Faith teaches that Jesus, having overcome, “received a fullness of the glory of the Father.”[22] Later, in “Lecture Seventh” of the Lectures on Faith, it is taught that Jesus Christ is the prototype of a saved and glorified person. He is the example for us to follow, a person who, through faith, “has become perfect enough to lay hold upon eternal life.”[23] This early summary of the theology Joseph Smith developed depicts Jesus advancing from having a non-deified status to being one who takes hold of eternal life, having received a fullness of glory. Thus, even if Christ becomes the archetype of pre- and post-mortal divinity, his trajectory also includes an initial progression to divinity. There was a time, call it time T, when Jesus was not fully divine. Then at T1 he was exalted, then at T2 he was mortal (and not glorified), and then at T3 he was full of glory once more. Ostler has argued that the KFS passage above is consistent with monarchotheism because Smith claimed that Jesus did only what he had seen the Father do before him, and since we know that Jesus was fully divine prior to his mortal sojourn, then God must have been fully divine prior to his subsequent exaltation as well. However, the trajectory of Jesus represented in the KFS and in the Lectures of Faith appears to be one of a being who was exalted at some time after he was born of heavenly parents. If Ostler is correct in his interpretation and Jesus follows the Father’s path, then this would imply that God the Father was once a mere organized being who was later exalted, after which he became mortal and then, finally, was glorified again. Thus, if Ostler is correct, God the Father still has not been God from all eternity. Ostler’s treatment of the passage from the King Follett Sermon does not work to effectively undermine the understanding of many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who hold that “God became ‘God’ at some first moment through obedience to moral principles that were given by a prior god, the Father’s Father.”[24]
There is a second key passage in the King Follet Sermon that seems to establish the notion of a progression toward deity. Smith preached,
Here, then is eternal life—to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be Kings and Priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.[25]
Ostler concedes that this passage may indicate that persons “learn how to advance to become Gods by becoming a ‘god’ at some first time T1 by advancing from one capacity to another until they reach the status of gods.”[26] However, Ostler seeks to reconcile this with his own view of a static and unchanging divine status. He argues that readers should not assume “that those engaged in the process of learning to be gods cannot already be gods.”[27] Ostler claims this passage should be taken to mean only that “God the Father has been in a process of eternal progression from one exaltation to another for all eternity, and humans can commence to progress toward godhood by engaging in the same activity of progression.”[28]
Contrary to Ostler’s interpretation, this passage is aimed at communicating to mortal humans, who have (presumably) never been gods, how they may progress to “be Gods yourselves.” Humans, who at present have never been fully divine, may become so by following the same process “as all the Gods have done before” them. Smith taught humans to take as their model for exaltation other beings who have learned little by little how to progress from a small capacity to a great one. He is not talking about a separate class of eternally divine beings. Even “the only wise and true God,” in Joseph Smith’s theology, does not appear to be exempted from this mimicable process. “All Gods,” Joseph Smith explains, have followed this trajectory. The above passage is all the more remarkable because in the sermon, just prior to the quoted passage, Smith led the congregation to consider what God is like. He petitioned his listeners, “I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer the question in their own heart, what kind of a being God is,”[29] and Smith takes it as his “first object” to “find out the character of the only wise and true God; and what kind of being he is.”[30] The portion of the KFS quoted above is Smith’s answer to this question. What sort of being is the only wise and true God? He is a being who has learned to be God, advancing from one capacity to another, as all gods have done. Ostler’s contention does not fully consider the context and aim of the sermon.
There is a third passage in the KFS that Ostler has opened for reinterpretation. In the most well-known version of the King Follett Sermon produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith states:
It is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.[31]
In this passage, Smith reportedly refutes the idea that God “has always been God or always had divine status.”[32] Here again, he put forward the idea that God “came to be” at a certain point, indicating that divinity occurred at a particular time.
Ostler’s strategy with this passage is to argue for a revision of the text that will allow for a different interpretation. There exists no stenographic record of this sermon. Instead, what we have are a number of individuals’ notes of the sermon. Several of these accounts were scribes from Smith’s presidential office and other authorities of the Church, making this the best recorded of Smith’s discourses.[33] Ostler’s primary argument maintains that the above statement, while supported by Willard Richards’s and Wilford Woodruff’s recollection of the sermon, is not in harmony with Thomas Bullock’s report of the discourse.[34] Ostler also points out that another observer of the address, William Clayton, omits the statement “about a refutation altogether.”
However, one should accept the traditional text as published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for three reasons. First, William Clayton’s report does convey that Smith claimed to “tell you how God came to be God.”[35] While he does not reproduce the exact phrase as Willard Richards and Wilford Woodruff, he does produce the same teaching. Presumably, for Smith to tell us how “God came to be God,” he will have to refute the idea that God has been God for all eternity.
Secondly, there is actually another version of the sermon that reports the same idea. Samuel W. Richards’s record is brief but remarkably records Smith’s refutation that God has been God from all eternity. It states, “to have eternal life, God: a man like one of us, even like Adam. Not God from all Eternity.”[36] Richards’s account provides another witness to Smith’s refutation of the notion that God has been God from all eternity, making it difficult to maintain, as Ostler does, that Smith did not teach this.
Thirdly, Bullock’s account is not out of harmony with Willard Richards’s, and Wilford Woodruff’s account as Ostler claims. Bullock’s report records, “I am going to tell you what sort of a being of God. for he was God from the begin of all Eternity & if I do not refute it.”[37] Ostler claims that Bullock’s report states that Smith does not intend to refute the idea that God has been God from all eternity. However, Bullock’s report is ambiguous, as he reports Smith to have said only, “if I do not refute it.” He does not say “I do not refute it.” The statement as recorded by Bullock could well be understood as shorthand for something like, “& [see] if I do not refute it.” Supporting this notion, Bullock notes that just after this statement, Smith went on to claim that “God himself the father of us all dwelt on a Earth same as J C himself did.”[38] This seems to refute the idea that God has been God from all eternity. God dwelt on an Earth, and during that time God was not fully divine. Bullock’s notes continue that humans have this capacity to dwell on an Earth and be exalted to divine status as well, claiming “you have got to learn how to be a God yourself & be K[ing] & Priest to God same as all have done by going from a small cap[acit]y to an[othe]r. from grace to grace until the res[urrectio]n. & sit in everlasting power as they who have gone before & God.”[39] The theology Bullock records, that God and all humans share a trajectory of progress, is entirely in line with the one reported by Richards, Woodruff, and Clayton. Ostler’s interpretation of this passage from Bullock’s report would set it against not only the other records of the discourse but against Bullock’s own account.
The idea that there is a disagreement between Bullock and the other witnesses on this point is weak. Bullock himself was responsible for preparing the minutes of the conference based on his and William Clayton’s notes.[40] These minutes were then published in Times and Seasons. In Bullock’s published minutes, Smith claimed, “We have imagined that God was God from all eternity,” but that it is necessary to “understand the character and being of God, for I am going to tell you how God came to be God.”[41] The preponderance of the reporting seems to point in one direction: namely, the interpretation Ostler seeks to avoid.[42]
As a final consideration regarding the view of God found in the King Follett Sermon, Ostler points to Smith’s reconstruction of Genesis 1:1 as proof of his monarchotheistic leanings. Smith claimed that Genesis 1:1 should be read to say, “The head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods.”[43] Ostler claims that Smith’s revision of Genesis 1:1 “entailed that there is a single God who is the head of all other gods.” As has been argued elsewhere, Smith used Hebrew “as he chose, as an artist . . . in accordance with his taste, according to the effect he wanted to produce, as a foundation for the theological innovations.”[44] In Kevin Barney’s study of Smith’s emendation of the Hebrew behind Genesis 1:1, he admits that it is difficult to piece together Smith’s exact logic in his reconstruction. Rather than attempting to follow Smith’s interpretation of the text of Genesis 1:1, Barney concludes that it seems more fruitful to interpret Smith as conjecturing that the original Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 had been altered and that his reading was the original.[45] While it may be difficult to ascertain how Smith arrived at his reconstruction of Genesis 1:1, Barney claims that the basic thrust of Smith’s argument is not as uncertain. Joseph Smith appears to make the claim that Genesis 1:1 is describing the council witnessed to in the book of Abraham 3:23, in which God called other gods to council in order to create our world. This certainly does not necessitate God’s being fully divine from all eternity, as God could have been fully divine at this point in his existence and could be the head God of this creative event. This is fully consistent with the belief that God was not fully divine from all eternity. Ostler contends that Smith “believed that the text of Genesis 1:1 had been corrupted and that it originally indicated that the head God brought forth the other gods in a council of gods.”[46] This claim will be revisited in the next section while reviewing Ostler’s claim regarding Smith’s use of Genesis 1:1 in the Sermon in the Grove.
Sermon in the Grove
Joseph preached his final sermon in a grove east of the Nauvoo Temple.[47] He began the sermon by quoting Revelation 1:6, “And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His father.”[48] The King James Version of the Bible places “and His father” after “God,” which Joseph Smith took to mean that the verse was stating that Jesus makes Christians to be kings and priests under God the Father and God the Father’s father. This understanding seems to have been seized upon by Joseph Smith and used as a proof text from which to proclaim that “the Father had a father and that there is another ‘Father above the Father of Christ.”[49] In this view, God the Father of Jesus Christ also has a father.
Ostler believes that the Father of God here refers only to his earthly existence. He explains, “when the Father condescended from a fullness of his divine state to become mortal, he was born into a world and had a father as a mortal.”[50] Ostler begins his defense of this interpretation by noting that Smith continues to stress that Jesus does “precisely” what the Father did before him.[51] As we saw above, this strategy fails to suit Ostler’s purposes because, if the analogy holds, it proves too much. If Jesus truly follows the Father’s precise example, then the example is that of a person of divine parentage who became divine, entered into mortality, and exercised power to take his life up again after death. If Jesus’ divine Father was the trailblazer of this precise path, then he too would have both a spiritual and mortal father.
Ostler puts forward other evidence for his reading of this sermon in support of monarchotheism. He points to George Laub’s journal notes from this sermon. Ostler quotes Laub as reporting that “the Holy Ghost is yet a Spiritual body and waiting to take upon himself a body, as the Savior did or as god did.”[52] Ostler concludes from this that “Joseph Smith taught that already divine persons, including the Son and the Holy Ghost, take upon themselves bodies.”[53] The major problem with this use of George Laub’s journal is that Ostler’s quotation of this portion of the journal is incomplete. Laub’s sentence continues on where Ostler provides a period. Laub’s record reads, “But the holy ghost is yet a spiritual Body. and waiting to take to himself a body as the savior did or as god did or the gods before them took bodies.”[54] This indicates that Smith taught that all gods follow this path, with Jesus, Jesus’ Father, and the Holy Ghost as exemplars of the pattern. Laub’s notes go on to further extend the analogy: “the scripture says those who will obey the commandments Shall be heirs of god and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. we then also took Bodies to lay them down and take them up again.”[55] Laub’s understanding is that we do just what Jesus did, which is just what the Father did before him, and other gods before him. Laub’s journal provides deeper evidence that Smith’s thinking about God is that the Father, the Son, and we humans are but three links in an eternal chain of gods.
William McIntire’s and Thomas Bullock’s record of Smith’s Sermon in the Grove relates that in this sermon Smith returned again to his modification of Genesis 1:1.[56] Ostler contends that Smith’s understanding of Genesis 1:1 is that a monarchotheistic head God presides over a council of gods.[57] However, in Thomas Bullock’s account of this sermon, Smith understands the term “Eloiheam” from Genesis 1:1 to be translated “in the plural all the way thro––Gods––the heads of the Gods appointed one God for us.”[58] Rather than there being a head God who organizes a council, there is instead an insistence that in the beginning there were heads of the gods who appointed one God for us. Smith proclaims, “Intelligences exist one above anotr. that there is no end to it.”[59] That there is “no end to it” suggests that Smith sees no one head God at the end of the line. He states, “in the very beginning there is a plurality of Gods—beyond the power of refutation.”[60] From Thomas Bullock’s record, Smith is clear, there are a plurality of head gods who appointed one God to preside over the earth. Ostler’s contention that Smith taught there to be one head God does not hold up.
William McIntire’s report of the sermon, though brief, shares Bullock’s understanding of Smith’s use of Genesis 1:1 in the Sermon in the Grove. McIntire claims that in this sermon, Smith “proceeded to show the plurality of Gods” with his explanation of the “origanel [sic] Hebrew” of Genesis 1:1.[61] McIntire claims that Smith shared with the gathered crowd in the grove that the “Head Gods organized the Earth & the heavens.”[62] McIntire’s witness claims Joseph Smith spoke of the “Head Gods” (plural), rather than a singular “head God,” as Ostler would have it. Thus, the reports of Smith’s teaching in the Sermon in the Grove does not support Ostler’s contention that Smith taught there to be a monarchotheist Head God who presides over a council of gods. Smith teaches a plurality all the way through.
Conclusion
Ostler’s interpretation of Joseph Smith’s teaching rests on three principal arguments. First, he claims that Smith’s teaching in the KFS implies that the Father was divine prior to becoming mortal just as Jesus was divine prior to mortality. Yet the KFS was shown to be better interpreted as claiming that God was elevated to his status as God at some time in the past. Further, if we press the analogy between the Father and the Son as Ostler does, the conclusion runs contrary to Ostler’s contention and God the Father is still elevated to divinity from some state of non-divinity at some point prior to his mortal life. Second, Ostler claims that Smith’s teaching that the Father had a father from Smith’s Sermon in the Grove should be interpreted as God the Father’s having a father in mortality, and not that there was a God prior to the Father. After reviewing Ostler’s arguments, it seems clear that Smith’s point in that sermon was indeed to claim that God the Father of Jesus himself had a spiritual progenitor. Third, Ostler argues that Smith’s use of Genesis 1:1 shows that Smith believed in a monarch God who rules over a heavenly council of gods. This is a novel thesis, but as a historical argument it does not hold. The great lesson Smith stresses from his emendation of Genesis 1:1 is that there is a plurality of gods at play from the very beginning. The heads of gods appointed the God of this world to his station. This is a process Smith appears to envision having no end.
Ostler’s contention that the best interpretation of Joseph Smith’s teachings about God is to suppose God to be the head God (the Monarch) who leads all other subordinate gods has not been persuasive. Ostler’s kingship monotheism does not appear to be represented in the two key discourses of Joseph Smith that have been examined in this paper. Instead, the best interpretation of Smith’s teaching on God in those discourses is that God the Father himself had a premortal father and came to be exalted to divinity at some first moment, that Jesus followed God the Father’s example, and that humans may follow Jesus’ example in turn.
[1] Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 91.
[2] Terryl Givens, Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 63. See also: Givens, Wrestling the Angel, 60; Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, 4th ed. (London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1877), 37; John Widtsoe, A Rational Theology: As Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: General Boards of the Mutual Improvement Association, 1932), 175.
[3] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 442.
[4] Portions of this article draw on research from the author’s PhD dissertation. See Loren Pankratz, “Traditional Christian and Mormon Views of God and Their Compatibility with the Moral Theistic Argument: An Exercise in Ramified Natural Theology” (PhD diss., South African Theological Seminary, 2020).
[5] This paper will use the phrases “traditional view” and “traditional thought” as representing the view expressed in the paper’s opening sentence. As Samuel Brown has illustrated, there are a variety of ways Latter-day Saints may conceive of God from within this traditional viewpoint. See Samuel M. Brown, “Mormons Probably Aren’t Materialists,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 50, no. 3 (Fall 2017): 39–72.
[6] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 93.
[7] “Discourse, 5 February 1840: Historical introduction,” The Joseph Smith Papers.
[8] “Discourse, 5 February 1840.” See also, Ostler, Problems of Theism, 433.
[9] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1 [1 July 1843–30 April 1844],” 1970, The Joseph Smith Papers. See also, Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, 433.
[10] “Discourse, 5 February 1840.”
[11] “Discourse, 5 February 1840.”
[12] “Discourse, 5 February 1840.”
[13] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1,” 1968.
[14] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1,” 1970.
[15] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 435.
[16] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 438.
[17] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 438, emphasis in the original.
[18] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church History Topics, “Lectures on Theology (“Lectures on Faith”). Robert Millet calls the Lectures on Faith a “systematic study of faith.” See, Robert L. Millet, Precept Upon Precept: Joseph Smith and the Restoration of Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), 217.
[20] “Lectures on Theology.” See also Charles R. Harrell, “This Is My Doctrine”: The Development of Mormon Theology (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011), 121. Harrell claims that the consensus concerning authorship of the Lectures on Faith is that Joseph Smith “ultimately endorsed their contents and sanctioned their publication.” Joseph Fielding Smith reminds the reader that the Lectures “were not taken out of the Doctrine and Covenants because they contained false doctrine,” and that “the Prophet himself revised and prepared these Lectures on Faith for publication; and they were studied in the School of the Prophets.” See Joseph Fielding Smith, Seek Ye Earnestly (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1970), 194.
[21] Millet, Precept Upon Precept, 236.
[22] Joseph Smith Jr., Lectures on Faith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1985), 60.
[23] Smith, Lectures on Faith, 75.
[24] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 91.
[25] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1,” 1971.
[26] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 440.
[27] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 440.
[28] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 440.
[29] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1,” 1969.
[30] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1,” 1969.
[31] Joseph Smith Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2nd rev. ed., edited by B. H. Roberts (Deseret Book: Salt Lake City, 1980), 6:305. See also Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, 441.
[32] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 441.
[33] “Accounts of the ‘King Follett Sermon,’” The Joseph Smith Papers.
[34] “Accounts of the ‘King Follett Sermon.’”
[35] “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by William Clayton,” 13, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[36] Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University), 361.
[37] “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by Thomas Bullock,” 16, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[38] “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by Thomas Bullock.”
[39] “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by Thomas Bullock.”
[40] Kevin L. Barney, “Joseph Smith’s Emendation of Hebrew Genesis 1:1.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 30, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 107.
[41] “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by Times and Seasons,” 614, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[42] Stan Larson’s amalgamated text of the King Follett Sermon is in harmony with the traditional published version of the discourse. It reads, “For we have imagined that God was God from the beginning of all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil so you may see.” Larson’s modern amalgamation preserves Smith refuting the idea that God was God from the beginning. See Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1978): 201. See also B. H. Roberts, The Mormon Doctrine of Deity (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1903), 227.
[43] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1,” 1972.
[44] Zucker L. “Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebrew.” Dialogue 3 (Summer 1968): 53.
[45] Barney, “Joseph Smith’s Emendation,” 128.
[46] Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, 442.
[47] Ehat and Cook, Words of Joseph Smith, 378.
[48] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 442.
[49] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 444.
[50] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 444, emphasis in the original.
[51] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 445.
[52] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 445.
[53] Ostler, Problems of Theism, 445.
[54] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by George Laub,” 30, The Joseph Smith Papers, emphasis added.
[55] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by George Laub,” 31.
[56] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by William McIntire,” 21, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[57] Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: Of God and Gods (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008), 20. See also Ostler, Problems of Theism, 443.
[58] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by Thomas Bullock,” 2, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[59] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by Thomas Bullock,” 3.
[60] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by Thomas Bullock,” 3.
[61] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by William McIntire,” 21.
[62] “Discourse, 16 June 1844–A, as Reported by William McIntire,” 21.
[post_title] => Was Joseph Smith a Monarchotheist? An Engagement with Blake Ostler’s Theological Position on the Nature of God [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 55.2 (Spring 2022): 37–72Joseph Smith’s teachings on God found in his preaching at the April 7, 1844 general conference, known as the King Follett Sermon, and Smith’s Sermon in the Grove, given at a meeting held just east of the Nauvoo Temple on June 16, 1844, have appeared to many to give strong support to this view. There, he taught that God was not always God but developed into God over time. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => was-joseph-smith-a-monarchotheist-an-engagement-with-blake-ostlers-theological-position-on-the-nature-of-god [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:43:47 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:43:47 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://dj.slanginteractive.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=30130 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Praise to the Man: The Development of Joseph Smith Deification in Woolleyite Mormonism, 1929–1977
Cristina Rosetti
Dialogue 54.3 (Fall 2021): 41–65
However, the 1886 Revelation and subsequent statement also raised their own doctrinal questions that were continually developed through the lineage that became Woolleyite Mormonism. Namely, why was the resurrected Joseph Smith present alongside Jesus Christ at the meeting with John Taylor?
“My testimony is that Joseph Smith is at the head of this dispensation; he is a member of the Godhead and he is the One Mighty and Strong. And it is his work to set the house of God in order.”
Saint Joseph W. Musser, June 25, 1944
The Lorin C. Woolley Statement
On September 22, 1929, Lorin C. Woolley stood before a group of Mormon men and read a statement on the continuation of plural marriage. His statement began with an overview of June 1886, when leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathered to raise their concerns about the government confiscating Church property over the issue of polygamy.[1] According to Woolley’s account, many of the men were in support of appeasing the government to preserve Church assets. Leading the charge of this position was George Q. Cannon who, along with Hiram B. Clawson, Franklin S. Richards, John T. Caine, and James Black, met with President John Taylor for his consideration. On September 26, 1886, unable to come to a consensus among the men, Cannon suggested that President Taylor take the matter to God.[2]
In Woolley’s recollection of the evening, he sat in his room and began reading the Doctrine and Covenants, a compilation of LDS Church presidents’ revelations, when, “I was suddenly attracted to a light appearing under the door leading to President Taylor’s room, and was at once startled to hear the voices of men talking there. There were three distinct voices.”[3] Concerned for Taylor’s well-being, who was in hiding for his own participation in plural marriage, Woolley ran to the door and found it bolted. Perplexed, he stood by the door until morning, when Taylor emerged from the room with a “brightness of his personage.”[4] Looking to Woolley, and the other men now gathered at the door, Taylor explained, “Brethren, I have had a very pleasant conversation all night with Brother Joseph [Smith].”[5] Even more perplexed, Woolley questioned the voices, only to learn that the third voice was Jesus Christ. With little additional explanation, Woolley recalled Taylor placing “each person under covenant that he or she would defend the principle of Celestial or Plural Marriage, and that they would consecrate their lives, liberty and property to this end, and that they personally would sustain and uphold the principle.”[6] Following the alleged ordination, Taylor penned the revelation, popularly referred to as the 1886 Revelation, that affirmed the continued practice of polygamy and its place as an irrevocable doctrine for Latter-day Saints.
The 1886 Revelation was a watershed moment for the development of Mormon fundamentalism. In light of government prosecution and internal persecution of polygamists within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the revelation became a touchstone that affirmed the fundamentalist position on plural marriage. At the same time, the revelation became a marker of an alternate priesthood lineage outside of the LDS Church. Rather than follow the leadership of Wilford Woodruff and the subsequent end of polygamy, a priesthood led by John W. Woolley was initiated to preserve the practice. However, the 1886 Revelation and subsequent statement also raised their own doctrinal questions that were continually developed through the lineage that became Woolleyite Mormonism. Namely, why was the resurrected Joseph Smith present alongside Jesus Christ at the meeting with John Taylor?
Since Smith’s death in 1844, Mormonism struggled to place the martyr within their cosmology. In life, Smith’s role as the prophet of the last dispensation went largely uncontested among his followers. While this remains the case, his position in death is much more complex. In Christopher J. Blythe’s work on the apotheosis of Joseph Smith and the struggle to make sense of the late prophet’s identity after death, he describes how early Latter-day Saints conceptualized their late leader, including the use of past sermons that alluded to Smith’s identity as “veiled in mystery.”[7] The most notable and often cited of these mysterious remarks stated, “Would to God, brethren, I could tell you who I am! Would to God I could tell you what I know! But you would call it blasphemy and want to take my life.”[8] Smith’s vague statement on his identity shortly before his death left a knowledge void among his believers that allowed for diverse doctrinal speculation. Summarizing the various responses to Smith’s death, Blythe shows a range of positions, from beliefs that Smith belonged within the angelic hierarchy to assertions that his place was among the godsfrom assertions that Smith belonged within the angelic hierarchy to his place among the gods.
Through doctrinal routinization, LDS leaders sought to distance themselves from the latter position and clarify Smith’s place within Mormon cosmology. Within the LDS Church, Smith was doctrinally concretized as a mortal prophet who spoke with God, but was not God. However, as the LDS Church increasingly moved away from deification, with the eventual concretization of Smith’s place as the prophet of God, but not God, Mormon fundamentalists developed a doctrine of deity that named Smith as the third member of the Godhead. Most notably, Lorin C. Woolley and the men who descend from his priesthood lineage constructed a discourse on the nature of God that placed Smith back within Woolley’s own speculative framework on exaltation.
This article analyzes deification as a discursive practice that, together with Mormon theology of embodiment, exalted Smith to deity. Within many of the largest Mormon fundamentalist groups, Smith’s position as a member of the Godhead fills the void of Smith’s claim and answers for his continued presence in the lives of the Saints. For many Mormons gathering outside of the institutional LDS Church, Smith remains present in the lives of believers and continues to serve as a source of authority for minority Mormon groups because he became one of the gods.
Mingling with Gods
Following the death of Joseph Smith, a poem turned hymn appeared in the August 1844 issue of Times and Seasons, an LDS newspaper that circulated in Nauvoo, Illinois. William W. Phelps wrote “Praise to the Man” to celebrate the life and legacy of the late prophet. While the hymn underwent its own controversy and revision in the twentieth century, the chorus remained an iconic segment of the commemorative poem:
Hail to the Prophet, ascended to heaven! Traitors and tyrants now fight him in vain. Mingling with Gods, he can plan for his brethren; Death cannot conquer the hero again.
The writings of Phelps, and other early leaders within the Church after Smith’s martyrdom, constructed and concretized norms surrounding both faith and the language that serves as its foundation. Through writing, sermonizing, and doctrinal speculation, they created doctrines that became lived realities that governed the lives of the Saints. As authors recalled and theorized Smith’s existence, Smith’s existence came to life. In ensuing decades, Smith became an authoritative figure who governed those who believed themselves the heirs of the faith he founded.
When Lorin C. Woolley first speculated on the nature of Joseph Smith in 1932, he began with the language of Phelps’s hymn to articulate Smith’s central role in both the Church and the eschaton. The first recorded reference to Joseph Smith by Woolley occurred during a meeting of his School of the Prophets on March 6, 1932. Because Woolley did not keep a diary or a record of his revelations and doctrinal developments, early Woolleyite Mormonism is best known through the writings of the men in his Priesthood Council, the group of men ordained by Woolley to maintain the principles of Mormonism outside the bounds of the institutional Church.[9] Woolleyite doctrine recorded in Joseph W. Musser’s Book of Remembrances and the meeting minutes for the School of the Prophets give the most comprehensive overview of Woolley’s teachings.[10]
In his first lecture pertaining to Smith, Woolley expounded on Smith’s infamous “Would to God” statement. He explained:
J.S. repeated the statement—“‘Would to God I could tell you who I am.’ The saints are not yet prepared to know their Prophet leader.” Joseph S. is probably a literal descendent of Jesus Christ of Jewish and Ephraim lineage, the blood of Judah probably predominating—the ruling power. . . . Adam at head of Adamic dispensation; Christ at head of dispensation of the Meridian of Times and Joseph at the head of the last dispensation. “Would to God I could tell you who I am!” Being a God, he is mingling with Gods and planning for his brethren.[11]
In the last year of his life, Smith welcomed his followers to consider their eternality and the transformative aspects of death. In the often-cited King Follet Sermon, delivered by Smith in 1844, Smith remarked, “You have got to learn how to be a god yourself in order to save yourself.”[12] By articulating Smith as “mingling with gods,” Woolley postulated of an already exalted Smith, placing Smith within his own theological development and asserting that through his own mortal probation Smith was exalted into the realm of the gods.
Woolley maintained Smith’s unquestionable role as the prophet who restored the Church and revived the priesthood, or power of God, to earth. Having accomplished this mortal work, Mormons place Smith as the head of the final dispensation, or period of divine time in which an authorized leader holds the priesthood and ministers on behalf of God. As Woolley looked back on the leaders of various dispensations, he accounted for their potential exaltation, especially when viewed through the theological teachings of Brigham Young and the Adam–God doctrine.[13] The three dispensation periods most spoken about by Woolley were the Adamic dispensation that began humanity, the dispensation at the meridian of time led by Jesus, and the dispensation of the fullness of time led by Joseph Smith.[14] Placing these three individuals together, along with Smith’s own comments about his identity, afforded Woolley a starting point for positioning Smith not only within the realm of deity but within the Godhead of Mormon cosmology.
In the last years of his life, Smith offered several comments that alluded to his significance beyond an earthly leader of a temporal Church. The famous “Would to God” statement, paraphrased by Woolley, not only raised the question of Smith’s identity, but offered perceived sacrilege as the reason for not divulging, “But you would call it blasphemy and want to take my life.”[15] Smith’s vague comments were not a deterrent to Woolley. Rather, they were rich with meaning but in need of order and understanding. Central to the early fundamentalist worldview was the belief that doctrines are not available to all people. The assumption being that Smith could not reveal his identity to the members of the Church, but he potentially revealed it to the members of the priesthood.[16] In recollections of his time with Smith, Brigham Young, Smith’s successor as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, noted that revelations are reserved for a certain time and often only to those prepared for them.[17] For Musser and other members of Mormon fundamentalist movements, the people best prepared for the weightier doctrines were the members of the priesthood. Whereas the Church tends toward introductory doctrine and casting aside of the more challenging principles, the priesthood is reserved to maintain the entirety of the faith, including the nature of God. Similar to Brigham Young’s comment, Woolley claimed that John Taylor, the third president of the LDS Church and the one claimed to have received the 1886 Revelation and ordained the earliest members of the Priesthood Council apart from the Church, eventually came to a knowledge of Smith as a god.
One of the great challenges to historians of Woolleyite Mormonism are his unsourced statements, such as Taylor’s realization of Smith as deity. Because Woolley did not make use of primary sources, Woolley’s own revelations became the primary source material for doctrinal formation. As a prophet, Woolley took disparate histories and statements and transformed them into concrete reality. His power as a leader was his ability to sermonize discourse into doctrine, transforming theological ideas into tenets of the faith. One of the greatest examples of this was Woolley’s brief accounts of the moments leading up to Smith’s martyrdom and the implication that Smith was aware of his divine status prior to death. At a May 5, 1932 meeting of the School of the Prophets, Woolley spoke on Smith’s preaching prior to his death, “Shortly before being murdered, Joseph Smith said: ‘I am going to take my place in the heavens,’ until which time John Taylor did not have a clear understanding of who J. S. was—one of the Gods.”[18] The understanding that Smith continued working on the other side of the veil was not a controversial idea in early Mormonism. In his public sermons, Brigham Young commented on Smith’s role in the afterlife and place in the final judgement, “Joseph Smith holds the keys of this last dispensation, and is now engaged behind the veil in the great work of the last days.”[19]
Because of Smith’s role as the head of this dispensation and subsequent martyrdom, Woolley’s sermons and doctrinal developments assumed his exaltation alongside the great patriarchs of the Old Testament, who were themselves believed to be heads of their respective dispensations. As these developments formed, Woolley’s sermons spoke Smith’s deification into existence. Drawing on Smith’s own theology of embodiment, Woolley preached about Smith as intermingling between the temporal and spiritual. However, it was not until the writings of Joseph W. Musser that Smith became identified with a particular deity of this world who consciously accepted a body. It was also under Musser that the doctrine was further concretized, to the detriment of all other speculative possibilities. Whereas Woolley made Smith a god in embryo, Musser transformed Smith into a god embodied.
The Office of the Holy Ghost
In 1934, Wooley passed away, leaving Joseph W. Musser one step closer to his future role as president of the Priesthood Council. Already before Woolley’s death, Musser’s authorship of multiple doctrinal pamphlets and editorial work for the monthly Truth magazine made him the primary conduit of Woolleyite doctrine.[20] In his leadership role, Musser inherited a religious community marked by both outside prosecution and internal persecution. Having been excommunicated from the LDS Church, Musser joined the Woolley Priesthood Council, an organization that he conceptualized as the highest Joseph W. Musser expression of Mormon priesthood and the avenue for preserving Joseph Smith’s most sacred doctrines.
While most of Musser’s theology focused on the centrality of the priesthood and the continuation of plural marriage, Musser also penned the first full-length fundamentalist pamphlet on the nature of God. Michael, Our Father and Our God: The Mormon Conception of Deity as Taught by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor and their Associates in the Priesthood first appeared in volume 3 of Truth magazine and was later reprinted in four editions as a stand-alone pamphlet. The pamphlet sold for 25 cents and purportedly circulated among LDS elders quorums and Sunday Schools throughout the intermountain West.[21] In this work, Musser articulated the necessity of embodiment for exaltation and acted as an ordering agent who clarified doctrine of God in a way that solidified its place in fundamentalist theology. Through his speculative discourses, Woolley brought doctrine to life. Through his widely circulated writing, Musser solidified Woolley’s speculations as truth.
During the April 7, 1844 conference of the Church, Joseph Smith stood before his congregation and emphatically stated, “We have imagined that God was God from all eternity. These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are the simple and first principles of the gospel, to know for a certainty the character of God.”[22] In line with Smith’s statement on the first principle, Musser’s pamphlet was an attempt at Mormon theology that both defended Young’s theory of divine embodiment and accounted for human exaltation. For Musser, the goal of the pamphlet was “acquainting the Saints with the true God of Israel, His genesis, His character and attributes.”[23] Michael, Our Father and Our God, in all of its editions, fulfilled Smith’s 1844 call for the Saints to know for certain the nature of God, a not-too-distant and embodied being that was both familiar and humanity’s goal.
Whereas Woolley made claims regarding the deification of Smith, and the other members of the Godhead, Musser sought to answer the mechanics of the claims. Michael, Our Father and Our God was foremost a critique of contemporary LDS leadership that disregarded Brigham Young’s teaching of the Adam–God doctrine. This doctrine had been central to early Utah Mormonism. On April 9, 1852, Brigham Young delivered an address in the tabernacle for the semiannual general conference on the nature of God. During his sermon, Young asserted that Michael entered an earthly body in Eden and became Adam, “the first of the human family.”[24] At the end of his life, having served his God faithfully, Adam was translated back into his celestial body and attained exaltation.[25] “As a man who was exalted and became God, Adam affords spiritual beings the opportunity to follow his mortal existence and seek embodiment for the purpose of becoming gods.
To make sense of Brigham Young’s doctrine, Musser introduced his reader to “offices” and “titles” of deities. Whereas the majority of Christianity refers to the divine person as “God,” Musser sought to identify the being and the title as distinct. He explained, “The key to understanding is the difference between the individual and the office held by the individual. ‘God’ is a title or office—a principle; and yet the being who occupies this office of God is an exalted man. The office of ‘God’ has always existed and always will exist. It, the office, is without ‘beginning of days or end of years.’”[26] Within this framework, Michael currently holds the office of “God.”[27] In a similar way, furthering the doctrine from the teaching of Brigham Young, Musser posited “Jehovah” as a salvific office that works alongside God by entering a temporal body in this world to redeem humanity. By completing his divinely appointed mission on earth, Jesus attained exaltation following his tenure as the savior of this world.[28] In looking at these two beings together, Musser recognized a similarity between the Father and Son. Both experienced mortality. With this in mind, Musser sought to make sense of embodiment as it relates to the third member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost.
Young’s doctrine faced vast criticism in the twentieth century. Musser’s LDS contemporaries quickly denounced the teaching as unfounded or noted the possibility of a misquote or misunderstanding. In response, Musser was firm in his conviction that Young’s doctrine of God was vital to human exaltation because it offered human beings a clear path forward and example of their future godliness. However, in speaking on the third member of the Godhead, Musser’s early work is not as exact or clear. If exaltation makes use of materiality as the vehicle for godliness, the implication is that gods require bodies. Early Mormon teachings on the Holy Ghost aligned with their Protestant counterparts; even Brigham Young noted that the Holy Ghost is not “a person of tabernacle as we are.”[29] For a faith that placed embodiment as a precursor to godliness, the Holy Ghost’s lack of materiality created potential problems for the Mormon conception of God.
Rather than settle on the Holy Ghost existing as a personage without embodiment, Musser used his theory of divine offices to answer for the Holy Ghost. Early in his writing, Musser referred to the Holy Ghost as “God’s witness to mankind,” the divine presence that makes God known to humanity.[30] In A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel, Elder Franklin D. Richards and amateur historian James A. Little expound on this idea: “Everlasting covenant was made between three personages before the organization of this earth, and relates to their dispensation of things to men on the earth: these personages, according to Abraham’s record, are called God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the Witness or Testator.”[31] As someone well-acquainted with early Mormon writings, Musser was familiar with the phrase “witness and testator.” However, unlike his LDS counterparts, the phrase was familiar because of its use in reference to Joseph Smith.
Like those before him, Musser believed that Smith served greater than anyone because he both witnessed God in vision and testified of him in this dispensation through the Book of Mormon and establishment of the Church despite opposition. For this reason, Musser devoted each December issue of his magazine, Truth, to the commemoration of Smith’s birth and earthly mission. Like most fundamentalist work, the magazine was largely a collection of quotes and passages from previous leaders. In addition, Musser offered commentary on the happenings in the LDS Church, community updates, most of which dealt with excommunications of fundamentalists in southern Utah, and a widely read editorial section, written by Musser, that expounded on historical issues and doctrine.
In the 1937 issue of Truth, which Musser used to commemorate the birth of Joseph Smith, an entire section of the magazine was devoted to Smith as the witness and testator. He wrote, “Joseph Smith’s mission was that of a WITNESS, a TESTATOR. He came in the ‘fulness of times,’ to re-establish God’s laws in the earth. Joseph’s dispensation is the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, when all things are to be gathered as one, never again to be taken from the earth.”[32] While Musser acknowledged Smith’s role as both witness and testator, the first public connection between Smith’s honorific title testator and attribution to godliness was not until the distribution of Michael, Our Father and Our God. Drawing the connection between Smith’s earthly role and the designation given the Holy Ghost, Musser offered his first public questioning of Smith’s role outside of temporality: “and why not Joseph Smith, who was the ‘Witness or Testator,’ ‘God the third’?”[33] This public question, the first time having appeared in a widely distributed publication, opened the theological possibility of Smith as the Holy Ghost for the entire fundamentalist movement. While he was not yet acting as the leader of the movement, Musser’s writings quickly became the voice of the growing community and carried an authoritative weight that was not found elsewhere in fundamentalism. With this public question, the doctrinal deification of Joseph Smith took shape.
Drawing on both the work of Richards and Little, as well as his own theological questioning in his pamphlets, Musser’s December 1940 issue of Truth marked a shift in the telling of Smith’s story. Whereas previous accounts recalled the First Vision, importance of priesthood restoration, and events leading up to the martyrdom, this issue responded to Smith’s curious comment, “Would to God, brethren, I would tell you who I am.” Again, drawing on Brigham Young’s sentiment that not all truths were revealed to all people, the magazine questions the great truth that Smith concealed from his Church. Responding to Richards and Little’s description of the Godhead, Musser wrote, “Who is this ‘Witness and Testator?’ None other than Joseph Smith. He alone occupies that sacred office. Even now—ninety-six years since his martyrdom—the Saints as a body are unable to comprehend the great truth; and movements are afloat to nullify some of the doctrines he established, and for which he died!”[34] While references in Woolley’s School of the Prophets abound, this moment marked the first widely circulated reference to Smith as the Holy Ghost in the fundamentalist movement. As an authoritative voice and the primary circulator of fundamentalist doctrine, Musser established Smith’s position as one of the gods as not a simple matter of speculation, but a central tenet of his faith.
While Musser’s public commentary on the Godhead evolved over time, most of his comments on the subject appeared in sermons given during meetings with members of the fundamentalist movement. During these meetings, members traveled across the state to hear from their leaders, first in homes and then in the shared Priesthood House, dedicated on August 9, 1942. This space, and the community it held, was significant for Musser, who argued that the institutional Church was not prepared for some doctrines. Rather, members of the Priesthood Council were the ones responsible for the maintenance and promulgation of higher laws, such as plural marriage and the lived practice of consecration. Musser referenced this idea in his work on Adam–God stating, “The doctrine, while sound, was too strong for mass reception. And so, with facts pertaining to creation.”[35] Rather than preached over the pulpit in LDS meetinghouses, which Musser argued would lead to the group being “hissed out” of the Tabernacle, Musser believed that the Priesthood Council was responsible for teaching the true nature of God.[36]
Musser’s articulation of potential LDS reaction to the doctrine not only positioned the Salt Lake Church as lacking in divine knowledge, it simultaneously positioned the Priesthood Council as holding special access to God. The distinction between the Church and the priesthood, with the priesthood functioning as the higher organizational structure, was an overarching theme of Musser’s writing.[37] Much like his writing on the preservation of plural marriage as a function of the priesthood, the theological development of Smith as the Holy Ghost linked the priesthood to both God and the earliest moments of the Church’s organization. For the minority Mormon movement seeking legitimization in a time of religious upheaval, the exaltation of Smith transformed the founder of the faith into a knowable deity who oversaw the truest expression of the faith.
It was during priesthood meetings that Musser made frequent reference to Smith as “the God of this dispensation,” referencing Smith’s role as the one who re-established God’s authority on the earth.[38] His first reference on February 23, 1941 argued against placing Smith in a more subordinate position than warranted, something Musser grew increasingly concerned about during his tenure in the Priesthood Council. Musser stated: “I want to protest with all the zeal and power that I have and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, against subordinating Joseph Smith, that great and glorious prophet. Joseph is a God, one of the trinity of this planet. Don’t you understand? His own people didn’t know that, for they would not have killed him had they known. He is a God in the trinity of this earth. He is going to wind up all things and will take his place with Adam our God.”[39] Unlike traditional theologies that afford God one instance of incarnation, through Jesus Christ, Musser created a worldview where godly embodiment was the rule that punctuated human existence. Rather than simply focus on a linear trajectory between mortality and godliness, Musser presented an intricate divine relationship where the gods participate in embodiment throughout the course of history.
In order to understand Smith’s role, Musser continued to draw from Richards and Little’s interpretation of the Godhead, specifically the idea that the members of the Godhead entered into a covenant prior to mortality with the understanding that they would become the gods of this world: “Joseph Smith was one of the three Gods that were appointed to come here on earth and to people this earth and to redeem it—God, the Father, the creator; God the Mediator, the Savior, the Redeemer; and God the Witness and the Testator. Before they came here upon earth, and in the presence of the great Elohim of this earth’s galaxy, they entered into a covenant which established them as the Gods, or the Trinity of this earth.”[40]
On that same year, on December 26, 1943, Musser further articulated the meeting between the Godhead to prepare for their mortal probations: “We know Joseph Smith as one member in the Godhead. He with His Father and elder brother, Jesus Christ, met before he came here in the mortal state, and met concerning their covenants with each other before they ever came here and were in their positions they assumed before ever they came here.”[41] Musser’s articulation of Smith’s prior knowledge of his divinity and future exaltation flipped the logics of apotheosis. Within Musser’s framework, Smith was not only a god in embryo, but a god embodied.
Early members of the Church speculated on the role of Smith after death, some attributing him a place in the final judgement. Most notably, Brigham Young taught that, as the head of this dispensation, Smith’s presence was essential for salvation: “no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith. From the day that the Priesthood was taken from the earth to the winding-up scene of all things, every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ are.”[42] Years later, Musser would articulate the same sentiment, arguing that Smith held an essential place in the salvation of human beings as a member of the Godhead. At a Priesthood Council meeting on December 26, 1943, Musser stated, “To me, Joseph Smith is my leader and God; he is not Adam, Michael; nor Jesus Christ; but I do not expect to pass into the presence of Jesus Christ, or my Father Adam, Michel, except when I am passed upon by Joseph Smith.”[43]
While not shared by the Church down the street from the Council’s Priesthood House, members of the Council appeared to readily accept the doctrine, recording it in their journals alongside other meeting notes. After one of Musser’s first sermons on the topic, Joseph Lyman Jessop recorded his notes from the Sunday School meeting: “Many notable things were said. Pres. Musser said ‘Joseph Smith is the third member of the Godhead of this earth.’ He held up the book of Doctrine and Covenants and said in substance, ‘Here are the revelations of the Lord to this dispensation. Anyone claiming leadership must be in accord with these revelations or he cannot be of God.’”[44] Whereas Woolley spoke of Smith as deity, Musser’s writings and sermons created tangible doctrines that solidified the nature of God for members of the fundamentalist movement. Taken together, Musser ended speculation and alternative possibilities for Smith’s posthumous existence. Much like early leaders within the LDS Church, Musser and his priesthood group routinized Smith into godliness.
Gods Above Gods Infinitely
In 1944, Musser ordained Rulon C. Allred as “Second Elder,” the title given to the man who would take his place in the priesthood succession after his passing. This ordination was not without controversy, as many of the Council did not agree with the ordination.[45] However, despite protest, Allred succeeded Musser and eventually became the president of the Priesthood Council. In this role, Allred oversaw the growth and expansion of the movement, as well as the building of a temple and the implementation of ordinances outside of the LDS Church. In addition, Allred incorporated the community into a church, acknowledging that the LDS Church no longer held authority following the lifting the priesthood restriction.[46] The church he incorporated, the Apostolic United Brethren, remains one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist churches in the nation. As the new leader of the contested fundamentalist movement, Allred remained committed to teaching and expanding on the doctrinal development of Woolleyite Mormonism. This included concretizing Smith’s place as the Holy Ghost within the fundamentalist movement turned church.
As leader, Allred encouraged his Mormon fundamentalists to retain the principles of the gospel and live lives worthy to return to God and attain their own exaltation. Like his predecessors, Allred advocated for sermons without notes and frequently served as the final speaker at church meetings. One such meeting occurred on October 6, 1974 and was devoted to the Holy Ghost. In his address, Allred sought to expand on Doctrine and Covenants 93, a subject that was discussed earlier in the Sunday School meeting. What made Allred’s doctrinal exposition particularly interesting is the way he both elaborated on the work of Musser and veered in new directions, arguing for a representational embodiment and not an embodied deity limited to one probationary period. Allred asserted the abundance that exists pertaining to the spirit of God and argued for a limitless nature of deity. He explained, “But it is so limitless that even the Gods in their various positions are eternally reaching out to its laws and its ordinances and its principles its powers, its dominions and is exaltations. Therefore, there are Gods above Gods infinity.”[47] One such deity, the Holy Ghost, was viewed as so infinite in power that Allred argued no person could fully comprehend the power in mortality.
Allred’s clarification conceptualized embodiment as a reason why the Holy Ghost does not remain a constant part of the believer’s life, “But the Holy Ghost as an individual, does not abide in us. It is the Spirit which emanates from the Father and the Son which abides in us.”[48] However, at the same time, Allred began developing a theology in which the offices of the Godhead are rotating and serve as representations of godliness in various dispensations: “Jehovah, in His supreme power, having passed through these things more than Michael, therefor directed Michael. Michael was the agent through which both Elohim and Jehovah acted. He fulfilled the office of the Holy Ghost, representing the Father and the Son to all of the things under His direction and His creation and organization. This being so, here you have an individual representing the power of the Holy Ghost in creation.”[49] Allred conceptualized his theology as the Holy Ghost “bearing of the responsibility of exaltation” within the world they presided.[50] The Holy Ghost is a messenger in a specific time and for a specific people. Within this framework, Joseph Smith acted as the Holy Ghost and served in this office, but did not necessarily retain that position as an eternal and static state. Whereas Musser conceived of Smith as embodied deity, Allred argued for Smith as an embodied representation of deity.
While the spirit of God is welcomed into the life of the believer through the confirmation ordinance, the office of the Holy Ghost remains a personage in Allred’s theology. At the same time, Allred complicates the matter through his theology of infinite gods above gods. To make sense of Smith’s place within the exalted sphere, Allred argued for multiple gods, some of which preside in eternity and some in temporality:
Joseph Smith in speaking of this said there were three Gods pertaining to the spiritual world, and there are three Gods pertaining to the temporal world. These three Gods were god the Father, and He is defined as Adam; God the Son, and He is defined as the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God; and God the Holy Ghost, who held the keys of the dispensation of the fulness of times. The Prophet Joseph Smith perfectly fit this office of the Holy Ghost in this mortal world, in that we are told repeatedly in ancient and modern scripture that there would be one servant of God who would be raised up who would reveal all things in the dispensation in the fulness of times.[51]
Allred’s theology pointed to the office of the Holy Ghost as the being by which all people in this mortal dispensation participated in godliness. For Allred, Smith was not the vehicle of exaltation itself, but that which represented it. Human beings are able to come in contact with godliness through the work of Joseph Smith, the witness and testator.
On January 13,1977, Allred offered another talk devoted to the Holy Ghost. This time, the meeting was a fireside and Allred accepted questions and responded based on his knowledge of the subject, claiming much of his information from Joseph Smith and Orson Pratt.[52] During this meeting, Allred continued his theological development of multiple trinitarian Godheads, arguing, “I cannot conclude anything else but that in the spiritual creation there were the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael. In the temporal creation there is the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost represented by the three distinct Beings, Adam, the Father, Jesus Christ the Son and the Redeemer, and Joseph the Prophet, the witness and testator who restored all things.”[53] Whereas Musser alluded to a spiritual trinity outside of temporality, Allred concretized the idea and developed it into a complex theology of multiple gods in both temporality and eternity with Smith as the final member of the temporal Godhead.
In the same sermon, Allred addressed the LDS Church and stated that, while acknowledging the Holy Ghost as a personage of spirit, he could not commit to name the personage. Allred continued, “I cannot construe it in any other light, that as far as the temporal creation of the world is concerned, we have the perfect representation of the Father, Adam, Jehovah, God among men, the Son, the Redeemer, and Joseph Smith the Prophet, the witness and testator of both the Father and the Son, who restored all things.”[54] In response to why Allred believed the way he did, he quoted Smith, saying, “They dare not take the assumption of the Prophet Joseph Smith, who said, ‘If I were to tell you who I am, there are those upon this stand who would seek to take my life. And there is no blasphemy that can be compared with it.’”[55] Decades after Woolley first sought to fill the void left by Smith through the theological development of embodied deity, Allred affirmed that Smith’s words gave his followers a clue to the divine quest for exaltation by placing himself squarely within the doctrine.
Conclusion
Early in its founding, Mormonism radically redefined the nature of deity by centering materiality and embodiment. Through his lectures on exaltation, Smith spoke to the Saints and affirmed that God had a mortal existence much like themselves. In turn, the Saints held within them the beginnings of godliness and through mortality positioned to become gods. For Smith, mortality was not only the mediator between the temporal and spiritual, but also the vehicle back to God. At the same time, Smith began articulating his own role in Mormon cosmology with statements that were left open to interpretation and allowed for wide speculation. Though Smith’s spirit was routinized shortly after his death and concretized by the LDS Church, the theology Smith developed and his own statements on embodiment allowed for a minority of Saints to conceptualize Smith as more than a prophet.
Through the sermons and writings of Woolleyite Mormonism, the late prophet was placed within his own theological developments. As this happened, the practices of writing and sermonizing brought forth a theological reality that remains uncontested for many Mormons who follow Woolley’s priesthood lineage. Through Woolley’s sermons, Smith attained exaltation and became one of the many gods that surround Mormon cosmology and a deity known by the inheritors of the faith. In a time of upheaval for polygamous Mormons, the writings and sermons of Joseph W. Musser transformed Smith into the embodied Holy Ghost who continues to work on behalf of a persecuted religious community. Through Rulon C. Allred, Smith became a representation of an unending universe of deities, which continues as a foundational tenet of Mormon fundamentalism. Woolleyite Mormonism offers an alternate interpretation of the late martyr that takes Smith’s own statements on his divine mission, radical doctrine of embodied deity, and eternal perspective of exaltation to theologically innovative conclusions. Through the work of fundamentalist leaders who spoke Smith’s exaltation into reality, Smith fulfilled this mission and became a god.
[1] The Edmunds–Tucker Act was passed by the Senate in January 1886. The Act disincorporated the Church, dissolved the corporation, and allowed for the federal government to confiscate Church property valued at more than $50,000. This monetary value put temples, the center of family formation and polygamous marriages, in jeopardy of confiscation.
[2] “Statements of Lorin C. Woolley and Daniel R. Bateman,” in Priesthood Items, 2nd edition, by J. W. Musser and J. L. Broadbent (n.p., 1933), 56.
[3] “Statements of Lorin C. Woolley and Daniel R. Bateman,” 56.
[4] “Statements of Lorin C. Woolley and Daniel R. Bateman,” 57.
[5] “Statements of Lorin C. Woolley and Daniel R. Bateman,” 57.
[6] “Statements of Lorin C. Woolley and Daniel R. Bateman,” 58.
[7] Christopher James Blythe, “‘Would to God Brethren, I Could Tell You Who I Am!’: Nineteenth-Century Mormonisms and the Apotheosis of Joseph Smith,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 18, no. 2 (2014): 16.
[8] Orson F. Whitney, The Life of Heber C. Kimball (Salt Lake City: The Kimball Family, 1888), 333.
[9] In their later writings, the men of the Priesthood Council articulated a theology of priesthood that placed their ordinations above the LDS Church. Holding higher priesthood enabled these men to participate in rituals and practices no longer taught within the institution. Central to their mission was the preservation of polygamy. See Craig L. Foster and Marianne T. Watson, American Polygamy: A History of Fundamentalist Mormon Faith (Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2019).
[10] Woolley School of the Prophets Meeting Minutes, transcribed and edited by Bryan Buchanan, 7, photocopies in author’s possession. The Woolley School of the Prophets began meeting on September 1, 1932 in the homes and offices of its members in Salt Lake City. During the meeting, the men received the sacrament using bread and wine, participated in foot washing, and expounded on doctrine.
[11] “Praise to the Man,” Hymns, no. 27.
[12]“Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by William Clayton,” 11, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[13] Brigham Young, Apr. 9, 1852, Journal of Discourses, 1:46. Beginning in 1852, Brigham Young taught that Michael descended to earth and became a mortal, Adam. In mortality, Adam served his God faithfully and attained exaltation at the end of his life. In his exalted status, Adam is the God of this world. Young’s discourse on the nature of God outlined the nature of God and offered the Saints and tangible example of Smith’s exaltation doctrine.
[14] Doctrine and Covenants 128:20.
[15] Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball, 333.
[16] Many Mormon fundamentalists teach that God gives “further light and knowledge” to people as they are prepared to receive it. Gary Barnes, an independent fundamentalist, wrote extensively on this in his pamphlet, Further Light Further Light and Knowledge: Understanding the Mysteries of the Kingdom. The pamphlet outlines the journey of Adam and Eve toward God and the necessity of receiving further light and knowledge through the acquisition of priesthood keys. He argues that all human beings must follow the same journey as Adam and Eve, receiving further light and knowledge, in order to return to God. See also Janet Bennion, Polygamy in Primetime: Media, Gender, and Politics in Mormon Fundamentalism (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2011).
[17] Brigham Young, Aug. 1831, Journal of Discourses, 3:333.
[18] Musser, Book of Remembrances, 11.
[19] Brigham Young, Oct. 9, 1859, Journal of Discourses, 7:289.
[20] Truth was a fundamentalist periodical that ran from 1935 until 1956. Each issue contained excerpts from former Church leaders, community updates (including commentary on government raids), and a monthly editorial by Musser on contemporary topics. From its inception, Musser proclaimed the magazine as centrally concerned with “the fundamentals governing man’s existence.” Truth 1, no. 1 (1935): 1.
[21] Truth 3, no. 10 (Mar. 1938): 173.
[22] “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by Times and Seasons,” 614, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[23] Joseph White Musser, “Preface to the 3rd Edition,” Michael, Our Father and Our God: The Mormon Conception of Deity as Taught by Joseph Smith, Brigham Yung, John Taylor and their Associates in the Priesthood, 4th ed. (Salt Lake City: Truth Publishing Co.).
[24] Brigham Young, Apr. 9, 1852, Journal of Discourses, 1:46. Musser argues that upon eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam’s body filled with blood and became mortal. This reflects the work of Benjamin E. Park, who wrote about Joseph Smith’s early conception of blood as the “‘corrupting’ factor associated with an earthly body.” Benjamin E. Park, “Salvation through a Tabernacle: Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 43, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 1–44.
[25] Musser, Michael, Our Father and Our God, 109.
[26] Musser, Michael, Our Father and Our God, 85.
[27] Musser argued that Elohim is the name given to Adam’s God. Within this narrative, Adam and Eve were created on another earth governed by Elohim. In general, Musser referred to the Adam and Eve account as a “stork story” (Michael, Our Father and Our God, 100). Like parents teaching their children about storks delivering babies, Musser argues that Moses was inspired to write the account of Adam formed out of dust and Eve from Adam’s rib as a way of explaining the origins of humanity in a way that met “the mental capacities of his day” (Michael, Our Father and Our God, 100).
[28] Despite his early comments equating Jesus with Jehovah, similar to the teachings of the LDS Church, Musser’s later sermons and writings reflect a shift toward more traditional fundamentalist teachings. In a sermon given on July 23, 1941 in the home of Charles F. Zitting, Musser stated, “Our Brother, Jesus Christ, loves us and He is the Lord of this earth at the present time; He is not the Jehovah at the present time. He is the one who will be the Jehovah when the earth is sanctified.” The Sermons of Joseph W. Musser, 1940–1945, edited by Nathan and Bonnie Taylor, vols. 1–2, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Messenger Publications, 2008), 61.
[29] Brigham Young, Apr. 9, 1852, Journal of Discourses, 1:50.
[30] Musser, Michael, Our Father and Our God, 4.
[31] A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel, second edition, compiled by Franklin D. Richards and Elder James A. Little (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1884), 1108.
[32] “JOSEPH SMITH, The Witness and Testator,” Truth 3, no. 7 (Dec. 1940): 106.
[33] “JOSEPH SMITH, The Witness and Testator,” 112.
[34] Truth 6, no. 7 (Dec. 1940): 157.
[35] Musser, Michael, Our Father and Our God, 79.
[36] “December 24, 1944,” in Sermons of Joseph W. Musser, 251.
[37] See Joseph W. Musser, A Priesthood Issue (1948).
[38] “June 28, 1942,” in Sermons of Joseph W. Musser, 109.
[39] “February 23, 1941,” in Sermons of Joseph W. Musser, 40.
[40] March 28, 1943, in Sermons of Joseph W. Musser, 157.
[41] Sermons of Joseph W. Musser, 212.
[42] Brigham Young, Oct. 9, 1859, Journal of Discourses, 7:289.
[43] “December 26, 1943,” in Sermons of Joseph W. Musser, 213.
[44] December 20, 1936, in Diary of Joseph Lyman Jessop, Volume 2 (1934–1945), 108.
[45] In his recollections of the events, Joseph Lyman Jessop, a member of the fundamentalist movement under Musser, recalled “At this service Bro. Jos. W Musser spoke and told the people of a revelation calling Bro. Rulon C. Allred to the Council of Priesthood. They (the Council) would not accept this and would not sustain him not help him lay hands and set Rulon apart to that office.” (May 6, 1951, in Diary of Joseph Lyman Jessop, Volume 3 [1945–1954], 140.) The following year, Lyman recalled Musser instructing the Saints that they were no longer required to attend meetings with the men who did not sustain Allred. This division constituted the largest split in the fundamentalist movement and the eventual formations of the largest fundamentalist groups in the United States.
[46] Allred, like many fundamentalists, argued that the government was primarily behind the lifting of the priesthood and temple ban. In addition to government pressure, Allred argued that the devil was also responsible for the pressure on the Church to “give up every principle as a Christian faith that would brand them as the Church of God.” For Allred, this included the priesthood and temple ban. “The Position of the Church Concerning Celestial Marriage and the Negro Holding the Priesthood,” in Selected Discourses and Excerpts from Talks by Rulon C. Allred, vol. 1, 1st ed. (Hamilton, Mont.: Bitterroot Publishing Company, 1981), 3.
[47] “6 October 1974. Place unknown. THE HOLY GHOST,” in Selected Discourses and Excerpts from Talks by Rulon C. Allred, 314.
[48] “6 October 1974,” 314.
[49] “6 October 1974,” 314.
[50] “6 October 1974,” 314.
[51] “6 October 1974,” 314, emphasis added.
[52] “13 January 1977. Fireside. Salt Lake City, Utah. THE HOLY GHOST,” in Selected Discourses and Excerpts from Talks by Rulon C. Allred, vol. 2, 1st ed. (Hamilton, Mont.: The Bitterroot Publishing Company, 1981), 317.
[53] “13 January 1977,” 318.
[54] “13 January 1977,” 318.
[55] “13 January 1977,” 318.
[post_title] => Praise to the Man: The Development of Joseph Smith Deification in Woolleyite Mormonism, 1929–1977 [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 54.3 (Fall 2021): 41–65However, the 1886 Revelation and subsequent statement also raised their own doctrinal questions that were continually developed through the lineage that became Woolleyite Mormonism. Namely, why was the resurrected Joseph Smith present alongside Jesus Christ at the meeting with John Taylor? [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => praise-to-the-man-the-development-of-joseph-smith-deification-in-woolleyite-mormonism-1929-1977 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:44:23 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:44:23 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=28552 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Secular Binary of Joseph Smith’s Translations
Michael Hubbard MacKay
Dialogue 54.3 (Fall 2021): 1–40
The debate about Joseph Smith’s translations have primarily assumed that the translation was commensurable and focuses upon theories of authorial involvement of Joseph Smith.
By 1828, Joseph Smith had carefully created copies and an “alphabet” of the characters on the gold plates to take to scholars to “git them translated.”[1] At this early stage it is easy to see him feeling around to understand his boundaries and to position himself to translate.[2] But what did it mean to translate in a secular world? According to Joseph, he sent the list of characters and a small sample of his own translation with his friend and benefactor Martin Harris to have them examined and academically translated.[3] In other words, Joseph almost immediately faced the problem of finding equivalent characters, symbols, and language to represent revelation from God. He ingenuously sent the characters and a piece of his own translation to linguists to identify a translation equivalency from the characters to English.[4]
By looking for someone to “git them translated,” Joseph opened himself up to an academic translation of the gold plates. In fact, the list of characters that he sent with Harris presented the possibility that he may have even obtained a one-to-one translation in an alphabetic format. One can only imagine Joseph Smith with a “reformed Egyptian” lexicon provided by Samuel Mitchell or Charles Anthon, sorting through the characters on the gold plates. Nonetheless, once Martin Harris returned without an academic translation of the characters, Joseph did not pursue a linguist translation or a one-to-one translation of the characters. He made a conscious decision to distance himself from a linguistic translation and accepted that the kind of translation he would produce was not done by finding equivalence between “reformed Egyptian” and English.[5] Joseph ignored all precision for equivalence in the translation by assuming that the words revealed to him constituted a translation of the characters. In other words, Joseph Smith was not in a position to know for himself whether the translation was correct; he had to trust that God was delivering the correct translation to him.
This episode highlights a central issue in the analysis of Joseph Smith’s translation projects and positions him squarely within the secular age. Were his translations based on a verifiable correspondence of symbols to English words, or did the process require a disconnected metaphysics that was incommensurable to the original symbols? The debate about Joseph Smith’s translations have primarily assumed that the translation was commensurable and focuses upon theories of authorial involvement of Joseph Smith. Scholars place their theories of translation on a spectrum in which God was completely responsible for the translation on one end and Joseph Smith was completely responsible on the other end. This is usually paralleled with another spectrum for how he translated, ranging from reading God’s translation from a seer stone to postmodern critiques about discourse.[6] With the intention of both contributing to and challenging these parallel spectrums of thought, this article will demonstrate Joseph’s realization of the incommensurability of his own translations by looking at his attempts to produce a linguistic translation. It does this by comparing three seemingly disparate translation projects that have rarely been associated together: the Book of Mormon “caractors” document (1829), the Pure Language Documents (1833/35), and the Kirtland Egyptian Alphabet (1835). Running through this examination, it will explore the tension between commensurability and incommensurability of translation.
This paper demonstrates continuity in Joseph Smith’s translation projects by tracking translation and commensurability between 1828 and 1835, giving special emphasis on “reformed Egyptian” characters and their possible English translation. These documents seem to be examples of a translation process that explicitly tried to assign a specific English meaning to a specific character from the mysterious languages from which Smith was translating. Yet, this paper challenges the theory that Joseph Smith was engaged in translation commensurability, i.e., the idea that there is a direct correspondence between two languages. Rather, this paper demonstrates that Smith’s translation projects, even in his most mechanical examples, relied on translation underdetermination, which refers both to the fact that his translations were not precise one-to-one linguistic translations and the broader idea that language offers multiple meanings and possible interpretations. It will illustrate Joseph’s failure to provide a commensurable translation of Egyptian characters and his own acceptance of an incommensurable translation.
Linguists have made it clear that perfect equivalency in translation is impossible, but philosophers of science go even further to demonstrate that our evidence at any given point is underdetermined, or insufficient in determining what beliefs we should hold about nature. Provoking the demise of twentieth-century logical positivism, Willard Van Orman Quine’s theory of the indeterminacy of translation argued that there could be multiple, equally correct translations of one word.[7] Reflecting the problem of translating, Quine skeptically challenged whether identifying synonyms was possible, questioning even whether an idea in one’s head was not a theoretical translation in the first place that needed justification, not just symbolic representation. Even native speakers misunderstand given the complex association with the language and various depths of expression and cultural meaning.[8] Joseph Smith expressed his own sense of underdetermination in his translations, as well as in his revelations. Such a close study of what he thought he was doing can reshape the current debates about his translations by focusing on the role that revelation and religious experience played in them.
This article will examine the tension present within Joseph Smith’s translations between the acceptance of an incommensurable translation and his attempts to find a commensurable translation. This binary is explored in juxtaposition with religion and secularism. The tension illustrates competing pulls between “religious” experience as the mediator of truth and a “common sense” appeal to verifiable secular knowledge.[9] In antebellum America, the competition between religious and secular knowledge shaped the quest for “true religion.”[10] Historian John Modern argues that this secular impulse in the period “conditioned not only particular understandings of the religious but also the environment in which these understandings became matters of common sense.”[11] In this view, the question of a religious and a secular knowledge are not in opposition to one another, but so intimately bound together as to shape and define the contours of each. This tension was the “connective tissue” in Joseph Smith’s world that made true religion, as Modern describes it.[12] In fact the formation of this tension and the creation of this relationship convinced Joseph Smith and his followers that they were religious in a secular world.[13] Like the brilliant research of Tomoko Masuzawa in which she showed how secularism made religion universal, the incommensurability of translation made Joseph Smith’s translations legitimate, but only through that binary.
The Book of Mormon
Translation was a process of change, but in Joseph Smith’s experience that change was not demonstrably a process of equivalent change, like a one-to-one translation of words. In the case of the Book of Mormon, for example, even claiming that there was a commensurable change between languages fails to demonstrate how they would know that. David Whitmer was one of the few witnesses of the translation that tried to make Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon commensurable with the original characters. He apparently told a reporter that “the graven characters would appear in succession to the seer, and directly under the character, when viewed through the glasses, would be the translation in English.”[14] Even if David Whitmer’s story of the translation process were true, in which words and equivalent characters appeared on Joseph’s seer stones, he still could not experience commensurability without knowing “reformed Egyptian.” This leaves Smith within a scenario in which he could not personally compare the gold plates with the English translation of the Book of Mormon. He experienced the process but he did not know through personal experience that it was correct or whether its modern translation represented a historical ontology or a nineteenth-century ontology. He simply could not know.
As early as 1829, the text of the Book of Mormon is self-aware of its incommensurability in translation. It states: “But the Lord knoweth the things which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language; and because that none other people knoweth our language, therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof” (Mormon 9:34). Mormon is self-aware of the problem of translation, since he is worried about his own ability to translate the records into “reformed Egyptian” and he is especially cognizant of the problem of future peoples being able to translate his translations and abridgements. Even reading words from a seer stone, if this is considered a petri dish for perfect transmission, still has the transformation required of the reader, not to mention the reality of errors of human cognition and inevitable reassessment of the canonical text. Just think of the issue of ontological assumptions being made by the producer of the text and the ontological assumptions being made by the reader, especially if they are separated by thousands of years and culturally at odds with each other.[15] The complexity of identity and cognition that come before speech inevitably problematize the outcome of Joseph Smith reading words from a seer stone, let alone translating cultural and ontologically oriented ideas.
The “caractors” document illustrates the point. Though there was a clear disconnect between the characters on the gold plates and the text in the Book of Mormon, Joseph still valued the copies of the characters that remained. Just because he could not assess the commensurability of the translation did not necessarily mean that he did not think it was commensurable. The interest in this kind of evidence for his translation and its relationship with the incommensurability of his translations eventually created a chain of interest in ancient characters from the Book of Mormon “Egyptian” to the book of Abraham “Egyptian.” There are several documented examples from 1828 to 1835 of Joseph identifying this tension. Below we will examine the examples of Joseph Smith attempting to translate Egyptian characters. In fact, even the Pure Language Documents are eventually connected with Joseph Smith’s most concerted efforts to verify or connect his translations back to an ancient language, or at least ancient characters.
Early Revelations
The secular tension present in Smith’s translations is also present in experiences within the leadership too. An important example is found in his history, in which Joseph noted that in November 1831, when they were compiling the early revelations that would eventually be a part of the Doctrine and Covenants, they had “some conversation . . . concerning revelations and language.”[16] Joseph’s revelation at the conference declared that through the spirit and a kind of communion with God, he produced the revelations, in which God declared that his servants were given this revelation “in their weakness after the manner of their language.”[17] Admitting the gap between religious experience and what his servants declared created space for others to experience the divine and to know that Joseph Smith’s revelations were from God. This was similar to the idea that the text led back to enthusiastic experience. The text of the revelation was connected to an experience of the divine. Joseph’s revelation promised:
I say unto you that it is your privilege & a promise I give unto you that have been ordained unto the ministry that in as much as ye strip yourselves from Jealesies & fears & humble yourselves before me for ye are not sufficiently humble the veil shall not be wrent & you shall see me & know that I am not with the carnal neither natural but with the spiritual for no man hath seen God at any time in the flesh but by the Spirit of God neither can any natural man abide the presence of God neither after the carnal mind ye are not to able to abide the presence of God now neither the ministering of Angels wherefore continue in patience untill ye are perfected let not your minds turn back & when ye are worthy in mine own due time ye shall see & know that which was confirmed <upon you> by the hands of my Ser[v]ant Joseph.[18]
Accepting the fact that his language was flawed, Joseph was asking the elders at the conference to have this experience and testify that his revelations were from God, in spite of his inability to communicate as clearly as God.
Some of the elders questioned the verity of Joseph’s revelations because of his linguistic expressions. Joseph challenged them to write a revelation themselves that would be as efficacious as the revelations that he had produced. William E. McLellin, who was the primary instigator, attempted to “write a commandment like unto one of the least of the Lord’s, but failed.” All of the elders apparently watched eagerly as McLellin made a “vain attempt of man to imitate the language of Jesus Christ.” This spectacle demonstrates the secular binaries (foundationally emerging from the binary of religion and secularism) shaping early Mormonism, never letting the divine voice stand without its companion, the secular language of humankind.[19] Writing about his prophetic role to produce revelation, Joseph wrote that “it was an awful responsibility to write in the name of the Lord.”[20]
Chart 1: Transformation/Translation Process
This builds a bridge between his translations and his revelations that we will need cross back and forth on, while focusing on translation. Before turning to another example, it’s worth noting that translation can extend beyond just intra-language translation, such as the translation between religious experience and language. George Steiner explains that “translation is one in which a message from a source-language passes into a receptor language via a transformational process,” but his point lies within the fact that “the same model . . . is operative within a single language.”[21] (See Chart 1.) On one level, Joseph Smith was translating time in one language, describing the past and even prophesying the future, all in English. But on another level of translation, he was operating within one language, translating his experience. Because his translations did not include a personal transformation between two languages, it is difficult to completely untangle his translations from his revelations. As the next example will show, they were not historically separate either.
McLellin’s challenge was neither the first time nor the last time Joseph Smith faced the problem of the indeterminacy of language with his colleagues. This all became more of a reality when he and Sidney Rigdon faced the problem of describing their vision (D&C 76) in early 1832. They eventually declared:
But great and marvelous are the works of the Lord, and the mysteries of his kingdom which he showed unto us, which surpass all understanding in glory, and in might, and in dominion; Which he commanded us we should not write while we were yet in the Spirit, and are not lawful for man to utter; Neither is man capable to make them known, for they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him; To whom he grants this privilege of seeing and knowing for themselves. That through the power and manifestation of the Spirit, while in the flesh, they may be able to bear his presence in the world of glory. (D&C 76:114–18)
The Spirit was necessary to mediate the communication precisely because of the difficulty that language itself posed.
Apparently, visions were particularly difficult to translate into effective words. Yet, Joseph had produced examples of how past prophets had described their visions in some of his other revelations and translations. In fact, the Book of Mormon includes examples of visions similar to Joseph Smith’s vision.[22] (See Chart 2.) Nephi explains that John’s vision in the New Testament (Revelation) was also a vision like unto his own (“all-seeing,” panoptic, or panoramic vision). The Book of Mormon explained that both Nephi and John had “seen all things” in vision, and Nephi compared what John would write to know what he should write down about his vision.[23] They both had visions and both stayed true to their perspective of their visions.
Nephi’s perception of a shared experience with John made their experiences comparable, but their individual perspectives also mattered and determined how they wrote about the vision. Like Nephi, Joseph Smith also compared his vision (D&C 76) with John’s vision.[24] Having described a kind archetypical (panoptic) vision in the Book of Mormon and now having experienced his own vision, he turned to these other authors/prophets (such as John) to know how to write about his incommensurable vision. When he finally writes D&C 76, he explains that God commanded him and Rigdon to write the revelation, but he worries that he will not be able to communicate what he saw in writing. Eventually, he explains in D&C 76 that “Neither is man capable to make them [the experiences in the vision] known.” Language was his problem, not transcendence or knowledge, demonstrating the overarching tension of the secular binary.[25]
Chart 2: All Seeing Vision Comparison as an Archetype
Joseph’s comparison demonstrates his acceptance of the incommensurability of language. Nephi claimed that John had the same vision, and then Joseph used John’s description of his vision (Revelation) to undergird his own interpretation and perspective about his vision. Having examined the text of Revelation carefully, Joseph asked questions about the text, then God would reveal the answer with the meaning and interpretation (D&C 77). His revelation (D&C 77) about John’s vision was written down just after he had seen his own vision. This revelation suggests that he recognized his inability to write about his vision, but it also suggests that his perspective mattered. D&C 77 is an example of how he could clearly address these visionary experiences in his own context and interpretation, after accepting the incommensurability of language.[26]
This overlap between translation and revelation became even more distinct within this project to translate his vision. In fact, his experience receiving D&C 77 led Joseph to ask additional questions about John’s vision. Instead of looking for a word for translation or an acceptable interpretation, he wanted to ask ontological questions about the nature of God. In the same format as D&C 77 (a series of questions posed from the text of Revelation followed by their respective answers), he asked God what the name of God was, provoked from the text of Revelation (3:12). The title of the revelation that he received read “First Question What is the name of God as taught in the pure Language.” This was unlike D&C 77 in the fact that it was not asking for an interpretation. It was asking for a translation in “the pure language,” or in a language that was not incommensurable. That meant that God’s name could not be delivered to him in English, or Egyptian, or Hebrew. Translation into these languages would all be incommensurable, but he seemed to be asking for something more than that. He seemed to be asking for something even more than the primordial language of Adam. He was asking to eliminate the religion and secularism binary to just have religion, which would prove to be difficult, securing him in a kind of prison.
Pure Language Document(s)
Joseph Smith was aware of the problem of translatability since his own translations contemplated a time when there was no need for translation. The book of Moses, which was written within the first year after he established the Church of Christ, expressed similar concerns with the incommensurability of translation. It establishes a timeframe in the beginning of the world when there was only one language, while also claiming that it was “a language which was pure and undefiled” or the language of Adam (Moses 6:5–6). This represents a moment of pure communication, while still finding itself under the strong arm of ontological relativity and the realization that there is still a kind of translation in the movement from prelinguistic cognition and linguistic expressions. Then the book of Moses introduces the reality of translatability within its own pages by describing Enoch trying to preserve Adam’s language amid the multiplication of languages. Even though ontological relativity played a role from the beginning of this narrative, translatability is a central concern, even a central epistemology, for Joseph Smith’s scripture at the earliest stages of his ministry and reemerging in the spring of 1832.
The “Sample of Pure Language” was not just evidence of Joseph Smith’s musings about translation—it represented an important element in his epistemology. First of all, it emerged within the context of creating a framework to transform Joseph Smith’s panoptic vision (D&C 76) into English. Second, it imagined the possibility of a prelinguistic linguistics, in which there was a time when there was a single “pure language.” Scholars have generally associated the “pure language” with the language of Adam, or the “undefiled” language described in Moses 6:5–6, or as the Joseph Smith Papers has associated it with the Jaredites and the confounding of languages.[27] (See Chart 3.) Nonetheless, the “pure language” could have just as easily represented a language before Adam’s language, which was the first corrupted language. Finally, this document is revelation about translation. Though it was not published in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, it was included within the manuscript version of Smith’s revelations. Even over time, it was not forgotten though it was not broadly available. Orson Pratt preached about the revelation in 1855, explaining that “there is one revelation that this people are not generally acquainted with . . . it has never been published, but probably will be in the Church History.”[28] This revelation demonstrates the dilemma of receiving “pure” communication and the inevitable incommensurability of translation. What Joseph was doing here has been debated for decades and few have agreed upon its purpose.
One thing that is clear is that this revelation marks Joseph Smith’s cognizance of the incommensurability of language, which reveals the secular binary. The idea of it being a “sample” suggests that the content itself was not its only purpose. Answering the question of what God’s name is was clearly important, but this document suggests that it is a sample of an overarching question that was being asked. The question of language and its nature was a central feature of this document. Joseph was not only interested in theological answers; he was interested in epistemology and communication. He chased these ideas throughout his ministry until he died. The very idea of evoking an original language that was “pure” is an explicit acceptance of the incommensurability of language and translation. Change, or translation, was not a real possibility. Returning to the original language was the most effective way to access the pure knowledge that he sought. Yet, even in this document, the answer is still in English.
Chart 3: Sample of Pure Language
Joseph never forgets the fact that what has been revealed to him still has to be delivered in English and he keeps exploring this idea through the Pure Language Document. This is demonstrated through a few copies of the document. Perhaps the most telling and interesting version of the document was written in the spring of 1835 as part of a letter written by W. W. Phelps to his wife. His letter included a copy of the Pure Language Document, but combined it with characters that Joseph had produced as examples of the characters on the gold plates. Phelps borrowed six characters from the Book of Mormon characters documents and lined them up with the six expressions made in the Pure Language Document (see Comparison #1). Lined up next to the characters are six phonetic sounds, followed by a row of English/pseudo-Hebrew transliteration terms taken primarily from the Pure Language Document. Finally, Phelps aligned the six rows with what seems to be the meaning (also drawn from the Pure Language Document) of the six characters.[29] (See Chart 4.)
This is a comparison between The Caractors Document and Phelps’s 1835 letter. Four of the six characters in the Phelps letter have similar counterparts in the Caractors Document. There are multiple documents created by Joseph Smith that were like the Caractors Document that these may have been copied from.
Chart 4: W. W. Phelps Pure Language Chart, 1835
Phelps’s letter appears to be a one-to-one translation of six characters from the gold plates. His letter is the first known document to express commensurability between the characters and an English expression of the characters. Before Phelps’s chart, there was nothing. Even more remarkable is the fact that Phelps used the Book of Mormon characters, but instead of identifying a word or phrase from the Book of Mormon, he associated their meaning with the revelation that was provided in the Pure Language Document.
However, there is no extant document trying to connect the translation of the “caractors” with any specific passage in the Book of Mormon. The concepts of God, son of God, humankind, and angels are used in the Book of Mormon but never the term “ahman,” nor is the ontology expressed in the Pure Language Document found within its pages. Nonetheless, “ahman” becomes an important concept in the Doctrine and Covenants, especially in its association with D&C 78 and “Adam-ondi-ahman,” a place where Christ would return as part of the Second Coming.[30] This is strange, but it does demonstrate their efforts to identify commensurability between characters and revealed text.
There is another document that also tries to identify commensurability in a similar way. Oliver Cowdery made some notes that also point toward a kind of one-to-one translation of the characters from the Book of Mormon. Having edited this document for the Joseph Smith Papers, I can say it’s difficult to date its production with any accuracy and it was relegated to the appendix of Documents Volume 1. Nonetheless, the first part of his notes includes a verse from the book of Jacob labeled “English,” followed by an indecipherable phrase labeled “Hebrew.” Then the second part includes “Book of Mormon characters” presumably with their translation into English above (see “Written and Kept for Profit and Learning” below). Assuming this is produced at the same time, it demonstrates their efforts to make translation commensurable and binary.
The Phelps letter includes six characters that were also included in the Egyptian Alphabet. This overlap demonstrates continuity and influence from the Pure Language Document (referenced in the Phelps letter) to the Egyptian Alphabet. The definitions represent a series of different sounds and meanings, but still provide an expansion of a root sound or definition (like “beth” or “ahman”) into five degrees of ministry.
What was happening here is unclear, but the Cowdery document demonstrates their efforts to develop a correspondence translation between the Book of Mormon and the “caractors.” However, they fall short in two distinct ways. First, they are not connected to any specific passage and indeed even represent ideas and terms that are not in the Book of Mormon at all (for example, the phrase “the interpreters of language”). Second, they still don’t know the original language in order to develop a corresponding translation (interestingly, within months they begin studying Hebrew). They rely on revelation to make their translations, but not on a verifiable translation process. Because of this, even the most mechanical and minor efforts to show a correspondence of any kind, whether tight or loose, between the English text of the Book of Mormon and the mysterious script of “reformed Egyptian” still do not provide any evidence of a correspondence theory of translation. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t create a binary tension.
The Kirtland Egyptian Alphabets
The Phelps letter led to further attempts to create a kind of correspondence translation of the Book of Mormon and the gold plate characters. In the summer of 1835, the three individuals most interested in this work on translation and the search for a pure language over the previous eight years took another try at it. The Egyptian “caractors” copied from the gold plates in 1828 and Pure Language Document that Joseph Smith began in early 1828 and in 1832 have always been considered separately from the first alphabet of Egyptian characters produced in the summer of 1835. Yet, this research shows that they started that summer by examining the Egyptian from the gold plates, not the papyri. This can be demonstrated through the “Egyptian Alphabet” documents that have been assumed to have come from the papyri. Oliver Cowdery, W. W. Phelps, and Joseph Smith each worked on three separate alphabet documents, though they were copies of each other with a few idiosyncratic changes, collectively known as the “Egyptian Alphabet”; it should be relabeled the “Combined Gold Plates Egyptian and Papyri Egyptian Alphabet,” though I will continue to call it the “Egyptian Alphabet.”
This proposed title change is important. These alphabets shared a similar format and organization with Phelps’s chart including Book of Mormon characters, phonetics, transliteration, and meanings.[31] Further connecting them, some characters from the Book of Mormon “caractors” document ended up in their alphabets just like they ended up in Phelps’s letter on pure language. Some of the Egyptian characters in the alphabet documents have exact matches to the characters associated with the gold plates in 1828 (to my knowledge, the list below is the first time this comparative list has been identified in print or otherwise). Curiously, Oliver Cowdery’s edition of the Egyptian Alphabet shows more signs of being associated with the earlier Book of Mormon characters project. Cowdery’s alphabet appears to be the original or first of the three alphabet documents. Not only do the characters match many of the extant samples of Book of Mormon characters, but Cowdery also frames his alphabet like John Whitmer did for the Book of Mormon “caractors” document by calling the symbols “characters,” while Phelps and Smith called them “Egyptian.” This seems to suggest a relationship between the 1828 alphabet “caractors” project and the 1835 Egyptian Alphabet project.[32] (See Chart 5.)
Chart 5: Comparing Documents Associated with Reformed Egyptian Characters
The project that had just begun that summer to develop an Egyptian alphabet experienced an unexpected boost when the Saints came into contact with some genuine Egyptian materials. In July 1835, Joseph Smith and some helpful financiers purchased several scrolls of Egyptian papyri. Since Joseph Smith had already translated the gold plates, which were in “reformed Egyptian,” the papyri became all the more intriguing and a great way to extend their study of language. After recently returning to studying the Book of Mormon’s “reformed Egyptian,” the arrival of the mummies and papyri in Kirtland must not have seemed like a coincidence. It’s clear that Cowdery, Phelps, and Joseph were not finished with the alphabet; once the papyri arrived, Joseph continued by adding characters from the papyri to the list of Book of Mormon Egyptian. The last page of all three copies of the alphabet show the explicit shift from gold plates characters to characters taken from the newly purchased papyri. Though they stopped abruptly after including only a handful of characters from the papyri, the unfinished Kirtland Egyptian Alphabet was then a compilation of four different documents: gold plate “reformed Egyptian” characters (1828), the Pure Language Document (1833), Phelps’s letter (1835), and finally, at the end of the Alphabet, the characters from the papyri (procured in July 1835).[33] (See Chart 6.)
Chart 6
This chart demonstrates that the Egyptian Alphabet is constructed of two different sets of characters. The first set is demonstrably not from the Egyptian papyri, since six of the characters in the first set match the shape and order of six of the characters used in the Phelps letter. They are not taken from the Egyptian papyri because the Phelps letter was written before they purchased it; they also do not match any of the extant papyri. The first set resembles and occasionally matches the characters from the Book of Mormon “caractors” document, but there were multiple Book of Mormon characters documents and the “caractors” copy was likely not the primary document they used to compile the list (though there are still several exact matches with the characters from “caractors”). Cowdery wrote in 1835 that when the Egyptian papyri first arrived, they compared them to “a number of characters . . . copied from the plates.” The second set of characters does exactly what Cowdery said that it did: it compared the Book of Mormon character to the papyri characters. They copied directly from the Egyptian papyri fragment that became Facsimile 1 in the Pearl of Great Price (Fragment of Book of Breathing for Horos). The original has three columns of Egyptian characters that they copied directly from.
Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet and the Book of Abraham
After producing the Egyptian Alphabet, they turned to producing a “Grammar and Alphabet.” They continued to examine characters from the papyri and showed sustained interest in Book of Mormon characters. This new extension of the project had “antecedents in the earlier Egyptian Alphabet documents, all of which are arranged in a similar fashion,” leading back to the Phelps letter.[34] They continued to work through the same methodological dilemma of incommensurability. The “grammar” demonstrated a system in which each line of characters could be deepened by degrees (the Pure Language Document reflects a similar kind of five-part meaning). It explained that any given symbol (say a character, like an “l”) has five parts of speech that can be multiplied five times if a line is placed above the character. The “Grammar” document explains: “The character alone has 5 parts of speech: increase by one straight line thus 5 X 5 is 25 by 2 horizontal lines thus 25 X 5 = 125; and by 3 horizontal lines thus: —125 X 5 = 625.” As a general system, the possibilities of translation multiply quickly, deepening with each line or character.[35] In fact, one character in Egyptian can extend to an entire paragraph in an English definition.
When Smith, Phelps, and Cowdery addressed the fifth or final degree, a single character is lined up with an entire pericope of the text of the book of Abraham.[36] This may actually be a representation for how God’s revealed word was deeper and more profound than the surface-level definitions of the first degree. Brian Hauglid has demonstrated that some of the Egyptian characters and their associated English definitions in the “Grammar” end up in the earliest manuscripts of the book of Abraham. In those manuscripts, there is a single Egyptian character that is lined up with an entire paragraph of English. This is not a definition of a word that can be extended in its explanation like a dictionary. Something else is going on besides a commensurable translation of an Egyptian character into an English word or phrase. One Egyptian character represents a paragraph of English prose, followed by a connected paragraph of English prose that is associated with another Egyptian character. What’s most important for the argument here about the secular binary is that revealed text from the book of Abraham is being associated with actual Egyptian characters. Whether or not the text of the book of Abraham is revelation or simply derivative of the Egyptian or the “Grammar and Alphabet,” it’s still clear that revelatory translation and secular translation created a binary that represented the translation.
What could be more incommensurable? The degree system in the “Grammar” distances the characters from a one-to-one translation and adds a metaphysical component of different ranges of meaning contained within a single character. A character may refer to a single word or an entire paragraph of English. At one point they start with the fifth-degree translation and work backwards as if they know the outcome and are trying to attach the English to an Egyptian character.[37] This leads to the fact that what seems (at first glance) to be a kind of one-to-one translation is not what it appears to be. In fact, it looks like Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon. He has the characters from the gold plates and a revelatory English text but no possible way to tell if they are commensurable. He nonetheless sees them as commensurable, as would eventually be demonstrated through the publication of the book of Abraham that included a precursor claiming that it was a translation of the papyri.
Modern translators can demonstrate that Smith, Cowdery, and Phelps did not know Egyptian, making their efforts in the production of the Egyptian Alphabet, the “Grammar,” and the book of Abraham an attempt to create one side of the secular binary by trying to perform a linguistic translation. The binary did not have to actually be a linguistic translation but it did need to be secular and non-metaphysical. Though they may have felt they were getting closer to a linguistic translation, their work on the “Grammar and Alphabet” further demonstrates the incommensurability of translation that they were getting closer to. They don’t appear to be any further along in becoming linguists or knowing Egyptian, but they show clear signs of believing that there could be a one-to-one correlation in Joseph Smith’s translations with Egyptian. The efforts toward real translation also went hand in hand with the production of new scripture, since at least part of the book of Abraham was produced during their examination and study of the Egyptian papyri.[38]
Yet, all of these efforts to produce a verifiable, commensurable translation are superseded by the actual products of the translation efforts. Translation remained revelatory, though it was identified as a secular process. Maintaining a systematic line of thinking, the relationship between the “Grammar” and the book of Abraham may be an example of the process and depth of meaning rather than definition. Their process of producing the Book of Abraham could easily make claim to the fact that Joseph’s translation came from the papyri, even if none of the characters on the papyri could be directly translated into any of the words in the book of Abraham. Given their previous experience with translation, this makes sense.
The translation of the book of Abraham exhibits the same kind of method and incommensurability demonstrated in the Book of Mormon translation. In the case of Joseph Smith’s 1828 translation, he produced characters to be translated by scholars, but he also apparently provided text from revelation or seer stones. Both show efforts to decipher the meanings of the characters, but both also rely on revelation to provide the English rendition.
This metaphysical process is somewhat different from what Smith and his disciples were attempting to do with the alphabets. Phelps’s May 1835 letter used known text derived from the “pure language” from which he superimposed characters next to the text. It was an effort to assign specific meanings to specific characters. Joseph and his colleagues followed the structure (five parts or states of one definition) of the Pure Language Document with the system of degrees they designed in both the Alphabet and Grammar and Alphabet in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, but it is unclear whether the text of the book of Abraham came first by revelation or whether the characters inspired the text as an explanation.[39] Either way, it leads back to an underdetermined transference, or experience of divine communication that was derived from their exploration of a system associated with the Egyptian characters. This is like John Modern’s analysis in the fact that “true religion” is not being created by religion or religious experience, but instead it’s being created by the binary of religion and secularism or revelation and translation. Let me further demonstrate this binary with one more example.
Esotericism and Symbolic Translation
Scholars have rightfully compared the incommensurable translation described above with esotericism or attempts to understand Egyptian as a symbolic system that can only be delivered metaphysically.[40] Such an interpretation fits into a well-known intellectual tradition. Europeans struggled for centuries to make sense of Egyptian, developing it into a kind of cryptic language with no logical or systematic approach. The hieroglyphs represented mystery rather than clear expression or language. They treated the hieroglyphs like tiny pictures or symbols that could only be interpreted by ancient priests.[41] As Richard Bushman has argued, this symbolic school of Egyptian interpretation may reflect what Joseph Smith was doing in the Kirtland Egyptian Project.[42] If so, he was in good company. The Swedenborgians attached sacred meaning to the hieroglyphs, explaining that the meaning could only be accessed through divine means.[43] Bushman also points out that Smith used a similar approach to expand Hebrew later, in which simple words like “creation” became “a theory of creation.”[44] This symbolic interpretation of Egyptian drew on these mystical and esoteric theories of sacred language, demonstrating that what Joseph Smith was doing with translation was far less radical when placed within historical context. Egyptian was mysterious to everyone in the Western world.
However, Joseph and his colleagues did not buy wholesale into these mystical approaches either, since they show signs of using some of the nuanced academic approaches to Egyptian. French scholar Jean-François Champollion worked hard to break the Egyptian code by 1822. His breakthrough using the Rosetta Stone was the discovery that he disassociated the hieroglyphs with symbols and demonstrated that they represented sounds. Joseph Smith and his colleagues seem to be familiar with the implications of Champollion’s method. Beginning with Phelps’s letter, they created charts that reflected the comparative diagrams in Champollion’s work that juxtaposed hieroglyphs with phonetic scripts, a kind of comparison commonly found in the work of US-based scholars Samuel Rafinesque and Moses Stuart.[45] The Kirtland Egyptian Alphabet included names for the characters, pronunciations, and explanations. The pronunciations move distinctly away from the esoteric translation of Egyptian and represent the academic work of Champollion in the Kirtland Egyptian Projects by their use of phonetics.
Their exploration of Egyptian emphasized their interest in language but demonstrated more than any other project that their translations were underdetermined. They seemed to have accepted the fact that even if they were to break the code or understand the Egyptian characters, it wouldn’t offer them the pure language of God or even be a perfect reflection of the book of Abraham. Egyptian was certainly the entry point, but like other languages, it was corrupt in their minds, or at least deficient in its ability to deliver the pure communication of God—even a perfect one-to-one translation was still incommensurable in this respect. They did not give up on the usefulness of language, but rather they used the system it represented to see the depth of a particular message within a written language.
This gets us to the underlying tension of this article. It is clear that Joseph Smith knew that the ancient characters he was translating were inevitably incommensurable to the English translations that he offered. He did not devalue his revelatory knowledge, but rather accepted that it was more valuable than a linguistic translation that would also end up being incommensurable. Though Smith was producing translations by revelation, it still did not stop him from trying to create a system that explained and articulated that communication through language. The symbolic system of the Swedenborgians and others evoked a mystical experience by a priest, whereas Joseph was trying to give helpful precision and explanation to his translations. Comparable to Champollion’s phonetics, Joseph tried to identify the pronunciations and sounds of the characters, but then accepted the underdetermined nature of language and tried to develop a system of degrees to deepen the explanation and expand it further. In other words, Joseph did not want to accept the underdetermined nature of translation, but his struggle with it demonstrates that he was cognizant of the problem.[46]
The Prison of Language
Joseph Smith believed in a hierarchy of religious experience over language, but he couldn’t do without language. In fact, he explained, “Reading the experience of others, or the revelation given to them, can never give us a comprehensive view of our condition and true relation to God.” Yet, as he argued, “could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject.”[47] Visions and revelations were his reality, while language was his prison. Joseph questioned the validity or possibility of finding synonyms, constantly turning back to religious experience for the reality of religious truth. In a letter to W. W. Phelps, Joseph articulately explained the impact of religious experience, writing that “the still small voice which whispereth through and pierceth all things and often times it maketh my bones to quake while it maketh manifest.”[48] Yet still lamenting that “God holdeth up the dark curtain until we may read the sound of Eternity to the fullness and satisfaction of our immortal souls.”[49] This metaphor uses contradictory sensorial expressions of access (sight, touch, and hearing) to demonstrate the withdrawn nature of that access by claiming that one could read sound. The problem of reading sound is a perfect metaphor to help us access what was happening in his translations. Joseph described this division between God’s word and our earthly reality as a prison. He prayed that God would “deliver us in due time from the little narrow prison almost as it were [total] darkness of paper pen and ink and crooked broken scattered and imperfect language.”[50] Perhaps what he never fully realized was that he was describing the ever-present secular tension of antebellum American religion and that his religion itself was dependent upon that tension and the secular binary.
Joseph Smith’s theory of translation couldn’t be expressed any clearer than when he explained that language was like a prison. He could never quite secure his religious and spiritual foundations without secularizing them through an incommensurable translation. Smith was aware of the incommensurability of translation yet he still sought commensurability. Within the binary of religion and secularism, religion became universal, as mentioned above.[51] Yet secularism also de-universalized parts of religion that were not “consistent with the basic requirements of modern society.”[52] In Joseph Smith’s translations, he accepted the secular discourse of translation commensurability and maintained the tensions of the binary with incommensurability to establish the legitimacy of his translations and Mormonism. In this way, his translations were both secular and religious.
[1] See Michael Hubbard MacKay, “‘Git Them Translated’: Translating the Characters on the Gold Plates,” in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World, edited by Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo: Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2015), 83–116; Ann Taves, Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016); Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).
[2] Michael Hubbard MacKay, “Performing the Translation: Character Transcripts and Joseph Smith’s Earliest Translating Practices,” in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020), 81–104.
[3] Richard E. Bennett, “Martin Harris’s 1828 Visit to Luther Bradish, Charles Anthon, and Samuel Mitchell,” in The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, edited by Dennis L. Largey, Andrew H. Hedges, John Hilton III, and Kerry Hull (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2015), 103–15.
[4] Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Robin Scott Jensen, “The ‘Caractors’ Document: New Light on an Early Transcription of the Book of Mormon Characters,” Mormon Historical Studies 14, no. 1 (2013): 131–52.
[5] This was recognized as early as 1829 when Cornelius Blachtely asked for the possibility of accessing the gold plates to identify a one-to-one translation. See Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2015), chap. 12; Larry E. Morris, A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 375.
[6] For a remarkably clear examination and critique of the literature and evidences see Samuel Morris Brown, ”Seeing the Voice of God: The Book of Mormon on Its Own Translation,” in Producing Ancient Scripture, especially 146–67.
[7] Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2013), chap. 2. In opposition to the indeterminism of translation, John Searle argues that this would lead to skepticism or the possibility of anyone ever understanding anyone else. John R. Seale, “Indeterminacy, Empiricism, and the First Person”, Journal of Philosophy 84, no. 3 (Mar. 1987): 123–46.
[8] The recognition of the problem of translation has deep roots in religious studies and the translation of liturgy, scripture, and sermons. See Willis Barnstone, The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory and Practice (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993); George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (London: Oxford University Press, 1975); Lydia H. Liu, ed., Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999); Christopher R. King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Naoki Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
[9] Talal Asad argues that to know what the term secular means is to understand the binaries that it creates. Secularims constrains the meaning and power of terms and concepts to their binaries and disallows a singular preference within a binary. Faith is solidified by its shift and delineating relationship with Reason. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 23.
[10] See Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000); James Delbourgo, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006); Eric R. Schlereth, An Age of Infidels: The Politics of Religious Controversy in the Early United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Sarah Rivett, The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
[11] John Lardas Modern, Secularism in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 7.
[12] Modern, Secularism in Antebellum America, 282. Modern’s thesis is important here in its ability to identify a network of ideas that animates individuals and society to replicate and authenticate particular normative conditions. This is important for the secular idea of translation or the notion of commensurability in translation, which this article demonstrates is set in opposition to incommensurability. Compare this sense of normativity to “hyper-normativity” in Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 25 and 100. Talal Asad writes, “Only religions that have accepted the assumptions of liberal discourse are being commended, in which tolerance is sought on the basis of distinctive relation between law and morality.” Formations of the Secular, 182.
[13] Charles Taylor foundationally argued that secularism is a force that is opposed to religion and it is certainly not the opposite of religion. Religion in the secular age thrives, not just as a reaction to secularism but in part because of secularism. As Talal Asad has argued, secularism produces binaries that can easily be associated with good and bad religion, rational and irrational religion, both of which are relevant to the binary of commensurability and incommensurability in Joseph Smith’s translations. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 147.
[14] Edward Stevenson, “The Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon,” Millennial Star 48, July 12, 1886, 437.
[15] Quine writes, “An artificial example which I have used elsewhere depends on the fact that a whole rabbit is present when and only when an undetached part of a rabbit is present; also when and only when a temporal stage of a rabbit is present. If we are wondering whether to translate a native expression ‘gavagai’ as ‘rabbit’ or as ‘undetached rabbit part’ or as ‘rabbit stage,’ we can never settle the matter simply by ostension—that is, simply by repeatedly querying the expression ‘gavagai’ for the native’s assent or dissent in the presence of assorted stimulations.” “Ontological Relativity,” Journal of Philosophy 65, no. 7 (Apr. 4, 1968): 188.
[16] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” 161, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/167.
[17] “Revelation, 1 November 1831–B [D&C 1],” 126, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-1-november-1831-b-dc-1/2.
[18] “Revelation, circa 2 November 1831 [D&C 67],” 115, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-circa-2-november-1831-dc-67/2.
[19] Coviello argues that “secularism’s negative, its enemy, is not religion; it is bad belief.” This is framed first by the binary religion and secularism that moves to other binaries like civilizing and imbruting, or in this case, “God’s voice” and “humankind’s voice.” They thrive off one another, but appear without analysis to be trying to eliminate each other. Make Yourselves Gods, 27–29.
[20] “History, 1838–1856,” 162.
[21] Steiner, After Babel, 29.
[22] The scope of these visions is demonstrated in this passage by referencing them as including past, present, and future. “For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round” (1 Nephi 10:19).
[23] “And also others who have been, to them hath he shown all things, and they have a written them; and they are sealed up to come forth in their purity, according to the truth which is in the Lamb, in the own due time of the Lord, unto the house of Israel” (1 Nephi 14:26).
[24] According to the Book of Mormon, John is the author of the book of Revelation in the New Testament.
[25] For Samuel Brown, he has firmly moved toward the translation as metaphysical.
[26] There four typical ways of interpreting Revelation, of which Joseph Smith does not conform to or attempt to conform to in his interpretation of Revelation in D&C 77. See Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002), 20.
[27] Joseph Smith Papers, 2:214.
[28] Orson Pratt, “The Holy Spirit and the Godhead,” Feb. 18, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 2:342.
[29] There are multiple nonextant documents that included characters copied from the plates. The extant document includes some of them, but Phelps may have had a different copy or document than the extant document. The fact that these line up create an interesting situation. MacKay, Jensen, and Dirkmaat, “The ‘Caractors’ Document,” 131–52. See W. W. Phelps, Pure Language chart.
[30] Interestingly, notions of Adam and Adam-ondi-Ahman were added to Doctrine and Covenants (see changes in Doctrine and Covenants sections 27, 78, and 107) in early 1835 just before Phelps wrote his letter to his wife in May.
[31] Joseph Smith Papers, 4:53.
[32] Joseph Smith Papers, 1:345–52.
[33] For an example of contemporary comparison see Oliver Cowdery to William Frye, Dec. 22, 1835, copy in Oliver Cowdery Letterbook, 72, photocopy at Church History Library; Cowdery, “Egyptian Mummies—Ancient Records,” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate, December 1835, 235.
[34] Joseph Smith Papers, 4:112.
[35] The Grammar is “split into two parts, each of which is further divided into five subsections, called “degrees.” The degrees in each part appear in reverse numerical order. Part I begins with the firth degree and works backward to the first, then part 2 starts over with the firth degree and proceeds in the same manners.” Joseph Smith Papers, 4:112.
[36] See Brian M. Hauglid, “‘Translating an Alphabet to the Book of Abraham’: Joseph Smith’s Study of the Egyptian Language and His Translation of the Book of Abraham,” in Producing Ancient Scripture, 363–90.
[37] “Part 1 begins with the fifth degree and works backward to the first, then part 2 starts over with the fifth degree and proceeds in the same manner.” JSP, Revelations and Translations Vol. 4, 112.
[38] Hauglid, “Translating an Alphabet.”
[39] This scholarly debate continues to be waged primarily between Egyptologists (John Gee and Kerry Muhlestein) and others (like Robin Jensen and Brian Hauglid). Joseph Smith was determined that it came from God.
[40] For studies on semiotic translation, see Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976); Dinda L. Gorlée, Semiotics and the Problem of Translation: With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994).
[41] Richard L. Bushman, “Joseph Smith’s Place in the Study of Antiquity in Antebellum America,” in Approaching Antiquity, 17.
[42] Samuel Brown, “Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden,” Church History 78, no 1 (Mar. 2009): 26–65.
[43] Emanuel Swedenborg, A Hieroglyphic Key to Natural and Spiritual Mysteries, translated by James John Garth Wilkinson (London, 1874); Sampson Reed, New Jerusalem Magazine 4 (Oct. 1830): 69–71; and J. D., “Egyptian Hieroglyphs,” New Jerusalem Magazine 4 (Feb. 1831): 233–36.
[44] Bushman, “Joseph Smith’s Place in the Study of Antiquity,” 19.
[45] See Matthew J. Grey, “Joseph Smith’s Use of Hebrew in his Translation of the Book of Abraham,” in Producing Ancient Scripture; Moses Stuart, A Grammar of the Hebrew Language, 5th ed. (Andover, Mass.: Gould and Newman, 1835), 9–10 (charts no. I–III); Samuel Rafinesque, “Tabular View of the Compared Atlantic Alphabets & Glyphs of Africa and America,” Atlantic Journal (1832); Jean-François Champollion, Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1828).
[46] His late work on the Kinderhook plates demonstrates his distance from linguistic precision, but his continued prophetic and revelatory expressions show why he would be so intrigued by those plates without concern for a determinacy of language. See Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, “‘President Joseph Has Translated a Portion’: Joseph Smith and the Mistranslation of the Kinderhook Plates,” in Producing Ancient Scripture.
[47] Joseph Smith, “Mysteries of Godliness,” Times and Seasons, Oct. 9, 1843.
[48] “Letterbook 1,” 3, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letterbook-1/15.
[49] “Letterbook 1,” 4.
[50] “Letterbook 1,” 4.
[51] Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 29–30.
[52] Asad, Formations of the Secular, 182–83.
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“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making
Fiona Givens
Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26
Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself.
Any church that is more than a generation old is going to suffer the same challenges that confronted early Christianity: how to preach and teach its gospel to myriad peoples, nationalities, ethnic groups, and societies, without accumulating the cultural trappings of its initial geographical locus. As Joseph Milner has pointed out, the rescue of the “precious ore” of the original theological deposit is made particularly onerous, threatened as it is by rapidly growing mounds of accumulating cultural and “ecclesiastical rubbish.”[1] This includes social accretions, shifting sensibilities and priorities, and the inevitable hand of human intermediaries.
For Joseph Smith, Jr., the task of restoration was the reclamation of the kerygma of Christ’s original Gospel, but not just a return to the early Christian kerygma. Rather, he was attempting to restore the Ur-Evangelium itself—the gospel preached to and by the couple, Adam and Eve (Moses 6:9). In the present paper, I wish to recapitulate a common thread in Joseph’s early vision, one that may already be too obscure and in need of excavation and celebration. Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself. His manner of producing scripture, his reconceived doctrine of the Trinity, and his hopes for the Nauvoo Women’s Relief Society all attest to Joseph’s proclivity for collaborative scriptural, theological, and ecclesiastical restoration.
Though Smith was without parallel in his revelatory capacities (by one count he experienced seventy-six documented visions),[2] he increasingly insisted on democratizing that gift. As one scholar remarked, “Joseph Smith was the Henry Ford of revelation. He wanted every home to have one, and the revelation he had in mind was the revelation he’d had, which was seeing God.”[3] Richard Bushman has noted how “Smith did not attempt to monopolize the prophetic office. It was as if he intended to reduce his own role and infuse the church bureaucracy with his charismatic powers.”[4] This he principally effected through the formation of councils and quorums equal in authority—and revelatory responsibility—to that which he and his presidency possessed.[5] Most remarkable of all, perhaps, was Smith’s readiness to turn what revelations he did receive and record into cooperative editing projects. With his full sanction and participation, the “Revelation Books” wherein his divine dictations were recorded bear the evidence of half a dozen editors’ handwriting—including his own—engaged in the revision of his pronouncements.[6]
It was in that work of scriptural production that Joseph recognized that theological reclamation necessarily entailed fracturing the Christian canon to allow for excision, emendation, and addition. Arguably, the most important work of reclamation and re-conceptualization is Joseph’s understanding of the nature and attributes of the three members of the Godhead whose own collaborative work and glory are “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). Smith believed that the true nature and attributes of the Trinity, the truly “plain and precious things,” were either buried, revised, camouflaged, or expunged from the biblical text (1 Nephi 13). Part of his reclamation entailed a restoration of the Divine Feminine together with a revision of contemporary conceptions of priesthood power and authority in conjunction with “keys” Joseph believed had been lost following the advent of Christianity. Joseph saw himself as midwife in the restoration of the priesthood of the Ur-Evangelium. Within this framework, he envisioned collaborative roles for women and men within the ecclesiastical structure and ministry of the nascent LDS Church, evidenced in partial form in the initiatory, endowment, and sealing rites of the LDS temple.
Reclamation of Divine Collaboration
In answer to William Dever’s question “Did God have a Wife?” the LDS faith responds with a resounding affirmative.[7] Relatively recent excavation of the symbols and modes of worship attributed to the Divine Feminine both within and outside the ancient Hebrew tradition, together with salient clues within the biblical text, are helping to support Joseph’s reclamation of God, the Mother, from the textual absence to which she has been consigned. As Joseph’s theology never emerged ex nihilo, neither is it reasonable to infer his re-introduction of the doctrine of Heavenly Mother to be without canonical and, given Joseph’s penchant for rupturing boundaries, extra-canonical precedent. Joseph showed himself to be quite happy trolling every possible resource in order to reclaim what he considered was most plain and precious (D&C 91:1).[8]
Joseph’s theology was Trinitarian, but in a radically re-conceptualized way. A conventional trinity, in its thrice-reiterated maleness, could never have produced the collaborative vision of priesthood that Joseph developed. It is, therefore, crucial, for both historical context and theological rationale, to recognize that Joseph reconstitutes the Godhead of Christendom as a Heavenly Father who co-presides with a Heavenly Mother. In 1878, Apostle Erastus Snow stated: “‘What,’ says one, ‘do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of man and woman? Most certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself . . . I must believe that deity consists of man and woman. . . . There can be no God except he is composed of man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ever will be a God in any other way, . . . except they be made of these two component parts: a man and a woman; the male and the female” (emphasis mine).[9] In his 1876 general conference address, Brigham Young suggested a strik-ing equality within that Godhead, when he talked of “eternal mothers” and “eternal daughters . . . prepared to frame earth’s like unto ours.”[10]
Prescient but not surprising, therefore, is the merging of Smith’s reconstituted Godhead with the traditional Trinity. Elder Charles W. Penrose drew an unexpected inference from Joseph’s new theology when he suggested an identification of the Holy Spirit with Heavenly Mother. He responded to a Mr. Kinsman’s assertion that “the members of the Trinity are . . . men” by stating that the third member of the Godhead—the Holy Spirit—was the feminine member of the Trinity: “If the divine image, to be complete, had to reflect a female as well as a male element, it is self-evident that both must be contained in the Deity. And they are. For the divine Spirit that in the morning of creation ‘moved upon the face of the waters,’ bringing forth life and order, is . . . the feminine gender, whatever modern theology may think of it.”[11] Penrose may have been relying upon Joseph’s re-working of the creation narrative in the book of Abraham, where “movement” is replaced with “brooding”—a striking image of a mother bird during the incubation period of her offspring. (One remembers in this context Gerard Manley Hopkins’s lovely allusion to the Holy Spirit who, “over the bent/World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”)[12]
Even though recorded third-hand, the following account suggests that the prophet, Joseph, while not expressing the same identification as Penrose, was projecting the same reconstituted heavenly family:
One day the Prophet, Joseph, asked [Zebedee Coltrin] and Sidney Rigdon to accompany him into the Woods to pray. When they had reached a secluded spot Joseph laid down on his back and stretched out his arms. He told the brethren to lie one on each arm, and then shut their eyes. After they had prayed he told them to open their eyes. They did so and saw a brilliant light surrounding a pedestal which seemed to rest on the earth. They closed their eyes and again prayed. They then saw, on opening them, the Father seated upon a throne; they prayed again and on looking saw the Mother also; after praying and looking the fourth time they saw the Savior added to the group.[13]
V. H. Cassler has written, “What we have taken as absence was presence all along, but we did not have the eyes to see it.”[14] Even within our tradition, glimpses of Smith’s radical innovation have neither been sufficiently recognized nor appreciated. One such unrecognized symbol resides on the threshold of the celestial room in the Salt Lake Temple. Just above the veil on the west wall stands a remarkable, six-foot statue of a woman, holding what looks very much like a palm frond. She is flanked by two easily discernible cherubs to whom she is linked by gar-lands of colorful, open flowers. While chubby cherubs are ubiquitous in Renaissance art and could, therefore, be mistaken as merely decorative, the number and placement of the cherubs in the celestial room of the temple draw one back to the majestic, fearful Cherubim—guardians of the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies of the First Temple. The Lady of the Temple is positioned at the portal of the veil—the representation of the torn body of the Lord, Jesus Christ—through which all kindred, nations, tongues, and people shall pass into the celestial kingdom (Hebrews 10:20, Matthew 27:50–51). The original statue was purchased by Joseph Don Carlos Young, who was called by the Church Presidency to succeed Truman O. Angell as decorator of the temple interior. Young purchased the winged statue named “The Angel of Peace” and two cherubs on a visit to New York in 1877. However, during a dream vision one night Young recorded: “I felt impelled to remove the wings. Now I saw a smile and expression that I never saw before and I can now allow this . . . to be placed there.”[15] The enigmatic lady’s station at the veil of the temple, replete with crucifixion imagery, makes it unlikely that she represents Eve. Mary, the mortal mother of the Lord, is a possibility, given her maternal relationship to the Messiah. However, the Lady’s presence at the entrance to the celestial room, representing the celestial kingdom, suggests someone else. There are several key clues as to her possible identity.
Of note is the palm frond the Lady is holding. Anciently, trees were a potent symbol of Asherah, God the Mother.[16] In fact, the Menorah—the seven-branched lamp—that is reputed to have given light in the original Holy of Holies is fashioned after an almond tree, covered in gold—representing the Tree of Life spoken of at the beginning and end of the biblical text.[17] Not only are flowers fashioned into the Menorah: open flowers are one of the temple’s primary decorative motifs.[18] Palm trees also were closely associated with the First Temple with which the interior was liberally decorated together with cherubim: “And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub; and every cherub had two faces” (Ezekiel 41:18).[19] Palm fronds also play a conspicuous role in Jesus’ Passion—in particular his dramatic entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the day that begins the week ending in the crucifixion and resurrection of the Savior. The thronging crowds, waving and throwing palm fronds beneath the hooves of the donkey carrying the Messiah, “chant a Hoshi’ahnna’ (Hebrew “Save Us”)—a clear indication that many, if not all, the Jews present recognized that the man astride the donkey was the promised Messiah.[20] The palm fronds together with the chant suggest a recognition on the part of the thronging masses of the presence of the goddess Asherah—the Mother of the Lord—whose primary symbol is a tree.[21]
Asherah, or the Divine Feminine, is referred to in Proverbs 3:18 as the “Tree of Life.” Her “fruit is better than gold, even fine gold” (Proverbs 8:19). Those who hold her fast are called happy (a word play on the Hebrew ashr). It can be assumed, therefore, that Asherah and Wisdom (Sophia in the Greek) are different names for the same deity.[22] According to the book of Proverbs, Wisdom/Asherah is the name of the deity with whom “the Lord founded the earth” (Proverbs 3:19–20). Before the world was, She was. “Long life is in her right hand; /in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life” (Proverbs 3:16–18). Latter-day Saints are enjoined to search for her in the opening chapters of the Doctrine and Covenants because Wisdom holds the keys not only to the mysteries of God but to eternal life (D&C 6:7, 11:7).
Interestingly, the biblical association of Sophia with the Tree of Life finds powerful echo in the Book of Mormon narrative. Nephi begins the account of his vision by expressing an ardent desire to “see, and hear, and know of these things, by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek him [God]” (1 Nephi 10:17, 19). Nephi’s narrative starts in the company of the Spirit, who immediately draws his attention to the Tree of Life—“the whiteness [of which] did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow . . . the tree which is precious above all.” Mary, the mortal mother of the Messiah, whom Nephi sees following the vision of the tree (the Asherah), is similarly described as “exceedingly fair and white” (1 Nephi 11:13, 15, 18). After Mary is “carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time,” she is seen bearing the Christ child (1 Nephi 11:19–20). This association of Christ’s birth with the Tree of Life, with its echoes of a Divine Feminine, is not unique to the Book of Mormon. The oldest known visual representation of the Madonna and Child effects the same conjunction. In the Roman catacombs of St. Priscilla, a fresco dated to the second century depicts the mother and child, with a magnificent Tree of Life overarching both.[23] Immediately following Nephi’s vision of Mary and the Christ child, he watches “the heavens open, and the Holy [Spirit] come down out of heaven and abide upon [Christ] in the form of a dove” (1 Nephi 11:25–27). It does not appear to be coincidental that both “Spirit” and “dove” are gendered female in Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic.
Augustine also finds his theological heart strings pulled by the pro-vocative power and logic of the Holy Spirit as in some sense the Wife of the Father and Mother of the Son: “For I omit such a thing as to regard the Holy Spirit as the Mother of the Son and the Spouse of the Father; [because] it will perhaps be answered that these things offend us in carnal matters by arousing thoughts of corporeal conception and birth.”[24] At about the same time, the early Church Father, Jerome, interpreting Isaiah 11:9 in light of the Gospel of the Hebrews, noted that Jesus spoke of “My mother the holy spirit.”[25] Even though Jews returning from the Babylonian captivity were essentially monotheistic, there are suggestions that their belief in a deity that comprised the Father (El), the Mother (Asherah), and the Son (Yahweh) from the First Temple tradition and before persisted. For example, in 1449 Toledo some “conversos” (Jewish converts to Christianity) were alarming their ecclesiastical leaders by refusing to relinquish certain tenets of their previous faith: “In as much as it has been shown that a large portion of the city’s conversos descend-ing from the Jewish line are persons very suspect in the holy Catholic faith; that they hold and believe great errors against the articles of the holy Catholic faith; that they keep the rites and ceremonies of the old law; that they say and affirm that our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ was [a] man of their lineage who was killed and whom the Christians worship as God; that they say that there is both a god and a goddess in heaven.”[26] As Margaret Barker has stated: “It has become customary to translate and read the Hebrew Scriptures as an account of one male deity, and the feminine presence is not made clear. Had it been the custom to read of a female Spirit or to find Wisdom capitalized, it would have been easier to make the link between the older faith . . . and later developments outside the stream represented by the canonical texts.”[27]
Reclamation of Ecclesiastical Collaboration
The reciprocal synergy of the Godhead was a catalyst—or at least precursor—to Joseph’s quest for a universal collaboration of male and female. On March 17, 1842, he took another momentous step in that direction. At that time both male and female members of the Church were actively engaged in the construction of the Nauvoo temple. Women collaborated in the enterprise primarily by contributing financially and by providing the masons with clothing. In addition, they saw to the needs of impoverished members arriving daily seeking refuge. As the number of women engaged in support of temple construction and relief efforts grew, a group of them, at the instigation of Sarah Kimball, formed the Ladies’ Society of Nauvoo. Eliza R. Snow drafted the constitution and by-laws and then took them to Joseph, who, while applauding the enterprise, suggested the ladies might prefer something other than a benevolent or sewing society. He invited the sisters to “meet me and a few of the brethren in the Masonic Hall over my store next Thursday afternoon, and I will organize the sisters under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood.”[28] In other words, just as the male society had been organized after the pattern of the priesthood, the women of the church would form a female society, with Joseph’s sanction and blessing, after the same pattern.
Like the men before them, the women were to be organized under the umbrella of the priesthood “without beginning of days or end of years” (Moses 1:3). Joseph further stipulated: “the keys of the kingdom are about to be given to them [the sisters], that they may be able to detect every thing false—as well as to the Elders.”[29] While it has been argued that the expression “keys of the kingdom” in regard to women refers solely to their initiation into the ordinances of the “greater [or] Holy Priesthood” in the temple, Joseph seemed to attribute to women a priestly standing. In other words, he acted on the assumption that in order to access the priesthood that “holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God” together with the temple ordinances in which “the power of godliness is manifest,” one would already need to be a priest (D&C 84:19–22). At least, there is evidence that this is how Joseph understood access to priesthood power and authority.
On March 31, 1842, Joseph announced to the inchoate Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, first, his recognition that collaboration between men and women was key to spiritual and ecclesiastical progress—“All must act in concert or nothing can be done,” he said. Second, “the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood” as delineated in Doctrine and Covenants 84 (given in Kirtland on September 22 and 23, 1832). And, third, in order to accomplish the above, “the Society was to become a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day—as in Paul’s day.” Eliza R. Snow understood that the women’s Society or priesthood would enable women to become “Queens of Queens, and Priestesses unto the Most High God.”[30]
Joseph’s conception of female authority may have been tied to his understanding of the New Testament. That women as well as men held Church offices in “Paul’s day” has become apparent with the recent, more accurate translations of the Greek New Testament and research into early Christian ecclesiology. In Ephesians chapter four, Paul enumerates the gifts of the Spirit imparted by the Lord before His ascension: “some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to maturity” (Ephesians 4:11–13). Women as well as men were to be found in possession of each of these “gifts.” Peter Brown demonstrates that, unlike pagans and Jews, “They [Christians] welcomed women as patrons and . . . offered women roles in which they could act as collaborators.”[31]
In his letter to the Romans, Paul sends greetings to Andronicus and Junia (perhaps Julia), commending them for their faith and stating that “they are prominent among the apostles.”[32] Later writers would masculinize the name, but Chrysostom in the late fourth century had no problem praising “the devotion of this woman” who was “worthy to be called an apostle.”[33] In the second book of Acts, Luke records the following: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17–18). The apostle Paul considered the gift of prophecy one of the greatest spiritual gifts: “Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts,” he said, “and especially that you may prophecy [for] those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:1, 3). Indeed, Orson Pratt stated in 1876 that “there never was a genuine Christian Church unless it had Prophets and Prophetesses.”[34] It is, therefore, not surprising to find them mentioned in the New Testament. In Acts 21, we learn that the four unmarried daughters of Philip the evangelist possessed “the gift of prophesy” (Acts 21:8–9).
The primary role of evangelists was to teach the death and resur-rection of Jesus Christ. Raymond Brown has noted that in the Gospel of John, the Samaritan woman serves “a real missionary function,” while the women at Christ’s tomb are given “a quasi-apostolic role.”[35] As Kevin Giles puts it, “the Synoptic authors agree that it was women who first found the empty tomb. And Matthew and John record that Jesus first appeared to women. The encounter between the risen Christ and the women is drawn as a commissioning scene. The Lord says, ‘Go and tell my brethren’ (Matthew 28:10, cf. John 20:17). The women are chosen and commissioned by the risen Christ to be the first to proclaim, ‘He is risen.’”[36]
Deacons are also listed among the offices in the nascent Christian Church, and women are also included. In his letter to the Romans, Paul commends Phoebe, “a deacon or minister of the church at Cenchreae” (Romans 16:1). The terms “pastors” and “teachers” are joined grammatically in Ephesians 4:11. It appears that the term “pastor” in the New Testament was the universal term referring to spiritual leadership. Among the female pastor-teachers, Priscilla is singled out for her theological acumen, instructing (together with—possibly her husband—Aquila) the erudite and eloquent Apollos of Alexandria “more accurately . . . in the way of God” (Acts 18:18, 24–26). Significantly, of the six times this couple is mentioned, Priscilla precedes Aquila in four of them—according her prominence over Aquila either in ministry or social status—or both. Rodney Stark stated in his book The Rise of Christianity that “It is well known that the early Church attracted an unusual number of high status women . . . . Some of [whom] lived in relatively spacious homes,” to which they welcomed parishioners.[37] Priscilla is not the only woman mentioned in connection with church leadership. In addition to Priscilla we learn of Mark’s mother (Acts 12:12), Lydia from Philippi (Acts 16:14–15, 40), and Nympha in Paul’s letter to the Colossians (Colossians 4:15). The apostle John addresses a letter to the Elect or Chosen Lady and her children (congregation) in 2 John 1:1. All apparently function as leaders of the Church.
The title translated as “Lady” in the New Testament is the equivalent to the title “Lord,” generally denoting social standing but possibly, in an ecclesiastical sense, denoting someone in a position of church leadership.[38] According to Stanley Grenz, the nascent Christian Church “radically altered the position of women, elevating them to a partnership with men unparalleled in first-century society.”[39] It appears that Joseph was engaged in the same endeavor in mid-nineteenth-century America. During the inaugural meeting of the Relief Society, after reading 2 John 1:1 Joseph stated that “this is why she [Emma] was called an Elect Lady is because [she was] elected to preside.”[40] While it can be argued that the aforementioned are all gifts of the Spirit that do not necessarily involve priesthood, there is evidence that Joseph saw the Spirit as directing the implementation of these gifts into specific priesthood offices.
I mention these historical precedents because it is clear that Joseph Smith was aware of them and that they influenced his directive to Emma that “If any Officers are wanted to carry out the designs of the Institution, let them be appointed and set apart, as Deacons, Teachers &c. are among us.”[41] On April 28, 1842, after reading 1 Corinthians 12 to the Society, he gave “instructions respecting the different offices, and the necessity of every individual acting in the sphere allotted him or her; and filling the several offices to which they were appointed.”[42]
And so we find that the striking degree of collaboration between men and women in the early Christian Church is replicated in the founding of the LDS Church. In this regard, Bishop Newel K. Whitney’s words are significant: “It takes all to restore the Priesthood . . . without the female all things cannot be restor’d to the earth.”[43] This implies a much broader role for women in the Church structure than temple service alone. In Joseph’s journal account following the Female Relief Society meeting of Thursday, April 28, 1842, he writes: “Gave a lecture on the pries[t] hood shewing how the Sisters would come in possession of the priviliges & blessings & gifts of the priesthood—&c that the signs should follow them. such as healing the sick casting out devils &c.”[44] Commenting on Doctrine and Covenants 25, which Joseph read at the inaugural meeting of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, he stated that Emma “was ordain’d at the time, the Revelation was given”—that is, Emma was ordained not by man but by God to the position of Elect Lady (“and thou art an elect lady, whom I have called [or chosen]” [D&C 25:3]) as Joseph was ordained/chosen by God to the position of First Elder. It is clear from Emma’s remarks two years later at the Female Relief Society meeting of March 16, 1844, that she recognized that her ordination to the position of Elect Lady with its attendant power, privileges, and authority were divinely bestowed: “if thier ever was any authourity on the Earth [I] had it—and had [it] yet.”[45]
The second Relief Society president, Eliza R. Snow, who gained and retained possession of the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes, also recognized that Emma’s authority to preside over the Female Relief Society gave the women’s organization independence: “The Relief Society is designed to be a self-governing organization: to relieve the Bishops as well as to relieve the poor, to deal with its members, correct abuses, etc. If difficulties arise between members of a branch which they cannot settle between the members themselves, aided by the teachers, instead of troubling the Bishop, the matter should be referred to their president and her counselors.”[46] Reynolds Cahoon, a close affiliate of Joseph, understood “that the inclusion of women within the [ecclesiastical] structure of the church organization reflected the divine pattern of the perfect union of man and woman.” Indeed, Cahoon continued, “the Order of the Priesthood . . . which encompasses powers, keys, ordinances, offices, duties, organizations, and attitudes . . . is not complete without it [the Relief Society]”).[47]
The source of women’s ordination, Joseph suggested, was the Holy Spirit. He understood the women to belong to an order comparable to or pertaining to the priesthood, based on the ordinance of confirmation and receipt of the Holy Spirit. To the Nauvoo women, he suggested that the gift of the Holy Spirit enabled them to “administer in that author-ity which is conferr’d on them.”[48] The idea that priesthood power and authority were bestowed through the medium of the Holy Spirit was commonly accepted among both Protestants and Catholics at that time. The nineteenth-century Quaker, William Gibbons, articulated the broadly accepted view that “There is but one source from which ministerial power and authority, ever was, is, or can be derived, and that is the Holy Spirit.”[49] For, “it was by and through this holy unction, that all the prophets spake from Moses to Malachi.”[50] The Reformed Presbyterian Magazine cites this “holy unction” as “not only the fact but the origin of our priesthood” claiming to be made “priests by the Great High Priest Himself . . . transmitted through the consecration and seal of the Holy Spirit.”[51]
Such a link between the priesthood and the gift of the Holy Spirit is traced back to the early Christian Church, based on two New Testament passages. In John 20, the resurrected Christ commissions His disciples to go into the world proclaiming the Gospel, working miracles, and remit-ting sins in the same manner He was sent by His Father—through the bestowal of the Holy Spirit: “As my Father has sent me, so send I you. When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:21–23). Peter preached that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). And so to the Relief Society sisters Joseph “ask’d . . . if they could not see by this sweeping stroke, that wherein they are ordained, it is the privilege of those set apart to administer in that authority which is confer’d on them . . . and let every thing roll on.”[52] He called this authority “the power of the Holy Priesthood & the Holy Ghost,” in a unified expression.[53] Elsewhere he stated that “There is a prist-Hood with the Holy Ghost and a key.”[54] Indeed, Joseph presses the point even further. In a Times and Seasons article, he wrote that the gift of the Holy Ghost “was necessary both to ‘make’ and ‘to organize the priesthood.’”[55] It was under the direction of the Holy Spirit that Joseph was helping to organize—or, more accurately, re-organize—women in the priesthood.
For Joseph, the organization of the Female Relief Society was fundamental to the successful collaboration of the male and female quorums: “I have desired to organize the Sisters in the order of the Priesthood. I now have the key by which I can do it. The organization of the Church of Christ was never perfect until the women were organized.”[56] It was this key Joseph “turned” to the Elect Lady, Emma, with which the gates to the priesthood powers and privileges promised to the Female Relief Society could now be opened. The injunction given to recipients of priesthood privileges in Doctrine and Covenants 27 could, therefore, also apply equally to the nascent Female Relief Society to whom the keys of the kingdom were also promised.[57]
The fact that the Female Relief Society was inaugurated during the same period and setting as the founding of the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge is helpful in understanding its intended purpose. Joseph had been raised to the Third Degree of Freemasonry (Master Mason) the day before this auspicious meeting.[58] And a plausible argument has been made that the prophet considered the principal tenets of Masonry—Truth, Friendship (or Brotherly Love), and Relief—to be in complete harmony with the reclamation of the Ur-Evangelium.[59] It can, therefore, be argued that Friendship, “the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism,” formed the sacred bond between the male and female priesthood quorums in their efforts to proclaim truth, bless the afflicted, and alleviate suffering by providing relief as they worked side by side on their united goal to build the Nauvoo temple, assist those in need, preach the Gospel, excavate truth, and establish Zion.[60]
The organization of the female society also finds instructive parallels with the creation story in the books of Genesis and Abraham. Abraham states that “the Gods took counsel among themselves and said: Let us go down and form man in our image, after our likeness; and we will give them dominion. . . . So the Gods went down to organize man[kind] in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them” (Abraham 4:26–27). In the second biblical creation narrative, Eve is created after Adam when it was decided by the Gods that “it was not good for man to be [act] alone” (Genesis 2:18). After Adam and Eve were organized they were given the family name of Adam. He “called their name Adam” (Genesis 5:2; Moses 6:9). Adam is the family name, the couple’s surname. (One can note here the precedent set by “God” as a family name evidenced in the appellation: God, the Father; God, the Son; and God, the Holy Spirit). Erastus Snow’s remark bears repeating here: “Deity consists of man and woman. . . . There never was a God, and there never will be in all eternities, except they are made of these two component parts; a man and a woman; the male and the female.”[61]
The divinely decreed identity of the couple, Adam, is one of complementarity, two beings separated by a creative act and then reconstituted as one by divine sacrament. Only later does the name Adam come to denote the individual male rather than the couple. It is, perhaps, in this context of Adam as the family name that the following scripture from the book of Moses should be read: “And thus [they were] baptized, and the Spirit of God descended upon [them], and . . . [they were] born of the Spirit, and became quickened. . . . And they heard a voice out of heaven, saying: [ye are] baptized with fire, and with the Holy Ghost. This is the record of the Father, and the Son, from henceforth and forever; And [ye are] after the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity. Behold, [ye are] one in me, [children] of God; and thus may all become my children” (Moses 6:65–68).
In Moses, we learn that Eve labored with Adam. They worship together. They pray together. They grieve the loss of Cain together. Together they preach the gospel to their children (Moses 5:12). The right to preside over the human family was given jointly to Eve and Adam, as were the sacred rights of the temple: “And thus all things were confirmed unto [the couple] Adam, by an holy ordinance” (Moses 5:59). The sacerdotal nature of “ordinance” implies that Adam and Eve were also to collaborate in the powers inherent in priesthood. They were both clothed in holy garments representing the male and female images of the Creator Gods. Adam and Eve, therefore, represent the divine union of the God, El, and His Wife, variously known as Asherah (The Tree of Life), El Shaddai (God Almighty),[62] Shekhina (The Holy Spirit),[63] and Sophia (Wisdom). As Heber C. Kimball said, “‘What a strange doctrine,’ says one ‘that we should be taught to be one!’ I tell you there is no way for us to prosper and prevail in the last day only to learn to act in Union.”[64]
It is this union that Joseph appears to be attempting to restore with the organization of the Female Relief Society. The Nauvoo Relief Society minutes indicate that Joseph considered himself to be authorizing the women of the Church to form an institution fully commensurate with the male institutions he had organized earlier. The name the founding mothers chose for their organization was the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, possibly suggesting their recognition that what was being organized was the full and equal counterpart to the already operating male priesthood quorums.[65] John Taylor’s suggestion to name the female quorum “The Nauvoo Female Benevolent Society” in lieu of the Relief Society presidency’s proposal “The Nauvoo Female Relief Society” was rejected outright by the female presidency. “The popularity of the word benevolent is one great objection,” adding that we “do not wish to have it call’d after other Societies in the world” for “we design to act in the name of the Lord—to relieve the wants of the distressed, and do all the good we can.”[66]
It appears likely that the second president of the Female Relief Society recognized exactly that. As Eliza R. Snow told a gathering of Relief Society sisters on March 17, 1842, the Relief Society “was no trifling thing, but an organization after the order of Heaven.”[67] Indeed, Eliza later stated:
Although the name may be of modern date, the institution is of ancient origin. We were told by our martyred prophet, that the same organization existed in the church anciently, allusions to which are made in some of the epistles recorded in the New Testament, making use of the title, “elect lady”. . . . This is an organization that cannot exist without the priesthood, from the fact that it derives all its authority and influence from that source. When the Priesthood was taken from the earth, this institution as well as every other appendage to the true order of the church of Jesus Christ on the earth, became extinct, and had never been restored until now.[68]
In her poem, “The Female Relief Society: What is it?” Eliza expresses her understanding that the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo is the legitimate counterpart to the male organization by emphasizing the word “order” in the sixth and last stanza. She does so by enlarging the word in such a way that it immediately draws attention to itself, implying that she understands the “Relief Society” to be an order of the priesthood.[69] The “Chosen Lady”: Emma is so called “because [she was] elected to preside” as Joseph, the First Elder, was also elected to preside.[70] In the words of President John Taylor, “this Institution was organiz’d according to the law of Heaven—according to a revelation previously given to Mrs. E. Smith, appointing her to this important calling—[with] . . . all things moving forward in . . . a glorious manner.”[71]
The female counterpart of the priesthood would be linked to that of the male order in the appropriated grand fundamental of Masonry: friendship. One could construe that the name for the women’s organization, “The Female Relief Society, was chosen with the Masonic fundamentals of “truth,” “friendship,” and “relief” in mind—therefore empowering the female and male organizations to work together in mutual support, encouraging each other and meeting together in council—patterned after the Divine Council presided over by El, El Shaddai/ Asherah, and Yehovah. If that collaborative vision did not yet come to fruition, it did not go unnoticed by those who constituted the second generation of Relief Society sisters who were very familiar with the founding events of their organization; Susa Young Gates wrote that “the privileges and powers outlined by the Prophet in those first meetings [of the Relief Society] have never been granted to women in full even yet.”[72]
In turning “the key” to Emma as president of the Female Relief Society, Joseph encouraged Emma to “be a pattern of virtue; and possess all the qualifications necessary for her to stand and preside and dignify her Office.” In her article for the Young Woman’s Journal, Susa Young Gates, in her recapitulation of Doctrine and Covenants 25, reminds her young, female readership that Emma was not only called to be a scribe but a “counselor” to the prophet and that she was “ordained to expound the scriptures. Not only set apart but ordained!”[73] With Emma in possession of the keys to preside over the Female Relief Society, it was now possible to create a “kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day—as in Paul’s day.”[74] As in the ancient church of Adam and Eve envisioned by Joseph and, as in the early Christian Church, women would share the burdens of administering the affairs of the kingdom together with ministering to their congregations, the sick, the poor and the needy, and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.[75]
Indeed, Relief Society sisters performed a vital role in their min-istrations to the poor and the sick—including the pronouncement of blessings of healing. For example, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney records being blessed at the hands of Sister Persis Young, Brigham’s niece, who “had been impressed by the Spirit to come and administer to me . . . She rebuked my weakness . . . and commanded me to be made whole, pronouncing health and many other blessings upon me. . . . From that morning I went to work as though nothing had been the matter.”[76] At the Nauvoo Relief Society meeting of April 28, 1842 Joseph Smith had promised that “if the sisters should have faith to heal the sick, let all hold their tongues, and let every thing roll on.”[77] Women and men would also be endowed to perform the saving ordinances performed initially in the Masonic Lodge and then in the newly constructed Nauvoo Temple in order to redeem “all nations, kindreds, tongues and people” culminating in the sealing of the human family to each other and to the Divine Family, thereby fulfilling their collaborative roles as “Saviours on Mount Zion.”
As Susa Young Gates noted, “there were mighty things wrought in those long-ago days in this Church. Every great and gracious principle of the Gospel—every truth and force for good—all these were conceived and born in the mighty brain and great heart of that master-mind of the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith, the development and expansion of these truths he left to others” (emphasis mine). Susa then added that Joseph “was never jealous or grudging in his attitude to woman. . . . He brought from the Heavenly store-house that bread of life which should feed her soul, if she would eat and lift her from the low estate of centuries of servitude and ignominy into equal partnership and equal liberty with man.”[78]
[1] Joseph Milner, The History of the Church of Christ, vol. 2 (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812), v.; Joseph Milner, The History of the Church of Christ, vol. 3 (Boston: Farrand, Mallory, and Co., 1809), 221.
[2] They are treated in Alexander L. Baugh, “Parting the Veil: Joseph Smith’s Seventy-Six Documented Visionary Experiences,” in Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820–1844, edited by John W. Welch and Erick B. Carlson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University and Deseret Book, 2005), 265–326.
[3] Interview Kathleen Flake, “The Mormons,” PBS Frontline/American Experience (Apr. 30, 2007), retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/flake.html.
[4] Richard Bushman, “Joseph Smith and His Visions,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, edited by Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 118.
[5] This practice is most clearly evident in his revelation on priesthood, D&C 107.
[6] See The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Manuscript and Revelation Books, Facsimile Edition, edited by Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2009).
[7] William Dever, Did God Have a Wife? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005).
[8] Among Joseph’s reading material is Willam Hone, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament (London: Hone, 1821). For Smith’s library, see Kenneth W. Godfrey, “A Note on the Nauvoo Library and Literary Institute,” Brigham Young University Studies 14 (Spring 1974): 386–89.
[9] Erastus Snow, Mar. 3, 1878, Journal of Discourses, 19:269–70.
[10] Richard S. Van Wagoner, ed., Complete Discourses of Brigham Young (Salt Lake City: Smith-Petit Foundation, 2009), 5:3092.
[11] Women in Heaven,” Millennial Star 64 (Jun. 26, 1902): 410, retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/millennialstar6426eng#page/408/mode/2up. Penrose, who was editor at the time this editorial was written, is likely the author.
[12] Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 70.
[13] Abraham H. Cannon, Journal, Aug. 25, 1880, LDS archives, quoted in Linda P. Wilcox, “The Mormon Concept of a Mother in Heaven,” in Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Lavina Fielding Anderson, eds., Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 66; see also Maxine Hanks, Woman and Authority (Salt Lake: Signature, 1992).
[14] V. H. Cassler, “Plato’s Son, Augustine’s Heir: ‘A Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology’?” Square Two 5, no. 2 (Summer 2012), retrieved from http://squaretwo. org/Sq2ArticleCasslerPlatosSon.html.
[15] Joseph Don Carlos Young, Private Notebook (no date; no pagination), currently in the possession of Richard Wright Young, grandson of Joseph Don Carlos Young, quoted in Alonzo L. Gaskill and Seth G. Soha, “The Woman at the Veil,” in An Eye of Faith: Essays in Honor of Richard O. Cowan, edited by Kenneth L. Alford and Richard. E. Bennett (Provo: Religious Studies Center, 2015), 91–111.
[16] Daniel Peterson, “Nephi and his Asherah: A Note on 1 Nephi 11:8–23,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2 (2000): 16–25, 80–81.
[17] See Exodus 25:31–37, 37:17–22; Zechariah 4:1–3; Genesis 2:9; Revelation 22:2. See also Margaret Barker, King of the Jews: Temple Theology in John’s Gospel (London: SPCK, 2014), 34–38. Biblical quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[18] See 1 Kings 6:18, 29, 33.
[19] See also Ezekiel 40:16, 31.
[20] See John 12:12–13. The Hebrew for “Hosanna” is “Hoshi’ahnna” meaning “Save us” as noted in Margaret Barker, The Gate of Heaven (Sheffield: SPCK, 2008), 84.
[21] William Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 101.
[22] E.g., Proverbs 1:20.
[23] See photographs of the fresco at Catacombs of Priscilla, http://www.cata-combepriscilla.com/visita_catacomba_en.html.
[24] Augustine, The Trinity, Book VII, ch 5. My gratitude to Rachael Givens Johnson for alerting me to this passage.
[25] Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord, vol. 1: The Lady in the Temple (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 104.
[26] Kenneth B. Wolf, “Sentencia-Estatuto de Toledo, 1449.” Medieval Texts in Translation (2008), retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/canilup/toledo1449. My gratitude to Rachael Givens Johnson for sharing this quotation with me.
[27] Barker, Mother of the Lord, 331.
[28] Sarah M. Kimball, “Auto-Biography,” Woman’s Exponent 12, no. 7 (Sep. 1, 1883): 51, retrieved from http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/10872/rec/17.
[29] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 38, retrieved from http://josephsmith-papers.org/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book.
[30] Eliza R. Snow, “An Address,” Woman’s Exponent 2, no. 8 (Sep. 15, 1873): 63, retrieved from http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/15710/rec/31.
[31] Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 145.
[32] Romans 16:7.
[33] John Chrysostom, “Homilies on Romans 31,” in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament, VI: Romans, edited by Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 358.
[34] Orson Pratt, Mar. 26, 1876, Journal of Discourses 18:171.
[35] Raymond Brown, “Roles of Women in the Fourth Gospel,” Theological Studies 36 (1975): 691–92.
[36] Kevin Giles, Patterns of Ministry among the First Christians (Victoria: Collins Dove, 1989), 167.
[37] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1997), 107.
[38] For example, 2 John 1:1, 4, 13; 3 John 1:4.
[39] Stanley R. Grenz and Denise Muir Kjebo, Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 78.
[40] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 9.
[41] Ibid., 8.
[42] Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith (Orem, Utah: Grandin Book Company, 1991), 115.
[43] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 58.
[44] Joseph Smith, Journal, Apr. 28, 1842, in Andrew H. Hedges, et al., eds., Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843, edited by Dean C. Jessee, et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 52 (hereafter JSP, J2).
[45] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 126.
[46] E. R. Snow Smith, “To Branches of the Relief Society (republished by request, and permission of President Lorenzo Snow),” The Woman’s Exponent 27, no. 23 (Sep. 15, 1884): 140, retrieved from http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/33963/rec/1.
[47] Quoted in Jill Mulvay Derr, Janath Russell Cannon, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1992), 39, 50.
[48] Ehat and Cook, Words, 115. As Ehat and Cook point out, there seems little alternative to reading the “confirmation” in his expression as a reference to the gift of the Holy Ghost (141).
[49] William Gibbons, Truth Advocated in Letters Addressed to the Presbyterians (Philadelphia: Joseph Rakenstraw, 1822), 107. Quoted in Benjamin Keogh, “The Holy Priesthood, The Holy Ghost, and the Holy Community,” Mormon Scholars Foundation Summer Seminar paper, Brigham Young University, Jul. 23, 2015, n.p.
[50] Gibbons, Truth, 85.
[51] “Hours With Holy Scripture,” The Reformed Presbyterian Magazine (Edin-burgh: Johnstone, Hunter & Co, 1866), 45. Quoted in Keogh, “The Holy Priesthood, The Holy Ghost and the Holy Community.”
[52] On April 28 Joseph again visited the Relief Society meeting and discoursed on the topic of “different offices, and the necessity of every individual acting in the sphere allotted to him or her.” Given what follows it is evident that Joseph is addressing the different spiritual gifts allotted to each member of the community. For, he continues that “the disposition of man [is] to look with jealous eyes upon the standing of others” and “the reason these remarks were being made, was that some little thing was circulating in the Society,” com-plaints that “ some [women] were not going right in laying hands on the sick &c,” instead of rejoicing that “the sick could be heal’d” (Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 35–36).
[53] Ehat and Cook, Words, 7.
[54] Ibid., 64 (emphasis mine).
[55] Joseph Smith, “Gift of the Holy Ghost,” Times and Seasons, Jun. 15, 1842. Quoted in “The Holy Priesthood, The Holy Ghost and the Holy Community,” Keogh.
[56] Sarah Kimball, “Reminiscence, March 17, 1882,” in The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History, edited by Jill Mulvay Derr, et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 495; emphasis mine.
[57] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 40; D&C 27:13–18.
[58] Cheryl L. Bruno, “Keeping a Secret: Freemasonry, Polygamy, and the Nauvoo Relief Society, 1842–44,” Journal of Mormon History 39, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 159.
[59] Don Bradley has illuminated these connections in “The Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism: Joseph Smith’s Unfinished Reformation,” Sunstone (Apr. 2006): 32–41.
[60] Ehat and Cook, Words, 234.
[61] Snow, Journal of Discourses 19:266.
[62] For example, Exodus 6:3. For a discussion of Shaddai/Shadday as a female name, see Harriet Lutzky, “Shadday as a Goddess Epithet” in Vetus Testamentum 48, Fasc. 1 (Jan. 1998): 15–16.
[63] Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 105–06.
[64] Heber C. Kimball, Nov. 29, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 6:102.
[65] Considering the male priesthood to be the “Male Relief Society” is no stretch. The profound influence of Masonry on Smith, his choice of the Masonic Lodge for organizational purposes, the association of Masonic thought with “Relief,” and the women’s choice to employ that term explicitly in their organization’s name, all suggest that the male organization was effectively in Smith’s conception a “male Relief Society.”
[66] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 11–12.
[67] Eighth Ward, Liberty Stake, Relief Society Minutes and Records, 1867–1969, vol. 1, May 12, 1868. In First Fifty Years, 270.
[68] Eliza R. Snow, “Female Relief Society,” Apr. 18 and 20, 1868, in First Fifty Years, 271 (emphasis mine).
[69] Eliza R. Snow, “Female Relief Society of Nauvoo: What is it?” in First Fifty Years, 135.
[70] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 9.
[71] Ibid., 14.
[72] Susa Young Gates, “The Open Door for Women,” Young Woman’s Journal 16 (Mar. 3, 1905): 117; retrieved http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/YWJ/id/14738/rec/16.
[73] Gates, “Open Door,” 116.
[74] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 22.
[75] Ehat and Cook, Words, 110.
[76] Helen Mar Whitney, “Scenes and Incidents at Winter Quarters,” Woman’s Exponent 14, no. 14 (Dec. 15, 1885), 106, retrieved from http://contentdm. lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/12881/rec/69.
[77] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 36.
[78] Gates, “Open Door,” 116.
2016: Fiona Givens, “‘The Perfect Union of Man and Woman’: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 49 No. 1 (2016): 1–26.
Givens argues that one of the things that Joseph Smith was trying to restore was teachings taught to Adam and Eve, in particular men and women working together. Givens also highlighted the existence of Heavenly Mother.
[post_title] => “The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-perfect-union-of-man-and-womanreclamation-and-collaboration-in-joseph-smiths-theology-making [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:45:51 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:45:51 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=18872 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Salvation through a Tabernacle: Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment
Benjamin E. Park
Dialogue 43.2 (Summer 2010): 1–44
A discussion of the theology of the body being combined with the spirit for various different reasons.
In his Socratic dialogue Phaedo, Plato offered a multi-layered argument for the immortality of the soul, claiming that the human spirit belonged with the Forms—that is, the highest and most fundamental kind of reality as opposed to the “shadows” that humankind dealt with in the temporal world. Plato implied that the soul existed before entering the body and that, if it properly purified itself from all attachment to bodily things, it would then return to the intelligible world of Forms after death.[1] The body in early Platonism, therefore, served as a temporary prison for the immortal soul and, according to Phaedrus, came as a result of an undisciplined mistake and corresponding fall in humankind’s previous existence.[2] While Aristotle challenged and nuanced his teacher’s demeaning of the world and human bodies, Western thought largely engaged Plato’s belief for the following two millennia.
More than two thousand years after Socrates’s death, Mormon apostle Parley Parker Pratt used the Greek sage as a strawman against which he presented a radically material afterlife. In an essay written early in 1844 titled “The Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” Pratt invoked the classic philosopher as among those professing a temporary—and therefore, insufficient—view of the physical tabernacle and who therefore epitomized those who held the hope “of escaping with nothing but their spirits, to some immaterial world.” In Pratt’s theology, the redemption of the spirit is only half of the eternal battle that Mormons believed in: “One of the principal objects of our blessed Redeemer,” he claimed, “was the redemption of our material bodies, and the restoration of the whole physical world from the dominion of sin, death, and the curse.” Pratt went on to postulate the future potentialities of human bodies: a physical, supernatural resurrection of their bodily form, accompanied by celestial glory added not only upon the immortal soul, but the immortal tabernacle. “What kind of salvation then do we need?” he asked. “I reply, we need salvation from death and the grave, as well as from our sins ...a salvation not only of our spirits, but of our body and parts, of our flesh and bones, of our hands, and feet and head, with every organ, limb and joint.”[3]
The vast differences between the Platonic approach and Pratt’s are readily apparent. The former viewed the body as a temporary prison while absent from the intelligible world of Forms, the latter as a vehicle to the salvation of a domestic heaven. Indeed, these positions occupy opposite poles of a long-debated spectrum, offering the extremes of how to religiously approach corporality: Pratt’s radical materialism acts as a foil to the more traditional duality of spirit and matter. While positioning Pratt among later Christian writers collapses the contrast, LDS embodiment still stands unique. Placing early Mormon theology of the body within the larger Christian—and more importantly, antebellum Protestant—context provides a unique vantage point from which we can more fully understand its origins and implications. This paper analyzes pre-Utah Mormonism’s views of embodiment, both to better understand the development of early LDS thought and also to place Mormon theology within its larger culture.
Bodily Religions
In the last few decades, scholars of religion have given more attention to the place of the body in religious thought. Indeed, as religious critic William LaFleur notes, the academy has “moved from recognizing that religion involves the body to acknowledging” that it plays a major role in religion, even to the point that studies that do not involve the body in some way “now seem out-of-date.”[4] Similarly, British religious studies scholar Richard H. Roberts writes that “the body is . . . a core concern in world religious traditions, and the body as locus of experience, object of desire, source of metaphor, and icon of self representation is a pervasive preoccupation of Western . . . culture.”[5]
The body is an especially apt lens through which to view theology because it so penetrates religious thought, practice, and symbology that its significance often goes overlooked. Not only do many religious analogies employ the body for understanding, but the body itself serves as a metaphor for an entire religious construction. As religious anthropologist Mary Douglas noted three decades ago, “Just as it is true that everything symbolizes the body, so it is equally true that the body symbolizes everything else.”[6] Historians and religious scholars “cannot take ‘the body’ for granted as a natural, fixed and historically universal datum of human societies,” wisely notes anthropologist Bryan Turner, because it “has many meanings within human practice, and can be conceptualized within a variety of dimensions and frameworks.” Instead, he continues, we must treat human conceptions of corporality as another tool in understanding religious traditions and their attempts to understand themselves and the world around them. “The body, rather than being a naturally given datum, is a socially constructed artifact rather like other cultural products. The body (its image, its bearing, and representation) is the effect of innumerable practices, behaviours, and discourses which construct and produce the body as a culturally recognizable feature of social relations.”[7]
Embodiment theology presents, then, a unique perspective on the development of religious thought. It serves as the center of religious practice, especially for Christian religions and their emphasis on the suffering and crucified body of Christ as well as the Eucharist designed as a physical reminder of something divine becoming corporeal. Divine healings, a common practice among antebellum American religionists, implied a specific bond between the spirit and its tabernacle. The elements that make up the body, the purpose for the body, and the future of the body were all issues religious thinkers had to deal with throughout Christian history, and especially after the Protestant Reformation.
It is traditionally held that early and even medieval Christianity held highly disparaging views of the body. Noted religious studies scholar Marie Griffith acknowledged that it is “a truism to note that devout Christians of earlier eras displayed profound ambivalence about the flesh” and that they “felt the body to be a burden that must be suffered resignedly during earthly life while yet remaining the crucial material out of which devotional practice and spiritual progress were forged.”[8] Thus, many Christians acquiesced reluctantly to the necessity of embodiment but still yearned for an eventual transcendence of their temporal form that could be achieved only through resurrection. However, recent scholarship has argued that this view can be overstated. These “generalizations,” Sarah Coakley—editor of Cambridge University Press’s anthology on Religion and the Body—has written, probably cannot “stand the test of a nuanced reading of the complex different strands of thought about ‘bodiliness’ and meanings in Jewish and Christian traditions of the pre-Enlightenment era.” Indeed, Coakley argues, even the distinction between the terms “positive” and “negative” when used in terms of bodily theologies rely on generalizations that cannot withstand careful readings, and scholars need to acknowledge that the history of embodiment is much more ambivalent.[9]
However, while this “nuanced” approach deserves attention when relating to rituals, religious reception, or even divine healings, Christianity was often rhetorically pessimistic when speaking of the body and its limitations, largely following New Testament counsel to avoid the temptation of the “flesh” (e.g., Rom. 7:5, 8:1; Gal. 4:14, 5:16; Eph. 2:3). Further, at the heart of Christianity’s rhetorical hesitation toward embodiment was the belief in classic Cartesian dualism, in which, borrowing from the Platonic tradition, Christianity gave priority to things spiritual over things physical.
Similar sentiments carried over into America. The Puritan foundations of the nation, especially the Christian belief in the fallen state of humankind, led to frequent associations of the body with depraved human nature.[10] Jonathan Edwards, the nation’s most prominent eighteenth-century theologian, testified that mortals were weighed down by “a heavy moulded body, a lump of flesh and blood which is not fitted to be an organ for a soul inf lamed with high exercises of divine love. . . . Fain would they fly, but they are held down, as with a dead weight at their feet.”[11] Several generations later, influential minister Lorenzo Dow famously observed in classic Platonic fashion that the mortal body “is a clog to my soul, and frequently tends to weigh down my mind, which infirmity I don’t expect to get rid of till my Spirit returns to God.”[12] To American religionists, the body was the locus of sin, the target of temptation, and the bondage of the soul. As one writer noted, death began to be seen to some as a welcome relief, “an end to the ‘pilgrimage’ through . . . bodily hostility.”[13]
While a more optimistic view of the human soul began to develop during the antebellum period with the increase in Arminian theology, this theological progression was more often directed at the spirit than the body; American religious thinkers yearned for inward potential while still regretting the limitations of the flesh. Their views of embodiment continued to be ambiguous, acknowledging the human tabernacle as necessary for religious experience but remaining rhetorically hesitant toward granting it much virtue.[14] The body was still seen as a result of humankind’s fallen status and a symbol for human sin, and it was still strongly asserted that redemption of the soul was possible only through overcoming all bodily temptations and escaping earth’s carnal existence.
Early LDS Views of the Body
For almost the first decade of the Mormon Church’s existence, its adherents seemed to hold the same opinions of the body as their contemporaries. Joseph Smith’s early scriptures and revelations—particularly the Book of Mormon—presented the “natural man” as an “enemy to God,” and posited that only through rejecting their “carnal nature” could human beings be saved.[15] This scriptural rhetoric described the body as the encapsulation of temptation and sin, always associating humankind’s fallen state with the earthly tabernacle. One Book of Mormon passage specifically decried the depraved nature of “flesh”: A dying father in-structed his sons to “not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate.”[16] While early Mormon teachings and revelations rejected Calvinism and offered a more optimistic and Arminian interpretation of the soul, they mirrored contemporary Protestants in their ambiguity toward the body and its potential.[17]
Several early texts and practices, however, laid the ground-work for a later theological transition. In a revelation received in the winter of 1832–33, Joseph Smith recorded that it required both “the spirit and the body” to compose the human “soul.”[18] Traditional Christianity often separated the soul from its corporeal body, believing that the former signified the immaterial human spirit while the latter served as a temporary (and sometimes limited) shelter requiring a divine overhaul at the resurrection. Charles Buck’s influential nineteenth-century Theological Dictionary defined “soul” as “that vital, immaterial, active substance, or principle in man, whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons and wills”—clearly something outside of and separate to the material body.[19] Joseph Smith’s revelation—implying that it was only through the combination of the spirit and body that the soul could be complete—held promising possibilities for a theology of embodiment. A divine communication received several months later repeated this idea, claiming that, when the spirit and the body are separated, “man cannot receive a fulness of joy.”[20] However, like many other theological seeds found in Joseph Smith’s revelations, this idea lay fallow, and most early Mormon writings retained the traditional Cartesian dualism.[21]
Part of Joseph Smith’s religious quest for perfection—his “Zion” project—included a focus on things temporal as much as things spiritual. He understood his prophethood to grant him authority to regulate matters concerning everyday life and living, including controversial and ecclesiastically risky economic ventures.[22] His revelations also began to explicitly address bodily matters, from practical guidance on when to retire to bed to sanitary counsel in preparation for temple participation.[23] A divine commandment concerning the priesthood promised diligent Saints that they would be “sanctifyed by the Spirit unto the renewing of their bodies,” while another revelation promised them that their tabernacles would be “filled with light.”[24] The most important revelation regarding the body in the early Church, however, occurred during the School of the Prophets in the winter of 1833–34.
Perhaps influenced by his wife Emma who, tradition holds, was disgusted by the stains that resulted from the school’s tobacco use, the Mormon prophet recorded a revelation specifically devoted to the refinement of the body. Titled the “Word of Wisdom,” it countermanded the use of tobacco, liquor, and other harmful substances while recommending vegetables, fruits, and healthful grains. Following this divine counsel, the text promised, would result not only in “health in the navel and marrow in the bones” but also “wisdom and great treasures of knowledge.”[25] In short, spiritual growth must be accompanied by bodily ministration. Though obedience to this counsel ebbed and f lowed for almost a century, that a revelation focused on the treatment of the body was found in Mormonism’s canon implied special attention to the tabernacle for the spirit.
The revelation itself did not eliminate the classical body/spirit dualism; indeed, it still presented the body as something that required refinement for the spirit to be edified. However, the text did present the human tabernacle as a necessary tool in a spirit’s progression: The body was not to be overcome in order to reach spiritual fulfillment, but perfected. The earlier revelation that called for a combination of the body and spirit also designated a “natural body” as the apex of human development and the culminating reward for the soul’s purification. Other movements, both religious and secular, participated in various “temperance” movements, yet few grounded it in the divine and innately spiritual framework that Mormonism did.[26]
Early Mormonism also paid attention to the body in the context of healing. Following the New Testament injunction about the necessity of spiritual gifts, Mormon apostles and missionaries saw divine healing as a necessary part of their message and authority.[27] This practice assumed an intimate connection between body and spirit, implying that bodily elements would respond to ecclesiastical authority and religious faith. It also assumed that religion and spirituality dealt with corporality as much as metaphysics, leading to what one scholar has labeled a “collapse of the sacred” and an expansion of what is classified as religious.[28] Beyond just the possibility of divine healings of the body, however, Smith saw control over embodiment as crucial to the Mormon message of authority. When Lydia Carter, wife of early missionary Jared Carter, fell sick, the Prophet promised her that “she need not have any more pain” because the Mormon priesthood possessed power to overcome it.[29] Indeed, early Mormonism’s charismatic claims revolved around the extension of spiritual power into the physical realm, placing bodily healings at the center of what they understood to be biblical evidences and blessings.
Further, the developing Mormon temple rites in Kirtland also involved the body. In preparation, the Saints mixed bodily cleanliness and anointing with spiritual refinement. William Wine Phelps wrote his wife, Sally, in January 1836: “Our meeting[s] will grow more and more solemn, and will continue till the great solemn assembly when the house is finished! We are preparing to make ourselves clean, by first cleansing our hearts, forsaking our sins, forgiving every body; putting on clean decent clothes, by anointing our heads and by keeping all the commandments.”[30] This mingling of the physical with the spiritual hints at the attention paid to their bodies. The Kirtland Temple experience, an antecedent to the later Nauvoo rites, involved bodily purification as much as mental and spiritual preparation. In the meeting where Joseph Smith claimed a vision of the celestial kingdom, the participants “washed [their] bodies with pure water before the Lord,” after which they were “perfumed with a sweet smelling oderous wash.”[31] After the dedication of the temple, the culmination of the Kirtland rituals was the ordinance of the washing of feet, first performed by the leading councils, and then by the entire priesthood body in the area.[32] This ritual, echoing the New Testament pattern, reveals the close connection between body and spirit, attaching corporeal cleanliness to unity, purification, and sacred authority. This ritual also followed Old Testament patterns, echoing the explicitly physical nature of early Judaism.[33]
A final aspect to consider when engaging 1830s Mormonism is the conferral of the priesthood itself. Priesthood power, Mormons believed, was physically transferred by the officiator’s hands laid on the recipient’s head. It was not acquired merely through metaphysical belief or knowledge. As Joseph Smith spoke of his priesthood ordinations by angels, he described tangible beings with resurrected bodies who ordained him with physical touch.[34] There was something about fleshy tabernacles, this reasoning implied, that made it impossible for ordination to be done any other way. Similarly, the gift of the Holy Ghost was bestowed by physical confirmation, following what Mormons interpreted as scriptural precedent.[35] This thinking found its climax several decades later when Parley and Orson Pratt, brothers and apostles, wrote that these physical ordinations literally transferred a materialistic spirit, similar to the “laws and operations of electricity. . . . It is imparted by the contact of two bodies, through the channel of the nerves.”[36]
Many of these theological developments, however, were not significantly different from the tenets of other contemporaneous religious movements. Indeed, none of these specific beliefs or practices placed the early Church far outside the boundaries of antebellum Protestantism, even if they pulled Mormons toward the more optimistic side of the spectrum of belief about corporality. However, this paradigm would be severely challenged (if not shattered) in the next decade, as an expanded and ultimately radical new theology developed in Nauvoo, centered primarily on a daring and, to many, heretical, ontological framework, all of which led to a redefinition of embodiment. It took a combination of these early beliefs about the body and their later theological developments to lead Mormons out of mainstream belief.
Mormonism’s later theology of the body came as a result of the appearance of several corresponding theological ideas, each contributing to its redefinition of human corporality. First was the belief that material elements were eternal—a progressive rejection of traditional dualism that had placed spirit above matter—that led the early Saints to a radical materialist view. Another was Mormonism’s belief in the preexistence and the accompanying need and power that came with the reception of an earthly body. And third—the culmination of the previous two doctrinal innovations—was the embodiment of God himself with a physical tabernacle of flesh and bones, thereby setting a precedent for what embodied humankind may achieve. Further, these theological developments led to a redefinition of natural affections and bodily impulses, positing the “natural man” as pure and capable of cultivation. And finally, these ideas were solidified and reinforced by the introduction of Nauvoo Temple ceremonies, leading to a domestic heaven based on materiality, domesticity, and embodiment.
When approaching the topic of embodiment in the 1840s, two figures take center stage. Obviously, Joseph Smith must always be engaged because of his position as prophet and the reverence his colleagues gave to his revelations and teachings. However, Smith’s eclectic style and early death left many of his ideas and theological innovations fragmented, unfulfilled, and inchoate.[37] Thus, it was left to others, most notably Parley P. Pratt, to systematize, expand, and publish these doctrines. This is especially the case in embodiment theologies, as Parley Pratt wrote more on “material salvation” than anyone else in the late-Nauvoo period and immediately afterward. It was the ideas presented by both men—introduction by Joseph Smith and refinement by Parley Pratt—by which, as one scholar put it, “Mormonism established the human body as the key religious and ritual focus of life in a much more accentuated way than any other western form of Christianity.”[38]
Eternalizing Matter and Materializing Spirit
Mormonism’s redefinition of matter as an eternal element, coupled with its rejection of any difference between material and spiritual, completely revised LDS theology, and was the center of its developed belief in embodiment.[39] The timeline of this doctrinal development is difficult to determine, and several significant and related events in 1835–36 that played an important role are chronologically problematic. First was Joseph Smith’s exposure to an Egyptian text that he identified as the book of Abraham. This text presented a significant shift in the Genesis story, claiming that God “organized” the world out of already existent elements as opposed to a creation out of nothing. This text, however, was not published until 1842, and I argue that Smith probably did not produce the new creation account until Nauvoo.[40]
Another development was Smith’s participation in learning Hebrew during the winter of 1835–36.[41] Tutored by Jewish scholar Joshua Seixas, the Mormon prophet delved into a deeper study of ancient Biblical texts. Using Seixas’s manual on Hebrew Grammar, Smith was exposed to alternative interpretations of the Bible, interpretations that influenced his later teachings, including a divine council of Gods.[42] Part of the textbook’s “exercises in translating” involved the creation account in Genesis 1.[43] This exposure is important, for Smith’s later defense of matter’s eternal nature depended on his reinterpretation of the Hebrew text of Genesis.[44] While his later use of Hebrew, made famous in his April 1844 King Follett Discourse, may have been more influenced by Alexander Neibaur in Nauvoo, his dedication to working from the original Hebrew began in Kirtland, and this influence may have led to his rewriting of the creation account that introduced the concept of matter as eternal.[45]
A more concrete influence that can be traced in regard to materialism was the Saints’ exposure to the Scottish lay philosopher Thomas Dick. Dick was an amateur astronomer who made it his mission to reconcile science and religion.[46] His Philosophy of a Future State, first published in 1829, made only a moderate splash in Britain but was quickly embraced by antebellum America. This text argued that matter could not be created or destroyed[47]—the same anti-annihilation argument that later writers, most notably Joseph Smith and Parley Pratt, would employ.[48] Dick’s work was twice quoted in the Mormon periodical Messenger and Advocate, thus demonstrating considerable familiarity with the text.[49] While these excerpts were quoted as support for the Saints’ belief in the immortality of the human spirit, the sections also argued that matter could never be destroyed or annihilated. Determining intellectual influence is always a risky venture, yet at the very least it could be argued that familiarity with Dick’s writing could have strengthened, expanded, or even provided a respectable framework and defense for Mormonism’s developing materialism.[50]
The earliest published writing on the eternal nature of matter came from Parley Pratt in an 1839 essay, “The Regeneration and Eternal Duration of Matter.” While Pratt was not yet teaching that there was no difference between spirit and matter, he argued that both elements were of eternal duration. “Matter and Spirit are the two great principles of all existence,” he explained, and “every thing animate and inanimate is composed of one or the other, or both of these eternal principles.” Pratt’s pamphlet also rejected the idea that God had created the world out of nothing, reasoning that it is as “impossible for a mechanic to make any thing whatever without materials [as] it is equally impossible for God to bring forth matter from nonentity, or to originate element from nothing, because this would contradict the law of truth, and destroy himself.” Thus, all physical elements cannot be created or destroyed but will be redeemed and purified through the salvation of Christ—a redemption of the entire physical world.[51]
This redemption also included human corporality, he reasoned, for “the body and spirit will be reunited; the whole will become immortal, no more to be separated, or to undergo dissolution,” language clearly relying on Joseph Smith’s earlier revelations and the epistles of Paul. Then, turning to the example of Jesus Christ, Pratt explained that his resurrected body was “the same flesh, the same bones, the same joints,” and all other characteristics of the “physical features” that composed his earthly tabernacle, only quickened from its mortal state to an immortal condition. The only difference, he reasoned, was the presence of “spirit” in his veins rather than blood. Indeed, Pratt argued that human embodiment—including the forthcoming redemption and resurrection—was the fundamental reason for the earth’s existence and must be experienced by all those wishing to take part in God’s glory and receive their heavenly inheritance.[52]
While not completely destroying the concept of Cartesian dualism, placing spirit and matter on an equal level was an important step toward a corporeal deity. The Puritan theologian Stephen Charnock argued that God must be immaterial because he could not be infinite if “he should be a massy, heavy body, and have eyes and ears, feet and hands, as we have.” Since matter is not eternal, Charnock reasoned, materiality would limit God’s omnipotence.[53] At the heart of the spirit/matter dualism was the platonic implication that spirit was of a higher order than matter—that the “physical” was merely a temporary status that does not exist before or after the soul or spirit. Therefore, traditional Christianity argued, physical “matter” was to be contrasted with spiritual elements, the latter of which was the only principle considered eternal. However, if matter were to be eternal in scope, as Pratt was arguing, then a body could not be dismissed as being a barrier to divinity.
Joseph Smith went even further than Pratt in closing the distance between the spiritual and material. By 1841, the Mormon prophet also rejected creation ex nihilo, arguing that “this earth was organized or formed out of other planets which were broke up and remodelled and made into the one on which we live.” Using an analogy of a ring, he described matter as eternal: “That which has a beginning will surely have an end.”[54] An editorial published in April 1842 under his name claimed: “The spirit, by many, is thought to be immaterial, without substance. With this latter statement we should beg leave to differ, and state the spirit is a substance; that it is material, but that it is more pure, elastic and refined matter than the body.”[55] A year later, the Mormon prophet famously asserted that “all spirit is matter but is more fine or pure and can only be discerned by purer eyes,”[56] officially dismissing any difference between the two elements. Once this distinction was gone, Parley Pratt boldly proclaimed that all theologies based on traditional dualism were “mere relics of mysticism and superstition, riveted upon the mind by ignorance and tradition.” He went so far as to say that “all persons except materialists must be infidels, so far at least [as] belief in the scriptures is concerned.”[57] Parley’s brother Orson later claimed that believing in an immaterial God was nothing more than “religious atheism,” feigning a belief in God yet refusing Him any substance.[58]
This development toward materialism was crucial to Mormonism’s redefinition of embodiment. Mormons could not believe in the supremacy of spirit over matter, because there was no longer any significant difference; the body and the spirit were made up of the same elements and had to be enmeshed. It also meant that the next life would also be based on materiality because there was no other kind of existence. In short, monism, or the belief that everything was made out of one substance, unlocked the body from being seen as occupying an inferior and temporary status, instead redefining it as just one form of the single, universal element expanding throughout the entire cosmos.
Viewing the body as an eternal element also provided a conceptual framework for conquering death.[59] Like many of his contemporaries, Smith worried about what would happen to both his physical tabernacle and his personal relationships after this life. “More painful to me [are] the thoughts of anhilitation [annihilation] than death,” he exclaimed in an 1843 discourse. “If I had no expectation of seeing my mother, brother[s], and Sisters and friends again my heart would burst in a moment and I should go down to my grave.” However, if this separation could be overcome by the resurrection of a physical body, then death has lost its sting: “The expectation of seeing my friends in the morning of the resurrection cheers my soul,” Smith mused, “and make[s] me bear up against the evils of life.”[60] His vision of Christ’s second coming was as much about the physicality of renewed relationships as it was about glorifying God:
In the morn of the resurrection [the Saints] may come forth in a body. & come right up out of their graves, & strike hands immediately in eternal glory & felicity rather than to be scattered thousands of miles apart. There is something good & sacred to me. in this thing . . . I will tell you what I want, if to morrow I shall to lay in yonder tomb. in the morning of the resurrection, let me strike hands with my father, & cry, my father, & he will say my son, my son,—as soon as the rock rends. & before we come out of our graves.[61]
Indeed, the eternalizing of matter was not only a step toward divine embodiment but also a step toward Mormonism’s domestic heaven, both of which revolved around the physicality of their growing theology and the growing importance of embodiment.
The Preexistence and the Embodiment of Power
One of the slow-developing yet highly potent beliefs of early Mormonism was the preexistence, or the idea that the soul had a life before its earthly sojourn.[62] An 1833 revelation boldly proclaimed that the human spirit “was in the beginning with the Father” and that “intelligence . . . was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”[63] When Joseph Smith was working on the Egyptian papyri, arguably as late as the Nauvoo period, he translated portions that clearly spoke of premortal counsels and preordained appointments. While this doctrine was not emphasized early on, several Saints believed and taught it. For instance, W. W. Phelps editorialized in the Messenger and Advocate in 1835 that among the “new light . . . occasionally bursting into our minds” was that “we were with God in another world, before the foundation of the world, and had our agency.”[64] Similarly, Parley Pratt wrote a poem on his birthday in 1839:
This is the day that gave me birth
In eighteen hundred seven;
From worlds unseen I came to earth,
Far from my native heaven.[65]
Beyond these few intimations, however, the idea of preexistence was quiet throughout the first decade of the Church.
It would not stay silent for long, however. In 1842, Presbyterian minister J. B. Turner felt that this doctrine was at the center of Mormonism’s theology but that the Church was hiding it from the public. “Their sublime faith teaches them,” he explained, “that their action and destiny here are the result, and can be explained only upon admission, of their existence and action before they inhabited their present bodies. This notion, however, does not distinctly appear in their published revelations. It was at one time promulgated, but from its unpopularity, their leaders suppressed the full development of their peculiar scheme of preexistence until faith on the earth should increase.”[66] This public silence soon ended as Joseph Smith began preaching increasingly radical doctrines in Nauvoo. He repeatedly taught the eternal nature of the spirit, often emphasizing its independent nature: “The Spirit of Man is not a created being; it existed from Eternity & will exist to eternity,” he announced in 1839.[67] “The spirit or the inteligence [sic] of men are self Existant principles,” he proclaimed less than two years later.[68] Indeed, Joseph Smith’s theology laid out an origin for human souls that described them as coeternal with God, differing only in progress along an eternal spectrum rather than making humans a separate ontological species.
The idea of a premortal existence, however, was a platonic conception in itself and not foreign to many Christian thinkers.[69] It required a specific reformulation and unique framework of premortality to set a foundation for Mormonism’s embodiment and revised ontology. Once Smith granted human souls a new eternal origin, he provided a divine reason—and accompanying power—for their reception of earthly tabernacles. Starting in 1841, Smith depicted a council of Gods that had decided on human embodiment as a way to receive glory and power: “Joseph said that before [the] foundation of the Earth in the Grand Counsel,” recorded one of his listeners, “that the Spirits of all Men ware subject to opression & the express purpose of God in Giving it a tabernicle was to arm it against the power of Darkness.”[70] The reception of a body, in Joseph Smith’s theology, was not a “prison” or even a temporary vehicle for spiritual progression, but rather a symbol and receptacle of power intricately involved in human progression. In a work of speculative fiction, Phelps wrote that preexistent spirits “agreed to take upon them bodies of flesh, and work out a more exceeding and eternal crown of glory.”[71] In his description of spirits, Parley Pratt defined them as “men in embrio—Intelligences waiting to come into the natural world and take upon them flesh and bones, that through birth, death, and the resurection [sic] they may also be perfected in the material organization.”[72] Even the Holy Ghost, Smith reasoned, would be required at some point to possess a physical tabernacle.[73]
Smith later expounded on this concept and clarified how a spirit’s possession of a body was a tool of empowerment against others. In the premortal realm, he explained, “God saw that those intelegences had Not power to Defend themselves against those that had a tabernicle therefore the Lord Calls them together in Counsel & agrees to form them tabernicles so that he might [en]Gender the Spirit & the tabernicle together so as to create sympathy for their fellowman—for it is a Natureal thing with those spirits that has the most power to bore down on those of Lesser power.”[74] Indeed, the expanding role of a premortal council solidified the importance of the earthly tabernacle. The body was not merely an accompanying aspect of humankind’s telestial experience, but was the reason for that experience. Embodiment was a prearranged circumstance that God had designed as a way for His surrounding and inferior intelligences to gain similar glory, power, and dominion. In the eternal quest to overcome evil and fallen spirits, embodiment was the necessary step in the progress toward supremacy over other spirits. Smith claimed that it was “the design of God before the foundation of the world ...that we should take tabernacles that through faithfulness we should overcome,” because this was the sole way to “obtain glory honor power and dominion.” It was only by gaining a tabernacle that one could bring “other Spirits in Subjection unto them,” for “He who rules in the heavens” is He who has bodily power and authority over the lesser beings.[75] In the Prophet’s great chain of existence and dynastic view of heaven, the only difference between classes are the nature and state of their embodiment.[76]
Smith’s teachings presented embodiment as a way to combat and control the devil and his dominions. In this battle between good and evil spirits, he taught, “all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not.” Part of the devil’s punishment was that he would forever remain unembodied and therefore “has no power over us” because we have a decisive bodily advantage.[77] Because of this, the devil and his minions often sought to take possession of human tabernacles as an attempt to displace human power and build their own:
The greatness of [the devil’s] punishment is that he shall not have a tabernacle this is his punishment[.] So the devil thinking to thwart the decree of God by going up & down in the earth seeking whome he may destroy any person that he can find that will yield to him he will bind him & take possession of the body & reign there glorying in it mightily not thinking that he had got a stolen tabernacle & by & by some one of Authority will come along & cast him out & restore the tabernacle to his rightful owner but the devil steals a tabernacle because he has not one of his own but if he steals one he is liable to be turned out of doors[.][78]
The possession of a body was thus not only seen as an advantage for the spirits who obeyed God in the primordial realm but as a point of jealousy for those who did not. In contrast to the Platonic view of the body as a prison or Lorenzo Dow’s position that it is an anchor, dragging down the soul, Smith posited it as a reward for obedience, a receptacle of power, and the only vehicle for eternal exaltation. Thus, evil spirits acknowledged it as such and plotted to capture what they otherwise could not possess. The body was the only advantage humans had against these fallen nemeses, and it was their job to cultivate and improve it. “The great principle of happiness consists in having a body,” Smith argued, emphasizing humankind’s superiority over the devil.[79]
At the center of this optimistic perspective on embodiment was a highly biblical and literalist imitatio Christi. Mormons felt that the reason they had to take on a body was because Christ had done the same thing. In his King Follett Discourse, the Mormon prophet reasoned that just as Christ and the Father had received a body, laid it down, and then raised it from the dead, so human beings lay down their bodies in order to “take them up again,” imitating their now-embodied God.[80] When Parley Pratt wrote of the path that all human beings must take in possessing and resurrecting a body, he turned to Christ as juxtaposition against what he understood to be the “spiritualizing” theologies of his contemporaries, particularly Swedenborg and the Methodists. After quoting the passage in Luke describing Christ’s resurrected body, he exulted: “Here was an end of mysticism; here was a material salvation; here was flesh and bones, immortal, and celestial, prepared for eternal bloom in the mansions of glory; and this demonstrated by the sense of seeing, feeling, and hearing.”[81] All human beings must follow this divinely instituted pattern, and possess the same material body Christ did after the resurrection.
Divine Embodiment
Intertwined with this increasingly literalistic imitatio Christi was the Mormon belief in a corporeal deity. For the first decade of the Church’s existence, most Mormons shared a belief in a God the Father who was a personage of spirit.[82] The Lectures on Faith, which Smith endorsed even if he didn’t write, described God the Father as “a personage of spirit, glory, and power,” demonstrating the Church’s Kirtland period position of a spiritually, not physically, embodied God. In an 1840 pamphlet outlining Mormon beliefs, future apostle Erastus Snow quoted this passage and explicated the difference between a “natural body” of flesh and bones, and the “spiritual body” that God also possessed but which was based more in “form” than in materiality.[83] As Mormon historian Grant Underwood has persuasively shown, early Mormonism took part in “communities of discourse,” largely with other antiTrinitarian writers, and used terms like “personage” and “body” according to their contemporary definitions; in this case, Snow used “body” in a spiritual sense, not yet attributing flesh and bones to God.[84]
In Parley Pratt’s 1838 polemical book Mormonism Unveiled, he wrote that Mormons “worship a God who has both body and parts: who has eyes, mouth, and ears”[85]—a statement that appears to support a view of God as possessing a body of flesh, yet such descriptions were fairly common among contemporary anti-Trinitarians who still believed in a spiritual God. One defender of traditional Trinitarianism wrote that many modern “Arians” preached about a God with a literal body, including one who taught that “God has a body, eyes, ears, hands, feet, &c., just as we have.”[86] Indeed, while on his mission in England in 1840, Pratt published a pamphlet denying the accusation that Mormonism believed in a God with flesh and bones and clearly explained the difference between a physical body (which humans have) and a spiritual body (which God has): “Whoever reads our books, or hears us preach, knows that we believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as one God. That the Son has flesh and bones, and that the Father is a spirit. . . . [A] personage of spirit has its organized formation, its body and parts, its individual identity, its eyes, mouth, ears, &c., and . . . is in the image or likeness of the temporal body, although not composed of such gross materials as flesh and bones.”[87]
But once again, Joseph Smith began expounding new theology during the Nauvoo period. “There is no other God in heaven but that God who has flesh and bones,” the Mormon prophet boldly proclaimed in January 1841.[88] Making tangible what Mormons up until this point were holding as spiritual, divine corporality was the culmination of Smith’s literal reading of the Bible, developing materialist thought, and the disintegrating distinction between human beings and God.[89] Laid out most clearly in his King Follett Discourse, the Mormon prophet exegetically used Christ’s New Testament statement that “the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do” (John 5:19) to prove that the Father must have a physical, resurrected body exactly like Christ’s.[90] The God of Mormonism was not an ontologically foreign phenomenon; He was an intelligence coeternal with humankind but merely further advanced along an infinite spectrum. This divine anthropomorphism of God came to be viewed as the defining feature of Mormon theology and stands in deep contrast to the views of many contemporary religious thinkers.
Throughout religious history, as one critic has written, it has been natural for people to “represent objects and events in our environments anthropomorphically, i.e. in terms of human features and attributes.”[91] According to religious historian Michael McClymond, Jonathan Edwards anthropomorphized God by portraying him with humanlike desires and characteristics,[92] yet not all American religionists were willing to ascribe to Deity even that much similarity to humanity. In responding to the Transcendentalist preacher Theodore Parker’s humanizing of Christ, Orestes Brownson, a Transcendentalist turned Catholic, claimed that “to anthropomorphize the Deity is not to ascribe to him personality; but the limitations of our personality.”[93] Indeed, Brownson’s concern over his fellow Transcendentalists’ habit of making God more human was one factor that led him out of the movement and into Catholicism.[94]
Even those who were comfortable with ascribing human attributes to God had a growing fear of confining God to a human form. Anti-Trinitarians especially feared that traditional Christianity, and particularly doctrines of the Trinity, limited the power of God the Father. William Ellery Channing, a proto-Unitarian preacher and important early figure for liberal Christianity, feared that the Trinity “entangled God in a material body,” a “fatal f law” for a paradigm set on spirit/matter dualism.[95] Many ante-bellum anti-Trinitarians reasoned that separating God the Father from the Trinity and thus distancing him from Christ’s resurrected body was the only way to imagine a God with the omnipotence described in the Bible.
This point was where Joseph Smith parted company with anti-Trinitarians. He argued that the only possible God must be a corporeal one. “That which is without body or parts is nothing,” Smith reasoned.[96] His theology required materiality for existence and thus required God to take up physical space in the material universe. God was not outside time and space but had a tangible, glorified body, differentiated from an earthly body only in that spirit replaced blood. “Blood,” he explained, “is the part of the body that causes corruption.” Once the body is glorified, the blood “vanish[es] away” and “the Spirit of god [is] f lowing in the vains in Sted of the blood,” thereby making a tabernacle worthy of exaltation.[97] By identifying blood as the only “corrupting” factor associated with an earthly body, Smith set a precedent for perfection in a materialistic world.
And with that precedent, the Prophet set a path for humankind to follow. Building on a sacred mimesis of Christ, the removal of the body as a barrier for exaltation opened the way for human deification. Smith audaciously counseled the Saints to “make yourselves Gods in order to save yourselves . . . the same as all Gods have done.”[98] Lorenzo Snow later summarized the teaching in his famous couplet: “As man now is, God once was / As God now is, man may become.”[99] Thus, receiving a physical body had become one of several important markers along an infinite journey Indeed, the body was of such importance to exaltation, Smith taught, that children were governing worlds “with not one cubit added to their stature,” implying that mere possession of an undeveloped tabernacle was enough for future exaltation.[100]
Parley Pratt quickly adopted these new theological developments after he returned from his British mission in 1843 and, within a year, argued that belief in a non-corporeal deity was “one of the foundational errors of modern times.” Furthermore, a God without a physical body could never be “an object of veneration, fear, or love.”[101] The belief also bridged the gap between Pratt’s earlier “Doctrine of Equality”—in which redeemed humankind shared in God’s knowledge and glory—and the doctrine of exaltation that human beings would become all-powerful Gods like the one they presently worshipped.[102] Pratt closed his essay on the immortality of the body by claiming that man, once redeemed, will no longer “be confined, or limited in his sphere of actions to his small planet” but rather “will wing his way, like the risen Saviour, from world to world, with all the ease of communication.” And in the final act of sublime imitation—or perhaps, divine transfusion—“immortal man” will have placed upon him the very same “prediction” that was placed upon the Jehovah of the Old Testament: “OF THE INCREASE OF HIS KINGDOM AND GOVERNMENT THERE SHALL BE NO END.”[103]
Later, in his theological magnum opus, The Key to the Science of Theology, Pratt formulated these ideas into one grand synthesis. The Father was “a God not only possessing body and parts, but flesh and bones, and sinews, and all the attributes, organs, senses, and affections of a perfect man.” Logically, he argued, “beings which have no passions, have no soul.” The way to fully understand God was to picture humankind glorified, recognizing that “facts in our own existence” are also “true, in a higher sense, in relation to the Godhead.” Reading the Bible literally depicts the resurrected body, passions, and actions of Christ as representative of everyone else, including His Father. “Every man who is eventually made perfect,” he concluded, “will become like [Christ and his Father] in every respect, physically, and in intellect, attributes or powers.”[104]
Solidified during the last year of Joseph Smith’s life, the doctrine of divine embodiment and its accompanying theosis were the capstones of his prophetic career. A combination of staunch materialism, biblical literalism, and yearning for a familiarity in heaven led to an anthropomorphized God beyond what any other contemporary had urged. By believing in a corporeal God and human beings’ infinite potential, Smith demolished the distance between the human and the divine; the only difference was one of progress, not of being. A body was not only worthy of celestial glory but essential for it. This divine anthropology was the theological climax of LDS embodiment, placing corporality at the center of the Mormon cosmos.
The Cultivation and Exaltation of Human Affections
With this radical exaltation of the body came the need to redefine bodily affections and impulses. Following the New Testament injunction that “the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh” (Gal. 5:17), Christianity, with notable exceptions, often rhetorically held that bodily desires and spiritual promptings were always at odds.[105] Indeed, as “nuanced” as Western thought has been toward the body, bodily desires have often been dismissed as temptations and distractions during the human sojourn and even as the antithesis of the spirit and spiritual impulses. “The notions of both mind and body,” writes English moral philosopher Mary Midgley, “have . . . been shaped, from the start, by their roles as opponents” in the drama of life.[106] The body, while it could serve as the vehicle by which to experience religion, had its downside by introducing carnal desires that could tempt the soul to detour from its religious path. Even in vastly diverging embodiment theologies, this theme seemed to remain constant, according to Bryan Turner: “At least in the West (during the classical and Christian eras) the body has been seen to be a threatening and dangerous phenomenon, if not adequately controlled and regulated by cultural process. The body has been regarded as the vehicle or vessel of unruly, ungovernable, and irrational passions, desires, and emotions. The necessity to control the body (its locations, its excretions, and its reproduction) is an enduring theme within Western philosophy, religion, and art.”[107]
Such defamation of bodily passions led to many examples of reactionary extremes, most famously the myth of Origen’s self-castration or the celibacy seen as required for priests in the Catholic Church. While Martin Luther would change this extremist course for the Protestant movement he founded, he still placed the body as third in importance behind the mental and the spiritual. According to Luther critic David Tripp, Luther believed that, as “bodily beings,” humans are enslaved to their surroundings, but as “spiritual beings” they are free and have dominion over all things.[108]In America, most religionists accepted, as one writer put it, “the always vulnerable Christian body” where human senses were the “weak points,” always a danger of distraction from the inner spiritual light.[109] “But blessed is that man,” wrote Thomas à Kempis in his highly influential Imitation of Christ, who “violently resisteth nature, and through fervour of spirit crucifieth the lusts of the flesh” in order to be purified and “admitted into the angelical choirs.”[110] Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Transcendentalist who spent his life fighting against orthodoxy and tradition, wrote that “our senses barbarize us” and that it is “the savage [who] surrenders to his senses; he is subject to paroxysms of joy and fear; he is lewd and a drunkard.”[111] While traditional Christianity did not advocate completely rejecting the senses, it was held that they must be controlled and were only desirable when redeemed.
These concepts faced challenges during the Early Republic. Especially concerning sexuality, the “spirit and disruptive impact of the American Revolution” led to a revolt against America’s heretofore sexually restrictive climate.[112] Rebelling against the strict boundaries set for bodily desires established by early Puritans—even if those boundaries were more embracing than Puritanism’s Victorian descendents—Americans reappraised traditional morals. Coupled with the increasing Romantic tensions of the argument that humanity was innately good, early Americans wanted freedom from traditional cultural mores.[113] These liberating beliefs, however, remained at the folk level and were often denounced by the clergy. Even if an increasing number of people yearned in private to follow their bodily impulses, public discourse continued to emphasize control and restraint.
Parley Pratt, however, took these private beliefs and attempted to make a theological defense of them. In his 1844 pamphlet “Intelligence and Affection,” Pratt argued that natural bodily impulses were to be cultivated and amplified, not restricted or evaded. He taught that persons who view “our natural affections” as “the results of a fallen and corrupt nature,” and are “carnal, sensual, and devilish” and therefore ought to be “resisted, subdued, or overcome as so many evils which prevent our perfection, or progress in the spiritual life . . . have mistaken the source and fountain of happiness altogether.” Instead, the apostle claimed that any attempts to repress natural inclinations “are expressly and entirely opposed to the spirit, and objects of true religion.”[114]
Central to Pratt’s claims was differentiating between “natural” and “unnatural” desires, demonstrating the classification required when conceptualizing a framework in which to present the body. When Pratt spoke of “unnatural” desires, he meant lust, abuse, and perversion, which resulted either from a restriction on good passions or “the unlawful indulgence of that which is otherwise good.” The “natural affections,” on the other hand, centered on the physical and emotional love between a man and woman. According to Pratt, God planted in people’s bosoms “those affections which are calculated to promote their happiness and union.” From these affections, “spring” all other natural desires that validate the human experience.
By creating these categories of “natural” and “unnatural” desires, Pratt was better equipped to portray corporality as a positive element of humanity, in contrast to his depiction of what the rest of Christendom believed. These natural affections, he argued, were rooted in human nature for all eternity. The “unnatural affections” to be avoided were only those introduced by corrupt desires and the wickedness of modern Christianity. The true duty of humankind when it came to bodily affections was to learn to discern the natural and the unnatural: “Learn to act in unison with thy true character, nature and attributes; and thus improve and cultivate the resources within and around thee.” The goal of life was not to suppress impulses rooted in the flesh, but to amplify them: “Instead of seeking unto God for a mysterious change to be wrought, or for your affections and attributes to be taken away and subdued . . . pray to him that every affection, and tribute, power and energy of your body and mind may be cultivated, increased, enlarged, perfected and exercised for his glory and for the glory and happiness of yourself, and of all those whose good fortune it may be to associate with you.”[115]
When Pratt wrote his Key to the Science of Theology a decade later, he returned to this theme in relation to the process of exaltation: “The very germs of these Godlike attributes, being engendered in man, the offspring of Deity,” he reasoned, “only need cultivating, improving, developing, and advancing by means of a series of progressive changes, in order to arrive at the fountain ‘Head,’ the standard, the climax of Divine Humanity.”[116] Thus, when our bodies are redeemed and exalted, our natural affections and affinities are perfected with us, while all unnatural desires are purged. Natural bodily impulses are not carnal temptations of the flesh designed to test obedience or self-mastery but rather are “germs” of “Godlike attributes” that are part of eternal identity and, eventually, felicity.
This exaltation of human affection is unique among Mormonism’s contemporaries.[117] Pratt took Joseph Smith’s teachings concerning the importance of embodiment to unprecedented heights, claiming that in the physical body was not just power, but the seed for eternal felicity and glory. When Pratt wrote his autobiography a decade later, this principle was preeminent among the doctrines he expanded from Smith: “It is from him that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity; and that the refined sympathies and affections which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love . . . that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase in thesametoalleternity.”[118] He pushed the theology one step further and in a slightly different direction from his religious mentor. For the Mormon prophet, marriage, sealings, and physical connections were focused on nobility, kinship, and dynasty; for the Mormon apostle, they were about the literal physicality of love, affections, and even intimacy.[119]
The Temple and Domestic Heaven
Most likely a major influence on Pratt’s redefinition of bodily impulses was his initiation into Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo Temple rites.[120] Indeed, the temple served as a coronation of the body, a holy ceremony in which the patrons reenacted all aspects of embodiment: the plan propounded in the premortal council, the acquisition of a tabernacle on earth, and the eventual exaltation of human corporality. In these rituals, the body was not overcome, but hallowed; the apotheosis attained was an imminent exaltation of both the individual soul and its physical structure. Joseph Smith’s temple cultus revolved around physicality; only three days before he first introduced the endowment, Smith claimed that “there are signs in heaven, earth, and hell. The Elders must know them all to be endowed with power, to finish their work and prevent imposition. . . . No one can trulys ay he knows God until he has handled something, and this can only be in the Holiest of Holies.”[121]
Christian rituals had always involved the body, especially in connection with or in preparation for death. Most of these rites functioned to cleanse the tabernacle from its bodily sins and temptations, emphasizing that it was made of “dust and ashes” and that it required a glorious resurrection to make it worthy for the eternal soul.[122] One common example of this ideology was the Catholic rite of “extreme unction,” during which the dying is anointed “with a little oil [on] the chief seat of the five senses,” meant to represent forgiveness of all carnal desires throughout life.[123] These liturgies pointed to the forthcoming resurrection at the expense of earthly flesh, and demonstrated that the body would have to be completely transformed to inherit a heavenly glory. While baptism and the Lord’s Supper were important in terms of a progressive sanctification of the body, these sacraments were still primarily understood as preparatory for the later resurrection, which was when the body could be purified.
Juxtaposed to this view was Mormonism’s Nauvoo Temple ritual where the exact same senses were anointed, not in repentance for their bodily functions or impulses, but rather as an act of sanctification and enlargement. For instance, the second anointing that Brigham Young received under the hands of Heber C. Kimball focused on, among other things, a literal blessing of bodily organs. After being pronounced a “King and a Priest of the Most High God,” Kimball blessed Young’s individual body parts: “I anoint thy head, that thy brain may be healthy and active and quick to think and to understand and to direct thy whole body and I anoint thy eyes that they may see and perceive . . . and that thy sight may never fail thee: and I anoint thy ears that they may be quick to hear and communicate to thy understanding . . . and I anoint thy nose that thou may scent, and relish the fragrance of good things of the earth: and I anoint thy mouth that thou mayest be enabled to speak the great things of God.”[124] These blessings did not point to a future bodily transformation, but rather to a continuation of their present functions. The second anointing was meant to close the gap between a telestial and a celestial body, demonstrating that, except for “spirit” replacing blood, a heavenly tabernacle worked much the same way as an earthly one, with physical organs amplified rather than transcended.
The temple was also a venue in which Latter-day Saints performed salvific rituals for the dead, adding another layer to the importance of embodiment. That it was necessary for these ordinances to be performed by people possessing a physical tabernacle suggests the crucial nature of corporality. Temple rituals, Smith taught, were necessary to cleanse individuals from deeds done in the body.[125] Thus, those who died outside the faith lacked these essential ordinances. Baptisms for the dead bridged this divide, providing disembodied spirits with a way to obtain these bodily covenants. “This Doctrine,” Smith exulted, “presented in a clear light, the wisdom and mercy of God, in preparing an ordinance for the salvation of the dead, being baptized by proxy, their names recorded in heaven, and they judged according to the deeds done in the body.”[126] Just as human beings would be judged and punished for bodily actions, so must they be cleansed by bodily rituals.[127] Even the unpardonable sin, the only sin that prevents an individual’s salvation, could be performed only while in an earthly tabernacle.[128]
Smith later expanded the idea of proxy work in 1844, utilizing an obscure passage from Obadiah to emphasize the importance of these bodily temple ordinances. “Those who are baptised for their dead are the Saviours on mount Zion,” he proclaimed, because the dead “must receave their washings and their anointings for their dead the same as for themselves.” It required a joint work between angels who “preach to the [deceased] Spirits” and living saints who “minister for them in the flesh” to perform salvific work for the dead and create the eternal familial chain necessary for joint redemption.[129] Salvation for the dead, an important aspect of Smith’s novel heavenly society, revolved around embodiment, for these ordinances had to be performed by one possessing an earthly tabernacle. Mormon theology held that embodiment was not only instrumental for spiritual progression, or even for power over unembodied spirits but was the only occasion on which individuals could make binding covenants that had eternal implications. Those who missed that opportunity before death were dependent on proxy ordinances performed by those who still had corporeal bodies.
Building on these new temple rituals, Parley Pratt and others developed an extremely literal domestic heaven. Even during Joseph Smith’s life, Mormonism predated similar theological developments by rejecting the largely theocentric view of antebellum America.[130] Exalted human beings would not be limited to praising God at the expense of their own glory but would be progressing from glory to glory while adding kingdoms, thrones, and dominions.[131] Further, Mormonism’s later teachings concerning exaltation were closely linked with marital relations and bodily reproduction, and in Nauvoo Smith made marriage a necessary sacrament for one’s salvation; not entering this celestial covenant meant a literal end to progenitive increase,[132] and that continuation was what Smith saw as the acme of exaltation.[133] Indeed, polygamy, especially when viewed from an eternal perspective, dramatically multiplied the body’s potential for affection and reproduction, offering a domestic heaven based on familial and tangible connections.[134]
Parley Pratt adopted and then expanded this domestic heaven, viewing the next life as a continuation of the present. When writing about the future state of human beings and the nature of the celestial kingdom, Pratt wrote of a physical heaven, whose literalness was unique for its time. His vision of resurrected persons was based on materiality and many things often considered intimately connected to a body:
In the resurrection, and the life to come, men that are prepared will actually possess a material inheritance on the earth. They will possess houses, and cities, and villages, and gold and silver, and precious stones, and food, and raiment, and they will eat, drink, converse, think, walk, taste, smell and enjoy. They will also sing and preach, and teach, and learn, and investigate; and play on musical instruments, and enjoy all the pure delights of affection, love, and domestic felicity. While each, like the risen Jesus can take his friend by the hand and say: “Handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”[135]
Others had taught of a physical resurrection, yet few taught about a heaven so firmly based on physicality and corporality as Parley Pratt.
Pratt later presented a similar cosmos where all beings were merely a universal group of intelligences differentiated only in progression along an infinite spectrum, all of which centered around and pointed to an earthly embodiment. Indeed, he argued that the contemporary understanding of Christ as being both fully God and fully man was “an error by reason of not knowing ourselves,” because all beings—Gods, angels, and men—are of “one species, one race, [and] one great family.” The only “great distinguishing difference between one portion of this race and another” was the nature and state of their current embodiment. Thus, not only was the possession of a body central to all aspects of this eternal spectrum, but it served as a form of identity to differentiate among beings of varying status: God and other exalted beings had glorified bodies of flesh and bones, angels possessed bodies with “a lesser degree of glory,” and humans merely held “mortal tabernacle[s].”[136] Embodiment, then, played a central role in Pratt’s domestic heaven, serving as the hallmark of and only distinctions among an eternally expanding celestial race. Progress was centered on the body. Each intelligence’s graduation from one stage to another involved a modified, redeemed, and eventually exalted tabernacle, modeled after that of their all-powerful God.
Conclusion
As this article began with the Mormon apostle Parley Pratt engaging the Greek philosopher Socrates, it ends the same way. A decade after first citing Socrates, Pratt once again invoked the founder of Western thought—but this time used his philosophy as half of an eternal formulation based on Joseph Smith’s 1832 revelation:
The Greek Philosopher’s immortal mind,
Again with flesh and bone and nerve combined;
Immortal brain and heart—immortal whole,
Will make, as at the first, a living soul.
It was through this combination—and only through this combination—of the immortal soul and immortal body that humankind’s purpose could be fulfilled; the celestial kingdom was to be one of physical pleasures as well as spiritual fulfillment. “Man, thus adapted to all the enjoyments of life and love,” Pratt continued, “will possess the means of gratifying his organs of sight, hearing, taste, &c., and will possess, improve and enjoy [all] the riches of the eternal elements.”[137] This physicality epitomized not only Parley Pratt’s theological vision (and, for that matter, Joseph Smith’s), but was also the apex and culmination of the possibilities provided by early Mormon theologies of embodiment.
[1] Plato, Phaedo, 57a–84c.
[2] Plato, Phaedrus, 244a–257b.
[3] Parley P. Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” in An Appeal to the Inhabitants of the State of New York: Letter to Queen Victoria (Reprinted from the Tenth European Edition), The Fountain of Knowledge; Immortality of the Body, and Intelligence and Affection (Nauvoo, Ill.: John Taylor, Printer, 1840), 27–29. Pratt’s later references to Plato and Socrates become more laudatory, especially when praising them for their emphasis on the eternal nature of the soul. Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology: Designed as an Introduction to the First Principles of Spiritual Philosophy; Religion; Law and Government; As Delivered by the Ancients, and as Restored in This Age, for the Final Development of Universal Peace, Truth, and Knowledge (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855), 61.
[4] William Lafleur, “Body,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 36.
[5] Richard H. Roberts, “Body,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by Robert A. Segal (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publications, 2006), 213.
[6] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 122.
[7] Bryan S. Turner, “The Body in Western Society: Social Theory and Its Perspectives,” in Religion and the Body, edited by Sarah Coakley (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 17, 19.
[8] Marie R. Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 23.
[9] Coakley, “Religion and the Body,” in Religion and the Body, 5. For a more nuanced view of early Christianity’s views of the body, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
[10] Some progressions toward a more optimistic approach to embodiment, however, appear in the Puritan attitude toward marital sex. See Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). These favorable tendencies toward sexuality eventually led to later sexual and bodily experiments.
[11] Jonathan Edwards, “Heaven Is a World of Love,” quoted in George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 191.
[12] Lorenzo Dow, The Opinion of Dow; or, Lorenzo’s Thoughts, on Different Religious Subjects, in an Address to the People of New England (Windham, Vt.: J. Byrne, 1804), 96.
[13] Lewis O. Saum, The Popular Mood of Pre-Civil War America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 103.
[14] For an excellent treatment of the growing American impulse to “experience” religion, see Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).
[15] See The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon, upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi, translated by Joseph Smith (Palmyra: Printed by E. B. Grandin, for the Author, 1830), 82, 161, 188–89, 309//current (1981) LDS edition 2 Ne. 9:39; Mosiah 3:19, 16:2–5; Alma 30:53.
[16] 1830 Book of Mormon, 65//2 Ne. 2:28–29.
[17] The best work on early Mormonism’s ambiguity toward the body (focusing primarily on the Book of Mormon and early revelations) is R. Todd Welker, “The Locus of Sin? Joseph Smith and Nineteenth-Century Doctrines of the Body,” in Archive of Restoration Culture: Summer Fellows’ Papers, 2000–2002, edited by Richard Lyman Bushman (Provo, Utah: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, 2005), 107–12. Welker’s article focuses on the ambiguity of early Mormonism’s views toward the body, while my paper picks up the topic later on as the Mormons developed a more “positive” view of human corporality.
[18] Joseph Smith, Revelation, December 27–28, 1832; January 3, 1833, in Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper, eds., Revelations and Translations, Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, Vol. 1 of the Revelations and Translations series of the Joseph Smith Papers, edited by Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2009), 293//1981 LDS edition: D&C 88:15; emphasis mine, “and” is “&” in original. Responding to La Roy Sunderland, who singled this passage out as “nonsense and blasphemy,” Pratt argued that the very same teaching is found in the Bible, though he does not in any way explain its implications. Parley P. Pratt, Mormonism Unveiled: Zion’s Watchman Unmasked, and Its Editor, Mr. L. R. Sunderland, Exposed: Truth Vindicated: The Devil Mad, and Priestcraft in Danger!, 3rd ed. (New York: O. Pratt & E. Fordham, 1838), 26–27.
[19] Charles Buck, A Theological Dictionary: Containing All Religious Terms; A Comprehensive View of Every Article in the System of Divinity; An Impartial Account of All the Principal Denominations Which Have Subsisted in the Religious World from the Birth of Christ to the Present Day: Together with an Accurate Statement of the Most Remarkable Transactions and Events Recorded in Ecclesiastical History (Philadelphia: Joseph J. Woodward, 1831), 425. It should be noted that Buck (and antebellum Protestants, for that matter) believed in a physical resurrection but did not view the earthly body as a necessary ingredient for the soul. On the importance of Buck’s Dictionary in antebellum America, see Matthew Bowman and Samuel Brown, “The Reverend Buck’s Theological Dictionary and the Struggle to Define American Evangelicalism,” Journal of the Early Republic 29 (Fall 2009): 441–73.
[20] Joseph Smith, Revelation, May 6, 1833, in Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Volume 1, 335//1981 D&C 93:34.
[21] See Thomas G. Alexander, “The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive Theology,” Sunstone 5, no. 4 (July–August 1980): 24–33.
[22] See Joseph Smith, Revelation, February 9, 23, 1831, in Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Volume 1, 95–105, 107//1981 D&C 42.
[23] See Joseph Smith, Revelation, December 27–28, 1832; January 3, 1833, in Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Volume 1, 301, 309//1981 D&C 88:74, 124.
[24] Joseph Smith, Revelations, September 22B23, 1832, December 27–28, 1832, and January 3, 1833, in Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Volume 1, 279, 299-300//1981 D&C 84:33, 88:67.
[25] Joseph Smith, Revelation, February 27, 1833, in ibid., 311-13//1981 D&C 89.
[26] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 212B13. Other “temperance” reformers with devoutly spiritual agendas include Sylvester Graham and Phebe Temperance Sutliff. Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers, 1815–1860, rev. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), esp. 21–38.
[27] The best treatment on early Mormon ritual healing is Jonathan A. Stapley and Kristine Wright, “The Forms of Power: The Development of Mormon Ritual Healing to 1847,” Journal of Mormon History 35, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 42B87. For the larger context, see Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
[28] Terryl L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 37–52.
[29] Jared Carter, Journal, quoted in Stapley and Wright, “The Forms of Power,” 56.
[30] William Phelps, Letter to Sally Phelps, January 1836, in Bruce A. Van Orden, ed., “Writing to Zion: The William W. Phelps Kirtland Letters (1835–1836),” BYU Studies 33, no. 3 (1993): 574.
[31] Oliver Cowdery, Sketch Book (1836), in Steven C. Harper, “‘A Pentecost and Endowment Indeed’: Six Eyewitness Accounts of the Kirtland Temple Experience,” in Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820–1844, edited by John W. Welch with Erick B. Carlson (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press/Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 337. See also Joseph Smith, Journal, January 21, 1836, in Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Richard L. Jensen, eds., Journals, Volume 1: 1832–1839, Vol. 1 of the Journals series of the Joseph Smith Papers, edited by Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian=s Press, 2008), 166B67. The resulting revelation is now Doctrine and Covenants 137.
[32] Joseph Smith, Journal, March 29–30, 1836, in Jessee, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Journals, Volume 1, 212–13. For this ordinance as the “culmination” of the Kirtland rituals, see Gregory A. Prince, Power from On High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995), 172–73. Several months earlier, Smith stated that the washing of feet was “calculated to unite our hearts, that we may be one in feeling and sentiment and that our faith may be strong, so that satan cannot over throw us, nor have any power over us.” Joseph Smith, Journal, November 12, 1835, in Jessee, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Journals, Volume 1, 98. For the context of this religious ritual, see Matthew J. Grow, “‘Clean from the Blood of This Generation’: The Washing of Feet and the Latter-day Saints,” in Archive of Restoration Culture, 131B38.
[33] Douglas, Purity and Danger, chap. 3.
[34] For a discussion on the growing importance of angels in early Mormonism’s priesthood, see Benjamin E. Park, “‘A Uniformity So Complete’: Early Mormon Angelology,” Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 1, no. 2 (March 2010); also Samuel Brown and Matthew Bowman, AJoseph Smith and Charles Buck: Heresy and the Living Witness of History,” Paper presented at the Mormon History Association, May 2008, Sacramento, California.
[35] For a discussion on Mormonism’s “selective literalism” of the Bible, see Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 32–36, 65.
[36] Parley Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, 96–97; Orson Pratt, “Spiritual Gifts,” in O. Pratt, Tracts by Orson Pratt (Liverpool and London: F. D. Richards, 1857), 65.
[37] Bushman, Joseph Smith, xxi, rightly notes that Smith “never presented his ideas systematically in clear, logical order.” Rather they “came in flashes and bursts.” Therefore, “assembling a coherent picture out of many bits and pieces leaves room for misinterpretations and forced logic.”
[38] Douglas J. Davies, The Mormon Culture of Salvation: Force, Grace, and Glory (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000), 122.
[39] Writing in 1845, Parley Pratt presented Mormonism’s unique ontology as “the riches . . . held out by the system of materialism.” Parley P. Pratt, “Materiality,” The Prophet 1, no. 52 (May 24, 1845): not paginated. Mormon materialism plays a significant role in the development of LDS theology. While the theological collapse between matter and spirit led to a form of materialism and, I argue, paved the way to their redefined ontology, it was still distinctly different from contemporary monism. Early Mormon thinkers still held to varying degrees of physical elements, even if all “substance” related closely to each other, and they refused to believe that materialism led to mechanism (the idea that all thoughts and emotions result from the brain=s organization and natural functioning). Mormon materialism was its own unique blend of monism and dualism, holding that everything was made of the same substance, even if varying in refinement. For an early Mormon defense against comparisons to other materialists, see Orson Pratt, Absurdities of Immaterialism, or, A Reply to T. W. P. Taylder’s Pamphlet, entitled, “The Materialism of the Mormons or Latter-Day Saints, Examined and Exposed” (Liverpool: R. James, 1849). For the philosophical differences between Mormonism and materialist thought, see Max Nolan, “Materialism and the Mormon Faith,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 22, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 62–75.
[40] “The Book of Abraham,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 10 (March 15, 1842): 719–22. The LDS Church has three extant Kirtland-era copies of the book of Abraham, none of which goes beyond what is currently chapter 2 verse 18. The verses concerning the creation appear in chapter 4; and while it is possible that they were written in Kirtland, they fit better theologically among Nauvoo doctrinal developments. I appreciate Robin Jensen, an editor for the Joseph Smith Papers Project, for his advice on these documents. See also Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 286.
[41] For an overview of Joseph Smith=s experience in the Hebrew school, see Louis C. Zucker, “Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebrew,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3, no. 2 (Summer 1968): 41–55.
[42] Michael T. Walton, “Professor Seixas, the Hebrew Bible, and the Book of Abraham,” Sunstone 6 (March/April 1981): 41–43.
[43] Joshua Seixas, Manual Hebrew Grammar, for the Use of Beginners, 2d ed., enl. and improved (Andover, Mass.: Gould and Newman, 1834), 85–86.
[44] Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalga-mated Text,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 9; Kevin L. Barney, “Joseph Smith’s Emendation of Hebrew Genesis 1:1,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 30, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 103–35.
[45] An entry in Joseph’s journal on February 17, 1836, reveals his dedication to interpreting the Bible based on its earliest manuscripts: “My soul delights in reading the word of the Lord in the original.” Jessee, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Journals, Volume 1, 186. See also February 4, 1836, 180. For an excellent discussion on Joseph Smith’s uses of language to unlock truth, see Samuel Brown, “Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 78, no. 1 (March 2009): 26–65.
[46] The only scholarly work on Dick thus far is William J. Astore, Observing God: Thomas Dick, Evangelicalism, and Popular Science in Victorian Britain and America (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001).
[47] Thomas Dick, The Philosophy of a Future State (Philadelphia: Edward C. Biddle, 1836), 88.
[48] See, for example, Joseph Smith, Sermon, April 7, 1844, in Scott H. Faulring, ed., An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in Association with Smith Research Associates, 1989), 466; Parley Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” 23.
[49] “Extracts from Dick’s Philosophy,” Messenger and Advocate 3, no. 3 (December 1836): 423–25; “The Philosophy of Religion (Concluded from Our Last),” Messenger and Advocate 3, no. 6 (March 1837): 468–69. In the latter excerpt, Dick’s phrase “economy of the universe” is similar to the “economy of God” that Joseph Smith’s scribes used when describing the revelation that came to be known as “The Vision” (1981 LDS D&C 76). Robert J. Woodford, “The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants,” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1974), 2:935.
[50] For the view that Dick was an important influence on Smith, see Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet (New York: Knopf, 1945), 171B72; John L. Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 205–7. For an extensive, if flawed, comparative analysis between the theologies of Dick and the Mormon prophet in the attempt to show no influence, see Edward T. Jones, “The Theology of Thomas Dick and Its Possible Relationship to That of Joseph Smith” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1969). Both of these viewpoints overlook the modus operandi of early Mormonism’s vision: Joseph Smith seldom accepted or rejected theological ideas wholesale; rather, he incorporated bits and pieces while ignoring others in his attempt to gather “fragments” of truth to buttress his religious vision.
[51] Parley P. Pratt, “The Regeneration and Eternal Duration of Matter,” in Parley P. Pratt, The Millennium, and Other Poems: To Which Is Annexed, A Treatise on the Regeneration and Eternal Duration of Matter (New York: W. Molineux, 1840), 105, 110.
[52] Ibid., 124B26, 131B32, 134B35.
[53] Stephen Charnock, Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1845), 108.
[54] Joseph Smith, Sermon, January 5, 1841, in Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1980), 60.
[55] Joseph Smith, “Try the Spirits,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 11 (April 1, 1842): 745. While this editorial was printed under Joseph Smith=s name, it was most likely composed collaboratively with either William W. Phelps or John Taylor.
[56] Joseph Smith, Sermon, May 17, 1843, in George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in Association with Smith Research Associates, 1995), 103–4. Here is an acute example of Mormonism diverging from other materialists.
[57] Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Body,” 21. It could be argued that Pratt believed in the materiality of spirit as early as 1839 when he referred to “spirit” as an “eternal principle”—“principle” traditionally being used as a term referring to something material. However, considering his British pamphlets that were published in the early 1840s, I argue that Pratt did not shift until 1843, though this shift was not as big a philosophical leap because of his previous eternalization of matter.
[58] Orson Pratt, Absurdities of Immaterialism, 11.
[59] I was introduced to this idea through conversations with Samuel Brown, whose book in progress, working title “In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Conquest of Death,” will undoubtedly be the best work on the topic.
[60] Joseph Smith, Sermon, April 16, 1843, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 196.
[61] Ibid., 194–95.
[62] Charles R. Harrell, “The Development of the Doctrine of Preexistence, 1830–1844,” BYU Studies 28 (Winter 1989): 75–96; Blake T. Ostler, “The Idea of Pre-existence in the Development of Mormon Thought,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 (Spring 1982): 59–78. A better examination will be Brown, “In Heaven as It Is on Earth,” chap. 9. For the larger context of this idea, see Terryl L. Givens, When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
[63] Joseph Smith, Revelation, May 6, 1833, in Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Volume 1, 335//1981 D&C 93:29. There has been some debate about what “intelligence” means, but it seems clear that most early Mormons, especially Joseph Smith, interpreted it as referring to the human spirit and not some uncreated element from which spirits were organized. See Harrell, “Development of the Doctrine of Preexistence,” 82–84.
[64] W. W. Phelps, “Letter No. 8,” Messenger and Advocate 1, no. 9 (June 1835): 130.
[65] Parley P. Pratt, “Birthday in Prison,” in his The Millennium, and Other Poems, 70.
[66] J. B. Turner, Mormonism in All Ages: or the Rise, Progress, and Causes of Mormonism; with the Biography of Its Author and Founder, Joseph Smith, Junior (New York: Platt and Peters, 1842), 242.
[67] Joseph Smith, Sermon, ca. August 8, 1839, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 9.
[68] Joseph Smith, Sermon, March 28, 1841, in ibid., 68.
[69] Givens, When Souls Had Wings.
[70] Joseph Smith, Sermon, January 19, 1841, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 62.
[71] Phelps, quoted in Samuel Brown, “William Phelps’s Paracletes, an Early Witness to Joseph Smith’s Divine Anthropology,” International Journal of Mormon Studies 2 (Spring 2009): 80, http://www.ijmsonline. org/index.php/IJMS/article/view/42/110 (accessed September 2009).
[72] Parley Pratt, “Materiality,” not paginated.
[73] Joseph Smith, Sermon, June 16, 1844, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 382.
[74] Joseph Smith, Sermon, March 28, 1841, in ibid., 68.
[75] Joseph Smith, Sermon, May 21, 1843, in ibid., 207.
[76] For Mormonism’s unique chain of being, see Brown, “In Heaven as It Is on Earth,” chap. 9; Park, “A Uniformity So Complete.”
[77] Joseph Smith, Sermon, January 5, 1841, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 60.
[78] Joseph Smith, Sermon, May 14, 1843, in ibid., 201. On May 21, just a week later, Smith preached: “The mortification of satan consists in his not being permitted to take a body. He sometimes gets possession of a body but when the proven authorities turn him out of Doors he finds it was not his but a stole one.” Ibid., 208.
[79] Joseph Smith, Sermon, January 5, 1841, in George D. Smith, An Intimate Chronicle, 516.
[80] Larson, “King Follett Discourse,” 8–9.
[81] Parley Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” 27–28; emphasis mine.
[82] The development of early Mormonism’s understanding of the Godhead has been much debated, including how early Smith understood God the Father to be embodied. For the interpretation that Smith progressed from the view of an immaterial to an eventually material God, see Alexander, “The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine”;Grant Underwood, “The New England Origins of Mormonism Revisited,” Journal of Mormon History 15 (1989): 16–17; Dan Vogel, “The Earliest Mormon Concept of God,” in Line upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine, edited by Gary James Bergera (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 17–33. For the view that Joseph Smith much earlier understood God as embodied, see David L. Paulsen, “The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Restoration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives,” BYU Studies 25, no. 4 (1995–96): 7–39; Ari D. Bruening and David L. Paulsen, “The Development of the Mormon Understanding of God: Early Mormon Modalism and Other Myths,” FARMS Review of Books 13 (2001): 109–39.
[83] Erastus E. Snow, Snow’s Reply to a Self-Styled Philanthropist, of Chester County (1840), quoted in Grant Underwood, “A ‘Communities of Discourse’ Approach to Early LDS Thought,” in Discourses of Mormon Theology: Philosophical and Theological Possibilities, edited by James M. McLaughlan and Loyd Ericson (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 31.
[84] Underwood, “A ‘Communities of Discourse’ Approach,” 27–38.
[85] Parley Pratt, Mormonism Unveiled, 29.
[86] Reverend H. Mattison, A Scriptural Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity, or a Check to Modern Arianism, as Taught by Unitarians, Campbellites, Hicksites, New Lights, Universalists and Mormons; and Especially by a Sect Calling Themselves “Christians” (New York: Lewis Colby & Co., 1848), 44. Several other Mormons around the same time as Parley’s Mormonism Unveiled made similar statements about God. Warren Cowdery, “Comments on John 14:6,” Messenger and Advocate 2, no. 5 (February 5, 1836): 265, accused other religions of “worshiping a God of imagination without body or parts.” Wilford Woodruff, Letter to Asahel H[art], Scarborough, Maine, August 25, 1838, quoted in Robert H. Slover, “A Newly Discovered 1838 Wilford Woodruff Letter,” BYU Studies 15 (Spring 1975): 357, wrote, “Their [sic] is a whole generation worshiping they know not what, whether a God without mouth, eyes, ears, body parts or passions as he does not reveal himself to them, but their [sic] is not deception with the Saints in any age of the world who worships the living and true God of revelation.”
[87] Parley P. Pratt, An Answer to Mr. William Hewitt’s Tract against the Latter-day Saints (Manchester, England: W. B. Thomas, 1840), 9. Like the ministers Pratt and Snow were combatting, Truman Coe, a Presbyterian minister living near the Saints in Kirtland, also misinterpreted early LDS teachings of the Godhead. The Mormons, he claimed, “contend that the God worshipped by the Presbyterians and all other sectarians is no better than a wooden god. They believe that the true God is a material being, composed of body and parts; and that when the Creator formed Adam in his own image, he made him about the size and shape of God himself.” Truman Coe, Letter to the Ohio Observer, August 11, 1836, in Milton V. Backman Jr., “Truman Coe’s 1836 Description of Mormonism,” BYU Studies 17 (Spring 1977): 347, 350, 354. It is likely that Coe misinterpreted the Warren Cowdery statement quoted above.
[88] Joseph Smith, Sermon, January 5, 1841, in George D. Smith, An Intimate Chronicle, 515.
[89] For a discussion on theological developments leading up to the King Follett Discourse, see Van Hale, “The Doctrinal Impact of the King Follett Discourse,” BYU Studies 18 (Winter 1978): 209–55.
[90] Larson, “King Follett Discourse,” 8.
[91] Luther H. Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” in The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by John R. Hinnell (New York: Routledge, 2005), 478.
[92] Michael James McClymond, Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 59.
[93] Orestes Brownson, “Theodore Parker’s Discourse,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (October 14, 1842): 433.
[94] Patrick W. Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004), 117.
[95] E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 205.
[96] Joseph Smith, Sermon, January 5, 1841, in George D. Smith, An Intimate Chronicle, 515.
[97] Joseph Smith, Sermon, May 12, 1844, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 370–71.
[98] Larson, “King Follett Discourse,” 8–9.
[99] Eliza R. Snow, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Company, 1884), 46.
[100] Larson, “King Follett Discourse,” 15. Smith’s successors retreated from this teaching, instead reasoning that children’s bodies will be allowed to grow before their exaltation.
[101] Parley Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” 25.
[102] For Pratt’s doctrine of equality, see Pratt, Mormonism Unveiled, 27. This early conception of theosis vaguely differs from other perfectionist teachings of contemporary religions.
[103] Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” 35; emphasis mine; capitalization Pratt’s.
[104] Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, 27–32. A decade earlier, Pratt had written in “Intelligence and Affection,” 37, that God had all power because He had perfected his affections, most especially love.
[105] Exceptions include Christian mystics who, among others, described their religious experiences in terms of love and even lust.
[106] Mary Midgley, “The Soul’s Successors: Philosophy and the Body,” in Religion and the Body, 55.
[107] Turner, “The Body in Western Society,” 20.
[108] David Tripp, “The Image of the Body in Protestant Reformation,” in Religion and Body, 134.
[109] Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 50.
[110] Thomas à Kempis, The Christian’s Pattern; or, a Treatise on the Imitation of Christ, abridged by John Wesley (Halifax, England: William Milner, 1845), 115.
[111] Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Senses and the Soul,” The Dial 2 (January 1842): 378.
[112] Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 229.
[113] This cry for bodily freedom led to such experiments as the Moravians’ divinized sexual practices, the Shakers’ celibacy, the Oneidans’ complex marriage system, and even Mormonism’s polygamous relationships. See Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Jesus Is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), esp. 73–104; Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984).
[114] Parley P. Pratt, “Intelligence and Affection,” in Pratt, An Appeal, 37–38. Pratt’s apparent neglect of the Book of Mormon’s teachings on the “natural man” demonstrates either early Mormonism’s neglect of the Book of Mormon in developing their theology or that the Church had moved beyond the rhetoric of the Nephite scripture.
[115] Pratt, “Intelligence and Affection,” 38–39. The timing of this essay is especially notable: Most of the apostles and other Church leaders had just been introduced to the practice of polygamy, and Parley’s introduction was especially difficult. He was originally sealed to his second wife, Mary Ann Frost (his first wife, Thankful Halsey, had died), by Hyrum Smith, but Joseph Smith later cancelled that sealing and took Mary as his own plural wife. Andrew F. Ehat, “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Crisis” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982), 66–71; George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: “. . . but we called it celestial marriage” (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008), 207–9.
[116] Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, 32.
[117] A noted exception is Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish theologian. For his deification of the senses, see Schmidt, Hearing Things, 211–21.
[118] Pratt, Autobiography, 329. I say that Pratt “expanded” this principle from Joseph Smith because we have no teachings from the Mormon prophet documenting that he held this view of the eternal cultivation of sympathies, though he did speak about the eternal importance of friendship. Benjamin E. Park, “‘Build, Therefore, Your Own World’: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Smith, and American Antebellum Thought,” Journal of Mormon History 36 (Winter 2010): 41–72. Rather, it appears that Parley is reading back into Smith the theological innovations that he himself induced from the Prophet’s teachings. It is also noteworthy that Mary Ann, the wife to whom Parley apparently refers in this passage (that is, during his 1840 trip to Philadelphia), had left him over the principle of celestial marriage by the time he was writing this segment of the autobiography.
[119] For Joseph Smith’s “dynastic” view of sealing and, especially, plural marriage, see Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), chap. 1; Brooke, Refiner’s Fire, 255–58. Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 445, writes that Smith’s “marriage covenant prepared the Saints less for wedded bliss than for heavenly rule.” This focus on creating a religious dynasty led to the theological development of attaching every family to a hierarchical figure. Gordon Irving, “The Law of Adoption: One Phase of the Development of the Mormon Concept of Salvation,” BYU Studies 14, no. 3 (1974): 291–314; Brown, “In Heaven as It Is on Earth,” chap. 8. It should be noted that Parley Pratt was sufficiently hesitant about this practice that he did not participate in adoptions performed prior to the trek west. I appreciate Jonathan Stapley for sharing his statistics on Nauvoo adoptions.
[120] Pratt participated in the endowment for the first time on December 2, 1843, and received his second anointing on January 21, 1844. Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 429, 442. Pratt, Autobiography, 367, later dated the composition of “Intelligence and Affection” as early 1844.
[121] “Book of the Law of the Lord,” May 1, 1842, in Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, comps. and eds., Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, 1842–1845: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in Association with Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2005), 1.
[122] Rev. F. G. Lee, Dictionary of Ritual and Other Ecclesiastical Terms (London: James Hogg & Son, 1871), Pt. 1, 46.
[123] Joseph Faa Di Bruno, Catholic Belief: or A Short and Simple Exposition of Catholic Doctrine (London: Burns and Oates, 1878), 96.
[124] “Book of Anointings—Wives to Husbands,” January 11, 1846, in Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, comps. and eds., The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845–1846: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in Association with Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2005), 397. For the importance of this form of blessing, see David John Buerger, “‘The Fulness of the Priesthood’: The Second Anointing in Latter-day Saint Theology and Practice,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16 (Spring 1983): 10–44.
[125] Joseph Smith, Sermon, February 5, 1840, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 33, preached that, at the final judgment, human beings will “be punished for deeds done in the body.”
[126] Joseph Smith, Sermon, “Minutes of a Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Held in Nauvoo, Ill., Commencing Oct. 1st, 1841,” Times and Seasons 2, no. 24 (October 15, 1841): 578.
[127] These ordinances were originally performed in the river, but on April 6, 1842, Smith announced that they “must be in a font” in the temple. “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 12 (April 15, 1842): 763; Alexander L. Baugh, “‘For This Ordinance Belongeth to My House’: The Practice of Baptism for the Dead outside the Nauvoo Temple,” Mormon Historical Studies 3, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 47B58.
[128] Larson, “King Follett Discourse,” 14.
[129] Joseph Smith, Sermon, May 12, 1844, in Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 370. “Saviours . . . on mount Zion” is in Obad. 1:21.
[130] For the evolution from a theocentric to a domestic heaven, see Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), chap. 7.
[131] Smith uses this language concerning plural/eternal marriage. The earliest published version is “Revelation Given to Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, July 12th, 1843,” Deseret News Extra, September 14, 1852, 26–27 (1981 D&C 132:19).
[132] Joseph Smith’s revelation on plural marriage announced that those who do not enter a celestial union, no matter how righteous they are, “cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition.” “Revelation Given to Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, July 12th, 1843,” 26.//D&C 132:17.
[133] William Clayton recorded on May 16, 1843, that Joseph Smith explained: “Those who are married by the power and authority of the priesthood in this life and continue without committing the sin against the Holy Ghost will continue to increase and have children in the celestial glory.” George D. Smith, An Intimate Chronicle, 101.
[134] Mormonism’s domestic heaven was an extension from Joseph Smith’s teachings and, excluding Parley Pratt’s 1844 writings, largely appearing after Smith’s death. For an extended argument that Joseph Smith’s heaven was not centered on domesticity, see Brown, “In Heaven as It Is on Earth,” chaps. 8B9.
[135] Pratt, “Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body,” 30.
[136] Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, 33–34.
[137] Ibid., 136.
[post_title] => Salvation through a Tabernacle: Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 43.2 (Summer 2010): 1–44A discussion of the theology of the body being combined with the spirit for various different reasons. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => salvation-through-a-tabernacle-joseph-smith-parley-p-pratt-and-early-mormon-theologies-of-embodiment [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:46:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:46:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=9767 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Joseph Smith and Process Theology
Garland E. Tickemyer
Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 75–88
Utah Mormons have had over a hundred years in which to systematize and institutionalize their beliefs. Institutionalized religion tends to expend its energies in conserving and promulgating the truths once delivered to the saints.
In the early 1950s, Dr. Daniel S. Robinson, head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, delivered a lecture in which he attempted to expose the fallacies of the finite God concept, a view that sees God as limited either by internal or by external forces over which he does not have immediate and complete control. His principal argument was that such a concept reduces God to a temporal being existing within the time continuum. A student at the time, I was struck with considerable force that the finite God he was describing bore a marked resemblance to what I understood to be the Utah Mormon God concept. I had been nurtured in the conviction that Utah Mormon beliefs in a changing God were contrary to clearly stated scriptural descriptions of a God who "change[s] not."
As a result of this experience, I began to study the writings of those Ameri can philosophers who were generally classified as finitists, including Edgar A. Brightman, William P. Montague, Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hart shorne, and others. I was particularly impressed with Brightman's The Problem of God (New York: Abbington Press, 1931). I wrote my master's thesis in 1954 on "Some Representative Concepts of a Finite God in Contemporary American Philosophy with Reference to the God Concepts of the Utah Mor mons" and included some further development of the finite concept in my doctoral dissertation in 1962.[1]
By this time I was thoroughly convinced that Mormon theology placed God in a limited and temporal mold long before nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers developed any such theories. It was also apparent that although Orson Pratt was principally responsible for the systematized form in which Utah Mormon metaphysical views were cast, the original ideas for those views were either expressed or implied in concepts that were first devel oped by the Prophet Joseph.
I was also intrigued by the conviction that the germinal ideas expressed by Joseph Smith could serve as the basis for development of a neo-Restoration theology that would benefit from contributions of contemporary philosophic thought. Even though finitism, anthropomorphism, and polytheism may have been interconnected in their organic development, I believed that finitism could be divorced from the anthropomorphic polytheistic form in which it was cast by early Mormon theologians.
Some years after my initial studies, I first heard the term "process theology." I read Gilkey's Naming the Whirlwind[2] and discovered that process theology is a further development of the finitism that I had discovered in Whitehead in my earlier research.
For over twenty-five years I had viewed with frustrated concern the trend toward rejection of Mormon roots, as reconstructive forces in the RLDS Church moved steadily in the direction of accommodation to Protestant liberalism. I was also disturbed by statements of my Utah friends indicating that the LDS Church was leaning toward Protestant neo-orthodoxy as a negative reaction to anthropomorphic polytheism. In a personal letter, Dr. Sterling McMurrin said, "They thirst after the accolades of the Protestant pulpit."[3] My efforts to create an interest in the development of a neo-Restoration the ology that would enable the RLDS branch of Mormonism to maintain some continuity with its historical beginning had, with a very few exceptions, fallen on deaf ears. The direction of change pointed toward eventual absorption of what could be a liberal branch of Mormonism into the mainstream of Protestantism. Conservative RLDS members resist such a trend and some general officers who are allowing it to happen do so only because they see no acceptable alternatives.
The most encouraging current development is the interest that some of the very capable young theology students of the RLDS Church are taking in process theology.[4] As yet they have shown no awareness of the relationship which exists between process theology and the teachings of Joseph Smith, but perhaps this relationship will become apparent as they remove the anthropomorphic-polytheistic blinders that prejudice them against limited God concepts and reconsider possible values in the Nauvoo period theological developments.
Process theology is a theological system based on theories of God and creation which were originally developed by Alfred North Whitehead, a brilliant scientist and philosopher in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Process theologians generally agree that God is limited either by internal or by external forces over which he does not have immediate and complete control. As the composite of all emergent entities, God is himself an entity. He is temporal and has subjective aims for which he struggles to achieve satisfaction. He is constantly increasing and is an integral part of the whole process of reality. God is not before all creation but is with all reality. All occasions emerging in the physical world are absorbed into God and add to his reality. Human beings' actions have meaning for and are of concern to God. God is involved in constant change as the entire universe evolves. God is not all powerful for he is limited by the individual freedom of every emerging occasion. Each new occasion is a composite of all previous occasions, but it is more than the sum of its parts. It is the sum of its parts plus one.
To view God as struggling, suffering, and achieving (as process and Mormon theology both do) is a radical departure from concepts of the Greeks and the early Church Fathers who describe him as the unmoved mover, the first cause. Viewed as complete and perfect being, he cannot be affected by anything that occurs in the universe. He cannot experience changing emotions or feelings. He exists outside of time; and all past, present, and future events are immediate to his awareness. A complete, self-contained, perfect being without needs, his intrinsic glory cannot be added to nor diminished by anything that occurs in the universe. He is unaffected by what human beings suffer or achieve. Both process and Mormon theologies depart from orthodoxy in affirming that man's salvation does benefit God. Latter Day revelation says: "And there is no end to my works, neither to my words; for behold this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39; RLDS D&C 22:23). If God's glory can be increased, then to that extent he is unfulfilled.
The Problem of Evil
If it is affirmed that God is the Absolute—unlimited in power and being both as essence and as actuality, and perfect in goodness—we are confronted with the insoluble problem of the existence of evil. How can an all-powerful and wholly good God permit the existence of evil in a universe designed to exalt those very virtues of which evil is the antithesis? Resolution of this problem demands a limitation either in God's goodness or in his power.
It may be argued, as the Book of Mormon states, that there "must needs be . . . an opposition" (2 Ne. 2:15; RLDS 1:97). But a staged situation in which God provides the possibility of evil as a foil against which human beings can strengthen their wills is not very satisfactory, for it poses the problem of whether God or the devil is the author of evil. If God is the author of the play, then he is responsible for its content. If evil is some disguised or indirect form of good, as some believe, then it may be our duty to abet it, not to oppose it.
Evolutionary Struggle, Staged or Real?
The evident use of means and contrivances in nature to attain ends indicates that God is a being who cannot secure his ends directly but is working under limitations. There is evidence of design in nature; there is also evidence of frustration of design and of delay in its achievement. Nature seems to dis play prodigality and wastefulness. Entire species perish and are known only through their fossil remains. Many forms of life are seemingly trivial and others, such as disease germs and parasites, are destructive and harmful. On the other hand, the law and the progress evident in nature, the adaptations of life to environment and environment to life, the origination of higher and higher forms, all make it evident that evolution is purposive.
Putting these two aspects together, we are led to say that nature is the work of a power that is achieving its ends in the face of what seems to be opposition. There is evidence of design in nature; there is also evidence of frustration of design and of delay in its achievement. The process view of God is more compatible with recognition of the reality of struggle in nature than is the traditional view of an omnipotent and benevolent creator.
Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge
Josiah Royce speaks for the Absolutists in asserting that God exists outside of time and that all events—past, present, and future—are immediate to his awareness. Representing the limited God viewpoint, Brightman says, "If man is truly free, God must be finite as regards his knowledge. . . . Man's freedom is actually a limitation on the foreknowledge of God."[5] Whitehead's position is that God is powerless before the individual freedom of each individual moment, implying that even though the course of events is shaped by a divine will and purpose, those ends cannot be achieved simply by willing them.
The book of Abraham account of a heavenly council held to determine how salvation was to be achieved is, in Mormon theology, a clear indication that the method was not yet determined (Abr. 4–5).
Finitism in Restoration Theology
The origin of Restoration finitism is somewhat uncertain. There is no evidence of any link between its introduction into Mormonism and any other philosophic system of which we are now aware. It would have been a fairly simple progression in thought from the theory of eternal progression as it re lates to mankind which was developed and published by Thomas Dick in 1830[6] to the idea of progression of deity itself, though nowhere does Dick express such a view. In the absence of clear evidence of redactional influence, we are justified in assuming that finitism in Mormonism was the product of Mormon thought.
The most able philosopher in the early church was Orson Pratt. The Church is undoubtedly indebted to him for the first serious attempt to formulate the doctrine of finite deities into a metaphysical system. He, in turn, attributed the teaching to Joseph Smith. Pratt's distinction between God as infinite being with respect to principles of light, truth, and knowledge and God as actualized (finite) being, a distinction on which he and Brigham Young disagreed,[7] does raise questions as to whether Joseph Smith made such a distinction.
Although we have numerous fragmentary references to theistic pluralism and evolution in statements of the Prophet prior to his death, nowhere do we find an overall statement of those views that he could have examined and approved prior to publication. The fact that he failed to do so suggests that the ideas may not have matured in his thinking to the point where he desired to set them forth in written form, or, that they developed so late in his life that his untimely death prevented their being written down.
The clearest enunciation of the finite concept is contained in the King Follett funeral sermon delivered 7 April 1844 at a General Conference of the Church and in an address delivered on 16 June 1844, eleven days before his death. Although leaders in both the LDS and the RLDS churches have been cautious in placing their stamp of approval on the reported version of the King Follett sermon, recent examination of the original sources from which the re port was compiled attest to its accuracy on the doctrinal points included in it.[8]
In both addresses the Prophet forthrightly endorses spiritual pluralism rep resented in a council of Gods: "I shall comment on the very first Hebrew word in the Bible; . . . Berosheit. . . . 'The head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods.' That is the true meaning of the words. . . . Thus the head God brought forth the gods in the grand councils."[9]
The Prophet had said that intelligence is not created. He had also said that the elements are eternal (LDS D&C 93:29; RLDS 90:5). This lays the foundation for a primordial dualism which is actually developed into pluralism. Pluralism appears to be quite fundamental in Mormon thinking. Not only are the spirits of persons self-existent manifestations of this primordial and un created intelligence, but the elements are also eternal and uncreated. F. Henry Edwards recognized this point in his Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants: "Evidently the world was not created from nothing, but was created out of previously existent matter."[10]
In the second address at Nauvoo, Joseph interprets the Hebrew to read, "The head of the Gods called the Gods together. . . . The head one of the Gods said, let us make a man in our own image."[11]
In the book of Abraham, of which Joseph is the undisputed author or translator, the supreme God is represented as standing in the presence of lesser but nevertheless uncreated and eternal spirits. Abraham is informed that he was one of those spirits, while God and Christ were more intelligent than the others (Abr. 3:19-22).
Reference to theistic pluralism also occurs in the original of the Liberty Jail letter dated 25 March 1839, which is preserved in the Utah church archives and speaks of a "Council of Gods."
On 1 March 1843, the Times and Seasons carried an article by Orson Pratt which explains:
A plan was formed in the councils of heaven, it was contemplated by the great author of our existence, Eloheim, Jehovah, to redeem the earth from the curse. Hence when the Gods deliberated about the formation of man, it was known that he would fall and that the Savior was provided who was to redeem and to restore, who was indeed the "lamb slain from the foundation of the earth."[12]
Expanding on the revelation given by the Prophet which states that both matter and intelligence are eternal and that intelligence was in the beginning with God, Pratt developed a theory of creation on the basis of atomistic materialism. He holds that matter and intelligence are of a material substance and have relationship both to time and to space. In their primal disorganized state they pre-existed all organized intelligence, including God. Particles of this disorganized matter have individuality, and similarity between any two is only accidental. They exist in time and space in which there is also motion, possess an affinity for each other, and tend toward union to form organized units of intelligence. Such concentrations of intelligence constitute an innumerable host of uncreated persons, says Pratt. Through almost an infinity of time, two of these organized masses of intelligence advanced to supremacy over all other organized intelligences and became God the Father and Jesus Christ. Pratt explains emerging deity as follows:
That portion of this one simple elementary substance which possess the most superior knowledge prescribes laws for its own action, and for the action of all other portions of the same substance which possesses inferior intelligence and thus there is a law given to all things according to their capacities, their wisdom, their knowledge, and their advancement in the grand school of the universe.[13]
The spiritual pluralism developed by Pratt is similar to that of William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience.
The only obvious escape from paradox here is to cut loose from monistic assumption altogether and to allow the world to have existed from its origin in pluralistic form as an aggregate or collection of higher and lower things and principles, rather than an absolutely unitary fact. .. . I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. . . . Beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. .. . It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. The universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness.[14]
Whitehead holds that God has no temporal priority, that he is not before all creation but with all creation. In God's primordial state "we must ascribe to him neither fullness of feeling, nor consciousness." This description sounds very much like Hegel's idea as ultimate reality which he describes as a blind unconscious essence endowed with a potential for becoming. Schopenhauer used will to describe the primal essence, a will which moves toward increasingly complex forms at ever-ascending levels of being.[15]
Early Mormon views were influenced by pre-Einsteinian atomistic materialism which is scientifically outdated, but these views are compatible with modern process theology by substituting essence for atoms.
In his "dipolar" description of God, Whitehead affirms that God is "deficient and unconscious" in his primordial state. The other side of God's nature is his actualized being which is derived from physical experience in the temporal world. Joseph Smith's statement that God did not create the world out of nothing but "formed" it out of pre-existing matter is in harmony with White head's statement that "he does not create the world, he saves it." Whitehead continues in an echo of Smith's concept of eternal progression: "The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfected unity. Neither God, nor the world reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty."[16]
In the book of Moses, Joseph Smith records statements of God describing a concept of cosmic advance: "Worlds without number have I created. . . . And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof, even so shall another come, and there is no end to my works, neither to my words" (Moses 1:33; RLDSD&C 22:21).
Orson Pratt held that the materials of the universe have not attained the fullness of their ultimate possibilities and that endless ages shall open "new glories, and new laws, and new modes of action" and that human beings will continue to progress in the "grand universal, and eternal scale of being."[17]
On 27 December 1832, seventeen years before Pratt wrote his Great First Cause, Joseph Smith, who was then only twenty-seven years old, delivered a most remarkable prophecy in which he identifies the Holy Spirit as an elementary simple substance which is in all things and is the power by which all things are made. He said:
Wherefore, I now send upon you another Comforter, . . . This Comforter is the promise which I give unto you of eternal life, . . . This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which they were made; And the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand. And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understanding; Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things. (LDS D&C 88:7-13; RLDS 85:2-3).
In commenting on this prophecy, Orson Pratt says that if all things were broken down to their smallest component parts we would find that all of the ponderable substances of nature, together with light, heat, and electricity, and even spirit itself, all originated from one elementary simple substance, possessing a living, self-moving force, with intelligence sufficient to govern it in all its infinitude of combinations and operations, producing all the immense variety of phenomena constantly taking place throughout the wide domains of universal nature.[18]
Pratt holds that self-moving particles of intelligent substance have united and through eons of time have evolved into two glorious personages whose substance, knowledge, wisdom, and goodness, though eternal, at the same time represent the highest point of development in an ever-ascending scale of being.
It should be noted that Pratt distinguishes between God as one infinite being with respect to the great principles of light and truth, or knowledge, and God as finite with respect to actualization in individual tabernacles. This dis tinction raises some question as to whether his concept can be regarded as ulti mately polytheistic. Pratt's concept resembles Fechner's "circles within a circle," also Leibniz's "Monad of Monads." Christ as incarnate deity and God as unmanifest deity would also fit this concept.
The all-powerful substance out of which God himself evolved possesses the potential for development of myriad personal spirits of like character and ultimate power. This, in fact, explains the origin and nature of man. The Prophet's statement is that "man was also in the beginning with God. . . .
Intelligence . . . was not created." Pratt's position appears to be that out of pre-existing eternal matter God formed spiritual bodies and implanted within them a pre-existent divine spark. He shoved those bits of incarnate intelligence on their way, and the fact of their primal independence of all other intelligence accounts for their inherent freedom of will. Pratt held that God did not create intelligent beings; he formed them, and he has limited control over them.
According to Whitehead, God is not an all-powerful, arbitrary ruler of the earth. He is, in fact, powerless before the freedom of each individual moment.
In all of the previous citations, it will be seen that there is a remarkable parallel between process theology and early Restoration views.
W. H. Chamberlin, a twentieth-century Mormon philosopher whose works are now receiving more careful examination by Mormon scholars than they received during his lifetime, expressed views similar to those held by process theologians:
If the all-pervasive cosmic power is that of a Person who has his own purposes, and is himself a reality, acting and growing in an environment of which we and similar minds are a part, this person has habits and groups of habits similar to those by means of which we have grown and now live. .. . It is not sufficient, however, to think of this complex as a simple federation of lives like our own; the theory demands the presence of a higher order of individuality ... . It postulates the existence of one greater person, or God, who is immanent in the world, forms the ground of interaction between lesser minds, and is the final harmonizing agency.[19]
Present Trends in Utah
The present Utah church appears to be confused by conflicts between some liberal Mormon scholars who see values in theistic finitism and a conservative trend that would accommodate conservative Protestant theology. The late President Joseph Fielding Smith explained to me that God was indeed once a man who has progressed to the level of perfection but that he does continue to progress in the accumulation of more worlds.[20] The implications of material accumulations being interpreted as qualitative growth are not altogether complimentary to God.
Many years ago, George T. Boyd, an able Mormon scholar and a fellow classmate of mine at the University of Southern California, told me that in all his contacts with Mormon students he had encountered only one who believed that God was absolute. He also said: "It is my opinion that finitism is implicit in the Mormon personal God concept and whether the early Mormons were conscious of it or not, their strong emphasis on the personal and anthropomorphic nature of God involved them in finitism."[21]
In 1952, Sterling McMurrin expressed the view that the better approach to identification of Mormon theology as finitistic is "the temporalistic char acter of the Mormon God concept which in principle opposes absolutism, or the intense pluralism that is obviously involved in the Mormon position, a pluralism that is incompatible with the monism of absolutism."[22] More recently, he has endorsed the view that Mormonism "has some common ground" with process theology in
its refusal to settle for a finished world, its restless sense of creative process and temporal movement. I personally feel that this is the most interesting and attractive facet of Mormon theology. . . . Mormon theologians might well take a very active interest in Whitehead, who is clearly the philosopher of process. Literate Mormons have for many years found support in William James's finitism, pluralism, and vision of the unfinished universe.[23]
Conclusion
Recognition of the role played by Joseph Smith in developing a finite God theology is disturbing to those of his followers who accept traditional Christian orthodoxy. It is particularly unacceptable to those RLDS members who associate it with Adam-God worship, polytheism, and anthropomorphism. How ever, such teachings need not bar consideration of finite God concepts by Restorationists who are not of the Utah Mormon persuasion.
Joseph Smith was a person of unusual genius. His uncultured but brilliant mind was entirely capable of germinal thinking. Without benefit of acquaintance with the main stream of philosophic thought, he challenged the orthodoxy of his day. The development of such a revolutionary doctrine as that of a finite God can be seen as a typical expression of his contempt for orthodoxy.
A major obstacle to the Prophet's formulation of a new concept of deity and of creation was the strong influence of traditional theology with its ready made terminology which was ill-suited to expression of radical views. For example, the whole concept of eternal progression is out of keeping with Joseph's apparent belief in the perfection of the ancient order of things. He apparently handled this conflict by explaining that new concepts which he was introducing were actually restorations of what had existed in the beginning. He might have avoided the charge of polytheism if he had used some term other than gods for evolving spirits. The Catholics distinguish between ordinary souls and exalted spirits by use of saints. Eastern religions use Devas.
Utah Mormons have had over a hundred years in which to systematize and institutionalize their beliefs. Institutionalized religion tends to expend its energies in conserving and promulgating the truths once delivered to the saints. Process theologians, who are so close to beliefs that were uniquely Mormon in an early day, may be helpful to Utah scholars in demonstrating alternative ways in which Restoration doctrines can be developed.
Missouri Mormons (RLDS) may discover that they have no need to apologize for radical doctrines taught by Joseph Smith. Those very doctrines which have been an anathema to this embattled sect, struggling to survive and to grow in hostile communities, may deserve a second look. Such reexamination may be especially timely in this period when all aspects of organizational and theological commitments are undergoing critical scrutiny. For them, a rediscovered Prophet of the Restoration may yet be able to speak to our day, and unique Restoration doctrines may provide helpful bases from which to continue the pursuit of that illusive will-o-the-wisp, "all truth."
A Selected Bibliography on Process Theology
Brown, Delwin, Ralph E. James, Jr., and Gene Reeves. Process Theology and Christian Thought. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.
Cargas, Harry James, and Bernard Lee. Religious Experience and Process Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1976.
Cobb, John B., Jr., and David Ray Griffin. Process Theology, An Introductory Exposition. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976.
Cousins, Ewert H., ed. Process Theology. New York: Newman Press, 1971.
Mellert, Robert B. What is Process Theology? New York: Paulist Press, 1975.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York: McMillan, 1929.
[1] Garland E. Tickemyer, "A Study of Some Representative Concepts of a Finite God in Contemporary American Philosophy with Application to the God Concepts of the Utah Mor mons" (M.A. thesis, University of Southern California, 1954) ; Garland E. Tickemyer, "The Philosophy of Joseph Smith and Its Educational Implications" (Ph.D. diss., The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1963).
[2] Langdon Gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind, The Renewal of God Language (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969).
[3] Sterling McMurrin to G. E. Tickemyer, 16 March 1952.
[4] The recent affirmative response of Sterling McMurrin to Floyd M. Ross's paper, "Process Theology and Mormon Thought," Sunstone 7 (Jan.-Feb. 1982): 17, indicates that liberal Utah Mormons recognize that "important fundamental similarities exist between Mormon theology and Whitehead's metaphysics." Sterling McMurrin, "Response: Comment on a Paper by Floyd M. Ross," Sunstone 7 (Jan.-Feb. 1982): 26.
[5] Edgar S. Brightman, The Problem of God (New York: Abbington Press, 1930), p. 102.
[6] Thomas Dick, The Philosophy of a Future State (Brookfield, Mass.: E. & G. Merriam, 1830).
[7] Blake Ostler, "The Idea of Pre-Existence in the Development of Mormon Thought," DIALOGUE 15 (Spring 1982): 64-66.
[8] Donald Q. Cannon, "The King Follett Discourse: Joseph Smith's Greatest Sermon in Historical Perspective," BYU Studies 18 (Winter 1978) : 179 and Stan Larsen, "The King Follett Discourse, a Newly Amalgamated Text, ibid., p. 193. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, comp. and ed., The Words of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), pp. 340-62, prints the exact wording of the original notes of Willard Richards, Wilford Woodruff, Thomas Bullock, and William Clayton recorded during the prophet's address from which the King Follett funeral address was reconstructed. The reconstruction appears to faithfully reflect the content and, so far as humanly possible, the exact words used by the prophet in the original address.
[9] "Conference Minutes," Times and Seasons 5 ( 1 Aug. 1844): 614.
[10] F. Henry Edwards, Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants (Independence, Mo.: Herald House, 1946), p. 294. In A New Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants (Herald House, 1977), p. 330, Edwards changed his position, stating, "This can hardly mean that the elements coexist with God from eternity to eternity. If this was so, then they are not created and are to that degree independent of God. The sentence is better understood in light of Section 18: 2d (RLDS)/Section 19:11-12 (LDS) by which we can understand that the elements are of God, who is eternal."
[11] History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, B. H. Roberts, ed., 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1959) 6: 475.
[12] Orson Pratt, "The Elias," Times and Seasons 4 (1 March 1843): 121.
[13] Orson Pratt, Great First Cause, (pamphlet) (Liverpool, 1 Jan. 1851), p. 15.
[14] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), p. 525.
[15] Irwin Edman, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (New York: Carlton House, n.d.). Second Book, The World as Will, pp. 110-11.
[16] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1929), p. 407.
[17] Pratt, Great First Cause, p. 14.
[18] Ibid., p. 15.
[19] R. V. Chamberlin, ed., Philosophy of W. H. Chamberlin (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1925), pp. 321-22.
[20] Joseph Fielding Smith in an interview with G. E. Tickemyer in Salt Lake City, early in 1954.
[21] George T. Boyd to G. E. Tickemyer, 13 April 1953.
[22] McMurrin to Tickemyer, 16 March 1953.
[23] McMurrin, "Response: Comment on a Paper by Floyd M. Ross," p. 27.
[post_title] => Joseph Smith and Process Theology [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 75–88Utah Mormons have had over a hundred years in which to systematize and institutionalize their beliefs. Institutionalized religion tends to expend its energies in conserving and promulgating the truths once delivered to the saints. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => joseph-smith-and-process-theology [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-09-04 01:05:31 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-09-04 01:05:31 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16145 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Limits of Naturalistic Criteria for the Book of Mormon: Comparing Joseph Smith and Andrew Jackson Davis
William Davis
Dialogue 53.3 (Fall 2020): 73–103
Davis compares the two men, saying “Davis, like Smith, was raised in a poor household and received little formal education—Davis, in fact, would claim to have received only “little more than five months” of schooling.”
In an 1879 interview with her son, Emma Smith famously asserted: “My belief is that the Book of Mormon is of divine authenticity—I have not the slightest doubt of it. I am satisfied that no man could have dictated the writing of the manuscripts unless he was inspired.” In support of her declaration, Emma turned from a confessional assertion to a naturalistic line of reasoning, arguing, “for, when [I was] acting as his scribe, your father would dictate to me hour after hour; and when returning after meals, or after interruptions, he would at once begin where he had left off, without either seeing the manuscript or having a portion of it read to him. This was a usual thing for him to do. It would have been improbable that a learned man could do this; and, for one so ignorant and unlearned as he was, it was simply impossible.”[1] Emma’s turn to naturalistic criteria offers an opportunity to explore the persistent relationships that often emerge in Mormon communities between personal testimonies and naturalistic arguments, which usually take the form of direct claims or indirect assumptions about Joseph’s alleged ignorance and illiteracy. Emma’s statement offers a template for this pervasive dynamic: her testimony suggests that her belief in the Book of Mormon hinged, at least in part, on her disbelief in Joseph’s ability to produce the work on his own accord.
Emma, of course, was not alone in this attitude. Early accounts of Joseph’s intellectual abilities, from critics and followers alike, often emphasize his illiteracy and lack of education; whereas those hostile to him did so in order to assert that another person or persons composed the text (hence the Spalding–Rigdon theory), believers did it in an effort to provide supporting evidence for the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon.[2] In time, such naturalistic arguments occasionally evolved into complex lists of criteria aimed at disqualifying Smith—or any other individual, for that matter—as the author of the work. In a 1955 devotional at Brigham Young University, the future LDS apostle Hugh B. Brown provided his audience with criteria that would influence subsequent lists of such naturalistic argumentation. “I submit to you that the Prophet Joseph Smith in translating the Book of Mormon did a superhuman task,” Brown declared to his audience. “I ask you students to go out and write a Book of Mormon. . . . I ask you to write, if you can, any kind of a story of the ancient inhabitants of America, and I ask you to write it without any source material.” Brown continued with a list of selective criteria, focusing on the ability to produce multiple chapters devoted to wars, history, visions, prophecies, and the ministry of Jesus Christ. In addition, any undertakers of such a task would need to incorporate “figures of speech, similes, metaphors, narration, exposition, description, oratory, epic, lyric, logic, and parables.” Moreover, alluding to Joseph’s age and lack of education, Brown singled out “those of you who are under twenty” to write the book (Joseph was twenty-three when he dictated the current text), while reminding them that “the man that translated the Book of Mormon was a young man, and he hadn’t had the opportunity of schooling that you have had.”[3] Like Emma’s assertions regarding Joseph’s lack of ability, Brown’s declarations offered a buttress for faith based on naturalistic lines of reasoning.
Brown’s list apparently inspired BYU professor Hugh Nibley to produce a similar but more detailed set of criteria. In addition to the general ideas proposed by Brown, Nibley specified that anyone attempting to replicate Joseph’s feat must produce a work “five to six hundred pages in length,” provide the names of hundreds of characters, and “be lavish with cultural and technical details—manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories,” among several additional requirements.[4] Brown’s and Nibley’s selective catalogues spurred numerous imitations, often referred to as the “Book of Mormon Challenge.” They might also contain additional exclusionary points of comparison, such as, “You are twenty-three years of age,” “You have had no more than three years of formal school education,” and “Your history must be 531 pages and over 300,000 words in length [at approximately 269,510 words, the Book of Mormon actually falls short of this criterion].”[5] The popularity of such lists has long saturated the cultural imagination of believers, reinforcing the idea that Joseph’s translation of the Book of Mormon would require, to use Brown’s words, a “superhuman task” to duplicate.
Such frameworks of evaluation, though unofficial and nondoctrinal, ostensibly gratify a need for tangible evidence of divine intervention, and variations of these lists make regular appearances in formal and informal settings. In a recent conference addressing the topic of Joseph Smith’s translation, for example, Richard L. Bushman offered an informal set of criteria that revealed the presence of such framing: “Despite all the naturalist arguments, I still do not believe that no matter what his [Smith’s] genius, he could have done it as himself.” In support of his position, Bushman proposed a comparative framework of naturalistic criteria intended to demonstrate the improbability of Smith’s possible authorship: “What I want is a text of similar complexity, produced under such primitive conditions, with so little background or training or precedence, to turn out his master work—not at the end of his career but at the beginning of his career, just as he’s getting started. That seems to me really beyond anything you could call natural.”[6] Bushman’s response was, of course, improvised, rather than a formal statement on the matter. Even so, his observations offer a fitting example of the ways in which naturalistic checklists weave their way into informal discussions about the origins of the Book of Mormon, influencing opinions and oftentimes buttressing the very foundations of faith.
Within the broader spectrum of Mormon apologetic discourse, the regular appearance of such comparative “proofs” (either as individual issues or collective catalogues) reflects a strong and common tendency to move beyond confessional affirmations—such as testimonies of spiritual witnesses confirming the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon—to decidedly non-confessional appeals to naturalistic criteria.[7] Nevertheless, such proposals, which directly entangle naturalistic criteria with the effort to strengthen faith, carry inherent and unpredictable risks. Should the proffered checklists fail to distinguish the Book of Mormon in any substantive way from other notable contemporary examples, then such comparisons not only result in the weakening of popular supports to faith but potentially undermine faith itself. As Loyd Isao Ericson cautions, the possibility then exists that “instead of tearing down potential stumbling blocks to faith, Mormon apologetics actually and unknowingly engages in building and establishing those blocks.”[8] Moreover, such comparisons are burdened with implications of unspoken (and unintended) commentaries on the very nature of faith and belief. The insistent turn to naturalistic criteria in the cultural imagination of believers strongly suggests the existence of an unacknowledged, paradoxical, and potentially incompatible component within the foundations of faith: belief in the Book of Mormon contains an embedded disbelief in Smith’s capacity to create it, or even to participate actively in its creation.
Within the community of faith, the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon finds its anchors exclusively in the personal spiritual witnesses and lived experiences of believers, independent of any additional appeals to naturalistic assumptions. Such, at least, is the idealistic and theological claim. The relentless invocations of naturalist arguments, however, trouble this idealism. Whether appearing as broad claims asserting Joseph’s alleged ignorance and illiteracy or as detailed catalogues of idiosyncratic criteria, it becomes clear that naturalistic arguments do, in fact, participate in the actual framework of day-to-day belief and workaday faith concerning the origins and authenticity (and therefore the authority) of the Book of Mormon. The pragmatic nature of faith seems not only to reflect a belief in “things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21), but likewise involves a subjective disbelief in alternative possibilities. Thus, doubt comes to play a role in the composition of faith. The embedded reliance on naturalistic arguments, however tangential, therefore presents the uneasy and troubling possibility that a portion of one’s faith rests upon a foundation of limited mortal assumptions, constrained within the narrow and finite compass of an individual’s personal knowledge, hopes, needs, and experience. As such, the presumably solid rock foundation of faith turns out to contain a lot of destabilizing sand.
Comparing American Seers
With such thoughts on faith and belief serving as a meditative backdrop, we might treat these naturalistic arguments as a convenient analytic framework to compare—and contrast—Joseph Smith and his 1829 translation of the Book of Mormon with Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910), another early American “prophet and a seer,” and his trance performance of The Principles of Nature (1847).[9] For within this comparison, we find another complex text produced by a speaker with limited formal education and training, created under similar conditions and circumstances, and a work that stands as its young creator’s greatest masterpiece, even though the text was created at the dawn of the speaker’s career. Davis, like Smith, was raised in a poor household and received little formal education—Davis, in fact, would claim to have received only “little more than five months” of schooling.[10] Davis also received visions and met with angelic messengers, who informed him that he was chosen to reveal important truths to the world. Through a mystical process of mesmeric trance and “conscious clairvoyance,” Davis dictated—without the use of notes, manuscripts, or books—his first and most popular volume, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, which, at approximately 320,000 words, contains a collection of intricate revelations that many of his readers treated as new scripture.[11] Though Davis eventually composed more than thirty books, The Principles of Nature would remain “the most famous” and influential text of his career.[12]
These broad-stroke comparisons do not, however, do justice to the compelling and oftentimes uncanny similarities between Smith and Davis. A closer examination of the circumstances surrounding the oral production of their works—both their similarities and important differences—can thus provide crucial insights into the cultural context in which these two fledgling seers performed their respective texts into existence. Moreover, such a comparative exploration alerts us to the problems of invoking arbitrary criteria in a strategic effort to privilege the work of a favored candidate.
The Poughkeepsie Seer
In April of 1829, when Joseph Smith started dictating the Book of Mormon in Harmony, Pennsylvania, Andrew Jackson Davis, not yet three years old, lived just over one hundred miles away in Blooming Grove, New York, a small town in the Hudson River Valley.[13] Like Smith, Davis was born into an impoverished family: his father was a weaver and journeyman shoemaker, while his mother occasionally supplemented the family’s meager income through domestic work in neighbors’ homes.[14] Their indigent circumstances forced them into a peripatetic life, moving from town to town in a constant search for work, disrupting any sense of familial stability. Their arrival in Poughkeepsie in 1841, when young “Jackson” turned fourteen years old, would mark the seventh time the family had moved.[15]
According to Davis, the constant moving from one town to another, coupled with the impoverished circumstances of the family, resulted in a poor education. Indeed, Davis’s supporters and detractors alike would eagerly embrace his claim of having little more than five months of formal education, arguing that Davis’s miraculous revelations could not possibly have come from the mind of such an untutored, ignorant boy. J. Stanley Grimes, a well-known contemporary mesmerist and phrenologist, argued that “Davis was notoriously ignorant and illiterate. . . . How, then, was he to write a superior book?”[16] The Reverend William Fishbough, Davis’s scribe during the dictation of The Principles of Nature, described the young visionary’s purported naïveté in more florid terms: “He remained, then, up to the commencement of his lectures, the uneducated, unsophisticated child of Nature, entirely free from the creeds, theories, and philosophies of the world.”[17] Ira Armstrong, a Poughkeepsie merchant who once hired Davis as an apprentice, stated, “His education barely amounted to a knowledge of reading, writing, and the rudiments of arithmetic.”[18] Armstrong’s description (a common refrain in the period) might well be compared to Smith’s claim that “I was merely instructed in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic.”[19] The familiar trope of the illiterate mouthpiece of God’s pure and undefiled word offered a convenient framework in which to cast the budding prophet’s career, and Davis’s self-reported ignorance provided his supporters with compelling evidence of divine intervention.[20]
Like the Smiths, the transient life of the Davis household also reflected their restless search for a religious home—at least for some of the family members. Davis’s father seems not to have held much interest in religion, yet his mother was deeply spiritual. Along with formal religious organizations, she was also a firm believer and practitioner in various forms of folk magic. “She had real clairvoyance,” Davis would later recall, adding that she had a “mysterious faculty to foretell the future.”[21] Davis also attended various churches with his mother, who joined at least two different denominations: the Dutch Reformed Church and the Presbyterians.[22] Working as both a farm laborer and an apprentice shoemaker, Davis would also frequently attend the churches to which his employers belonged, exposing him further to the Episcopalians, Methodists, and (indirectly) Universalists.[23]
Among these traditions, Methodism emerged as perhaps the most influential—another commonality with Smith. Davis’s interest began in the spring of 1842, when he started working as an apprentice to Ira Armstrong, a devout Methodist. Davis participated in a variety of services, including probationary meetings, class meetings, Sunday services, and at least one revival.[24] In such gatherings, Davis would have observed ministers and lay members engaged in semi-extemporaneous speaking, praying, and exhorting. He also would have witnessed the audience responses, which, apart from members rising and “shouting” out praises and calling for mercy, would have included members falling unconscious or into trance-like states of spiritual conviction.[25]
Davis’s prophetic career began in December 1843, shortly after J. Stanley Grimes, an itinerant lecturer, arrived in Poughkeepsie to demonstrate the wonders of mesmerism (a form of hypnotism) and phrenology (inferring an individual’s personality traits based on features of the cranium).[26] Davis volunteered as a subject, yet Grimes failed to hypnotize him. A few days later, however, William Levingston, a local tailor studying Chauncy Hare Townshend’s Facts in Mesmerism (1840) and an amateur mesmerist in his own right, approached Davis and asked if he could try to succeed where Grimes had failed. In this next attempt, Davis slipped into a deep trance.[27] In time, among other clairvoyant skills, Davis claimed that he could see the internal organs of people placed before him, as if “the whole body was transparent as a sheet of glass.”[28] This alleged ability prompted Davis and Levingston to set up a clairvoyant medical practice in March of 1844.[29] Levingston, acting as Davis’s “operator,” would induce the mesmeric trance, and then Davis, wrapped in a mystical vision, would look into the patient’s body, diagnose the ailments, and then advise homeopathic remedies.
During this early period, Davis also received visions in which angelic messengers met with him and foretold his mission in life. In his best known vision, much like Moroni’s visit to young Joseph, Davis would claim that the spirits of Galen, the ancient Greek physician and philosopher, and Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century mystic and theologian, appeared to him and guided him in a quest to reveal greater spiritual truths to humankind.[30] Such “prophetic admonitions,” as Davis described them, revealed that he was destined for a higher calling as a prophet and seer.[31]
In the months that followed, a Universalist minister in Poughkeepsie, the Reverend Gibson Smith, took great interest in Davis and Levingston’s medical practice and convinced the pair to travel with him on a healing/lecture tour throughout the region, stopping at Albany, New York, and Danbury, Connecticut.[32] During the tour, Davis not only diagnosed patients but spoke in trance about the natural and universal laws that governed all creation. The lectures fascinated Gibson Smith, and Davis “promised to give him three or four lectures on the subject.”[33] Nonetheless, and apparently without Davis’s permission or editorial input, Gibson Smith revised and published the lectures in a thirty-two-page pamphlet, Lectures on Clairmativeness: Or, Human Magnetism (1845). But Davis was not happy with Gibson Smith’s alterations or the resulting publication, describing the pamphlet as “a fugitive and mongrel production—containing a strong infusion of the editor’s own mind.”[34] As Catherine L. Albanese notes, “Davis would later disown the pamphlet.”[35]
As he continued his clairvoyant medical practice, Davis began to focus more attention on the revelation of eternal truths. His patients, in fact, often prompted this transition. “From the very beginning of my mystical experience,” Davis recalled, “convalescing patients and investigating minds” had peppered him with theological questions: “‘Can you tell me what constitutes the soul?’ or ‘Is man’s spirit immortal?’ or ‘Is man a free agent?’ ‘Is God a person, or an essence?’ ‘What is life?’ . . . ‘What is the main purpose of man’s creation?’ ‘Is the Bible all true, or in part only?’”[36] In time, the barrage of questions and Davis’s responsive revelations led to the incremental formation of a complete and systematic cosmology. Later, when patients continued to ask such questions, Davis replied that he would “dictate a Book, which will contain my answers to your interrogatories.”[37] This ambitious book, according to Davis, would contain “a series of extraordinary revelations” that would outline a new system of scientific theology encompassing the natural and spiritual laws that governed all creation.[38]
Later, in the fall of 1845, Davis ended his partnership with Gibson Smith and Levingston.[39] In their place, Davis enlisted the help of a homeopathic physician in Bridgeport, Connecticut, one Dr. Silas S. Lyon, who would act as Davis’s new mesmeric operator.[40] Davis and Lyon then moved to Manhattan, where they set up a clairvoyant medical practice in a local boarding house.[41] In preparation for recording Davis’s revelations, they also recruited the help of the Reverend William Fishbough, a Universalist minister living in New Haven, Connecticut, to act as the scribe for the project.[42] Davis and Lyon then arranged to have three formal witnesses regularly attend the trance lectures in order to provide eyewitness testimony concerning the process of dictation. Along with these witnesses, no less than twenty-three additional observers attended some of the proceedings, “ranging from one to six” guests per session.[43] “Among the more noteworthy visitors,” Robert W. Delp notes, “were Edgar Allan Poe and the organizer of communitarian experiments, Albert Brisbane.”[44] After approximately three months of preparation, in which Davis supported himself and Lyon by seeing patients in their clairvoyant medical practice, Davis finally started delivering the “lectures” on November 28, 1845.[45] The ambitious prophet and precocious seer had only recently turned nineteen years old.[46]
If presented as a tableau, Davis’s revelatory sessions would look similar to Smith’s translations with the seer stone. Both Smith and Davis would sit center stage in a room, their scribes near at hand writing furiously to keep pace, with a small but select audience of eyewitnesses to observe the proceedings.[47] There were, of course, differences. Smith used a seer stone in an upturned hat to block out light, while Davis was blindfolded and induced into a mesmeric trance by his operator, Lyon. Nevertheless, some of the parallel mechanics of the sessions prove intriguing. For example, Davis, like Smith, dictated the majority of his work one phrase at a time, pausing after each phrase and waiting for the operator or scribe to repeat each line back to him. According to Davis, the purpose was “to make sure that each word was correctly heard and written.”[48] Fishbough also described the dynamic: “A few words only are uttered at a time, which the clairvoyant requires to be repeated by Dr. Lyon, in order that he may know that he is understood. A pause then ensues until what he has said has been written, when he again proceeds.”[49] In this phrase-by-phrase process, Davis appeared to slip in and out of his trance state: “the passage into and out of the spiritual state occurs at an average of about once every sentence.”[50] Thus, Davis, like Smith, retained some form of conscious awareness of the development of the transcribed text.
In addition, Davis also spelled out unfamiliar words. When transcribing the term “Univercoelum,” a word that Davis coined to describe the original state of all the physical and spiritual components of the universe, Fishbough interrupted and asked, “What was that word?” Davis then “carefully spelled it, letter by letter, to make the scribe’s writing a matter of certainty.”[51] Moreover, Davis never referred to notes, manuscripts, or books during his trance state—he was, after all, blindfolded.[52] Neither did he review the physical manuscripts of his prior revelations before launching into new revelations. He did, however, claim to review visionary manifestations of the manuscripts in his clairvoyant state. Fishbough recalled, “At each entrance into the abnormal state for the purpose of lecturing, he [Davis] was capable, by an effort of a few moments’ duration, of reviewing all the manuscripts of his previous lectures.”[53] From the very beginning of the project, Davis also claimed that in his trance state he had the ability to view and scan the entire outline of his work.[54] Thus, through this clairvoyant process, Davis was able to start each new dictation session where the last one left off, without referring to material notes or texts—a feat that Smith had also performed during the translation of the Book of Mormon.[55]
In another noteworthy comparison, Davis also explicitly equated his mesmeric trance visions with the same visionary perceptions that allegedly occurred with the use of seer stones. When Davis was still in Poughkeepsie and developing his newfound skills in clairvoyance, an “old English gentleman” by the name of Dr. Maryatt came for a visit and “brought an egg-shaped white crystal, into which he requested me [Davis] to look, and tell him what I saw.” Initially confused about how to make the seer stone operate, Davis eventually succeeded in invoking its power. Within the “glass” he saw visions that revealed Maryatt’s house, environs, and family circumstances in England.[56] Later, when reflecting on the experience and how the seer stone worked, Davis observed that the object merely facilitated the same form of clairvoyance that he experienced with mesmerism: “it occurred to me that my gazing into it [the seer stone], with so much characteristic earnestness, had induced, temporarily, the state of conscious clairvoyance, which had enabled me first to see the landscape, house, paper, &c., and then, by simple concentration of thought, produced a miniature reflection of them in the glass before me.” This “conscious clairvoyance,” as Davis continued to describe it, allowed crystal-gazers to slip into a conscious trance-like state, “without going into sleep.”[57]
Davis’s level of consciousness during the dictation of his revelations alerts us to another important similarity between Smith and Davis. Even though Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon and Davis’s trance lectures have both been analyzed in terms of automatic writing, neither of these two young seers was actually operating within that particular process.[58] With automatic writing, the person receiving the revelations is the same person writing them, acting as a passive medium through whom some other disembodied spirit physically communicates a message. Though Scott C. Dunn has proposed that trance dictation and automatic writing “are only different techniques or expressions of the same underlying process,” the conflation of these modalities obliterates significant and crucial distinctions.[59] Apart from the challenge that neither Smith nor Davis claimed to channel the voice of another spirit or supernatural being, for example, the argument contains an embedded and faulty assumption that a text arising from an oral performance would express the same content, language, and characteristics as a written effort (conscious or otherwise). But these two modes of composition inevitably express significant and crucial differences.[60]
Moreover, Davis vehemently argued that his process of revelatory dictation did not equate to that of writing and speaking mediums: “how glaring becomes the misapprehension of those who advertise my lectures as ‘given through the mediumship of A. J. Davis’—as if my mind . . . were an insensible, unintelligent, and passive substance, or spout, through which disembodied personages express or promulgate their own specific opinions! This is an egregious error—a most unwholesome misrepresentation.”[61] Davis did not passively channel other spirits but rather spoke actively as himself, communicating the enlightened knowledge and divine revelations that flooded into his mind during his transcendent state.[62] When analyzing this process of performance, we find that neither the spontaneous utterances of automatic writing nor the free associations of extemporaneous trance speaking provides an adequate framework for the revelations and oral performances of either Davis or Smith.[63]
Another point of comparison involves the time it took to produce Smith’s and Davis’s revelations, and their resulting lengths. Smith produced the Book of Mormon within a three-month span, while Davis’s revelations occurred over a period of fifteen months.[64] In terms of actual working days, however, the disparity is not so great as these inclusive times might suggest. Scholars believe that Smith produced the Book of Mormon within a period ranging from fifty-seven to seventy-five working days, during which time he often worked at a full-time pace.[65] And, as David Whitmer observed, “the days were long, and they [Smith and Cowdery] worked from morning till night.”[66] Davis, on the other hand, supported himself and Lyon with the proceeds from their shared clairvoyant medical practice when he was not performing his revelations.[67] Financial exigencies forced Davis to produce the lectures intermittently and on a part-time basis, while devoting the majority of his time to treating enough patients to cover the living expenses for himself and his partner. In all, Davis intermittently delivered 157 lectures, each varying in length “from forty minutes to about four hours.”[68] If he could have worked “from morning till night,” as Smith had done, Davis theoretically could have produced at least two lectures per working day, spending a total amount of time that would have ranged from a low of one hour and twenty minutes per day to a high of eight hours. Thus, Davis’s total amount of dictation time, when converted to “full-time” days, equates to a rough estimate of 78.5 working days, and his series of revelatory lectures resulted in a work containing approximately 320,000 words.
When preparing the scribal manuscript for publication, Davis supervised the process but made few editorial corrections to the original outpouring of inspired words. Fishbough, who handled the preparations, stated, “With the exception of striking out a few sentences and supplying others, according to [Davis’s] direction, I have only found it necessary to correct the grammar, to prune out verbal redundancies, and to clarify such sentences as would to the general reader appear obscure.” Occasionally, the original manuscript was apparently illegible, requiring Fishbough to “reconstruct sentences” using “only the verbal materials found in the sentence as it first stood, preserving the peculiarities of style and mode of expression.” In perhaps the most invasive change, Fishbough indicated, “The arrangement of the work is the same as when delivered, except that in three instances contiguous paragraphs have been transposed for the sake of a closer connexion.” Finally, Fishbough asserted, “With these unimportant qualifications, the work may be considered as paragraph for paragraph, sentence for sentence, and word for word, as it was delivered by the author.”[69] In this regard (apart from Fishbough’s transpositions), the final published text of The Principles of Nature parallels similar editorial modifications that appeared in the 1837 and 1840 editions of the Book of Mormon, in which Smith revised the grammar and made selective changes in both editions.[70]
In terms of textual complexity, a comparison between Smith and Davis falls prey to subjective measurement, given that their texts are two fundamentally different products of oral performance. Smith produced an epic narrative containing a relatively complex collection of story episodes that included, as Grant Hardy has detailed, “flashbacks,” “embedded documents,” “year-by-year chronological markers through a century of judges,” “multiple wars,” “scriptural quotations and exegesis,” and “successions of rulers,” among several other standard narrative typologies.[71] Hardy has further argued (curiously) that the stories are “original.”[72] By comparison, Davis produced a series of lectures that outlined his vision of a scientific theology that would guide the world to a state of harmonious perfection. Such lectures, however, lacked the compelling drive of narrative structures filled with interesting, exotically named characters and dynamic storylines. Yet, as a systematic course of instruction that developed a new way of understanding the world, Davis’s lectures were never meant to be an epic narrative—a difference that hinders any direct comparison with the Book of Mormon. Evaluating the complexity of Davis’s thought therefore requires another perspective.
In terms of overall structure, The Principles of Nature contains three major divisions: “Part I.—The Key,” which establishes the fundamental framework of Davis’s ideas; “Part II.—The Revelation,” which Catherine L. Albanese describes as a “Swedenborgian-plus-‘popular-science’ section”; and “Part III.—The Application,” which ultimately provides a utopian vision of a harmonious society, or “The New Heaven and the New Earth.”[73] Albanese also observes that “The Principles of Nature was a complexly combinative work” that moved “in emphatically metaphysical directions.” And, in spite of its “trance dictation and sententious prose,” the work “possessed a logic and coherence that were, in structural terms, clear.”[74] This three-part division offers a simple yet effective organization for the entire work, though, from a structural viewpoint, it does not approach the complexity of the narrative twists and turns found in the Book of Mormon.
Moving beyond structure to evaluate the content, however, the reader discovers a sophisticated syncretism of contemporary scientific, theological, and philosophical thought. Though most of his ideas are now long outdated, especially with regard to scientific theories, Davis nevertheless stakes out positions and provides commentary on cutting-edge scientific theories of his day. And his philosophical forays reveal unexpected adaptations and developments of complex ideas. In the opening “Key,” for example, Davis sets about the task of reshaping the readers’ fundamental epistemologies, moving them away from standard theological narratives and traditional histories to novel views and assumptions informed by Enlightenment ideas, biblical criticism, scientific advances, and new philosophical perspectives. Davis alerts readers that their understanding of the world—how it operates, the nature of universal and divine laws, conceptions of God, and the spiritual nature of all things—is fundamentally distorted. For instance, as David Mihalyfy indicates, Davis addresses the issue of a historical Jesus, insisting rationally that Christ “was no apocalyptic prophet,” but a gifted (mortal) healer and, as Davis describes him, “the great Moral Reformer.”[75] In a quasi-primitivist turn, Davis also reveals that in order to understand how the universe truly operates, we need to sweep away false traditions and conceptions (with an emphasis on traditional religious opinions) and go back to the beginning of creation to understand how the world came to be, how it developed into its current state, and the principles that will structure further development.
In doing so, Davis invokes an overt Neoplatonic concept of material reality, where tangible matter and material forms exist in concert with perfected ideals (their “ultimate” state): “forms and appearances are effects of matter in approximating to its future state of perfection; while its perfected state, or ultimate, is in return controlling and refining these substances and forms.”[76] In this modification of Plato’s theory of forms, Davis extrapolates multiple “spheres” of existence, in which earthly matter interacts with its perfected ideal on higher planes of existence—planes that also offer error-free concepts, greater truths, and complete knowledge. But these relationships do not remain static. With this philosophical foundation, Davis incorporates contemporary scientific advancements into his philosophy to postulate a process of biological evolution.
Drawing on adapted concepts of Newtonian physics and laws of motion to theorize a mechanism for evolution (revising Newton’s concept of vis inertia and commenting on the relationships among rectilinear, curvilinear, and spiral motion) and incorporating contemporary studies in geology and paleobiology (the evolution of lower life forms observed in “the remains of the mollusca, radiata, articulata, and vertebrata” found in successive geological strata), Davis traces the origin, development, and transmutation of plants and animals in the natural world.[77] Not one to avoid controversy, Davis further includes the evolution of “Man” (the human body, though not the spirit) as the pinnacle form of that evolutionary process.[78] Thus, in his 1846 and 1847 trance lectures, Davis rejected a literal interpretation of the traditional story of Adam and Eve and the instantaneous six-day creation of all things and substituted a controversial model of biological evolution that contemporary scholars were fiercely debating in the years leading up to the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859.[79]
Moreover, in a point critical to note, Davis did not simply regurgitate information from a wide range of contemporary source materials and fields of knowledge. Rather, he saw their interrelated connections (or presumed relationships) and used those links to construct the scaffolding of a new belief system. For instance, this modified conception of the universe provided Davis with a philosophical and scientific explanation for how his own trance states operated: while in trance, his spirit transcended this earthly state to the higher planes of existence, where he received pure and unadulterated knowledge, which, in turn, he would share with the world through his revelatory trance utterances. Through a series of adaptations and calculated borrowings, especially from Swedenborg, Davis amalgamated the disparate fields of his knowledge and beliefs into a cohesive and multifaceted cosmology that served his ultimate project of social reform. He was, in essence, a magpie prophet-scientist, drawing on diverse sources of knowledge in order to weave his own innovative patchwork quilt explaining the laws that governed all creation. When we further consider that Davis performed these lectures while blindfolded, at the ages of nineteen and twenty, without the aid of notes or manuscripts for easy reference, and all the while supporting himself and an associate, we might begin to understand why many of his observers believed that this barely educated, substantially illiterate, poverty-stricken son of a poor journeyman shoemaker must have been truly inspired.
Turning from content to form, Davis also displays a wide range of rhetorical devices on par with those found in the Book of Mormon.[80] Because Fishbough kept his editorial changes to a minimum, The Principles of Nature preserves a number of interesting characteristics of Davis’s oral performance techniques, specifically regarding the use of rhetorical figures. Throughout the text, Davis makes use of such devices as anaphora (successive phrases beginning with the same word or words); antithesis (ideas set in opposition); epistrophe (successive phrases ending with the same word or words); various forms of parallelism; symploce (a combination of anaphora and epistrophe); zeugma (multiple phrases, often in a series or catalogue, controlled by a single verb); and, among many other devices, various types of “ring composition” or “envelope patterns” (also called simple and complex “chiasmus,” “inclusio,” and “inverted parallelism,” among other terms).[81]
Indeed, Davis’s pervasive use of chiastic structures suggests that the various patterns of ring composition—patterns of repetition and expansion quite common in oral traditions—reflect a habit of mind in the organization of his thoughts. Scholarship has not yet examined Davis’s use of complex chiastic structures, though it is highly unlikely that Davis knew about or intentionally formed them, particularly when they often lack the precision and clarity of consciously constructed (and revised) literary texts. Davis’s style of dense repetition, however, allows for the ready imposition of chiastic patterns onto his thoughts. A cursory reading can locate numerous examples, which, though certainly produced unconsciously, rival similar complex patterns found in the Book of Mormon (see figures 1 and 2).
Given the prominence of complex chiastic structures and the techniques of ring composition (conscious or otherwise) in oral performances, it would appear that the scholarship on chiasmus in the Book of Mormon needs to address further critical questions regarding the differences between literary and orally derived chiastic structures, as well as revisiting the purported intentionality behind them. Attributing such structures exclusively to the presence of underlying Hebraic literary devices ignores the global pervasiveness of such structures in both spoken and literary contexts, creating yet another illusory buttress to faith that crumbles upon closer examination.
Fixations on Idiosyncratic Criteria
In discussions concerning the origins and nature of the Book of Mormon, the fixation on naturalistic comparisons continues to thrive as a prominent and insistent need. The persistent creation of arbitrary taxonomies that divide and subdivide lists of selective criteria in an effort to privilege a predetermined chosen text suggests that such naturalistic comparisons play a far more important role in the cultural performance of faith and belief in the Book of Mormon than is usually acknowledged (or theologically desirable). Such lists attempt to manufacture miracles with an impressive array of contested categories, such as natural versus supernatural composition; conscious versus unconscious production; the purported significance of lengthy texts; the fixation on (often irrelevant) stylistic differences; dubious lists of information that the speaker allegedly could not possibly have known; and, above all, the purported ignorance and illiteracy of the person producing the work.[82] Given that such non-theological issues ideally do not participate in the confirmation of faith, the inordinate obsession with such naturalistic comparisons would seem to offer a troubling distraction, sending the tacit signal to the audience of believers that such comparisons and criteria must indeed be a crucial if unofficial component of faith.
The introduction of selective criteria, however, presents a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. We might, for example, create a new framework of naturalistic criteria, one calculated to dismiss Smith and the Book of Mormon in favor of Davis and The Principles of Nature: 1) The author or translator must be only twenty years of age or younger when he or she produces the work; 2) The author or translator cannot receive financial support from outside sources during the course of the project but must financially support himself or herself and an associate for the duration of the work; 3) The inspired text must consist of no less than 300,000 words, without being artificially expanded by the incorporation of extensive passages from other texts, especially the Bible; 4) When describing historical events and circumstances, the subject must frequently refer to known historical events and traditions that witnesses can independently verify for accuracy, using sources outside the text; 5) As evidence of truly divine revelation, the author must predict the existence of a planet in the solar system before the scientific community has discovered that same celestial body; and, finally, 6) When in a visionary state, the revelator must have the ability to utter phrases in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Sanskrit, even though the subject has never studied such languages, and then have a reputable university professor of Hebrew witness and verify such a feat.[83] If we were to accept this arbitrary list of criteria, we might hail Andrew Jackson Davis as a true prophet and seer, while Joseph Smith would be disqualified at every point along the way.
While naturalistic catalogues prove popular as rhetorical tools of persuasion, and while the mobilization of exclusionary rhetoric and claims of textual exceptionalism might appear to buttress belief, such dependence on arbitrary naturalistic criteria runs the risk of making faith more vulnerable. Indeed, the damage might already be done: the common day-to-day expressions of belief in the Book of Mormon strongly suggest that the persistent turn to naturalist comparisons reveals an entanglement of personal opinion, belief, theory, and faith. Belief in the Book of Mormon becomes inextricably bound to disbelief in Smith’s ability to create it—a position that reveals the uncomfortable prospect that the foundation of faith contains limited mortal perceptions, impressionability, and finite experience.
With such potential hazards, we might pause for a moment to ask what cultural work these comparative lists of selective criteria are actually performing and inadvertently revealing—not just about the texts but about ourselves. Such projects, after all, cannot prove or disprove the divine origins of the Book of Mormon. They never will. Such lists merely consist of tailored, calculated requirements that artificially isolate a preferred outcome, even as they showcase the preconceptions and assumptions of those who create and/or employ them. Such special pleading thus puts our own biases into sharp relief. Even if a text involves unusual characteristics beyond anything that we might personally describe as “natural,” the conclusion that the text must therefore be “divine” reveals a fatal leap in logic. We thereby display a faulty line of syllogistic reasoning that equates things purportedly unique and allegedly inexplicable with things miraculous and divine, as if these concepts were all somehow synonymous.
The persistent valorization of such projects, which ultimately compete with the development of authentic faith and potentially threaten whatever faith may already exist, should therefore make us pause and question their real value. Though such catalogues of criteria aim to impress (and entertain) an audience of believers, and though they might initially appear to strengthen faith, their effects prove ultimately unreliable and illusory. Moreover, they obfuscate historical complexities, transforming the young Joseph Smith into a two-dimensional, illiterate, know-nothing boy, when a close reading of historical sources rather reveals a young man with a gifted intellect and ambitious desires for self-education and self-improvement. Perhaps most importantly, however, naturalistic sets of criteria reveal more about ourselves than they reveal about Joseph Smith or the origins of the Book of Mormon: instead of discovering eternal markers that signal the presence of the divine, we merely discover the limitations of our individual experience, the borders of our imagination, and the measure of our credulity.
[1] This essay is indebted to insights from Brent Metcalfe, David Rodes, Colby Townsend, and the editor and anonymous readers for Dialogue.
Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996), 1:542. Hereafter EMD.
[2] Joseph Smith Sr. may well have started the tradition. According to Fayette Lapham, a farmer from nearby Perinton (aka Perrinton), New York, who visited the Smith home in 1829 or 1830, Joseph Sr. referred to Joseph Jr. as “the illiterate.” EMD 1:457.
[3] Hugh B. Brown, “The Profile of a Prophet” (devotional, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, Oct. 4, 1955). Modified transcript. For an audio recording, see BYU Speeches, “The Profile of a Prophet | Hugh B. Brown,” YouTube video, 27:04, June 29, 2018, 17:10–19:55. The quotations follow my own transcription of the original audio recording.
[4] Hugh Nibley, The Prophetic Book of Mormon, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, edited by John W. Welch, vol. 8 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 221–22.
[5] For a common list of criteria, together with commentary, see Jerald and Sandra Tanner, “Book of Mormon Challenge,” Salt Lake City Messenger 107, Oct. 2006. For the 269,510-word count, see John W. Welch, “Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2018): 22.
[6] Richard L. Bushman (panel discussion, “New Perspectives on Joseph Smith and Translation” conference, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, sponsored by USU Religious Studies and Faith Matters Foundation, Mar. 16, 2017). See Faith Matters Foundation, “The Translation Team—with highlights,” YouTube video, 18:53, Apr. 27, 2017, 3:30–4:06.
[7] As neither a doctrine nor principle of faith, the issue of plausibility falls technically outside the realm of theological apologetics.
[8] Loyd Isao Ericson, “Conceptual Confusion and the Building of Stumbling Blocks of Faith,” in Perspectives on Mormon Theology: Apologetics, edited by Blair G. Van Dyke and Loyd Isao Ericson (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2017), 209.
[9] J. Stanley Grimes describes how Davis came to the realization that he “was a prophet and a seer.” J. Stanley Grimes, The Mysteries of Human Nature Explained (Buffalo, N.Y.: R. M. Wanzer, 1857), 353.
[10] Andrew Jackson Davis, The Magic Staff: An Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis (New York: J. S. Brown, 1857), 173.
[11] Catherine L. Albanese aptly describes Davis’s work as “a new Bible of Nature.” See Catherine L. Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), 212. See also Grimes, Mysteries, 354. Brian Hales estimates that The Principles of Nature contains approximately 340,000 words, though I can only account for approximately 320,000. See Brian C. Hales, “Automatic Writing and The Book of Mormon: An Update,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 52, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 5.
[12] Anthony A. Walsh, “A Note on the Origin of ‘Modern’ Spiritualism,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 28, no. 2 (Apr. 1973): 170. See also Albanese, Republic of Mind, 218.
[13] For a sample of biographical sketches on Andrew Jackson Davis, see Albanese, Republic of Mind, 206–20, and Albanese, “On the Matter of Spirit: Andrew Jackson Davis and the Marriage of God and Nature,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 1–17. Robert W. Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet of American Spiritualism,” Journal of American History 54, no. 1 (June 1967): 43–56; Delp, “A Spiritualist in Connecticut: Andrew Jackson Davis, the Hartford Years, 1850–1854,” New England Quarterly 53, no. 3 (Sept. 1980): 345–62; and Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis and Spiritualism,” in Pseudo-Science and Society in 19th-Century America, edited by Arthur Wrobel (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 100–21. See also Grimes, Mysteries, 350–62.
[14] Davis, Magic Staff, 24–26, 68, 119.
[15] Davis, Magic Staff, 40, 51, 87, 118, 123, 136, 169–70, 177, 185.
[16] Grimes, Mysteries, 354, italics in the original.
[17] Grimes, Mysteries, xiv, italics in the original.
[18] Andrew Jackson Davis, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind (New York: S. S. Lyon and Wm. Fishbough, 1847), ix.
[19] EMD, 1:27, spelling and punctuation modernized. Davis, describing himself in the third person, would assert that prior to his revelations he had only read one book in his lifetime “on a very unimportant subject” (later identified as The Three Spaniards [1800], a Gothic melodrama by George Walker) and that he knew “nothing of grammar or the rules of language.” Magic Staff, 304–05.
[20] In spite of Davis’s claims, a careful reading of his autobiography suggests that he deliberately downplayed the actual amount of formal and informal education he received.
[21] Davis, Magic Staff, 110, 119; see also 94–95.
[22] Davis, Magic Staff, 160, 178.
[23] Davis, Magic Staff, 158, 191, 200 (“Rev. A. R. Bartlett” was a Universalist preacher).
[24] Davis, Magic Staff, 192.
[25] Davis, Magic Staff, 192–93, 199.
[26] Davis, Magic Staff, 201.
[27] Grimes, Mysteries, 350. Davis, Magic Staff, 201–02, 210.
[28] Davis, Magic Staff, 215.
[29] Davis, Principles of Nature, xii.
[30] Albanese, Republic of Mind, 207–08; Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet,” 44; Davis, Magic Staff, 238–45; for Davis’s identification of these visitors, see Magic Staff, 248.
[31] Davis, Magic Staff, 244.
[32] Davis, Magic Staff, 277.
[33] Davis, Magic Staff, 275; see also 276, 279.
[34] Davis, Magic Staff, 279. Likewise, Joseph Smith produced three recorded revelations (Doctrine and Covenants sections 3, 4, and 5) before the publication of the Book of Mormon.
[35] Albanese, Republic of Mind, 207.
[36] Davis, Magic Staff, 286.
[37] Davis, Magic Staff, 286.
[38] Davis, Magic Staff, 286.
[39] Davis, Magic Staff, 296–98. Albanese, Republic of Mind, 208.
[40] Albanese, Republic of Mind, 208; Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet,” 44; Davis, Magic Staff, 298; Davis, Principles of Nature, viii, xiii.
[41] Davis, Magic Staff, 299.
[42] Albanese, Republic of Mind, 208; Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet,” 44; Davis, Magic Staff, 300.
[43] Davis, Principles of Nature, xv; see also 2.
[44] Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet,” 44.
[45] Davis, Principles of Nature, xviii.
[46] Davis was born on August 11, 1826.
[47] For David Whitmer’s description of Smith’s dictation sessions, see EMD, 5:153–54.
[48] Davis, Magic Staff, 307.
[49] Davis, Principles of Nature, xviii.
[50] Davis, Principles of Nature, xviii.
[51] Davis, Magic Staff, 318.
[52] Davis, Principles of Nature, xvii.
[53] Davis, Principles of Nature, xx.
[54] Davis, Magic Staff, 299.
[55] See e.g., EMD, 1:542.
[56] Davis, Magic Staff, 266–68.
[57] Davis, Magic Staff, 268. Davis borrowed the term “conscious clairvoyance” (and plagiarized portions of text) from William Gregory’s observations on the use of seer stones. See William Gregory, Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism (London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly, 1851), 367–76.
[58] See e.g., Scott C. Dunn, “Automaticity and the Dictation of the Book of Mormon,” in American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, edited by Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 17–46; Hales, “Automatic Writing,” 1–35; Robert A. Rees, “The Book of Mormon and Automatic Writing,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15, no. 1 (2006): 4–17, 68–70.
[59] Dunn, “Automaticity,” 23.
[60] Anita M. Mühl conducted experiments with subjects narrating memories by dictation via crystal gazing and also automatic writing. Though the subjects described the same stories in both modes, the expression of events were inevitably different (e.g., alterations in phraseology, vocabulary, and narrative omissions and additions from one mode to the next); see Anita M. Mühl, “Automatic Writing Combined with Crystal Gazing as a Means of Recalling Forgotten Incidents,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology 19, no. 3 (Oct. 1924): 264–73. More recently, Alexandra A. Cleland and Martin J. Pickering observe that “language is clearly used differently in written and spoken production,” identifying differences in the use of passives, complex phrasal constructions, and size of vocabulary; see “Do Writing and Speaking Employ the Same Syntactic Representations?,” Journal of Memory and Language 54, no. 1 (2006): 185–98, esp. 185–86. In an oft reprinted article, David Crystal offers a concise list of distinctions between written and spoken language; see “Speaking of Writing and Writing of Speaking,” Longman Language Review 1 (repr. 2005): 1–5. For a more comprehensive analysis, see Douglas Biber, Variation Across Speech and Writing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
[61] Davis, Magic Staff, 311–12, italics in the original.
[62] Davis referred to several different trance states, with different levels of consciousness, ranging from being oblivious to his surroundings to being acutely aware of his environment. For Davis’s sketch outline of four trance (“magnetic”) states, see Principles of Nature, 35–37. For his scribe Fishbough’s observations of different trance states, see Davis, Principles of Nature, xvii-xviii.
[63] For the historical context regarding the development of conscious and unconscious trance states, see Ann Taves, Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 207–27.
[64] Fishbough states that the first lecture began on November 28, 1845, and the last ended on January 25, 1847; see Davis, Principles of Nature, xviii. In other words, Davis spent fourteen months of actual work time spanning a fifteen-month calendar period.
[65] For John Welch’s most recent estimate “of only 57 to 63 available full-time working days,” see Welch, “Timing the Translation,” 34.
[66] EMD, 5:104.
[67] Davis, Principles of Nature, xiv.
[68] Davis, Principles of Nature, xviii.
[69] Davis, Principles of Nature, xviii–xix.
[70] For a concise description of Smith’s changes, see Paul C. Gutjahr, The Book of Mormon: A Biography (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), 63–65.
[71] Grant Hardy, ed., The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2018), 621.
[72] Hardy recently claimed that one of the features of the Book of Mormon is its “originality,” specifically stating that, “the content [of the Book of Mormon] is original.” See Grant Hardy, “Textual Criticism and the Book of Mormon,” in Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources, edited by Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 39. In the absence of clarification, Hardy’s claim is debatable, given the large body of research in literary criticism that hotly contests the meaning of “originality” in the way that Hardy appears to use the term. The stories of the Book of Mormon, though often “original” with regard to surface features, nevertheless rely heavily on preexisting core narrative templates for their shape and structure.
[73] Davis, Principles of Nature, xxiii; Albanese, Republic of Mind, 210.
[74] Albanese, Republic of Mind, 209.
[75] David Mihalyfy, “What They Don’t Want You to Know About Jesus Christ and the Seer of Poughkeepsie,” Contingent Magazine, June 21, 2019; Davis, Principles of Nature, 434. For a detailed analysis of Davis’s views on a historical Jesus and biblical criticism, see David Francis Mihalyfy, “Heterodoxies and the Historical Jesus: Biblical Criticism of the Gospels in the U.S., 1794–1860” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2017), esp. 7, 180–84, 193–217.
[76] Davis, Principles of Nature, 47.
[77] For Davis’s references to Newton’s laws, see Principles of Nature, 57, 69. For his discussion on lower life forms, see 78–79. For evolution, see e.g., 57–85.
[78] Davis situated his theory in what we describe today as intelligent design. See Principles of Nature, 70–76, 92. For an unambiguous statement on the evolutionary process resulting in humankind, see 328.
[79] Darwin was not, of course, the first to propose a theory of biological evolution. Rather, he proposed new theories regarding the mechanisms driving the transmutation of species (e.g., natural selection). For a contemporary study that acknowledges the controversies of biological evolution and includes the categories of Radiata, Mollusca, Articulata, and Vertebrata, see Charles Girard, “Life in its Physical Aspects,” Proceedings of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science (annual meeting, National Institute for the Promotion of Science, Washington, DC, Jan. 15, 1855), 2–22, esp. 20–22.
[80] For a detailed and helpful overview of several species of parallelism and a selection of rhetorical devices in the Book of Mormon, see Donald W. Parry, Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon: The Complete Text Reformatted, 2nd ed. (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, 2007), xi–xlvi.
[81] The final paragraph on page 6 of The Principles of Nature (1847) offers several common examples: “This ignorance still exists; this bigotry and superstition still exist” (parallelism, symploce); “It has in its long career,” “It has obstructed,” “It has obscured,” “It has covered,” “It has sapped,” “It has produced” (anaphora, parallelism); “Wisdom/folly,” “Knowledge/ignorance,” “Happiness/misery” (antithesis). Such devices are ubiquitous in oral traditions as storytelling techniques, as well as in written texts. Thus, any assertion that such devices provide evidence of the Book of Mormon’s literary (written) origins faces the added burden of proving how such devices were exclusively literary constructions and not orally derived features.
[82] See e.g., Hales, “Automatic Writing,” 1–35. Rees, “The Book of Mormon and Automatic Writing,” 4–17; 68–70.
[83] Albanese notes how Davis “predicted an eighth [planet]—in a lecture delivered six months before the discovery of Neptune.” Albanese, Republic of Mind, 211. George Bush, a New York University professor of Hebrew and a devoted Swedenborgian, stated, “I can most solemnly affirm, that I have heard him correctly quote the Hebrew language in his Lectures.” Bush also claimed that Davis dictated phrases “from the ancient languages,” including “long extracts from the Sanscrit [sic].” See George Bush, Mesmer and Swedenborg, 2nd ed. (New York: John Allen, 1847), 161, 203. The “ancient languages” would be later identified as “Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.” See Theophilus Parsons, “Review,” New Jerusalem Magazine 20, no. 5 (Boston: Otis Clapp, Jan. 1847), 190.
[post_title] => The Limits of Naturalistic Criteria for the Book of Mormon: Comparing Joseph Smith and Andrew Jackson Davis [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 53.3 (Fall 2020): 73–103Davis compares the two men, saying “Davis, like Smith, was raised in a poor household and received little formal education—Davis, in fact, would claim to have received only “little more than five months” of schooling.” [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-limits-of-naturalistic-criteria-for-the-book-of-mormon-comparing-joseph-smith-and-andrew-jackson-davis [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:47:05 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:47:05 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=26727 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon: Co-Founders of a Movement
Steven L. Shields
Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 1–18
Shields argues that if you deny or dismiss Sidney Ridgon’s contributions to the early church, then the scripture canon during this time would need to be reinterpreted.
With the recent push by President Russell M. Nelson to refer to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by its proper name and stop using the term “Mormon,” perhaps the time has come to advocate for a more objective term for the academic study of the larger movement than “Mormon Studies,” which has tended to focus solely on the Utah-based branch. Students and scholars need a more objective name for the movement, one that is based in the history of its foundations. The studies they do must be done with a broader rubric of interpretation—not one that is focused on telling one side of the story.[1] For historical and theological purposes, then, I argue that the academic community should adopt the term “Smith-Rigdon Movement” in their studies and publications.
To call the movement “Mormonism” is confusing, even though “Mormon” and “Mormonite” are among the earliest nicknames to appear in history. A French scholar proposed referring to the movement as “Mormonisms.” His argument is that because Mormonism is widely understood, making the word plural signals there is more than one brand.[2] However, many denominations within the movement do not identify with the term.[3]
Furthermore, the term “Latter Day Saint movement” is anachronistic, regardless of whether the beginning of the movement is counted from 1820, 1829, or 1830.[4] The phrase was not introduced to the movement until 1833.[5] The name was formalized in 1834.[6] But, as with “Mormonism,” many of the denominations in the movement do not identify with the phrase.[7]
The label “restoration movement” is a retrospective gloss that introduces confusion as well. Anachronistic application of later or contemporary understanding to historical circumstances leads to fundamental misunderstanding. Joseph Smith commonly called the Church “a great and marvelous work,” but rarely used the term “restoration” in his earliest writings.[8] Many followers often talked about the “new revelation” when speaking of the Book of Mormon. In the rare times that we find restoration in Smith’s revelations, the Book of Mormon, or other writings, the term speaks of other ideas. Smith uses the word to talk about future events, about the Jewish people, or in general terms. In no case did he use the term to suggest that he understood himself to be “restoring” either the gospel or an organization.[9]
The use and meanings of restore and restoration, as has become commonplace in the Smith-Rigdon Movement, was borrowed from Reform Baptist (the Stone-Campbell movement) language in use from the early 1820s. Sidney Rigdon and those leaders who came with him when they merged with Smith introduced the language.[10] Joseph Smith’s appellation “the restorer,” the term “restored gospel” as applied to Smith’s message, and the unique definition of restoration all postdate Smith’s founding experiences. Interestingly, the earliest Ohio members of the new movement continued to call themselves “disciples” at least until the church name was formally changed in 1834.
The Churches of Christ, and independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ use the phrase “restoration movement” when writing and talking about themselves, but the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) long ago stopped using such language.[11] Academics in that tradition have long used “Stone-Campbell movement” to discuss their broader history because styles and definitions of restoration are varied.[12]
For example, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon each sought restorations that were charismatic and experiential, revelational restorationism. Alexander Campbell was noted for rational restorationism.[13] This idea is based on the belief that the Bible contains concrete facts, rather than abstract truths, and Campbell advocated a scientific method to understanding the teachings of the book. Campbell felt that by relying only on the facts contained in the Bible, Christians could come to a unity of agreement.[14] Further, the restoration vision was widely known as it had already emerged with great strength in the sixteenth century and was foundational for much of the Reformation throughout Europe.[15]
Sidney Rigdon’s importance to the movement cannot be overemphasized. When Smith and Rigdon met late in 1830, they formed a partnership, resulting in a merger of two independent movements. This had been several months in the making, from the time some of Rigdon’s followers began to believe in the new revelation represented by the Book of Mormon. Smith’s was a loosely organized collection of fewer than three hundred people scattered around the border area of upstate New York and Pennsylvania;[16] Rigdon’s was a network of several congregations and hundreds of members.[17]
The Doctrine and Covenants and other sources clearly demonstrate that Sidney Rigdon was not second to Joseph Smith, but an equal partner. The problem from our modern perspective is that by the time Joseph Smith was killed, he had become disenchanted with Rigdon. Likewise, Rigdon had become disenchanted with Smith, due largely to the cancellation of the common stock association, the Kirtland Bank debacle, and the repeated failures to establish Zion. Nevertheless, prior to this, Rigdon had remained loyal and largely hid his discouragement and frustration. His belief in Smith’s revelations and the testimony of the Book of Mormon remained strong until Rigdon’s death.[18]
Not long after Joseph Smith’s death, Sidney Rigdon was written out of the Church’s history by Brigham Young and others who disagreed with Rigdon’s position. Ever after, those writing the history of the movement have ignored Rigdon’s significant contributions that shaped the identity and message of the movement.[19][20]
James J. Strang and those who formed Community of Christ had little or no knowledge of Sidney Rigdon’s true role in forming the movement. Many of them were latecomers and not located at the center. The same is true for Granville Hedrick. Rigdon’s legacy lived on, but only in part, through William Bickerton’s Church of Jesus Christ.[21]
Joseph Smith’s religious work began taking shape by May of 1829 in New York and Pennsylvania with the first baptisms, although the foundations were several years in the making. The founding event was the Book of Mormon. Reliance on the First Vision as founding event did not happen until decades after Smith’s death.[22]
What Smith and his followers did on April 6, 1830, was organize a religious association to be legally recognized to perform marriages. They were not incorporating, nor were they forming a denomination in the modern understanding. Such an idea was counter to the ideas of Smith, Rigdon, and many others.[23] They were organizing a church in the local sense.[24] I think that is why the word “branch” emerged to refer to the scattered congregations.
Meanwhile, Adamson Bentley, Sidney Rigdon’s brother-in-law, introduced Rigdon to Alexander Campbell in 1821. Historians consider that meeting to be the beginning of the movement. Rigdon and Campbell quickly became close associates. Rigdon was known as one of the most successful and eloquent leaders in Campbell’s movement.[25]
Some scholars consider Sidney Rigdon, Walter Scott, Adamson Bentley, and Alexander Campbell as co-founders of the movement that gave birth to what is now known as the Stone-Campbell Movement.[26] The Mahoning Baptist Association, which they formed in 1820, was an alliance of like-minded ministers and congregations that were the nucleus for the later development of the Disciples movement with Campbell.[27] In the earliest years, they were called Reformed Baptists. The Mahoning Association functioned in some ways as a micro-denomination. It was geographically localized over a relatively small area. There were dozens of such associations in the United States at the time. They held annual conferences, appointed ministers to certain tasks, and declared common doctrinal statements. Sidney Rigdon was one of the bishops, supervising several congregations northwest of Warren, Ohio.[28]
By 1828, Bentley was the leader supervising several congregations near Warren, Ohio, Scott was in charge southwest of Warren, Rigdon was the leader northwest of Warren, and Campbell was the scholar and writer.[29] Walter Scott claimed to have restored the “ancient gospel,” but Campbell rejected that claim.[30]
Rigdon and Campbell parted company in the summer of 1830 over issues dealing with the role of charismata and setting up communitarian societies.[31] Eventually, Rigdon found the prophetic impulse to be powerful in his life of faith. As one scholar declared, “few sources could be more authoritative than direct revelation from God.”[32]
Historian F. Mark McKiernan explained:
Rigdon disagreed with Campbell over whether the so-called “manifestations of Spiritual Gifts” and miracles had a place in the restoration. The gifts of the spirit were the speaking and interpretation of foreign tongues, prophecy, visions, spiritual dreams, and the discernment of evil spirits. Campbell declared that the miraculous work of the Holy Ghost was “confined to the apostolic age, and to only a portion of the saints who lived in that age.” Rigdon, however, sought “to convince influential persons that, along with the primitive gospel, supernatural gifts and miracles ought to be restored.”[33]
Sidney Rigdon has been identified by some historians as one of the “Three Witnesses to the Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things.” The primary holders of the title are Alexander Campbell and Walter Scott.[34] When Rigdon met Joseph Smith Jr., Smith declared that Rigdon was like John the Baptist and appointed him as a spokesperson. Interestingly, the same language was already being used to describe Barton Stone.[35] Sidney Rigdon is mentioned by name in dozens of sections of the Doctrine and Covenants; many sections were jointly received by Smith and Rigdon.
Some of the earliest believers in the Book of Mormon message had been Disciples trained by Sidney Rigdon as ministers and church leaders. They introduced their beloved leader and teacher Rigdon to the message, who finally accepted rebaptism late in 1830. By December, Rigdon traveled to New York to meet Joseph Smith Jr. and stayed for several weeks through the winter.[36]
Even though Smith and his missionaries rebaptized Rigdon and his followers, this does not suggest that Rigdon and his followers felt they were in submission to Smith or did not have authority to baptize previously. Rather it was that Smith claimed to be able to give the gift of the Holy Spirit. That was important to Rigdon and his followers. Rigdon disagreed with Alexander Campbell on this issue, which was one reason leading to their separation.[37]
The Smith-Rigdon partnership merged two distinct religious bodies and created a new one that contained features of both. They built on those foundations. Neither leader gave up cherished basic principles. Rigdon brought communalism and a fervent belief in gifts of the Spirit. Smith had the “new revelation” and oracles from God. Rigdon also brought a refined understanding of the Bible and theology. Each leader contributed to the newly shaped church body ideas and skills the other lacked.
Sidney Rigdon was well-spoken, educated, and experienced as a church leader. He was appointed to be Smith’s principal adviser and spokesperson by revelation.[38] He brought hundreds of his followers into the movement, including Orson Pratt, recognized as the first systematic theologian of the movement.[39] I believe that without Rigdon’s contributions, Joseph Smith’s church would likely not have developed its several distinct teachings and practices. Indeed, much of the theology was founded on Disciples doctrine, which Rigdon and his followers brought with them.
When Sidney Rigdon merged his faith community with that of Joseph Smith, the demographics of the movement shifted dramatically. Rigdon’s followers who were attracted to Smith’s message were at least double the New York and Pennsylvania membership to begin with, but within a few months, the newly merged church’s population in Ohio reached upwards of one thousand members.[40] These new members were not new. Most of them had been members of the various congregations of Disciples under Rigdon’s bishopric in the Kirtland area and had followed him out of Campbell’s movement.[41] Historian Mark Staker noted that former Disciples were the majority, had been taught by Sidney Rigdon, and that Smith built on that foundation.[42]
One scholar suggested that Rigdon’s influence and importance in the merger with Joseph Smith included five key points:
First, Sidney was one of the most influential figures in northern Ohio. His reputation, visibility, and prestige created instant credibility for the fledgling [Church of Christ]. Second, Sidney’s skill and fame as a religious orator provided ready audiences throughout northern Ohio. Third, Sidney brought with him a vast network of acquaintances—former Baptist and Disciple converts . . . . Fourth, Sidney’s experience as a religious organizer, trainer, minister, missionary, biblical scholar, and scriptorian far exceeded that of any other early convert. Fifth, Sidney had spent years grooming a number of individuals for the ministry: . . Edward Partridge, Newell K. Whitney, Isaac Morley, Frederick G. Williams . . . Parley P. Pratt, John Murdock . . . Orson Hyde . . . Eliza R. Snow . . . Orson Pratt.[43]
Other former Disciples included John Corrill, William E. McLellin, John F. Boynton, Lyman Wight, Levi W. Hancock, Zebedee Coltrin, Luke S. and Lyman E. Johnson, John Johnson, and Sylvester Smith. One-half of the original twelve apostles were Rigdon’s people. In fact, many of them, including Orson Hyde and the Pratt brothers, had been Campbellite preachers.[44] Indeed, of the four people who were crucial in introducing new ideas and policies, and who helped articulate the theology of the fledgling church in the early years of the movement, three were Disciples, or Campbellites—Sidney Rigdon, Parley P. Pratt, and Orson Pratt. Moreover, Rigdon had trained both Pratts as ministers. The fourth was Joseph Smith Jr.[45]
Objective studies of the movement need to understand Sidney Rig-don’s and others’ contributions to the movement as it developed, rather than judging those contributions through retrospective gloss, discounting valid and important contributions based merely on later events. Sidney Rigdon’s contributions to the original church[46] and the overall movement need to be written back into the history of the movement, regardless of what happened to his relationship with Smith in succeeding years.
Rigdon delivered every major speech and sermon in the first decade of the church’s history, dealing with faith, repentance, baptism, spiritual gifts, the Millennium, and communitarianism. The early church’s periodicals are replete with notes, prayers, texts, and comments by Rigdon. He outlined the basic theology of the movement in his Lectures of Faith[47] that were used for missionary training and canonized as equal to the revelations in the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants in 1835.[48] He laid the foundations for what has become, for some denominations in the movement, essential temple ritual. To discount or deny Rigdon’s contributions because of his later, rockier relationship with Smith and his refusal to agree with Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve would require a reinterpretation of the entire canon of scripture of the movement.[49]
Smith and Rigdon’s first joint project was revising the Bible; although Smith had begun this a few months earlier, it had languished, but now consumed much of the attention of the partners. Not long after Smith and the New York/Pennsylvania group relocated to Kirtland, the Book of Abraham project began and continued concurrently with the Bible revision.
The idea of problems with the text of the King James Version of the Bible was commonplace. There is little question that Rigdon was well informed and likely made use of Alexander Campbell’s 1826 revision of the New Testament. Scholars grounded in first-century Greek commonly agreed the King James Version was not inviolable. Between the late 1770s and the early 1830s, some five hundred different editions of the Bible or New Testament had been published in the United States.[50]
Richard S. Van Wagoner noted that Rigdon was “often called a ‘walking Bible’ by his peers in the Reformed Baptist Movement.” “That Rigdon could have been merely Sidney the Scribe, a penman whose sole function was to take down dictation, is implausible. A biblical scholar with a reputation for erudition, he was more learned, better read, and more steeped in biblical interpretation than any other early Mormon, despite his common school education. Any number of Smith’s followers could have served as clerk, but only Rigdon could have functioned as a scribe in the historical Jewish sense of the word: “a man of learning; one who read and explained the law to the people.”[51] Before Rigdon’s involvement in the Bible revision project, only about seven chapters of Genesis had been written. Manuscripts were in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer. However, even those early manuscripts were revised and rewritten by Rigdon.[52]
During work on the Bible revision, while Rigdon was in New York with Smith, the idea of moving the entire church to Ohio came up. Joseph Smith’s elaboration on the Prophecy of Enoch (Inspired Version of the Bible Genesis 7; Pearl of Great Price Moses 7) spoke directly to Rigdon’s yearnings for what he believed to be a restoration of New Testament communitarianism. Rigdon’s experience with communitarianism surely influenced Smith’s revision of the idea. The communal ideas expressed in the Book of Mormon were different from Rigdon’s and different from what developed after Smith and Rigdon merged their two movements.[53]
The church was struggling in New York but booming in Ohio. Many of the early church members in New York were prosperous landowners and farmers and were not keen on being uprooted. Persuasively, Smith pronounced a revelation in December 1830, directing church members to assemble in Ohio (D&C 37). Smith declared, “God is about to destroy this generation, and Christ will descend from Heaven in power and great glory.”[54] F. Mark McKiernan noted, “Kirtland was Rigdon’s city, and while the church’s headquarters remained there the basic structure of the Mormon Church was developed.”[55]
Richard S. Van Wagoner has described Smith and Rigdon as equals. He noted that Smith “used the term ‘having a revelation’ when referring to the statements he issued in response to specific questions or crises. Rigdon was privy to the same epiphanies, and several early revelations were given to both men simultaneously.”[56] These include Doctrine and Covenants 34, 37, 40, 44, 71, 73, 76, 97/SLC 35, 37, 40, 44, 71, 73, 76, and 100.
Doctrine and Covenants 76 (both editions), dated February 16, 1832, is important evidence of Rigdon’s equal status with Joseph Smith. Rigdon was the only other person besides Smith, who claimed to have conversed with Christ, and he and Smith were together at the time.[57] The vision contains teachings about the hereafter that were often a matter of debate. Those members who had not come out of the Disciples movement were the ones who questioned the vision’s teachings. However, the former Disciples understood the vision through the lens of their rational restorationism, as taught to them by Sidney Rigdon. They were the ones who explained the teachings of the vision to others.[58]
Further confirmation of Rigdon’s equal status is found in Doctrine and Covenants 87/SLC 90, dated March 8, 1833. The text declares that both Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams “are accounted as equal with [Joseph Smith] in holding the keys of this last kingdom.” Williams, as noted earlier, was also a former Disciple.
As Zion’s Camp was assembling at Kirtland in the spring of 1834, Rigdon preached a sermon to the recruits on May 3. Rigdon announced, “that the prophet and the high council had agreed to his suggestion to change the name of the church from ‘The Church of Christ’ to ‘The Church of the Latter Day Saints,’ emphasizing the proximity of the Millennium.”[59] It was by this name the church published the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants in 1835. The name was inscribed on the entablature of the Kirtland Temple.[60]
Sidney Rigdon ordained Joseph Smith to the office of president of the high priesthood when the high priesthood was introduced into the church. The suggestion came from Sidney. His influence over the identity, mission, message, beliefs, and organizational structure of the church was disconcerting to those from Joseph’s original group. David Whitmer complained, “Rigdon finally persuaded Brother Joseph to believe that the high priests who had such great power in ancient times, should be in the Church of Christ today. He had Brother Joseph inquire of the Lord about it, and they received an answer according to their erring desires.”[61] Rigdon also ordained, or set apart, the members of the first high council at Kirtland, and was that body’s presiding officer.[62]
Sidney Rigdon was one of the best-educated members of the church. Late in 1832, instruction was given to set up a school to teach the priesthood. Variously called the School of the Elders or the School of the Prophets, Rigdon was the chief instructor. The curriculum included religious topics, but also grammar, reading, writing, history, geography, and foreign languages. None of this was new to Rigdon. He was an experienced teacher and trainer of ministers.
One of the most important contributions to the identity, mission, message, and beliefs of the young church “was Rigdon’s preparation and delivery of a seven-part series of theological lectures to a group of prospective missionaries . . . during the 1834–35 winter term.”[63] Rigdon’s lectures were canonized in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants and designated by the First Presidency as the “doctrine of the church.” The lectures had equal scriptural status with the revelations in part two of the book until 1897 in Community of Christ, and 1921 in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[64] Not only had Rigdon solidly laid the foundation for the importance of education in the movement, but he also produced the first written theology.
The Kirtland Temple was, perhaps, Sidney Rigdon’s longest-lasting visible project. When the building was dedicated, Rigdon co-presided with Joseph Smith, gave a lengthy dedicatory address, and conducted the proceedings overall. The ordinance of washing of feet, first performed in the Kirtland Temple, was “a remnant of Sandemanian theology from Rigdon’s late 1820s ministry with Walter Scott in Pittsburgh” and “Two days after the dedication [of Kirtland Temple], the foot washing ceremony, the only ordinance performed in the solemn assembly after the dedication of the temple, was performed.” Rigdon “first washed the prophet’s feet. Smith then reciprocated after with the ordinance was performed for the rest of the group by Smith and Rigdon.”[65]
Richard S. Van Wagoner noted, “Mormonism in its purest distillation is the fused product of Joseph Smith’s and Sidney Rigdon’s revolutionary thinking condensed into the prophet’s revelations.”[66] To discount human-divine interaction in revelation or to see Joseph as merely a scribe for dictated communication from God simply does not fit with Smith’s description and experience of revelation and prophecy.[67] Smith, with Rigdon, felt complete freedom to revise the texts of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the contents of the Doctrine and Covenants.
In summary, by the end of 1830, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon effected a merger. Joseph brought only a handful of members to the merged organization but brought “the gifts of the Holy Spirit,” especially prophecy and revelation. Further, those in New York and Pennsylvania were scattered and endured persecution. Rigdon, better educated and better spoken, brought his experience as a spiritual leader and his biblical scholarship. Rigdon also brought a huge network of members who were located in settled communities that were free from persecution. Smith and Rigdon clearly brought to the merger what each other needed.
Rigdon laid the foundation for educational pursuits that became a hallmark of the original church and for many of its successor denomi-nations. Smith and Rigdon blended their views of communitarianism. Rigdon proposed ideas, and Smith confirmed them by revelation. Sidney Rigdon was responsible for the basic articulation of the church’s identity, mission, message, and beliefs, with his Lectures of Faith having equal canonical standing with Smith’s revelations. His influence was far-reaching and gave shape and longevity to what otherwise may have been a short-lived religious experiment in upstate New York. Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon both had pivotal roles in shaping the movement that emerged from their partnership.
An academic name for the movement, then, should recognize their equal contributions. And the name of the study of this religious movement should recognize its roots and development and reads its history frontward rather than backward and avoid retrospective interpretive gloss.
I propose, then, that for historical and theological purposes, those in the academic community use “Smith-Rigdon Movement” in their studies and publications about the movement. Such a move will help bring objectivity to the study of the movement and broaden the lens through which the movement’s historical and theological development can be viewed and interpreted.
The author presented on this topic at the thirty-ninth annual meeting of the John Whitmer Historical Association in Nauvoo, Illinois, Sept. 23, 2011. This is an updated and expanded version.
[1] For a catalog of almost five hundred expressions of the movement, see the author’s Divergent Paths of the Restoration, 5th edition, Greg Kofford Books, forthcoming.
[2] Chrystal Vanel, interview with author, May 9, 2011.
[3] Eber D. Howe, in early 1831, popularized the terms. “Mormonism,” Painesville Telegraph, Jan. 18, 1831, 3.
[4] Joseph Smith reported a powerful conversion experience as having occurred in 1820. Baptisms were taking place in 1829, following a reported visit from John the Baptist. Smith legally organized a “church” in 1830.
[5] Mark Lyman Staker, Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2009), 74.
[6] Richard S. Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 149. See also Mark A. Scherer, “Called by a New Name: Mission, Identity and the Reorganized Church,” Journal of Mormon History 27, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 40–63. The minutes of a May 3, 1834 “conference of the elders of the church” were published in The Evening and the Morning Star. The conference met to consider “names and appellations.” Joseph Smith Jr. was chosen as moderator. Sidney Rigdon made a motion, seconded by Newell K. Whitney, that the church be called “The Church of the Latter Day Saints.” The motion passed unanimously (The Evening and the Morning Star 2, no. 20, May 1834, 160).
[7] There are also the two spelling conventions, British and American. When the British is chosen, the name favors the LDS Church in Utah with “Latter-day Saint.” If the American convention, Latter Day Saint, though used by some others in the movement, confuses the issue. For a brief summary of the hyphenation conventions, see Wikipedia, s.v. “American and British Eng-lish spelling differences; Compounds and hyphens,” last modified Sept. 18, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling _differences#Compounds_and_hyphens.
[8] For instance, see D&C 6. See also Evening and the Morning Star 1, no. 1, June 1832, 6.
[9] For example, see D&C 84, 85; SLC 77, 86, 88 (SLC 77 does not appear in Community of Christ editions of the book). Doctrine and Covenants section and paragraph numbers in this article refer to editions published by Community of Christ. SLC denotes editions published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A thorough study of the use of the terms restore and restoration in the early years of the movement is needed.
[10] Staker, 19ff. Staker has an excellent outline and background history of the Stone-Campbell movement’s earliest years. Alexander Campbell introduced the language “restoration of the ancient order of things” in the 1820s.
[11] Ralph G. Wilburn, “A Critique of the Restoration Principle,” in The Renewal of Church: The Panel of Scholars Reports, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1963).
[12] Douglas A. Foster, “Community of Christ and Churches of Christ: Extraordinary Distinctions, Extraordinary Parallels,” Restoration Studies XIV (2013): 2.
[13] John L. Morrison, “A Rational Voice Crying in an Emotional Wilderness,” in The Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition, edited by Michael W. Casey and Douglas A. Foster (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 163–76.
[14] C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ (Abilene, Tex.: ACU Press, 1988), 84.
[15] Richard T. Hughes, “Historical Models of Restoration,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement edited by Douglas A. Foster, et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich., and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 635.
[16] Wikipedia, s.v. “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints member-ship history: LDS Church membership numbers,” last modified Sept. 27, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day _Saints_membership_history#LDS_Church_membership_numbers.
[17] Richard S. Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 49–67, details the extent of Rigdon’s influence in the “Western Reserve.”
[18] Lloyd Knowles, “Sidney Rigdon: A Frustrated Restorationist in Pursuit of ‘The True Church,’” manuscript, dated June 29, 2012, in author’s possession, 16–17.
[19] Rigdon was also written out of the Stone-Campbell Movement history in earlier years, but recently his contributions have been more widely acknowledged. See Staker, 24, n. 3.
[20] Van Wagoner, 165−66. The beginning of the end of the Smith-Rigdon partnership was the disruption over the Kirtland Bank. A caustic meeting held in the temple at Kirtland in December 1837 tried to deal with the serious leadership crisis that had developed.
[21] W. H. Cadman, A History of the Church of Jesus Christ (Monongahela, Pa.: The Church of Jesus Christ, 1945), 4−9. Robert A. Watson, et al, A History of the Church of Jesus Christ, Volume 2 (Monongahela, Pa.: The Church of Jesus Christ, 2002), 28−34. William Bickerton was unique among the many leaders during the Fragmentation Era. He had not belonged to the original church, nor had he met Joseph Smith Jr. or other leaders. He came into contact with Sidney Rigdon’s Church of Christ in the Pittsburgh area, was baptized, ordained, and became a member of Rigdon’s “Grand Council” (similar to Council of Fifty). When Rigdon’s lack of administrative skill failed the church, Bickerton and a few elders continued in their local branches until the late 1850s when they reorganized the first presidency and other leadership councils. See Daniel P. Stone, William Bickerton: Forgotten Latter Day Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2018).
[22] Richard P. Howard, The Church Through the Years, Volume 1 (Independence, Mo.: Herald Publishing House, 1992) 111–12.
[23] Douglas A. Foster, “Denominationalism,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, edited by Douglas A. Foster, et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 267–69.
[24] David Keith Stott, “Legal Insights into the Organization of the Church in 1830,” BYU Studies 49, no. 2 (2010): 121−48.
[25] Staker, 19−26, 31, 34, 38, 40, 47, 279, 320−21, 405.
[26] Staker, 24, n. 3.
[27] Lloyd Alan Knowles, In Pursuit of the True Church: The Attraction of Restorationism on the Nineteenth Century American Frontier: Sidney Rigdon, the Disciples of Christ, and the Mormons (Deer Park, N.Y.: Linus, 2007), 78–86.
[28] Phil McIntosh, “Mahoning Baptist Association,” in Douglas A. Foster, et al., eds. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004), 501–02. Also, Richard McLellan, “Sidney Rigdon’s 1820 Ministry: Preparing the Way for Mormonism in Ohio,” Dialogue 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 155.
[29] Richard McClellan, “Sidney Rigdon’s 1820 Ministry: Preparing the Way for Mormonism in Ohio,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 151−59.
[30] Staker, 321. Interview with Douglas A. Foster, Stone-Campbell movement scholar, Nov. 11, 2015.
[31] Thomas W. Grafton, Alexander Campbell (St. Louis, Mo.: Christian Publishing Company, 1897), 127.
[32] Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 20.
[33] F. Mark McKiernan, The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness: Sidney Rigdon, Religious Reformer, 1793−1876 (Independence, Mo.: Herald House, 1971 [1990]), 27. An explanation of how this idea played out in the experiential primitivism, as shaped by nineteenth-century American romanticism, espoused by Joseph Smith and the early years of his church is found in Foster, et al., 637. See also Richard T. Hughes, “Two Restoration Traditions: Mormons and Churches of Christ in the Nineteenth Century,” in Casey and Foster, 356; and Gregory A. Prince, Power from on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995), 63–64.
[34] Staker, 24, n. 3.
[35] Quoted in Staker, 19ff.
[36] Lloyd Knowles, “Sidney Rigdon: A Frustrated Restorationist in Pursuit of ‘The True Church,’” manuscript dated June 20, 2019, in author’s possession, 13–14.
[37] Staker, 23.
[38] Doctrine and Covenants 34; 35 SLC; 97; 100 SLC.
[39] Breck England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985). See also Leonard J. Arrington, “The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints,” Dialogue 4, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 17.
[40] Lee Copeland, “Speaking in Tongues in the Restoration Churches,” Dialogue 24, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 17. Richard S. Van Wagoner, “Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo,” Dialogue 18, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 67−83. McKiernan, 36. Van Wagoner, 87.
[41] Richard McLellan, “Sidney Rigdon’s 1820 Ministry: Preparing the Way for Mormonism in Ohio,” Dialogue 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003):157−59. See also Staker, 61−62.
[42] Staker, 335.
[43] Richard McClellan, “Sidney Rigdon’s 1820 Ministry: Preparing the Way for Mormonism in Ohio,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 159. See also Scott Kenney, “Sidney Rigdon: The Baptist Years (1817−1830),” unpublished paper (copy on file) presented to Sunstone Symposium, Aug. 14, 2009, for a list of prominent Church leaders who had been Sidney Rigdon’s followers.
[44] Staker, 34, 61, 320.
[45] Arrington, 16.
[46] “Original Church” refers to the organization up to Joseph Smith, Junior’s death in 1844.
[47] These are also referred to as the “Lectures on Faith.”
[48] Van Wagoner, 162. See also Arrington, 17.
[49] This includes Doctrine and Covenants 34, 37, 40, 44, 71, 73, 76, 97; SLC 35, 37, 40, 44, 71, 73, 76, and 100; the Inspired Version of the Bible, revisions to the Book of Mormon text, and the Book of Abraham.
[50] Van Wagoner, 72.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid., 73.
[53] Thomas F. O’Dea, The Mormons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 37. Van Wagoner notes, “The prophet’s syncretic ability to blend others’ ideas with his own intuition was a conspicuous feature of his career. It was not surprising that Joseph Smith’s communal vision began evolving within days of meeting Rigdon” (79). See also Van Wagoner, 74 and 85.
[54] McKiernan, 45. The section number is the same in both Independence and Salt Lake City editions.
[55] McKiernan, 66; Van Wagoner 82.
[56] Van Wagoner, 74.
[57] D &C 76. See McKiernan, 69. D&C IND 76:3a, 3b; SLC 76:11−14.
[58] Staker, 331−33.
[59] Van Wagoner, 149.
[60] Scherer, 42.
[61] Quoted in David John Buerger, “‘The Fulness of the Priesthood’: The Second Anointing in Latter-day Saint Theology and Practice,” Dialogue 16, no. 1 (Spring 1983): 10−46.
[62] Kenney, “Sidney Rigdon: The Baptist Years.” See also Van Wagoner, 163.
[63] Van Wagoner, 161.
[64] Ibid., 162. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes called the LDS Church, prefers “the” to be capitalized.
[65] Van Wagoner, 169–73.
[66] Van Wagoner, 142.
[67] See Geoffrey F. Spencer, “A Reinterpretation of Inspiration, Revelation, and Scripture,” in The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, edited by Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990), 19–27.
2019: Steven Shields, “Joseph Smith and Sidney Ridgon: Co-founders of a Movement” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 52 No. 3 (2019): 1–18.
Shields argues that if you deny or dismiss Sidney Ridgon’s contributions to the early church, then the scripture canon during this time would need to be reinterpreted.
[post_title] => Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon: Co-Founders of a Movement [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 1–18Shields argues that if you deny or dismiss Sidney Ridgon’s contributions to the early church, then the scripture canon during this time would need to be reinterpreted. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => joseph-smith-and-sidney-rigdon-co-founders-of-a-movement [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:47:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:47:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=24138 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Pedagogy of Perfection: Joseph Smith’s Perfectionism, How It was Taught in the Early LDS Church, and Its Contemporary Applicability
Richard Sleegers
Dialogue 51.4 (Winter 2018): 105–143
Richard Sleegers contrasts 19th century Protestant teachings about salvations to what Joseph Smith taught about life after death.
It is necessary in the ushering in of the dispensation of the fulness of times, which dispensation is now beginning to usher in, that a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together of dispensations, and keys, and powers, and glories should take place, and be revealed from the days of Adam even to the present time. And not only this, but those things which never have been revealed from the foundation of the world, but have been kept hid from the wise and prudent, shall be revealed unto babes and sucklings in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times.[1]
The Nauvoo period in LDS history was a time of “welding” for Joseph Smith: bringing together previous revelatory teachings and actively shaping rituals into “a whole and complete and perfect union.”[2] He believed he was opening a “dispensation,” or a pouring out of knowledge and authority from heaven, and was anxious to finish it. He had a vision—at least in the down-to-earth sense of a “goal”—of all Saints being educated in the knowledge prerequisite for a salvation he coined “exaltation.”
This exaltation can be seen as a unique form of Christian “perfectionism.”[3] Most early-nineteenth-century Christian denominations were seeking after salvation, differing in forms and degrees, but united in their desire for certainty. Denominations based on Calvinism found it in God-given grace to a select few, while Arminian-based theologies like that found in Methodism believed that all who chose Christ as their Savior could be saved. Universalists, like Joseph Smith’s grandfather,[4] went the furthest in their belief Christ would save all. The basic premise of Christian theology—forgiveness of sins through Christ’s atonement—seemed undebated, though. Each acknowledged that a power went forth from the atoning sacrifice of Christ. The debate was on how to access that power; how one could be certain that power was manifest, and hence whether salvation was sure.[5] Joseph Smith went about revolutionizing the idea of and prerequisites for salvific surety into a perfectionism that was both concrete and attainable, but to most quite unimaginable: becoming as God, or becoming gods.[6] The rationale is that to be certain one can re-enter the presence of God, one should strive to know or see God and progress to be like him.[7] In other words: he saw theophany as a precursor to theosis. Where was this to take place? In God’s temple.
But what was Joseph Smith’s pedagogy? What educational means did Smith and his contemporaries devise to make this perfectionism comprehensible and tangible? And how has that teaching continued into the present day? Are all educational means still intact and accessible? And what is needed in our time of ongoing secularization to teach this perfectionism effectively? Finally, what happens or can happen to the “temperature” (degree of devotion)[8] of Saints, when this great end goal of perfection is no longer taught as concrete and attainable, as Joseph did?
In this paper, I will answer these questions by first sketching the cultural religious context within which this perfectionism took shape. Next, I will draw from Joseph’s teachings about gaining certainty of exaltation from his revelations, public sermons, and more private teachings.[9] Third, I will examine the pedagogy, the modes of teaching, and the associated ordinances Joseph Smith devised. Fourth, I will sketch briefly the most important developments in dispensing those modes of teaching to all the Saints to this day. Finally, I will draw some conclusions, make suggestions, and raise questions about how to go about teaching perfection in our day.
Conceptual Notes
Speaking about “certainty” and its synonyms quickly leads to a debate on epistemology, especially when the terms “certain” or “sure” are coupled with “knowledge,” pointing to “truth” or “true knowledge.” All of these terms are found in Joseph Smith’s teachings (and many of his contemporaries), but most epistemological claims Smith makes refer to revelation as the ultimate source of truth. Even though Joseph and early Church leaders sought knowledge in original scripture, languages, “best books” (D&C 88:118), and Masonic temple rites, these insights had to be confirmed by revelation, either personal revelation or public revelation from the prophet himself. A great focus lay on the applicability of that knowledge to bring about salvation.
The differing Protestant (Puritan Presbyterian, Wesleyan Methodist, Universalist Unitarian, etc.) concepts of justification, sanctification, and perfection are too intricate to be discussed in full in this short paper. Instead, I will focus mainly on the division between the underlying Calvinistic, Arminian, and Universalist theologies and compare them to Joseph Smith’s perfectionism.
I will distinguish two “lines” of certainty: The first is about believers who looked for certainty that the power of God was present, and that by that presence God showed his acceptance of the exercise of their faith. In other words, that their religious acts or rites were recognized by God, and that they administered them—as a church—with (a degree of) authority. The second “line” is about surety of salvation, expanding on the first line because it has to do with reassurances received in this life about our ability to transfer to the next life in a “saved state.” We will see that the definition of that “saved state” determines a lot about these reassurances and the authority needed. We will now go into these concepts more specifically, contrasting Calvinist, Universalist, (mainly) Methodist, and LDS theologies about them.
1: Historical Context: Protestant View of Perfectionism; Search for Certainty of Salvation
Joseph Smith’s contemporary religious teachers and reformers were united in their search for salvific certainty. One could say that, as Protestants, they had left the security of Catholic sacramentalism behind and had all proposed different substitute doctrines for achieving that goal.[10] Joseph himself describes the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists as three of the main sects he and his family were in contact with. He said he “attended their several meetings as occasion would permit” and that his “mind became somewhat partial to the Methodist sect.”[11] This begs the question: how much did Methodist (and others’) soteriology influence or even shape Smith’s own search for a—personal and later doctrinal—surety of salvation? Despite the doctrinal differences of these Christian sects, there was some consensus on the idea that humanity’s fallen and sinful state had to be overcome through the mediation and power of Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice. As mentioned earlier, the debate was focused on how to access that power and how one could be certain that power was manifest and hence salvation was sure.[12]
Steven Harper describes the sectarian landscape as divided over the question of individual choice in salvation. For Calvinistic Presbyterians, there was no choice: God had to elect you and make it known in a spiritual outpouring of grace. For Arminian-Wesleyan Methodists, individuals could choose to accept Christ’s atonement and exercise faith to bring about good works and confirming spiritual experiences. For Universalists, no choice existed, for all were saved. The divide was present in Joseph Smith’s own family, where mother, brothers, and older sister joined the Presbyterian Church and father turned from a Universalist to a more neutral standpoint and didn’t then adhere to a particular church.[13] Joseph was most likely sparked by a Methodist camp meeting to an individual endeavor to gain certainty of forgiveness for his sins and was deciding on which church to join in pursuit of that. He attended meetings but didn’t seem to have the same level of excitement, nor experience the physical sensations that others had. This set Joseph in dire need of a different confirmation or source of certainty.[14]
Methodists looked for certainty through scripture,[15] full devotion to a Christian life, and receiving spiritual manifestations of different kinds. These were commonly sought after and celebrated when received, confirming to faithful seekers that God corroborated their efforts with an “outpouring” of his power. The most well-known spiritual manifestations, mainly derived from biblical reports, were speaking in tongues, healings, dreams, and visions. Also, very physical effects were seen, like “people [who] went into trances, jerked, rolled and crawled on the ground,” or were, in Joseph Smith’s time, at least “crying, mourning, and sighing.”[16] The feeling of being “touched upon” or “recognized” or “accepted” by God was mostly a communal experience. Among the Methodists, camp meetings were predominant in bringing about this communal excitement, aimed at a “revival” or bringing souls “from darkness to light, and from bondage of iniquity to the glorious liberty of the sons of God . . . attended with an awakening sense of sin and with a change of temper and conduct, which cannot be easily concealed.”[17]
This begs the question: once such an “acceptance” took place, did those in the congregation who were part of this group experience feel secure about their stance before God; did they feel were they “forgiven of their sins”? If so, this must have been more of an individual certainty, for not all present experienced it. The ecclesiastical counterpart of that experience was the “power” or “authority” of a church to extend the right doctrines and means whereby its adherents could have these reviving experiences.[18] If false doctrine were preached or one adhered to a corrupt faith, there was danger of damnation, or at least, such things were being preached in an effort to dissuade converts from one sect to another.[19]
Christopher Jones, in his thesis, points out that Methodists were very likely to accept dreams and visions, like Joseph Smith’s First Vision, to be authoritative revelations from God. Joseph’s vision, seen through a Methodist lens, can be seen as a conversion experience whereby God answers a prayer by an apparition of sorts, invoking spiritual gifts and/or forgiving sins. Phineas Young, a Methodist who later converted to the LDS Church, had a similar experience as Joseph when he prayed to be “made holy” to fulfil his recent calling.[20] From the earliest account of Joseph Smith’s First Vision we learn that his initial effort was indeed a search for confirmation of forgiveness of personal sin. His prayer, he writes, was answered by God appearing and saying: “Joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee.”[21] This was the first certainty Joseph looked for.
Pertaining to authority as a church, Joseph sought additional certainty about which church to join, a church that would be “accepted of God.” Wesleyan teachings on power derived from “spiritual witness” were indicative of the certainty needed to be a living church. When denied, he taught, “there is a danger lest our religion degenerate into mere formality; lest, ‘having a form of godliness,’ we neglect if not ‘deny, the power of it.’”[22] This resembles a statement of the Lord in Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of his First Vision, and was part of the answer and instruction Joseph received to join none of the churches he was in contact with.[23] What was truly remarkable and very decisive for his later perfectionism—as we will see below—is that Joseph professed to receive these confirmations by God the Father and Jesus Christ in person. The accompanying conclusion, one that up to this day maybe is the greatest kick to the shins of other Christian denominations, is that the church Joseph was asked to organize was not his own, but the Lord’s, and the gospel he proclaimed was not his own, but restored by the Lord himself.
With regard to perfectionism among Methodists, John Wesley wrote three works with “perfection” prominent in their title.[24] In his treatise on perfection he defines it as follows:
that habitual disposition of the soul which, in the sacred writings, is termed holiness; and which directly implies being cleansed from sin, “from all filthiness both of flesh and spirit”; and, by consequence, being endued with those virtues which were in Christ Jesus; being so “renewed in the image of our mind,” as to be “perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”[25]
And:
“A restoration not only to the favour, but likewise to the image of God, implying not barely deliverance from sin, but the being filled with the fullness of God”[26]
“Holy,” “cleansed from sin,” “endued with Christlike virtues,” “renewed in mind” all imply a change brought about by the exercise of faith and the working of grace, but which makes the human only “as to be” perfect as God. Receiving “the image” of God or being filled with his “fullness” seem to point more to a refinement of Christian character, not to the more literal sense of “becoming a god” Joseph Smith adopted. Methodist perfection can more readily be incorporated with their teaching of “entire” sanctification, as shown in two other quotes from Wesley, stating that perfection is “deliverance from inward as well as from outward sin” and “a Christian is so far perfect as not to commit sin.”[27] These could be taken as prerequisites to Joseph’s idea of perfection (see §2).
A lesser known influence on Joseph Smith was that of the Universalist Society, originating in Boston but present in most of New England and to which Joseph’s grandfather and father adhered,[28] or the related Unitarians. Terryl Givens quotes William Ellery Channing, the latter movement’s dominant minister, teaching that “likeness to God is a good so unutterably surpassing all other good, that whoever admits it as attainable, must acknowledge it to be the chief aim of life.”[29] It is unclear how much of this teaching passed from Joseph’s grandfather and father to him. One Universalist idea Asael Smith certainly taught that can be recognized in Joseph’s soteriology is its anti-Calvinistic conception of God’s universal salvific love: a desire to save all his children.[30] It is likely that Joseph accepted this desire that God could save all, but also adhered to the Methodist requisite of agency and exercise of faith to bring about saving grace. We will now investigate how Joseph situated this reciprocal desire for human and God to reunite in perfect unity in an almost Catholic sacramental “covenant” theology and with accompanying temple ordinances.
2: Joseph Smith’s Own View on Certainty and Perfection: The Pinnacle of Salvation
If you wish to go where God is, you must be like God, or possess the principles which God possesses. . . . A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, . . . . Hence [we] need revelation to assist us, and give us knowledge of the things of God.[31]
Church history scholars have argued about the doctrinal differences of the Kirtland/Missouri and Nauvoo eras. There seems to be both a continuum and a split. One general observation that we can make is that there was a shifting focus: from a literal city of Zion and urgent millennialism, to a more spiritualized seeking for a Zion society and preparing to meet God in the temple.[32] Nevertheless, many teachings on principles later incorporated in the temple ordinances can be traced back to earlier times, and just as many new teachings evolved in the last three years of Joseph’s life, as David Buerger and Andrew Ehat have abundantly shown.[33] What occurred after the shift can be described by the concepts consolidation and dissemination.[34] The bringing together (con) of principles of salvation into tangible (solid) ordinances that can be experienced, and teaching them to more and more of the saints (dis) to eventually bear much fruit (seminate). The Nauvoo Temple was built and a “Quorum of the Anointed” established to fit these purposes.
I argue that the two lines of certainty, mentioned in the introduction and §1, also came together: 1) The power of God present, acceptance by God, authority 2) Surety of salvation.
As for the first, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, while translating the Book of Mormon, described how they had received priesthood from heavenly messengers: the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist and the Melchizedek Priesthood from Peter, James, and John. A revelation received just before the Church was organized (now D&C 20) explains the several offices in those priesthoods. People were baptized, confirmed, the sacrament performed, using these priesthoods to do it with authority. In Kirtland, however, at Sidney Rigdon’s initial suggestion, a new and higher office in the priesthood was installed—after the order of the ancients—namely the High Priesthood.[35] David Buerger illustrates how the innovation of the High Priesthood allowed Joseph and the Twelve to “seal [people] up to eternal life” (D&C 68:2, 12 also 1:8–9), introducing ordinances that were later incorporated in the temple endowment,[36] and thus to do what “strict Calvinists reserved solely to God.”[37] “Sealing” is another word connoting certainty and can be seen in connection with the sealing or binding power Peter and Nephi received “to bind on earth as in heaven” and later the receiving of the sealing keys of Elijah in the Kirtland Temple.[38] Zebedee Coltrin in 1831, Jared Carter in 1832, and Orson Pratt in 1833 all testify of the outpourings of the Spirit, not only on individuals, but on whole groups that Joseph gathered in his School of the Prophets, to “seal them up” “to the Lord” “unto eternal life” “by the power of the Holy Ghost.”[39] These much resembled Methodist communal outpourings, but in a completely new doctrinal context of apostles and “prophets”[40] being called to the ministry (D&C 95:4–5).
As for the second, Joseph Smith’s first quest for personal salvation was answered by a personal visitation[41] of the Father and the Son, which is exactly the theophany that he later posed as the end goal of temple practice. I say “practice” because the gaining of knowledge, exercise of faith, and accompanying works, Joseph melted together in a development toward perfection or godhood. The temple was a place to meet God and “a place of learning” in preparation for that.[42] These can be seen as original additions to the Methodist “faith and works” required for spiritual approval from God: searching for the mysteries of God(liness) “by study and by faith,” made education into a mode of worship. We could rephrase the word worship now as “a mode to approach God,” a reciprocal act to return to him.[43] Joseph started this early on by erecting (on divine command) the previously mentioned School of the Prophets in Kirtland. It was in this school, and later—upon completion—in the Kirtland Temple, that he started preparing others to meet the Lord, preparatory for their missions as—literal—witnesses of Christ. He taught them:
How do men obtain a knowledge of the glory of God, his perfections and attributes? By devoting themselves to his service, through prayer and supplication incessantly strengthening their faith in him, until, like Enoch, the Brother of Jared, and Moses, they obtain a manifestation of God to themselves.[44]
This resembles the Methodist method to come to entire sanctification, up until the word “until” appears, after which Joseph refers to other prophets in the scriptures who were called by God in person.
To make that viable, the Kirtland Temple needed to be built. The twelve apostles Joseph Smith had chosen were charged “not to go to other nations . . . [but to] tarry at Kirtland until [they were] endowed with power from on high.”[45] Oliver Cowdery gave them this “charge”:
The ancients passed through the same. They had this testimony, that they had seen the Saviour after he rose from the dead. . . . You must bear the same testimony, that there is [p. 156[a]] but one God and one Mediator; he that has seen him will know him and testify of him.” . . . You have been indebted to other men in the first instance for evidence, on that you have acted. But . . . [p. 159] You will, therefore see the necessity of getting this testimony from Heaven. Never cease striving until you have seen God, face to face. Strengthen your faith, cast off your doubts, your sins and all your unbelief and nothing can prevent you from coming to God. Your ordination is not full and complete till God has laid his hand upon you.”[46]
This “ordination” refers to the “fullness of the priesthood,” which flows from having seen God. In other words, the Twelve had to make their “calling and election”—as apostles—sure, just like Joseph was called in the grove in 1820. The event of seeing God the Father and his Son occurred (at least for most of the Twelve[47]) “at one of these meetings after the organization of the school, (the school being organized on the 23rd of January, 1833).”[48] Afterwards the prophet Joseph said: “Brethren, now you are prepared to be the apostles of Jesus Christ, for you have seen both the Father and the Son and know that they exist and that they are two separate personages.”[49] So the same surety of “calling” he personally received in Palmyra, he also deemed necessary for the Twelve and others sent out to the ministry in Kirtland. It is interesting to see that many also received a blessing by the laying on of hands whereby their “sins were forgiven them.”[50]
Here we see a complete unity of the two lines of authority in Joseph’s conception of perfection: 1) three priesthoods were restored, including the sealing power, and 2) the most sure you can get of your salvation is by meeting God, but this was also a way of having the apostles’ “calling and election” made sure; to be able to teach with authority as witnesses of Christ. Nevertheless, this theophany to the Twelve in preparation of their ministry was only a precursor to what was about to come. Their “calling and election” had not explicitly to do with surety of salvation. The leadership were still learning, and repenting, confessing their sins to one another, bearing one another up. Theophany as a means whereby one could be sure of salvation, being sealed unto eternal life or exalta-tion, Joseph started to teach, to all, in Nauvoo.
In a sermon delivered at the Nauvoo Temple grounds on Friday, May 12, 1844 Joseph pleaded with all Saints present there: “I am going on in my progress for eternal life, . . . . Oh! I beseech you to go forward, go forward and make your calling and election sure.”[51] Surely Joseph had been adamant in his search for knowledge: the inspired or explanatory translation of the Old and New Testaments, the discussions in the School of the Prophets, the ongoing revelations, receiving the sealing keys of Elijah, the discovery of the Abraham papyri, and entering the Masonic Lodge, were all sources of knowledge—ancient and new—Joseph employed to construct his theology of exaltation. All were coming together: the knowledge and principles needed to guide all Saints to meet God in his temple and thus be sure of salvation. This surety of salvation he named after Peter’s “calling and election made sure” (2 Pet. 1:10, 19). Joseph explained in May 17, 1843, “The more sure word of prophecy means a man’s knowing that he is sealed up unto eternal life, by revelation and the spirit of prophecy, through the power of the Holy Priesthood” (D&C 131:5–6). Now the Protestants around him used these scriptures too, e.g., Calvinists talked about them, using scriptures on “sealing” to corroborate their doctrine of predestination. Methodists, like John Wesley, as we saw above, had teachings on sanctification and even perfection. But none went as far in teaching perfectionism as becoming as God. Now Joseph made one more addition, unique to LDS theology, to his concept of “exaltation”: eternal marriage, and for some plural marriage.
One day before this explanation on the more sure word of prophecy, Joseph taught:
In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees; and in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; and if he does not, he cannot obtain it. He may enter into the other, but that is the end of his kingdom: he cannot have an increase.[52]
Joseph, who already divided the heavens up in three kingdoms of glory in his vision of February 1832 (D&C 76), now divided up the celestial glory into three degrees. The “increase” mentioned, points to similar blessings Abraham received pertaining to his posterity, “both in the world and out of this world” (D&C 132:30).[53] This revelation on both the sealing power and on the covenant of eternal (and plural) marriage, made exaltation and perfection—becoming gods—more explicit: all gods are married—or sealed to one another—and continue in procreation in the eternities. Any lesser form of salvation (“saved state”), would be a limitation to eternal progression:
For these angels did not abide my law; therefore, they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods, but are angels of God forever and ever. (D&C 132:17)
Later on in this revelation it seems to show that to have those blessings confirmed or sealed upon you while “in this world” is prerequisite for exaltation:
For strait is the gate, and narrow the way that leadeth unto the exaltation and continuation of the lives, and few there be that find it, because ye receive me not in the world neither do ye know me. But if ye receive me in the world, then shall ye know me, and shall receive your exaltation; that where I am ye shall be also.[54]
Joseph was now doctrinally prepared to make these highest of blessing available to all who were “Spiritual minded” and “prepared to receive” them.[55] And he wanted to make haste, as he expected to be taken from this world and needed “to instruct the Society and point out the way for them to conduct, that they might act according to the will of God . . . delivering the keys to this society and the church.”[56] This “society” was the Nauvoo Relief Society, but it was also an allusion to the Quorum of the Anointed, in which—logically—women played an equal part, because that is where he eventually revealed all these ordinances of exaltation. Joseph started with the initiation of a select few, twenty-four couples and seventeen others to be exact,[57] but with a broader view ahead:
In this Council [Quorum] was instituted the Ancient order of things for the first time in these last days. . . . and there was nothing made known to these men, but what will be made known to all <the> Saints of the last days, so soon as they are prepared to receive, and a proper place is prepared to communicate them, even to the weakest of the Saints.[58]
That proper place was the (Nauvoo) temple, but it was still under construction, so Joseph went ahead and set up the upper room of his red brick store to serve as an ordinance room. By this last addition of marriage, the gospel of Adam and Eve one could say, the full meaning of the word “sealing” was established: this sealing of couples to one another and to God, now extended—through the Abrahamic covenant and the keys of the sealing power of Elijah (D&C 110:13–16)—to all progenitors and posterity, both living and dead, so that the entire human family could be bound together on earth and in heaven. And this led to another addition to the idea of perfection: that we “without our dead cannot be made perfect.”[59] Hence, all the ordinances that Joseph had installed were able to be performed by proxy for ancestors. The outward forms and their role in teaching perfectionism to the Saints we will discuss next.
3: Outward Forms: Joseph Smith’s Search for Fitting Ordinances: A Pedagogy of Perfection
And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh; for without this no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live. (D&C 84:21–22)
The question is frequently asked: Can we not be saved without going through with all these ordinances &c. I would answer: No, not the fullness of Salvation, any person who is exalted to the highest mansion has to abide a Celestial law & the whole law to.[60]
Now that the doctrines were in place, consolidated, they were ready to be passed on, disseminated. How? Orally. An oral canon of scripture was about to be opened, expounded upon, and fitted to the envisioned purpose: to have every Saint who was ready to receive it meet God in person and be assured of exaltation. Oral transmission of sacred truths, which were “not to be riten,”[61] serves several important purposes. It was done by the Jews, Egyptians, Masons, and, as far as we can infer from the limited canon of the New Testament, also in the days of the early apostles.[62] Joseph considered many plain and precious things from the gospel to have been lost,[63] mostly from scripture, but much, he believed, had been preserved in oral traditions. Joseph’s discovery of the Egyptian papyri, his involvement in the Masonic temple, and his own revelations received while reading the Old and New Testaments in their original languages had helped him discover precious parts of that lost tradition. Following his pattern of dissemination, he introduced them to the Twelve and others and expounded on them in his public sermons. Then, in Nauvoo, he urged the Twelve and hundreds of others to join the Masonic lodge[64] to learn what he had learned and help him bring it into one revealed whole.
The next step Joseph took was to fit all these saving principles into a mode of teaching that would, on the one hand, be instrumental in revealing unto the participant all knowledge necessary to re-enter God’s presence. On the other hand, since it was sacred knowledge, he had to safeguard it. This put Joseph in a delicate position, and the way he went about it was to create an oral tradition of knowledge by initiation. The Masonic temple rites are the most exemplary for this mode of teaching.[65] The point I want to make about this mode of teaching is how Joseph Smith envisioned it and its purposes. It is a mode of teaching that resembles Jesus’ usage of parables: to communicate “hidden” knowledge to those who had “ears to hear,” but conceal at the same time the “pearls from the swine.”
Education[66] and pedagogy[67] are in their Latin and Greek roots almost interchangeable. “Educare” (leading out) is mostly associated with training the powers of the mind, oriented more at the transmittal and sharing of knowledge. “Παιδαγογία” or paidagōgía (leading a child) is more relational, associated with mentoring and the development of a child. In the combination of these concepts we can find the need for both teaching of principles and knowledge, and the leading, guiding, or mentoring that is part of initiation and catering to certain experiences necessary for development.
“Hidden” knowledge of principles, and the experiences necessary to internalize these principles “deeply into the bone,” are made into a whole by initiation into ordinances or rituals. Ordinances are tools in teaching, but not only that, they are—like Catholic sacraments—binding rituals designed to bring about salvation. One can view the temple ritual in both Methodist and Calvinist senses of perfection: it can be instrumental in receiving spiritual outpourings and confirming one’s holiness or standing before God. “Binding” or “sealing” are both terms referring to a covenant relationship between humans and God, meant to bridge the gap between them. Another Methodist element, one could say, is that the relationship is entered into of one’s own free will and choice. A ritual can be defined as a symbolic act, meant to “bridge a distance,” to initiate a “passage” or symbolize a relationship of “belonging.”[68] All these can be applied to the temple ordinances, which for Joseph Smith and the early leaders were seen as parts of one ritual. Maybe with the exception of baptism for the living—the first initiation rite to become a member of the Church—all other ordinances were done in temple setting: sacrament,[69] washings and anointings, endowment, marriage sealing, washing of feet, etc. (D&C 88:75; 138–41). The same pattern of dissemination emerged: all ordinances were revealed by Joseph, done or “tested” with the Twelve in Kirtland,[70] and then shared with selected men and women in the Quorum of the Anointed in Nauvoo.
The “testing” for the new (Nauvoo) additions to the endowment and marriage ordinances was done in the upper room of Joseph’s red brick store. He had asked five men who were masons to prepare the room according to his instructions. Eight people were the first to receive this improvised endowment on May 4, 1842. It is illustrative to consider how Joseph later apologized for the improvised quarters, saying to Brigham Young:
this is not arranged right, but, we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed, and I wish you take this matter in hand . . . organize and systematize all these ceremonies . . . [Brigham Young:] We performed the ordinances under Joseph’s supervision numerous times and each time I got something more so that when we went through the Temple at Nauvoo I understood and knew how to place them there. We had our ceremonies pretty correct.[71]
It was an evolving ceremony, and frankly, it has been evolving ever since,[72] which tells us something about its instrumental nature. Symbols, by their metaphorical nature, are meant to “carry over” (μετα-φέρειν) meaning from one realm of reality to another. For example, the story of Adam and Eve can have meaning within the context of their dealings with God, but at the same time carry over meaning for all (married) men and women going through mortal life. The portrayal of the stories and symbols—with exception of some key elements—does not have to be exact every time. There is constant interpretation: some (though little) by the persons portraying the symbols (live performance) and even more by the persons receiving them. In fact, every individual receiving them can make his or her own interpretations and apply them in his or her life.
Now let us look a bit closer to how these ordinances of the gospel, by initiation into higher knowledge and ritual experiences, work toward meeting God and becoming like God. Baptism is the first initiation ordinance and already points to the end from the beginning. It is symbolic of birth and death, rebirth and a new life in the resurrection. In Nephi’s words:
And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path [i.e. by baptism], I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay. . . . Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life. (2 Ne. 31:19–20, italics added)
Baptism resembles the path from infancy (in the gospel) to adulthood: having the Father tell you that you shall have eternal life, or, as Joseph or Peter taught: “having our callings and election made sure.” All inter-mediate ordinances can be seen as steps on the “ladder,” a pedagogy toward perfection. In the well-known King Follett Sermon delivered April 7, 1844 Joseph explained:
Here then is eternal life, to know the only wise and true God. You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves; to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done; by going from a small degree to another, from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you are able to sit in glory as doth those who sit enthroned in everlasting power; . . . When you climb a ladder, you must begin at the bottom and go on until you learn the last principle; it will be a great while before you have learned the last. It is not all to be comprehended in this world; it is a great thing to learn salvation beyond the grave.[73]
This last sentence again raises debate as to whether the sealing unto eternal life has to take place in this world or if it might be received in the hereafter. One could argue that, after passing through death, all will see God and know that he is. The other option is that the ordinance does have to take place in this life and that only then will progression continue after death.[74] Notwithstanding these possibilities, Joseph Smith seemed eager to prepare the Saints to meet God in this life and have the promised blessing sealed upon them in this life. All further temple instructions point to that.
Washings and anointings were among the first ordinances to be performed in this dispensation. An important part of these are the references to our own bodies and blessings connected to them. So, one’s own body becomes an instrument in sanctification, by overcoming the natural tendencies of the flesh and instead using the body to acquire these spiritual blessings. One could say the Methodist sense of perfection, becoming entirely clean of (the blood and) sins (of this generation), took on this sacramental form in Joseph’s perfectionism. Again, internalization through the ritual is very prominent, as these blessings are memorized and one’s own body—and the symbolic garments it is clothed with—serve as daily reminders. It also has a communal aspect of great trust, whereas the washings and anointings are performed by touching by a brother or sister, providing the experience that internalizes the ritual.
The endowment is even closer to a “ladder” of sanctification, as the initiate is literally taken from one phase to the other, symbolized by the different rooms one passes through, the increasing brightness of light, and the ever deeper commitments entered into. Deeper commitments also lead to deeper connection with the divine, in anticipation of reuniting with God at the end of the ceremony, where one ritually steps into God’s presence by passing through a veil (Ether 3:20).
Temple marriage is, of course, a direct symbol of uniting man and woman in God and having these relationships “sealed” beyond the grave. Children are “born into the covenant,” and covenant relationships can be extended vicariously to ancestors. Blessings pertaining to offspring in this world and the next are represented in symbolic representations of fertility.[75] Unity in marriage as a way to grow nearer to God the Father and Mother sets up family life as a learning environment as well: practicing to become gods and have an “increase” (D&C 131:4).
We could go on expanding on the symbolism of these ordinances, but I noted only some that had relation to the perfectionism Joseph taught. (See table 1, a series of principles that are taught and internalized by experiencing temple ordinances.) The LDS temple ritual is deeply pedagogical: anyone can learn new things relevant to one’s current phase of development and as the Holy Spirit may direct. This, one can say, is the perfect mode of learning, tailored, deeply spiritual, and experiential. It is revealing on the one hand, to the individual through personal revelation brought about by communal symbolic rites and experiences, and safeguards on the other hand the sacredness of these teachings by the initiation principle and the promises entered into. It is this mode of teaching I call Joseph’s Pedagogy of Perfection. In essence it is that all Saints can, of their own free will and choice, partake in ordinances as means to experience spiritual maturation, to the end purpose of meeting and becoming like God.
EDUCATION | PEDAGOGY |
Principle = Knowledge | Ordinance = Experience |
Repentance, new life, resurrection | Baptism, washed clean, out of water |
Pure life, overcome sins of generation | Washing, blessings on bodily parts |
Act righteously with power given, stewardship from small to great | Anointing, preparatory king and priest |
Set apart from the world, discipline over body, searching for truth, faithfulness | Priesthood garments, wear always, constant reminder, protection, etc. |
Line upon line, growth in priesthood power, strong against temptations of Satan | Endowment, going from room to room, learning, clothing, covenants |
Marriage for eternity, fidelity, family, offspring | Temple marriage, sealing, blessings |
. . . | . . . |
ALL: preparing to meet and be like God | ALL: preparing to meet and be like God |
Let us return to the early Saints who first received these ordinances, who were still innovating and learning to apply this new mode of teaching to their development and spiritual life. I would like to show, from their own experiences, how they thought these teachings were to be applied and disseminated. Just as Joseph had openly preached about many of the principles pertaining to exaltation and making one’s calling and election sure, partakers of the ordinances were discussing their experiences in the temple. Helen Mar Whitney recorded Amasa Lyman’s insights and experiences of the temple ordinances he received on December 21, 1845, which reveal some keys to the perceived purposes of temple pedagogy:
These things [are] to put you in possession of the means of salvation, and be brought into a proper relationship to God. . . . It is the key by which you approach God. No impression which you receive here should be lost. It was to rivet the recollections of these things in your memory, like a nail in a sure place never to be forgotten. The scenery through which you have passed is actually laying before you a picture or map, by which you are to travel through life and obtain entrance into the celestial Kingdom hereafter.[76]
According to this statement, the ritual accomplishes three things: It is meant to “bridge the gap” between humans and God (it is relational). Second, it provides a specific goal to internalize the “oral scripture” by memorizing the proceedings of the ordinances. Third, there is a close relation between our “travel through the temple” and our everyday “travel through life.”
Easily overlooked, but to me very poignant, is that the quotation above comes from minutes made of meetings held just after the performance of the ordinances. This was like a “temple testimony meeting,” with seventy-five brothers and sisters present and where several shared their views on what they had just experienced. These early Saints, under the direction of Heber C. Kimball, helped each other understand and get a testimony of these important saving ordinances. They were actively making that connection with real life, as we also see with prophets of old and others in the scriptures. This begs the question: how do Latter-day Saints, from the early times to the present, go about making that connection? How do they liken the oral scriptures of the temple to themselves? Where and when do they discuss them, to mentor one another to further initiation? Next, I want to discuss the extension of temple ordinances and of the accompanying temple education over time, and the evolving modes and policies surrounding them.
4: Extension of Teachings and Blessings to the Saints Abroad—Gathering Reversed
But there has been a great difficulty in getting anything into the heads of this generation. . . . Even the Saints are slow to understand. I have tried for a number of years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God, but we frequently see some of them after suffering all they have for the work of God will fly to pieces like glass as soon as any thing comes that is contrary to their traditions, they cannot stand the fire at all. How many will be able to abide a celestial law, go through and receive their exaltation I am unable to say but many are called and few are chosen.[77]
Joseph Smith’s lamentation that the early Saints were slow to understand demonstrates that he was struggling with the dilemma of widespread dissemination and selective initiation already in his day. Likewise, from the earliest days of Joseph’s teaching about perfection and eternal marriage, there have been exposés and distortions by dissenting members and others. Balancing the needs of members learning and maintaining the sacredness of the temple teachings has been a constant conundrum. Policies about both content and dissemination of temple blessings have been evolving ever since.
When Joseph Smith was martyred, he had only performed the full temple ordinances with sixty-five Saints.[78] Brigham Young continued overseeing the temple construction and performed these saving ordinances wherever possible. In the meantime, he made some late innovations to the ceremonies. Upon completion of the temple, the ordinance work started and took off at an unfathomable pace, as thousands of Saints were yearning to be “endowed” and married before their God. Just before the trek to the West, over 5,000 members went through the temple, around 600 of whom received the highest blessings pertaining to exaltation.[79]
Once in the Utah mountains, Brigham Young continued extending endowments and sealings to as many as possible as soon as possible. Before any buildings were erected, some ordinances were performed on hilltops: “Addison Pratt received his endowments on Ensign Hill on the 21st [July 21, 1849], the place being consecrated for the purpose. Myself . . . being present.”[80] Mountains were, scripturally, seen as places equal to temples and this seemed in line with earlier practices of performing ordinances elsewhere when there was no operating temple.[81] The endowment house was erected to make ordinances available before temples were finished; in 1855 endowments were continued, and in 1867 the other sealing ordinances.[82] In 1877, the St. George Temple was dedicated. Ordinances were standardized and recorded in written form the year before President Young’s death. President Taylor reinstituted the School of the Prophets in 1883, introducing “worthy” married members with the washing of feet as had been done before, but only as a reminder or repetition of blessings already pronounced and as a sign of unity and selfless service. President Taylor explained at a meeting of the school on October 12, 1883:
The reason why things are in the shape they are is because Joseph felt called upon to confer all ordinances connected with the Priesthood. He felt in a hurry on account of certain premonition [sic] that he had concerning his death, and was very desirous to impart the endowments and all the ordinances thereof to the Priesthood during his lifetime, and it would seem to be necessary that there should be more care taken in the administration of the ordinances to the Saints in order that those who had not proven themselves worthy might not partake of the fulness of the anointings until they had proven themselves worthy thereof, upon being faithful to the initiatory principles; as great carelessness and a lack of appreciation had been manifested by many who had partaken of these sacred ordinances.[83]
This remark illustrates the point of careful initiation, and the School had the purpose of preparing those who had received the “initiatory principles” to be instructed—and thus initiated—further, until they were worthy and ready to receive further ordinances. President Taylor and George Q. Cannon decided, for this purpose, “it would be advisable for the endowment to be administered in separate stages.”[84] In these first few decades of the Utah-based Church, General Authorities generally knew all Church members, so members’ progress could be monitored closely. Ordinances were mostly done by temple presidents and General Authorities, so the needed balance between members’ getting instruction and the ceremonies’ being kept sacred was maintained.
With only four temples available in the first seventy-three years of the Church,[85] converts abroad who wanted to receive the temple blessings had no choice but to come to the United States. The policy of the gathering was underlined by the idea of a “compact society”:
TO THE SAINTS ABROAD. In order that the object for which the saints are gathered together in the last days, as spoken of by all the holy prophets since the world began, may be obtained, it is essentially necessary, that they should all be gathered in to the Cities appointed for that purpose; as it will be much better for them all, in order that they may be in a situation to have the necessary instruction, to prepare them for the duties of their callings respectively. . . . And we wish it to be deeply impressed on the minds of all, that to obtain all the knowledge which the circumstances of man will admit of, is one of the principle objects the saints have in gathering together. Intelligence is the result of education, and education can only be obtained by living in compact society.[86]
This 1838 charge by Sidney Rigdon was still the standing policy at the time the Saints settled the Utah basin. A “perpetual immigration fund” provided means for converts to travel and settle, but the economic “panic” in the 1890s and the Great Depression in the 1930s probably sparked a change in policy of the gathering, as Utah Saints weren’t able to accommodate the immigrants. Nevertheless, immigration was substantial until after World War II.
The policy, however, eventually changed from gathering in Utah to gathering in “stakes of Zion” abroad. A first European-based temple came in 1955 in Bern (Zollikofen), Switzerland. With the first two stakes outside of the United States in the 1950s (Hamilton, New Zealand, and London, England), also came two temples in 1958. South America and Japan followed in 1978 and 1980. A massive surge in temple dedications abroad (and in general) began in 1983 by Gordon B. Hinckley,[87] who also started the “small temple plan,” announced in October 1997. He urged that temple blessings and “all other ordinances to be had in the Lord’s house” be available, be “presided over, wherever possible, by local men called as temple presidents, just as stake presidents are called,” and be performed by “local people who would serve in other capacities in their wards and stakes.”[88] Temples now approach 200 in number.
Judging by this trend in extending temple blessings, one could say the gathering is definitively reversed. This demanded different ways to prepare, initiate, and monitor worthiness for extension of ordinances, especially as judging worthiness was delegated to local leaders.[89] But what was the international equivalent of the School of the Prophets? There is an official temple preparation class, and up until 1990 there was a “sermon at the veil” providing some explanation on the symbolisms of the performed ceremony. But systematic teaching about the temple as in the School of the Prophets, or like the “temple testimony meetings” of 1845, have been discontinued. Whenever relevant scriptures are discussed in priesthood and Relief Society classes now, references to the temple ordinances can be made only as brief hints, as both endowed and non-endowed members are present. The communal discussion about temple symbolism is discouraged outside as well as inside the temple.[90] Still, the importance of teaching perfection and the principles and ordinances pertaining to it, have been a major mission of the Church, as stated, for example, by President Benson:
The temple ceremony was given by a wise Heavenly Father to help us become more Christlike. . . . We will not be able to dwell in the company of celestial beings unless we are pure and holy. The laws and ordinances which cause men and women to come out of the world and become sanctified are administered only in these holy places. They were given by revelation and are comprehended by revelation. It is for this reason that one of the Brethren [ElRay Christensen] has referred to the temple as the “university of the Lord.” No member of the Church can be perfected without the ordinances of the temple. We have a mission to assist those who do not have these blessings to receive them.[91]
The mission of “perfecting the Saints” and that of “redeeming the dead” are intertwined in the ability to repeat the temple ordinances for deceased ancestors. In my opinion, though, the focus has shifted to “the great work of redeeming the dead, fulfilling the mission of Elijah.”[92] There have been urges to reinvigorate temple attendance for the purpose of individual development in the gospel, but no structural communal policy changes have been made recently.
With a worldwide membership of sixteen million and adding thou-sands every day, it is understandable that the focus of teaching can shift to the basic principles. But at the same time, with more members, more will also be “ready to receive” the highest blessings of the temple, and more will strive for their calling and election to be made sure. So how can the LDS Church go about initiation in a way that is more open, to more and more members, while safeguarding the sacredness of these ordinances in an information age where all of them can be found in one Google search? In sum, how can graduating from “temple university” become more achievable? In my conclusion I will draw from all the above to make some suggestions and raise some questions on how to go about clever teaching and mentoring.
Conclusion and Suggestions: Pedagogy of Perfection: The End in Mind and Education Toward That End
“God’s earthly kingdom is a school in which the saints learn the doctrines of salvation. Some members of the Church are being taught elementary courses; others are approaching graduation and can do independent research where the deep and hidden things are concerned. All must learn line upon line and precept upon precept.”[93]
Both Moses and Jesus tried to bring the temple to the center of the religious life of their followers. They disseminated the knowledge and ordinances of the temple, first to their disciples and through them to others. Joseph Smith set up the same mode of teaching for the Latter-day Saints, a series of ordinances to be available for all who are ready to receive it. But do we teach about it in the same ways and as often as Joseph and the early Saints did? What is needed in our age?
With temple ordinances being officiated around the world and with Church leaders trying to safeguard the sacredness of the temple ordinances, it is no wonder that we tend to err on the side of not talking about the temple. We must be careful, but I think also we need to look for inventive ways to teach about the temple in order to perfect the Saints more universally. Joseph Smith was clear about this: the temple is the center of our worship, but it is for initiates. So even though the outward ordinances have been exposed,[94] the knowledge will always be safe, because it can only be received by initiatory experiences and revelation. Initiation in ritual is the safety measure.
Education is still the form of worship most dominant in LDS Church meetings and home, with Church members being encouraged to keep rereading the standard works of scripture, helped by Sunday School, seminary and institute classes. But does this bring about sufficient development? If one is to learn “line upon line,” ascending Joseph’s ladder, one needs constant hints to new possible meanings, insights[95] into new layers of deeper knowledge that were not yet “present” to the understanding. I argue that the same goes for the oral scripture of the temple. Progress without mentoring is hard.
Following Joseph’s cry to all Saints to make their calling and elections sure,[96] how are we to go about teaching that in a careful way? Enduring to the end, explained simply as not falling away on hidden paths, is not as motivating as a concrete and attainable goal in this life: the tangible sign of one’s “calling and election being made sure.” The suggestion I want to make here is that this goal could be communicated more clearly to faithful couples. In light of this great end goal, all other “work” toward it gains meaning. Enduring can become joyful, or the prospect can become a rock in times of tempest, and be preventive of becoming lukewarm[97] by the many routines and repetitions.
Joseph’s pedagogy of perfection is quite a unique form of salvation theology, which makes the LDS Church (and temple) stand out more than it blends in. This gives rise to a paradox,[98] already in Joseph’s time, of stressing the newly revealed points of doctrine (including premortal existence, eternal marriage, and exaltation) on the one hand, and wanting to be accepted as a Christian religion on the other. But the Church today, especially in Europe, is surrounded more and more by secular philosophies. Converts come from different paradigms and are less concerned about how “different” the Church is from other Christian denominations. The idea of a God who is an exalted human living in a different realm of this universe with a plan to have us come to earth for a mortal moral apprenticeship, preparatory to returning to dwell in his presence, is actually pretty “down to earth.” It fits in a disenchanted perception of God, who is not seen any more as pure Spirit and unreachable, but as a God we can relate to and even touch and meet. Likewise, the idea of developing line upon line, from the preparatory gospel to the “temple university,” advancing in the priesthood (for both male and female), is a pedagogy similar to our educational systems.
But where are the professors, the mentors, those who guide the initiation, teaching “research methods,” toward eventual “graduation”? I suggest that the LDS Church could put initiation and mentoring forward as a priority, with less concern about secretiveness, but proud that it has a tangible and achievable way to prepare faithful believers in Christ to the point where they are ready to meet him. It could take the same pride in the teachings as did the early saints who announced it in bold terms:
These teachings of the Savior [in 1 John 3:2–3; 1 Peter 1:15–16; Mat-thew 5:48; John 14:12; 17:20–24] most clearly show unto us the nature of salvation, and what He proposed unto the human family when He proposed to save them—that He proposed to make them like unto himself, and He was like the Father, the great prototype of all saved beings; and for any portion of the human family to be assimilated into their likeness is to be saved.[99]
And they could recognize, as did Bruce R. McConkie, that to continually advance toward God is an innate human desire:
Among those who have received the gospel, and who are seeking dili-gently to live its laws and gain eternal life, there is an instinctive and determined desire to make their calling and election sure. Because they have tasted the good things of God and sipped from the fountain of eternal truth, they now seek the divine presence, where they shall know all things, have all power, all might, and all dominion, and in fact be like Him who is the great Prototype of all saved beings—God our Heavenly Father. (D&C 132:20.) This is the end objective, the chief goal of all the faithful, and there is nothing greater in all eternity, “for there is no gift greater than the gift of salvation.” (D&C 6:13)[100]
This paper was written as part of the Neil A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2015 Summer Seminar, “Organizing the Kingdom: Priesthood, Church Government, and the Forms of LDS Worship.”
[1] From a letter by Joseph Smith “to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Sept. 6 1842, [D&C 128:18].
[2] Ibid.
[3] For an extensive treatise of precedents to LDS perfectionism (or “theosis”), see Terryl L. Givens, Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), chap. 21.
[4] Richard L. Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2003), 162, 133–35.
[5] Steven C. Harper, “First Vision Accounts: Joseph Smith History, circa summer 1832,” YouTube video, posted by LDS Church History, Apr. 15, 2015, https://youtu.be/IobA9THKx-M.
[6] It is to this day the singular most-contested doctrine upon which main-stream Christianity disavows the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as a Christian religion. An example is: “Response to the 1982 anti-Mormon film The God Makers,” FairMormon, https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Video/The_God_Makers.
[7] Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, “April 10, 1842 Wilford Woodruff Journal,” in The Words of Joseph Smith (Provo: Grandin Book Company, 1991), 113.
[8] In his Revelation (3:15–16) John writes to the Saints in Laodicea: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” A psychological commonplace is that when people lose track of their end goal, motivation decreases.
[9] I used the most original sources available: The Joseph Smith papers, or Andrew Ehat and Lyndon Cook’s Words of Joseph Smith, or other sources like Wilford Woodruff’s diary. Regarding the revelations, when no serious change was found, I refer to the LDS standard works.
[10] There is nuance that must be maintained here: not all Protestants left sacramentalism. Some reformists like Calvin and followers (e.g., Beza, Turrettini) viewed “sacraments” as instruments of grace (albeit not in the same way as Catholicism [e.g., the Council of Trent]).
[11] Joseph Smith History, vol. A-1, 2, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed Dec. 10, 2018, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/2.
[12] Steven C. Harper, in “First Vision Accounts: Joseph Smith History circa Summer 1832,” remarks “There is a serious concern, among Joseph Smith and so many others, about how to overcome fallenness. Everybody knows that you overcome fallenness by accessing the atonement of Jesus Christ. The big contention is, how do you access the atonement of Jesus Christ?” (1.42–2:00).
[13] Joseph Smith History, vol. A-1, 2, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed Dec. 10, 2018, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/2; Steven C. Harper, Joseph Smith’s First Vision: A Guide to the Historical Accounts (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 14–21.
[14] Harper, Joseph Smith’s First Vision, 23–25.
[15] Methodist also clung to sola scriptura; whatever “revelation” received, it must be in accordance with scripture.
[16] Milton V. Backman Jr., “Awakenings in the Burned-Over District: New Light on the Historical Setting of the First Vision,” in Exploring the First Vision, edited by Samuel Alonzo Dodge and Steven C. Harper (Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book Company, 2012), 177–78.
[17] William Neill, “Thoughts on Revivals of Religion,” Christian Herald, Apr. 7, 1821, 708–11, in Backman, “Awakenings,” 186.
[18] The partaking of the sacrament in LDS theology can also be seen as a weekly “reviving” spiritual experience.
[19] Joseph Smith History, vol. A-1, 2, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed Dec. 10, 2018, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/2.
[20] The similarities are quite striking: in Young’s own words: “I prayed continually to God to make me holy, and give me power to do good. While in this state of mind I had a very singular manifestation. . . . when all of a sudden I saw the Heavens open and a body of light above the brightness of the sun descending towards me, in a moment it filled me with joy unutterable, every part of my system was perfectly light, and perfectly happy; I soon arose and spoke of things of the Kingdom of God as I never spoke before. I then felt satisfied that the Lord had heard my prayers and my sins were forgiven” (Young, “Life of Phinehas Howe Young,” L. Tom Perry Special Collections, HBLL, quoted in Christopher C. Jones, “‘We Latter-day Saints are Methodists: The Influence of Methodism on Early Mormon Religiosity,” MA Thesis, Brigham Young University, 2009. Harold B. Lee Library, All Theses and Dissertations, Paper 1747, 33, available at https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1747/).
[21] “History, circa Summer 1832,” in Joseph Smith Letterbook 1, The Joseph Smith Papers, 3, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-book-1/9. Shortly before on page 2 Joseph states the reason for his inquiry: “my mind become excedingly distressed for I became convicted of my sins and by searching the scriptures I found that mand <mankind> did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatised from the true and liveing faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament and I felt to mourn for my own sins and for the sins of the world.”
[22] Wesley, “Sermon 11, The Witness of the Spirit II” 1, no. 2, (1767) in The Works of John Wesley vol. 1 edited by Thomas Jackson (1872), 285, quoted in Christopher C. Jones, “We Latter-day Saints are Methodists,” 42.
[23] “My object in going to enquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. . . . I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the Personage who addressed me said that all their Creeds were an abomination in his sight, that those pro-fessors were all corrupt, that ‘they draw near to me to with their lips but their hearts are far from me, They teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of Godliness but they deny the power thereof’” (Joseph Smith History, vol. A-1, 3, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed Dec. 10, 2018, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/3; see also Isa. 29:13, Matt. 15:9).
[24] On Perfection (Sermon 40, 1739), Christian Perfection (Sermon 76, 1784). These were sermons on sanctification, which hints at how Wesley understood “perfection.” Also see A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (treatise, 1739).
[25] John Wesley, “A Plain Account on Christian Perfection,” in The Works of John Wesley 11, no. 29, edited by Thomas Jackson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1872), 366–446.
[26] John Wesley, “The End of Christ’s Coming” (Sermon 62), Wesley Center, available at http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-62-the-end-of-christs-coming/.
[27] John Wesley, “A Plain Account on Christian Perfection,” 36–446.
[28] Steven C. Harper, Joseph Smith’s First Vision, 17. Also, Richard L. Bushman makes a strong claim of Universalism present in the New England area and influ-ence on Asael Smith’s religious beliefs, in Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1984), 27–28.
[29] Terryl L. Givens, Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 263.
[30] Richard L. Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 136.
[31] Sermon delivered at Nauvoo, Ill. on Sunday Apr. 10, 1842, Wilford Woodruff Journal. In: Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds. The Words of Joseph Smith (Provo: Grandin Book Company, 1991), 113.
[32] Terryl L. Givens argued that the failed Zion’s camp can be seen as a turning point for this shift in focus. The argument was communicated orally in a group discussion during the 2015 Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture.
[33] For my description of Joseph Smith’s “pedagogy of perfection” pertaining to the doctrinal origins of the temple ordinances, I drew much from their extensive work, for which I like to express my appreciation and thanks. See David John Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1994 / 2003), 5; and Andrew F. Ehat, “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982).
[34] This term is not meant to be associated with the later evolving practice of plural marriage.
[35] This was not without controversy though, since some opposed it as being imagined by Rigdon. Eventually Joseph confirmed this addition by explaining this “order of the High priesthood” as the “power given them to seal up the Saints unto eternal life. And said it was the privilege of every Elder present to be ordained to the High Priesthood” (“Far West Record,” Oct. 25, 1931, Church History Library). (Thanks to David Buerger, see note 40).
[36] This “Kirtland endowment” included washings and anointings of kinds (see History of the Church 2:379–82), the washing of feet (and face) and the sacrament (see History of the Church 2:410–30), as found in D&C 88:127–41.
[37] Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness, 5. He further explains: “Key players in the sixteenth-century Reformation used many of these sealing passages [in the Bible] as evidence for their belief in predestination. Liberal reaction to Calvinist doctrine arose early in the seventeenth century when Arminians rejected this view, asserting that God’s sovereignty and human free will were compatible, that such sealings depended on choices of the individual believer.”
[38] See Matthew 16:19, Helaman 10:4–7, and D&C 110:13–16; and Joseph Smith’s explanation in D&C 128:5–18.
[39] See Zebedee Coltrin Diary, Nov. 15, 1831, Church History Library; Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sept. 27, 1832, Church History Library; and Journal of Orson Pratt, Aug. 26, Sept. 8, 1833, Church History Library.
[40] The name for the school was received in a revelation (D&C 88:127–38), and it is interesting to see that all participants were thus seen as “prophets,” or in any case Saints that were being trained to be prophet-like ministers.
[41] Actually several visitations, because three years after his First Vision he again prayed to know his standing before God, and as an answer angel Moroni appeared: “I often felt condemned for my weakness and imperfections; when on the evening of the above mentioned twenty first of September, after I had retired to my bed for the night I betook myself to prayer and supplication to Almighty God for forgiveness of all my sins and follies, and also for a manifestation to me that I might know of my state and standing before him. For I had full confidence in obtaining a divine manifestation as I had previously had one” (History, circa June 1839–circa 1841 [Draft 2], 5).
[42] D&C 88:118–19, 67–68.
[43] A well-known quote by Joseph is: “A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge” (Apr. 10, 1842, Wilford Woodruff Journal, in Ehat and Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith, 113). See also the opening quote of this section. Being brought back into God’s presence by gaining knowledge is an idea found in the Book of Mormon: “And because of the knowledge of this man [Brother
[44] Lectures on Faith, Second lecture, as found in Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Kirtland, Ohio: F. G. Williams & Co., 1835), 25. Italics mine.
[45] “Minute Book 1, [ca. 3 Dec. 1832–30 Nov. 1837],” Church History Library, Feb. 21, 1835, 162. Note the resemblance with Luke 24:49.
[46] “Minute Book 1, [ca. 3 Dec. 1832–30 Nov. 1837],” Church History Library, 156a–b; 159; 162.
[47] “There were members as follows: Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, William Smith, Frederick G. Williams, Orson Hyde (who had the charge of the school), Zebedee Coltrin, Sylvester Smith, Joseph Smith, Sr., Levi Hancock, Martin Harris, Sidney Rigdon, Newel K. Whitney, Samuel H. Smith, John Murdock, Lyman Johnson and Ezra Thayer.” As related by Zebedee Coltrin in “Minutes, Salt Lake City School of the Prophets,” Oct. 3, 1883.
[48] This remark by Zebedee Coltrin obscures the date when this took place. He doesn’t state the date, only the date of the organization of the School. The apostolic charge was given in 1835 and the temple dedicated Mar. 27, 1836.
[49] As related by Zebedee Coltrin in “Minutes, Salt Lake City School of the Prophets,” Oct. 3, 1883.
[50] “Minute Book 1, [ca. 3 Dec. 1832–30 Nov. 1837],” Church History Library, 154.
[51] Thomas Bullock report, Friday, May 12, 1844, Book of Abraham Project, available at http://www.boap.org/LDS/Parallel/1844/12May44.html.
[52] Joseph Smith History, vol. D-1, 1551, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed Dec. 10, 2018, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-d-1-1-august-1842-1-july-1843/194.
[53] See also Abraham 2:11.
[54] D&C 132:22–23, italics mine. This assertion can be debated, for these ordinances were and are performed also for the dead. See pp. 128–29 and note 73 further on in this paper for additional arguments on this question.
[55] Joseph Smith History, vol. C-1, 1328, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed Dec. 10, 2018, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842/502.
[56] “Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes,” The Words of Joseph Smith, eds. Ehat and Cook, Apr. 28, 1842, 116.
[57] See table with list of initiated in Ehat, “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances.”
[58] Joseph Smith History, vol. C-1, 1328, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed Dec. 10, 2018, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842/502.
[59] See Doctrine and Covenants 128:15 and Hebrews 11:40.
[60] Sermon delivered at Nauvoo, Ill. on Jan. 21, 1844, in Wilford Woodruff’s Journal: 1833–1898, Typescript Volumes 1–9, edited by Scott G. Kenney (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books, 1983).
[61] From Heber C. Kimball, in a letter to Parley and Mary Ann Pratt, dated Jun. 17, 1842, Church History Library. “We received some pressious things though the Prophet on the preasthood that would caus your Soul to rejoice. I can not give them to you on paper fore they are not to be riten. So you must come and get them fore your Self. We have organized a Lodge here. Of Masons. Since we obtained a Charter. That was in March since that thare has near two hundred been made masons Br Joseph and Sidny was the first that was Received in to the Lodg. All of the twelve have become members Exept Orson P. . . . thare is a similarity of preast Hood in Masonry. Bro Joseph ses masonry was taken from preasthood but had become degenerated but menny things are perfect” (italics mine).
[62] A complete study of aspects of the LDS temple ritual that can be traced back to Jewish, Egyptian, Masonic, and the early apostles lies far beyond the scope of this paper. Hugh Nibley’s extensive work on this can be consulted. I have focused, for the latter part of this paper, on the intended purposes of the mode of teaching that was devised.
[63] See 1 Nephi 13:20–29. Verse 26b says: “for behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away.”
[64] Also from Heber C. Kimball’s letter to Parley P. Pratt dated Jun. 17, 1842, Church History Library. See note 61.
[65] There are many excellent books on the comparison and evolvement of Masonic and LDS temple ordinances, e.g., Buerger compares them in The Mysteries of Godliness, 1994 / 2003), there is Matthew B. Brown’s book Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, 2009), a recent article by Jeff Bradshaw, “Freemasonry and the Origins of Modern Temple Ordinances,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 15 (2015): 159–237, and again Hugh Nibley, e.g., Temple and Cosmos (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992).
[66] educate (v.) mid-15c., “bring up (children), to train,” from Latin educatus, past participle of educare “bring up, rear, educate,” which is a frequentative of or otherwise related to educere “bring out, lead forth,” from ex- “out” (see ex-) + ducere “to lead” (see duke (n.)). Meaning “provide schooling” is first attested 1580s. Related: Educated; educating. According to “Century Dictionary,” educere, of a child, is “usually with reference to bodily nurture or support, while educare refers more frequently to the mind,” and, “There is no authority for the common statement that the primary sense of education is to ‘draw out or unfold the powers of the mind’” (from: http://www.etymonline.com/index. php?term=educate&allowed_in_frame=0).
[67] pedagogue (n.) late 14c., “schoolmaster, teacher,” from Old French pedagoge “teacher of children” (14c.), from Latin paedagogus, from Greek paidagogos “slave who escorts boys to school and generally supervises them,” later “a teacher,” from pais (genitive paidos) “child” (see pedo-) + agogos “leader,” from agein “to lead” (see act (n.)) (from: http://www.etymonline.com/index. php?term=pedagogue&allowed_in_frame=0).
[68] Ronald L. Grimes, Deeply into the Bone: Re-inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000), 16 and 121.
[69] The sacrament of course was also performed outside of the temple, in regular Sunday meetings. It seems to have been an ordinance to remember Christ’s sacrifice on any occasion the early brethren seemed fit. For an extensive treatise on the sacrament see Ugo A. Perego, “The Changing Forms of the Sacrament,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 22 (2016): 1–16, https://www.mor-moninterpreter.com/the-changing-forms-of-the-latter-day-saint-sacrament/.
[70] Except of course the new elements of the endowment ceremony and mar-riage ceremonies devised in Nauvoo.
[71] L. John Nuttall, diary, typescript entry for Feb. 7, 1877 (Provo: Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University).
[72] As the publication of this article was pending, the First Presidency announced new changes to the temple using these words: “Over these many centuries, details associated with temple work have been adjusted periodically (. . .). Prophets have taught that there will be no end to such adjustments as directed by the Lord to His servants” (First Presidency Statement on Temples, Jan. 2, 2019, available at https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/temple-worship). The last major changes in the endowment date from 1990, some minor changes in the initiatories were made more recently, diminishing the communal part of touching at the pronouncement of blessings, see below and John-Charles Duffy, “Concealing the Body, Concealing the Sacred: The Decline of Ritual Nudity in Mormon Temples,” Journal of Ritual Studies 21, no. 1 (2007): 1–21. A full account of all policy and content changes can be found in the works of David Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1994 / 2003) and “‘The Fulness of the Priesthood’: The Second Anointing in Latter-day Saint Theology and Practice,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16, no. 1 (Spring 1983): 10–44.
[73] Joseph Smith, Discourse, Nauvoo, Ill., Apr. 7, 1844; in Times and Seasons 5, no. 15 (Nauvoo, Ill.: Aug. 15, 1844): 613–14.
[74] A detailed account of this debate is discussed by Buerger in his article “The Fulness of the Priesthood,” 43–44.
[75] This is most obvious in the Salt Lake Temple where the celestial room is adorned with many fertility symbols.
[76] Helen Mar Whitney, “Scenes in Nauvoo, and Incidents from H.C. Kimball’s Journal,” The Woman’s Exponent 12 (Aug. 1 and 15, 1883), 26, in Ehat, Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances, 115–16.
[77] Sermon delivered at Nauvoo, Ill. in front of Robert D. Foster’s hotel on Jan. 21, 1844 in Wilford Woodruff’s Journal. Italics and corrections mine
[78] History of the Church 7:543–80. See table of ordinances in Ehat, Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances.
[79] In Buerger, “The Fulness of the Priesthood,” 32.
[80] William S. Harwell, ed., Manuscript History of Brigham Young (Salt Lake City: Collier’s, 1997), 224–25.
[81] D&C 124:29–40.
[82] Buerger, “The Fulness of the Priesthood,” 27–28.
[83] “School of the Prophets Minutes” 1, in Buerger, “The Fulness of the Priest-hood,” Oct. 2, 1883, 32. Italics mine.
[84] “School of the Prophets Minutes,” in Buerger, “The Fulness of the Priest-hood,” Aug. 2, 1883, Sept. 27, 1883, 32.
[85] From the dedication of the Nauvoo Temple in May 1846 until the first temple outside of Utah dedicated in Laie, Hawaii, in Nov. 1919. The four temples meant are those in Utah from St. George in 1877 on until 1919.
[86] Sidney Rigdon in “Elders Journal 1” (Kirtland, Ohio: Far West, Mo., Aug. 4, 1838), 54. Italics mine.
[87] “Temple Chronology,” http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/chronological/.
[88] The announcement was as follows: “But there are many areas of the Church that are remote, where the membership is small and not likely to grow very much in the near future. Are those who live in these places to be denied for-ever the blessings of the temple ordinances? While visiting such an area a few months ago, we prayerfully pondered this question. The answer, we believe, came bright and clear. We will construct small temples in some of these areas, buildings with all of the facilities to administer all of the ordinances. . . . They would accommodate baptisms for the dead, the endowment service, sealings, and all other ordinances to be had in the Lord’s house for both the living and the dead. They would be presided over, wherever possible, by local men called as temple presidents, just as stake presidents are called. . . . All ordinance workers would be local people who would serve in other capacities in their wards and stakes” (Virginia Hatch Romney and Richard O. Cowan, The Colonia Juárez Temple: A Prophet’s Inspiration [Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2009], Appendix C. President Hinckley’s General Conference Announcement, Saturday, Oct. 4, 1997).
[89] Actually, this delegation already took place in the Utah-based Church after 1889 under President Wilford Woodruff. During these years, different standards and lists of criteria for worthiness were developed, e.g.,by President Lorenzo Snow. See Buerger, “The Fulness of the Priesthood,” 32–34.
[90] It goes too far for the scope of this paper to discuss all these changing trends and policies; that can be a topic for a different paper. What I derive from it is that temple education or pedagogy is not systematically embedded.
[91] Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson (Salt Lake City: Intellectual Reserve, 2014), 250–52; see also Elder Ray L. Christiansen, “Why Temples,” Conference Report (Apr. 1968), 134.
[92] In speaking in regard to the Saints becoming saviors upon Mount Zion, the Prophet Joseph said thus to his brethren [Jan. 20, 1844.]: “But how are they to become saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointings, ordinations, and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem them that they may come forth in the first resurrection and be exalted to thrones of glory with them; and herein is the chain that binds the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, which fulfils the mission of Elijah.” See: Marriner W. Merrill, “Temple Work” General Conference, Oct. 4, 1895, Collected Discourses 4:359.
[93] Alma 21:9–10 and Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary 2 (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965), 323.
[94] Starting as early as 1842 with John C. Bennett in Nauvoo, until fairly recently with Tom Philips in England, 2012.
[95] In the literal meaning of “looking into” or “peeking.” So “dropping hints” and letting others “take a peek,” becomes part of the teaching skill. In Dutch there is a phrase that comes even closer to this skill: Een tip van de sluier oplichten, “lifting up a tip of the veil.”
[96] “I am going on in my progress for eternal life, . . . . Oh! I beseech you to go forward, go forward and make your calling and election sure.” “Thomas Bullock report, Friday May 12, 1844,” Book of Abraham Project, http://www.boap.org/LDS/Parallel/1844/12May44.html.
[97] Think again about John the Apostle’s letter to Laodicea in Revelation 3:15–16.
[98] The fourth paradox as explained by Terryl Givens in People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 53–62.
[99] “Lectures on Faith, Seventh lecture, verse 16,” as found in Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Kirtland, Ohio: F. G. Williams & Co., 1835).
[100] Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, vol. 2 (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965), 325. Italics mine.
Richard Sleegers contrasts 19th century Protestant teachings about salvations to what Joseph Smith taught about life after death.
2018: Richard Sleegers, “Pedagogy of Perfection: Joseph Smith’s Perfectionism, How it was Taught in the Early LDS Church, and its Contemporary Applicabality,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 51 No. 4 (2018): 105–143.
Richard Sleegers contrasts 19th century Protestant teachings about salvations to what Joseph Smith taught about life after death.
[post_title] => Pedagogy of Perfection: Joseph Smith’s Perfectionism, How It was Taught in the Early LDS Church, and Its Contemporary Applicability [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 51.4 (Winter 2018): 105–143Richard Sleegers contrasts 19th century Protestant teachings about salvations to what Joseph Smith taught about life after death. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => pedagogy-of-perfection-joseph-smiths-perfectionism-how-it-was-taught-in-the-early-lds-church-and-its-contemporary-applicability [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:48:22 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:48:22 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=22902 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
A Documentary Note on a Letter to Joseph Smith. Romance, Death, and Polygamy: The Life and Times of Susan Hough Conrad and Lorenzo Dow Barnes
William V. Smith
Dialogue 49.4 (Winter 2016): 87–108
The history behind a letter that was written by missionary Jedediah Morgan Grant to Joseph Smith, which contained information about Susan Hough Conrad and her brief love writings with a missionary who was serving in England named Lorenzo Dow Barnes.
In the final year of Joseph Smith’s life, he engaged in frequent correspondence with political leaders, Church officers, family members, and others. In this paper I will consider a letter written to Joseph Smith from a Mormon missionary and presiding elder named Jedediah Morgan Grant, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1] Written in August 1843, the letter concerns—among a number of other things—a young female Latter-day Saint then living with her mother and sisters in Philadelphia. The letter is remarkable for several reasons, notably the veiled glimpse it provides into Joseph Smith’s practice of polygamy. A complete transcription of the letter is found in the appendix to this article; I will quote it liberally as I flesh out its context. Note that spelling and other irregularities in quotes from the letter and other sources are found in the originals (unless noted otherwise).
With the Finneys, Beechers, Towles, Campbells, and other luminaries of antebellum American religion stood the anonymous men and women who were followers or advocates of their movements. In the “age of improvement,” Americans seemed to be moving from one idea to another, just as they moved from one place to another. The restless minds of the antebellum Atlantic World were a fertile preaching environment for the Latter-day Saints, and a core of dedicated people made up a missionary cohort that converted thousands, forming Mormonism into a history-making wedge of Americana.[2] Two such devoted Mormon souls were Lorenzo Dow Barnes (1812–1842) and Susan Hough Conrad (1818–1888). I will first give a short description of Barnes’s and Conrad’s lives as context for the Grant letter. Next, I will discuss how their lives were linked together. Finally, informed by those lives, I will discuss the content of the Grant letter and how it and Conrad figured into Joseph Smith’s marriage project.[3]
Lorenzo Barnes
Lorenzo Dow Barnes’s[4] given names register one of the most famous of American preachers of the previous generation: Lorenzo Dow.[5] Thousands of American children of the period were named after the spellbinding Methodist itinerant preacher. Born in 1812 in Massachusetts, Lorenzo Barnes and his family were part of the westward expansion. Settling in Ohio, the family came into contact with Latter-day Saints in 1833. Barnes heard and accepted the Mormon millennial message and never looked back. While Barnes tried preaching to his family, it was without success: his parents remained non-Mormon Ohio residents until their deaths.
Almost immediately after joining the Latter-day Saints, Barnes took to the missionary trail, returning to the family home in winter snows to teach school until spring. In 1834, Barnes joined the “Camp of Israel,” the hopeful group of Saints led by Joseph Smith who wished to protect those Mormons who had been ejected from their Zion in Jackson County, Missouri, the previous year. The plan, proposed by the Mormons and Missouri’s attorney general, was for the men of Zion’s Camp to escort the displaced Saints back to the Independence area (now an eastern suburb of Kansas City). Missouri governor Daniel Dunklin rejected this plan because he saw the makings of civil war in the move.[6]
The expedition was disbanded and Barnes returned to Ohio. In 1835, Barnes, like many other members of Zion’s Camp, was given a leadership role in the Church, becoming a member of the first quorum of “Seventy,” a group tasked especially with the missionary efforts of the Church.[7] He was a consistent worker who overcame a speech problem to become one of the most highly regarded Mormon leaders in his field of labor. Sent off to proselytize in the eastern states, Barnes moved through Kentucky and Virginia, and he stayed in the region until 1838, when he followed Church leaders who vacated Ohio for Far West, Missouri.[8]
Barnes didn’t spend much time in the community-building efforts before he was again sent east to preach. He remained in missionary service until 1841, when he came to the new Church center of Nauvoo.[9]
Barnes was chosen for missionary service in 1839 to travel to Britain in the wake of the Mormon apostles who began canvassing England that same year.[10] Barnes was slow in taking ship for England, spending considerable time in the Philadelphia region. Barnes became a pillar of Church leadership in Pennsylvania for several years and wrote “licenses” for other Mormon leaders who were passing through the region.[11] He returned to Nauvoo in the spring of 1841 and was named clerk for a conference on August 16, 1842.[12] On August 21, a meeting of the Mormon apostles voted that “Barnes proceed on his mission to England without delay.” Church leaders wrote to remind him of the point of his journey, and Barnes finally boarded ship for England in January 1842.[13]
Lorenzo Barnes was no Parley Pratt, but he did publish some missionary tracts, one of which, titled References, was well respected by his fellow missionaries.[14] On the ship to Liverpool, Barnes composed a poem, “The Bold Pilgrim,” about his missionary task, which he published upon his arrival in England.[15]
Barnes died in December 1842 after a short illness in Idle, Yorkshire, England, where he was buried. Two years later, Wilford Woodruff visited the gravesite and made arrangements for a headstone and epitaph.[16] The epitaph read:
Sleep on, Lorenzo, but ere long from this
The conquered tomb shall yield her captured prey.
Then with thy Quorum shalt thou reign in bliss
As king and priest for all Eternal Day.[17]
When Joseph Smith heard of Barnes’s death via letter from the leader of the Church’s British mission, Parley P. Pratt, he offered remarks in Nauvoo in praise of Barnes but also regarding the matter of his burial in England.[18] Willard Richards reported Smith saying during his remarks:
When I heard of the death of our beloved bro Barns it would not have affected me so much if I had the opportunity of burying him in the land of Zion. I believe, those who have buried their friends here their condition is enviable. Look at Joseph in Egypt how he required his friends to bury him in the tomb of his fathers[19]
Passionate about having durable connections to family and friends, Joseph Smith deployed this Hebrew Bible image as background to his own New Testament vision of triumph:
would you think it strange that I relate what I have seen in vision in relation [to] this interesting theme. those who have died in Jesus Christ, may expect to enter in to all that fruition of Joy when they come forth, which they have pursued here, so plain was the vision I actually saw men, before they had ascended from the tomb, as though they were getting up slowly, they took each other by the hand & it was my father & my son . my mother my brother & my sister & my daughter[20]
Smith’s sermon was an impressive one, and it resonated with those who heard its sentiments. Years later, Mormon elders in Britain took up a collection to finance the exhumation of Barnes’s body to send it to Utah. It would be buried near his fellow deceased Latter-day Saints.[21] Barnes died at a time when Joseph Smith’s theological ideas and corresponding institutions were beginning to reach their zenith. Barnes’s death seems to have erased him from a portrait that included most prominent Nauvoo Mormons: the kinship expansions of polygamy and “sealing” and their associated practices.[22]
Susan Hough Conrad
Barnes appears to have been unattached until 1841. Sometime during his missionary service in Pennsylvania, he began a romance with Susan Hough Conrad, a young convert whose family was friendly to Mormon-ism and who may have heard Joseph Smith preach.[23] Smith preached a number of times in Washington and the surrounding area after his 1839–40 interviews with and pleas to Washington power brokers over the losses incurred by Latter-day Saints in Missouri in the 1830s; one of his better-known sermons was recorded in a letter by Matthew L. Davis, well-known journalist and friend and biographer of Aaron Burr.[24] Conrad was not present when Smith preached that sermon, but she may have heard him preach in Pennsylvania in the days following. She related the story of having Smith in her parent’s home at this period, and in any case she was impressed by him and became a Latter-day Saint in February or March of 1840.
Both Conrad and Barnes were in Nauvoo in 1841, but their stays may have only briefly intersected there. Conrad stayed in Nauvoo a few months, roughly between April and June. While in Nauvoo, she was befriended by another Latter-day Saint woman from the Philadelphia area, Mary Wickersham Woolley, with whom she exchanged some correspondence, the content of which suggests that Conrad stayed in the Woolley household during her time in Nauvoo.[25]
One of the more important extant documents detailing Conrad’s life is her “Autograph Album.” Autograph books were a nineteenth-century fad that often occupied the new-fangled parlors of middle class Americans, where guests might be asked to pen a verse while noting their names and the place and date of signing. Orson Pratt, Parley Pratt, and George Q. Cannon were some of the writers in Conrad’s album. Conrad’s movements and encounters can be at least partially accounted for since she took the book with her on several journeys. She seems to have acquired her book in Baltimore in 1837 (the earliest entries date from November 1837). Some of the entries suggest that it was a keepsake in memory of her departure from Baltimore to Philadelphia.[26]
Within a year of the death of Joseph Smith, Conrad had married, and her first child was born in 1845 or 1846. Only a few entries in the autograph book address Susan as Wilkinson, and up through 1844 she is always noted as Miss Susan Conrad or Susan H. Conrad. Her new husband was a close family acquaintance, William B. Wilkinson (1820–1889).[27] Wilkinson’s family identified as Anglican/Episcopalian and Wilkinson was christened at Old Trinity Church in Philadelphia. Indeed, Wilkinson’s family, as more liberal Protestants perhaps, apparently hosted Joseph Smith during his 1840 visit to the area; Joseph wrote them a short letter on the subject of “Virtue” with reference to their kind service.[28] Wilkinson tolerated Mormonism but apparently did not join the faith for almost two decades. Finally, in 1861, Wilkinson united with Mormonism in Philadelphia.[29] The Wilkinsons emigrated to Utah with the James S. Brown wagon train the following year, where they established a household in the Salt Lake City Fourteenth Ward.[30]
With the rejuvenation of local Relief Societies, Conrad-Wilkinson became part the presidency of the Relief Society of the Fourteenth Ward. Records say little of this early period, but Conrad-Wilkinson is noted in reminiscent speeches as active in the work of the Relief Society.[31] Susan had never been an idle Latter-day Saint and her mother’s home—and later her own in Philadelphia—was a frequent stopping place for visiting Church missionaries and authorities. She became personally acquainted with Joseph and Hyrum Smith.[32]
Romance
Conrad and Barnes seemingly lived out their lives independent of each other. Barnes’s life was cut short at age thirty by pneumonia in England, while Conrad lived a full life. However, below these surface facts, there was a love story.
Three years after Barnes’s death, Wilford Woodruff was in Britain and visited the family who cared for Barnes during his final hours. There Woodruff discovered that his hosts had preserved Barnes’s effects, among which was a trove of love letters between Lorenzo Barnes and Susan Conrad.[33] Typical of both, they exchanged love poems over the time of Barnes’s work in England. Woodruff referred to Conrad as Barnes’s “Lover,” a term that did not carry the sexual innuendo of modern usage. She was in effect, Barnes’s fiancé. Woodruff wrote,
My feelings were keen and sensitive. As I stood upon his grave I realized I was standing over the body of one of the Elders of Israel of the horns of Joseph of the Seed of Ephraim, one of the members of zions Camp who had travelled more than 1,000 miles in 1834 for the redemption of his persecuted, afflicted brethren. Offered to lay down his life for their sake. One whose fidelity was stronger than death towards his Lover, his brethren eternal truth, & his God.[34]
Woodruff held Barnes in high regard for a number of reasons, and he found Conrad (then Wilkinson) years later in Salt Lake City to talk about her former fiancé.[35] He recorded in his journal:
It is a Cold day. I spent a part of the day in the office. I wrote a Letter to G. Q. Cannon. I visited his wife also Sister Susan Conrad or Wilconson. I conversed with her about Elder Lorenzo D Barnes.[36]
While in England visiting Barnes’s grave, Woodruff vowed that the “sealing” priesthood would be used in Barnes’s behalf. Perhaps he thought of Conrad as Barnes’s eternal spouse, though they were never posthumously sealed (see the conclusion below).[37]
Polygamy
On March 11, 1843, and again on June 2, 1843, one of Joseph Smith’s clerks wrote to Susan Conrad at Philadelphia. The second letter (and likely the first one as well) was penned by William Clayton, a close comrade of Joseph Smith, and a part of his “Kitchen Cabinet” as it were.[38] Few people knew more than Clayton about Smith’s execution of and beliefs about polygamy in Nauvoo (that does not mean Smith’s polygamy was perfectly known by anyone at the time). Clayton does not mention the subject of the June letter in his journal but notes that presiding elder Jedediah Grant wrote to Joseph Smith from Philadelphia in August.[39] While neither the March nor June letters to Susan Conrad are extant, Grant’s letter still exists, and it is this letter that forms much of the documentary background of this paper.
Grant’s August 17, 1843, letter details his struggles over the contents of the March and June letters, which evidently proposed matrimony between Joseph Smith and Susan Conrad, vouching that funds would be provided for her return to Nauvoo. The religious dynamics in the Conrad family were complicated by several issues: Susan’s father had died in 1835, and while Susan, her mother, and sister Ann were active believers in Mormonism, one other sister still living at home was not (probably Mary Conrad).[40]
While Mary tried to intercept Mormon communications to the Conrad home, she apparently did not see the March and June letters from Nauvoo. When Susan and her mother read the letters, their faith was shaken by their contents as Grant noted in his letter. However, another sister, Ann Conrad (1804–1894), prevailed on mother and daughter to ask for a private explanation from Church leaders in Philadelphia. As it happened, several apostles were in the area, including Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball, and mother and daughter hoped that Pratt could help them understand the meaning of the letters’ troublesome ideas. Grant seemed to be reluctant to have Pratt deal with the Conrad sisters, likely due to Pratt’s difficulties over polygamy. He knew of the blowup that had taken place in Nauvoo over Orson’s wife, Sarah Pratt, and so Grant took the task on himself. “I was informed that Elder P. was wanted to explain, &c, as it was not on Mathematical subjects, I, thought it might be difficult for him, to interpet it, and as he was coming back to the City next week, I thought it best to make all things shure.”
Grant continued, “so I went to work in the name of the Lord, and after using every argument that I could, they delivered” the March and June letters—under the condition that he was to obtain explanations from Joseph Smith and give those explanations to them. Grant burned the letters in the privacy of his room.[41] Grant wanted to avoid any possibility that the letters might be found by visitors, including other churchmen who often shared his room overnight during their travels. Grant noted in his letter that Kimball had previously introduced him to the idea and practice of polygamy and told Joseph Smith of his pleasure to find that Smith’s brother Hyrum (an early opponent of polygamy) “had received the Priesthood, &c.” (a euphemism for his acceptance of plural marriage). The letter thus gives early documentation of Grant’s introduction to plural marriage.[42]
Grant seems to have been unsuccessful in his attempt to get Susan Conrad to respond to the letters. “I preached, bore testimony &c, ‘will you answer it Miss S,’ ‘no I cannot think of doing it’ . . . Miss S cried like a child when these things was made known to me.” Meanwhile, Clayton reported that Joseph Smith “received a letter from Jedediah M. Grant containing information of Conrad’s having recd a letter &c.” Emma Smith, “heard J[oseph Smith] read it and appeared for a while to feel very jealous.’’[43] Grant’s letter likely contributed to Emma Smith’s continuing opposition to polygamy after a brief respite in May 1843.[44]
Conclusion
The March 11 and June 2 letters straddled the day that Barnes’s death became common knowledge in Nauvoo (see Joseph Smith’s funeral address for Barnes delivered on April 16, 1843).[45] Hence the March 11 letter, if it subtly or explicitly offered plural marriage, would have conflicted with Susan’s understanding of her relationship with Barnes, one that both seem to have kept from public scrutiny. Barnes never signed Conrad’s autograph book, and in his correspondence he only mentioned his affection for the Saints of Pennsylvania generally and “to all who may enquire after me.”[46] The June letter (at least) probably arrived well after Conrad had news of Barnes’s death in England.
Grant’s letter of August 17 is carefully written so that identities are only indicated by initials in some cases, but the evidence suggests that Clayton made a surrogate proposal of marriage to Conrad on behalf of Joseph Smith and that Conrad’s dismay and tears amounted to a rejection.[47] Conrad’s August 1844 letter to Mary Woolley (who with her husband embraced polygamy in the fall of 1843) mentioned above may have made reference to Clayton’s letters on behalf of Smith:
I feel tempted to write some thing but I dare not[,] if brother Kimball had passed this way I could have trusted one by him such as I would like to write but it is not so dear sister . . . I heard some things that completely twisted me round that if my life depended on my acting different I could not have done it, I guess Joseph would not think I had much Philosophy about me if he had seen me some times I never was nearer crazy in my life you will know what I mean.[48]
Barnes was not sealed (married) posthumously to Conrad but was eventually sealed to three other women—one dead, two living (at the time of sealing). None of them were women Barnes knew in life. Conrad and her husband, William Wilkinson, did not engage in polygamy after his conversion and their migration to Utah, though they lived through much of the federal polygamy “raid” that marked the 1880s. What Susan Conrad thought of polygamy in later years is unknown, but she maintained a vigorous alliance to the faith, one established by her associations as a young woman.[49]
While it is unclear whether the romance between Conrad and Barnes was known to Joseph Smith, it is clear that Smith wished to enfold Conrad into his sealing network of Nauvoo and that it was not to be a long-distance relationship. Conrad captured the attention of a number of prominent Latter-day Saints both in Nauvoo and in her mother’s home in Pennsylvania, but a search of published literature on Nauvoo polygamy suggests that Conrad’s case has not been considered before. Conrad consented to give up Smith’s surrogate letters and likely understood that Grant would dispose of them. She and her family, while not fully understanding Smith’s practice of polygamy, agreed to keep the letters secret. Her actions placed her in an important group of similar women, women like Sarah Kimball who quietly refused Smith’s proposals but remained a Latter-day Saint.50 Unlike Kimball, Conrad never seems to have openly discussed those tearful and confusing hours in her mother’s Philadelphia home in 1843. Susan Conrad’s sorrow over her encounter with Nauvoo polygamy and her loss of Lorenzo Barnes remained bound in the private spaces of her heart until her death.
For Appendix, see PDF below.
[1] Grant (1816–1856) lived to become a counselor in the First Presidency of Brigham Young, taking the place of Willard Richards, who died in 1854. Grant is perhaps best known for his oratorical forge that hammered out a Mormon reform in 1850s Utah. On Grant, see Gene A. Sessions, Mormon Thunder: A Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007).
[2] On the general picture of antebellum American religion, see Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), chaps. 5, 8, 12; Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Richard T. Hughes and Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630–1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
[3] This article is based on and expands work that will appear in chapter 3 of a forthcoming book, William Victor Smith, Every Word Seasoned with Grace: A Textual Study of the Funeral Sermons of Joseph Smith. I would like to thank Robin S. Jensen of the Joseph Smith Papers Project and the staff of the LDS Church History Library for help with the documents considered in this work. I also thank Margaret Averill for her careful editorial advice.
[4] Spelled “Barns” in the 1820 US census, as well as in a number of other sources, for example, see The Elders Journal (Oct. 1837): 15.
[5] See, Lorenzo Dow Barnes, first small journal, page 1, holograph, MS 1436, LDS Church History Library (CHL), Salt Lake City, Utah. See also his second small journal, pages 53, 118. MS 1436, CHL.
[6] Dunklin hoped that ongoing negotiations between displaced Mormons and Jackson County residents would resolve the issue without militia action. They did not, but Dunklin’s delay left the Camp without its primary purpose. For a brief discussion of the political, religious, and documentary issues of Zion’s Camp see Matthew C. Godfrey, Brenden W. Rensink, Alex D. Smith, Max H. Parkin, and Alexander L. Baugh, Documents, Vol. 4: April 1834–September 1835, vol. 4 in The Joseph Smith Papers series, edited by Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 48–96.
[7] Similarly named groups in the LDS Church now function as general and regional officers. In these early times, however, it was only the “presidents” of the Seventy that were classed with the general hierarchy of Mormonism in a practical sense, despite the entire quorum having nascent high authority according to an April 1835 revelation. On the revelation see, for example, William V. Smith, “Early Mormon Priesthood Revelations: Text, Impact, and Evolution,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 48, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 1–84.
[8] On Barnes’s early mission work and travels, see Davis Bitton, “Kirtland as a Center of Missionary Activity, 1830–1838,’’ BYU Studies 11, no. 4 (1971): 501. Barnes was named a member of the short-lived Adam-ondi-Ahman high council in 1838. See also Andrew Jenson, Latter-Day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Company, 1920), 307–08. Also, Lorenzo D. Barnes reminiscences and diaries, 1834–1839, MS 1436, CHL.
[9] Barnes was in the Philadelphia region in late 1839. On Barnes’s work there see, for example, Times and Seasons 2, no. 1 (Nov. 1, 1840): 106–07. Barnes was often working in the Chester County area. See Conference Minutes, Times and Seasons 2, no. 14 (May 15, 1841): 412–13; Conference Minutes, Nauvoo, Aug. 16, 1841, Times and Seasons 2, no. 21 (Sept. 1, 1841): 521. Barnes was appointed clerk of the Nauvoo conference. Barnes was on occasion a “traveling agent” for the Nauvoo Times and Seasons. Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt (New York: Russell Brothers, 1874), 331. See also an amplified version of other texts generating a pseudepigraphal work, “Journal of Don Carlos Smith,” which appears in B. H. Roberts, ed. History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1902–1912), 4:394–95; Lucy Mack Smith history, 1845, Box 1, fd. 26, MS 2049, CHL. See Dan Vogel, History of Joseph Smith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A Source and Text-Critical Edition, 8 vols. (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2015), 4:390, note 27. The “Don C. Smith journal” appears in the appendix to Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool, England, 1853), 283–88.
[10] Lorenzo D. Barnes, Letter to Elijah Malin, Jan. 9, 1842, Journal History of the Church 1896–2001, vol. 14, CR 100 127, CHL.
[11] The idea of a license was a common tradition among itinerant preachers and in particular, Methodists. It functioned in Mormonism in the same way as a kind of letter of recommendation, but also as a badge of authority. See for example, George A. Smith, Letter to Brigham Young, Feb. 9, 1840, CR 1234 1, CHL.
[12] See, Journal of Hayward Thomas, page 1, MS 1434, CHL. John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2012), 65–79.
[13] Peter L. Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, 3 vols. (Provo: Religious Studies Center, 1997–2012), 1:165. On the apostles’ encouragement to Barnes, see Journal of Wilford Woodruff, Oct. 29, 1840, MS 1352, CHL; Scott G. Kenny, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 9 vols. typescript (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1983–1985), 1:543.
[14] See Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, vol. 1, items 115, 116; Times and Seasons 3, no. 1 (Nov. 15, 1841): 529.
[15] See Barnes’s report of arrival to Parley Pratt in Roberts, History of the Church, 4:569–70. Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, 1:151. “Pilgrim” appeared as a broadside in 1842; it gave Barnes’s faith-history in verse. No publisher was indicated.
[16] Woodruff took excerpts from his journal about the incident and put them in a letter to Times and Seasons editor John Taylor. Taylor published a version in the May 15, 1845 issue. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, May 1, 1845, MS 1352, CHL; Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 2:541.
[17] Woodruff journal, Apr. 26, 1845, Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 2:540.
[18] Editor Thomas Ward noted Barnes’s passing in his January 1843 Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star (hereafter Millennial Star) editorial and then inserted a long poem about Barnes. Ward noted that Barnes died at 3:15 in the morning (Millennial Star 3, no. 9 [Jan. 1843]: 159, 160).
[19] The source passage probably refers to Jacob, not Joseph. See Joseph Smith Diary, Apr. 16, 1843; Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson, eds., Journals, Vol. 2: 1841–1843, vol. 2 in The Joseph Smith Papers series, edited by Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2008), 359.
[20] Ibid.
[21] The bodies of Barnes and another Mormon missionary who had died in Britain took the journey to Utah with the first group of emigrants financed by the Church’s Perpetual Emigrating Fund (Abraham O. Smoot Company). The group arrived in Salt Lake City, September 3, 1852. Orson Pratt preached a reburial sermon for the two deceased missionaries on September 12, 1852 (Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 4:145–48). George D. Watt captured a shorthand audit of a portion of the sermon. See “Historian’s Office Reports of Speeches, 1845–1885,” CR 100 317, CHL.
[22] Woodruff’s epitaph suggests his intention of making the Mormon temple blessings available to Barnes, posthumously. There is now a large literature regarding both early LDS temple practice/ritual and doctrines as well as current temple use among Mormons. For an interesting overview from a century ago with historic photographs, see James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord (Salt Lake City: The Deseret News, 1912). For a contextual picture of Joseph Smith’s sealing theology, see Samuel Brown, “Early Mormon Adoption Theology and the Mechanics of Salvation, Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 3–52; also Samuel Morris Brown, In Heaven as it is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), chaps. 7, 8.
[23] Andrew Jackson’s designated presidential successor, Martin Van Buren, was in office. Van Buren was above all a political strategist and far less an ideologue than Jackson. Founder of two-party politics in America, Van Buren may have felt sympathy for Mormons in the Missouri violence, but holding Missouri liable for Mormon losses was outside the presidential and congressional Venn diagram. See Howe, What Hath God Wrought, chap. 10. Indeed, the Age of Jackson saw citizen violence in America reach an apex only superseded by war. On Smith’s mission to Washington for redress, see Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism’s Founder (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 391–402.
[24] Matthew L. Davis letter, Washington, DC to Mrs. Matthew L. Davis, New York City, New York, Feb. 6, 1840, MS 522, CHL.
[25] In particular, Susan Conrad, Letter to Mary Wickersham Woolley, Aug. 5, 1844, MS 8081, CHL. The Woolley letter passed through the hands of Mark Hofmann to the LDS church in 1985 but does not appear to be a forgery. However, it has not been subjected to complete forensic analysis. See Richard E. Turley, Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 392 (item 436). See also, Jeffery O. Johnson, “The Document Diggers and Their Discoveries: A Panel,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 55–56. Mary Wickersham grew up in Pennsylvania but her family moved west to Ohio as she reached adulthood. A young man in her circle of West Chester friends came west shortly after, possibly in search of Mary, and Edwin Dilworth Woolley married Mary Wickersham in 1831. See Leonard J. Arrington, From Quaker to Latter-day Saint: Bishop Edwin D. Woolley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 42, 45–48.
[26] See Susan C. Wilkinson autograph album, circa 1837–1844; 1860–1861, MS 3466, CHL. Several Conrad families lived in Baltimore in 1837 as shown by city directories of the time. The Baltimore Conrads did business as grocers and tavern keeps among other things. The November entries have the flavor of separation. Whether Conrad lived there some time or was only visiting is unknown.
[27] Conrad, “Autograph Album,” entries 61, 39 are signed “William.” Conrad’s brother, David, had married William Wilkinson’s sister Margaret in 1836. See also William’s death notice, “Died,” Salt Lake Herald, Jun. 29, 1889, 8.
[28] The January 20, 1840, letter read, “Virtue is one of the most prominant principles that enables us to have confidence in approaching our Father who is in heaven in order to ask wisdom at his hand therefore if thou wilt cherish this principle in thine heart thou mayest ask with all Confidence before him and it shall be poured out upon thine head and thou shalt not lack any thing that thy soul desires in truth and again the Lord shall bless this house and none of them shall fail because they turned not away the servants of the Lord from their doors even so Amen.” See Ensign (Sept. 1985): 77–78. The idea of virtue generally meant honest unselfish service, performing moral duties out of love for God and his laws, or out of recognition of human fundamental rights, and it was often used in that way in political discourse. Given Joseph Smith’s political frustrations in Washington, it was probably a topic that occupied his mind. He used the same idea in his 1838 letter from Liberty Jail excerpted as Doctrine and Covenants section 121.
[29] When George Q. Cannon passed through Philadelphia in December 1860, he noted “I also visited Mr. & Sister Wilkinson.” A year later, as missionary John D. T. McAllister passed through Philadelphia he wrote in the Autograph Album, “William B. Wilkinson and Wife, My dear Brother and Sister in the N.[ew and] E.[verlasting] Covenant . . .” showing the Wilkinson was now baptized as a Mormon. (George Q. Cannon journal, Dec. 2–6, 1860, CHL. The Cannon journal was recently digitally published by the Church Historian’s Press as The Journal of George Q. Cannon, www.churchhistorianspress.org/george-q-cannon). For McAllister, see the Conrad Autograph Album, entry 66. I use “entry” rather than page number since the book is not paginated and some pages contain more than one autograph/verse. Other pages are illustrations published with the book. I count these as entries though no handwriting appears on them. Blank pages are not counted.
[30] Johnson, “Document Diggers,” confuses the Conrad and Wilkinson families, probably assuming that Susan and William were married before Conrad’s 1840 Mormon baptism, rather than applying Smith’s compliments to William’s parents. However, Conrad’s records show she was unmarried after Joseph Smith’s death. For example, see Conrad, “Autograph Album,” entry 8. The narrative is slightly complicated by Susan Wilkinson’s death notice: “Her home in Philadelphia was always open for the Elders and in her mother’s home she helped entertain the Prophets Joseph and Hyrum Smith” (Death Notice, Susan H. Wilkinson, Deseret News, Apr. 11, 1888). Apparently both the Conrad and Wilkinson homes were friendly to Latter-day Saints prior to the marriage of William Wilkinson and Susan Conrad. William’s sister Margaret had also married into the Conrad family (she married Susan’s brother, David Conrad [1807–1857]). Widowed, Margaret also came with the James S. Brown com-pany with her daughter Tacy. On the Brown company, see “Third Independent Company,” Deseret News Weekly (Oct. 8, 1862): 113.
[31] Jill Mulvay Deer, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrock, and Matthew J. Grow, eds., The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 615. The Fifty Years volume makes the same error as Johnson in terms of the Conrad and Wilkinson marriage date. United States census records show that Conrad had three children, all of whom migrated to Utah with her and her husband in 1862. See “Probate Court,” Salt Lake Herald, Jul. 17, 1889. Also see the obituary of Conrad’s first child, Robert Morris Wilkinson (1845[6?]–1928), Salt Lake Telegram, May 21, 1928, 8.
[32] Conrad, Letter to Woolley, CHL. Death notice, Susan H. Wilkinson, Deseret News, Apr. 11, 1888.
[33] Woodruff boxed up the letters and the rest of Barnes’s effects and intended to ship them to Nauvoo for the care of the Church historian. (Woodruff journal, Apr. 23, 1845; Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 2:538–39). Barnes’s papers and property, including his correspondence with Conrad, are largely missing from Church archives.
[34] Indeed, Woodruff refers to Susan Conrad as Barnes’s “intended.” (Woodruff Journal, Feb. 20–22, 1845, MS 1352, CHL; Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 2:510–16).
[35] Barnes’s reputation was still strong decades later. George Q. Cannon wrote, “I am perfectly satisfied there are men who will be counted worthy of that glory who never had a wife; there are men probably in this world now, who will receive exaltation, who never had a wife at all, or probably had but one. But what is necessary for such a case? It must be perfection before God, and a proof of willingness on their part, if they had the opportunity. I will instance the case of a man whom you perhaps know by reputation, namely that of Elder Lorenzo D. Barnes. He was a faithful man in the Church, a man of zeal, a man of integrity, a man who did all in his power to magnify his holy Priesthood, and he died when upon a foreign mission before he had one wife. The Lord will judge that man, as he will all others, according to his works and the desires of his heart, because had he lived, and had had the opportunity, I am fully satisfied he would have obeyed that law. I do not doubt that he will receive exaltation in the presence of God.” The law Cannon was speaking of was plural marriage (for eternity) (George Q. Cannon sermon, “Difference Between the True Church of Christ and the Churches of the World . . .” Oct. 31, 1880, Journal of Discourses, 22:124–25). On Woodruff’s subsequent visits with Conrad-Wilkinson, see Journal of Wilford Woodruff, Nov. 26, 1849, Feb. 9, 1864, MS 1352, CHL; Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 3:496, 6:156–57.
[36] Ibid. 6:156.
[37] D. Michael Quinn discusses Conrad and Barnes in his Same Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 139. Quinn notes that a Lorenzo D. Barnes married an Amanda Wilson in Ohio, 1841. However, this Barnes and Wilson had a child in 1852. Hence this is not the Lorenzo Barnes of this paper. See Mary Leora Smith death certificate, Jun. 22, 1923, Sunfield, Eaton, Michigan, Division of Vital Records, Lansing, Michigan.
[38] A term I borrow from the political discourse surrounding Andrew Jackson. Jackson had a group of confidants outside his presidential cabinet officers. The Kitchen Cabinet often had more to do with government and legislative outcomes than the constitutional one. In some respects, the same was true with Joseph Smith. Ultimately Clayton’s letter was destroyed (see below). For the notice of writing the June letter see William Clayton’s journal, Jun. 2, 1843, as found in George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995), 107.
[39] Grant traveled to Philadelphia in May 1843 after being appointed as the presiding authority in the area during an April 1843 Church conference in Nauvoo. Sessions, Mormon Thunder, chap. 4.
[40] Genealogical information on the Conrads is available through LDS records accessible online through https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:2:SPBP-HGQ. Generally, such records should be second sourced when possible. I have used census records and personal records (diaries, letters, etc.) whenever possible to build that source structure.
[41] J. M. Grant, Letter to Joseph Smith, Aug. 17, 1843, Joseph Smith Collection, Box 3, fd. 5, MS 155, CHL. Some spelling and punctuation modernized.
[42] Grant’s sister may have been the object of a (refused) proposal by Joseph Smith. See D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 527.
[43] William Clayton journal, Aug. 31, 1843. The original diary is not available for inspection, however the text may be found in the D. Michael Quinn papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. See also, Vogel, History of Joseph Smith, 5:669n486.
[44] By September, Emma had apparently softened again. See Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 498–99.
[45] See Wilford Woodruff’s journal for a report of the circumstances and the sermon. See also Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 2:226, and Smith, Seasoned with Grace, chap. 3, forthcoming. See also, “Sermon delivered at Nauvoo temple on Sunday April 16, 1843,” Book of Abraham Project, http://boap.org/LDS/Parallel/1843/16Apr43.html.
[46] Barnes to Malin, Jan. 9, 1843.
[47] It’s highly unlikely that Clayton was acting on his own—he makes no mention of Conrad as a prospect for plural marriage (to himself), something he is very candid about with his other plural wives and prospects. Joseph Smith’s revelation on polygamy was dictated July 12, 1843. Interestingly, Joseph Smith’s proposals and Grant’s response letter fall to the before and after sides of the July revelation. For a contextual discussion of the July revelation, see William V. Smith, Textual Studies in the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, forthcoming). Clayton’s letters to Conrad may have been written in the same way that Clayton wrote to one Sarah Crooks in his own behalf at Joseph Smith’s insistence. Clayton wrote to Crooks having secured passage for her to Nauvoo from England through funds from Smith. When Crooks arrived in Nauvoo, Clayton fully explained his intention to marry her as a plural wife. It is interesting that Clayton’s full revelation of his intent to Crooks, something she seems to have been prepared for, took place on the evening of the day Clayton wrote the second letter to Conrad (Smith, Intimate Chronicle, 107). Crooks refused Clayton.
[48] Emphasis in the original text.
[49] Her obituary and autograph book shows that in her youth Conrad met and conversed with many of the leading lights of early Mormonism like Parley Pratt and Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
The history behind a letter that was written by missionary Jedediah Morgan Grant to Joseph Smith, which contained information about Susan Hough Conrad and her brief love writings with a missionary who was serving in England named Lorenzo Dow Barnes.
[post_title] => A Documentary Note on a Letter to Joseph Smith. Romance, Death, and Polygamy: The Life and Times of Susan Hough Conrad and Lorenzo Dow Barnes [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 49.4 (Winter 2016): 87–108The history behind a letter that was written by missionary Jedediah Morgan Grant to Joseph Smith, which contained information about Susan Hough Conrad and her brief love writings with a missionary who was serving in England named Lorenzo Dow Barnes. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => a-documentary-note-on-a-letter-to-joseph-smith-romance-death-and-polygamy-the-life-and-times-of-susan-hough-conrad-and-lorenzo-dow-barnes [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:48:59 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:48:59 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=18959 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures
Keith Parry
Dialogue 18.4 (Winter 1984): 65–80
Shortly after the church was organized, one of Joseph Smith’s main priorities during his lifetime was preaching to the Native Americans, who he believed to be the descendants of the Lamanites.
Joseph Smith's Life
Routinely, in speech and print, Church authorities and other Mormon commentators align the Mormon present and the Book of Mormon past in the following manner: We possess a unique understanding of the Indians. They are Lamanites, descendants of the Book of Mormon peoples, sprung from the House of Israel. The Book of Mormon was written for them in particular, so that they might be redeemed from the curse which fell upon their ancestors. As custodians of this record of their past, a sacred record of their heritage and destiny, we have a duty to ensure that the Indians regain their true identity. We accepted that responsibility from the first- our missionaries went among the Lamanites soon after the Church was restored. Since then, our prophets have seen to it that we have done our duty by the Indians. Now, more than ever, we must meet our obligations, for President Kimball has said that "the day of the Lamanite is surely here and we are God's instrument in helping to bring to pass the prophecies" of the Book of Mormon (TSGD 1978, 74).[1]
This statement expresses a sacred history, one to be faithfully accepted rather than tested. In it, the most substantial fact standing between the days of the Book of Mormon and the present is likely to be the "first mission to the Indians," undertaken by Parley P. Pratt and his companions in the winter of 1830-31. A pivotal element in the sacred history, the first mission stands for the inspiration of the Book of Mormon, for the unwavering Mormon commitment to the Lamanites over 150 years, and for the missionary zeal which Mormons should emulate now and in the future. Certainly, it will be taken to represent the quality of Mormon-Indian relations in Joseph Smith’s time. But two Mormon classics suggest that this popular interpretation of the first mission is too simple—that it is more valid as a reflection of the Mormon present and as a didactic tool for shaping the future than as a balanced depiction of the Mormon past. Together, Parley Pratt’s Autobiography and Joseph Smith’s History of the Church point to a complex of questions, and to their answers. What part did the Book of Mormon play in Mormon relations with the Indians during the Joseph Smith years? What emphasis did Mormons place upon missionary work with the Indians in those years? What effect did the gentile presence have on the relations of Mormons and Indians in that period? Did those relations prefigure developments during the Brigham Young years, and even into the present?
Addressing these questions, this essay offers a critique of the popular capsule history as it portrays the relations of Mormons and Indians in Joseph Smith's time. In its essentials, the critique does not draw upon secular analyses, for historians have written little enough on the topic. Rather, it is derived from hallowed Mormon texts: Parley Pratt's Autobiography, as the source of most accounts of the first Indian mission,[2] and Joseph Smith's History, which refers sporadically to the Lamanites as it chronicles the westward movement of the Mormons, from New York to Kirtland and Missouri, and then onward to Nauvoo. The critique rests upon an interpretation of what is and what is not to be found in those texts. So, only in a limited sense is this essay about a particular period in history. In a broader view, it is about the histories of a period—or at least about those which are most available to Mormons. These variant versions of history each have something to tell about Mormon-Indian relations in the present as well as in the past.
Parley Pratt’s Autobiography: The First Indian Mission
A few months after the restoration of the Church of Ghrist by Joseph Smith, a revelation was "given through the mouth of this Prophet, Seer and Translator, in which Elders Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, Ziba Peterson and myself were appointed to go into the wilderness, through the western States, and to the Indian territory." So writes Parley Pratt, who then describes the westward journey from New York, which they began in October 1830: "After travelling for some days we called on an Indian nation at or near Buffalo; and spent part of a day with them, instructing them in the knowledge of the record of their forefathers. We were kindly received, and much interest was manifested by them. . . . . We made a present of two copies of the Book of Mormon to certain of them who could read, and repaired to Buffalo” (1979, 47). Preaching with great success among Sidney Rigdon's congregation at Kirtland, the missionaries established the Mormon faith in Ohio. Then, joined by Frederick G. Williams, they visited the Wyandots in the western part of the state. Again they were well received, and they laid the Book of Mormon before the tribe. The Wyandots "rejoiced in the tidings, bid us God speed, and desired us to write to them in relation to our success among the tribes further west, who had already removed to the Indian territory, where these expected soon to go" (p. 51).
Early in 1831, after tra veiling 15 00 miles, mostly on foot, the missionaries reached Independence, Missouri. With little delay, three of them crossed into Indian territory, "tarried one night" with the Shawnees, then "entered among the Delawares." That tribe's chief "had ever been opposed to the introduction of missionaries)) among them. At first, he refused to ca1l his council together, but he changed his mind as he "at last began to understand the nature of the Book [of Mormon]." After he and his council listened to Cowdery's "glad news," the chief told the missionaries that the Delawares were "new settlers in this place" and had much to do in the spring, "but we will build a council house, and meet together, and you shall read to us and teach us more concerning the Book of our fathers and the will of the Great Spirit” (pp. 52–56).
According to Pratt, excitement and interest were contagious among the Delawares as the missionaries "continued for several days to instruct the old chief and many of his tribe." But then:
The excitement . . . reached the frontier settlements in Missouri, and stirred up the jealousy and envy of the Indian agents and sectarian missionaries to that degree that we were soon ordered out of the Indian country as disturbers of the peace; and even threatened with the military in case of non-compliance. We accordingly departed from the Indian country, and came over the line, and commenced laboring in Jackson County, Missouri, among the whites.
Concluding this account, Pratt trusts that "at some future day, when the servants of God go forth in power to the remnant of Joseph, some precious seed will be found growing in their hearts, which was sown by us in that early day" (p. 57). Apart from a casual reference, his autobiography says nothing more about the first mission to the Indians.
Joseph Smith’s History: The First Indian Mission
The History of the Church provides some background for Parley Pratt's narrative. In September 1830, a revelation given through Joseph Smith instructed Oliver Cowdery to "go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them; and inasmuch as they receive thy teachings, thou shalt cause my church to be established among them” (HC 1:111). Some days later, responding to “a great desire . . . manifested by several of the Elders respecting the remnants of the house of Joseph, the Lamanites, residing in the west/' the Prophet sought and received further divine guidance, and he then instructed Whitmer, Peterson, and Pratt to proceed with Cowdery on the missionary venture (HC 1:116-19).
The History also includes a letter from Missouri, where Oliver Cowdery had "nothing particular to write as concerning the Lamanites" (HC 1: 182). In a footnote, B. H. Roberts claims that the first Indian mission "is a very prominent event in early Church ·history” (HC 1: 183), but such a conclusion could not be deduced from the text, which makes no mention of the Cowdery party's missionary work among the Indians. Though Pratt returned to the east to give him "verbal information/' Smith notes only that "the mission to Western Missouri and the gathering of the Saints to that place was the most important subject which then [in May 1831] engrossed the attention of the Church" (HC 1:181-82). Later in the year, after the leaders of the Church had assembled in Missouri, that land having been "consecrated for the gathering of the Saints," the Prophet records that "the first Sabbath after our arrival in Jackson county, Brother W. W. Phelps preached to a western audience over the boundary of the United States, wherein were present specimens of all the families of the earth . . . [including] several of the Lamanites or Indians—representative of Shem" (HC 1:189-91). At that point in Smith’s account of the Missouri years, the Indian disappears as anything but a focus for Mormon-gentile polemics.
Joseph Smith’s History: The Missouri Years
Pratt asserts that Mormons and gentiles were soon at odds over Mormon contact with Indians on the Missouri frontier, blaming the demise of the mission among the Delawares upon "the Indian agents and sectarian missionaries.”[3] Similarly, Joseph Smith claims that, when the Jackson County mob confronted the Mormons in 1833, "most of the clergy acting as missionaries to the Indians, or to the frontier inhabitants, were among the most prominent characters, that rose up . . . to destroy the rights of the Church.” He reports that he responded in print to the "slanderous tract" of a clergyman "sent by the Missionary Society to civilize and Christianize the heathen of the west," who 'had "used his influence among both Indians and whites to overthrow the Church in Jackson county” (HC 1: 372-73). He follows this entry with the text of a manifesto in which the "citizens of Jackson county" express an intention to "rid our society" of the Mormons. R. W. Cummins, the Indian agent responsible for the expulsion of the Cowdery party from Indian territory, is listed as one of the signatories (HC 1:3 7 4-7 6).
The first evidence of a concern among Mormons that their relations with Indians might provoke gentile hostility is found in a letter which Smith attributes to Frederick G. Williams, writing from Kirtland "to the Saints in Missouri” in 1833. By then the Prophet's second counselor, Williams refers to an earlier letter which claimed "that two Lamanites were at a meeting, and the following prophecy was delivered to them: — That they were our friends, and that the Lord had sent them there; and the time would soon come, when they would embrace the Gospel;' and, also, 'that if we will not fight for ourselves, the Indians will fight for us.'" Williams cautions, "Though all this may be true, yet, it is not needful that it should be spoken, for it is of no service to the Saints, and has a tendency to stir up the people to anger» (HC 1:417-19). However, an entry for 1836 shows that his warning was in vain. The "Minutes of a Public Meeting at Liberty, Missouri" describe Mormons as "objects of the deepest hatred and detestation to many of our citizens.” Then the Mormons
are charged, as they have hitherto been, with keeping up a constant communication with our Indian tribes on our frontiers, with declaring, even from the pulpit, that the Indians are a part of God's chosen people, and are destined by heaven to inherit this land, in common with themselves. We do not vouch for the correctness of these statements; but whether they are true or false, their effect has been the same in exciting our community (HC 2:450).
Having presented these minutes, the History documents two Mormon responses to the gentile agitation. According to the minutes of a “Public Meeting of the Saints in Clay County,” the focal Mormons denied "holding any communications with the Indians," assuring their gentile neighbors that they meant to stand "as ready to defend our country against their [the Indians'] barbarous ravages, as any other people" (HC 2: 453). In a letter addressed to the spokesmen for Clay County's gentiles, the leaders of the Church at Kirtland claim that the county's Mormons share "a decided determination to be among the first to repel any [Indian] invasion” (HC 2:458). But, despite their protestations, the Mormons were driven from Clay County. Two years later, in Caldwell County, Joseph Smith would again be required to deny that the Mormons “stir up the Indians to war, and to commit depredations" (HC 3:29).
Joseph Smith’s History: Nauvoo
When Joseph Smith's narrative passes to the Nauvoo years, his references to the Indians are again transformed. Most often, he records the presence in Nauvoo of Indian visitors. In 1841, Smith received Keokuk "and about one hundred chiefs and braves" of the Sac and Fox tribes, together with their families. He "instructed them in many things which the Lord had revealed unto me concerning their fathers, and the promises that were made concerning them in the Book of Mormon. I advised them to cease killing each other and . . . also to keep peace with the whites” (HC 4:401–2). Again, he reports "an interview with several Pottawatamie chiefs," adding an extract from Wilford Woodruff’s journal which attributes this speech to an Indian orator: "'We as a people have long been distressed and oppressed. We have been driven from our lands many times . . . . We have asked the Great Spirit to save us and let us live; and the Great Spirit has told us that he had raised up a great Prophet, chief, and friend, who would do us great good . . . . We have now come a great way to see you, and hear your words, and to have you tell us what to do.'" The Woodruff extract records that "Joseph was much affected and shed tears” at these words. In response, he told the chiefs that their fathers were once a great people, "but they left the Great Spirit, and would not hear his words or keep them. The Great Spirit left them, and they began to kill one another, and they have been poor and afflicted until now." Showing them the Book of Mormon—"the book which your fathers made"—Smith instructed them not to kill Indians or whites "but [to] ask the Great Spirit for what you want, and it will not be long before the Great Spirit will bless you, and you will cultivate the earth and build good houses like white men” (HC 5 :479-80). Other entries recording the visits of parties of Indians to Nauvoo are similarly phrased (HC 5:365; 6: 402).
One entry for the Nauvoo years contrasts with those just cited. The record of an "exploring excursion west" to the Pottawatamies, Jonathan Dunham's 1843 journal shows little of the missionary perspective. Lodged in the tribe's "main village," Dunham was clearly concerned to assess the potential of the area for Mormon settlement. He notes that the "water is good and the climate wholesome. Some considerable timber, though no very great sawing timber." He spent one day "in looking up the creek for a mill seat, and found one and two beds of iron ore." Yet Dunham did not lack a missionary impulse. Impressed by the tenor of Indian worship, he notes: "All that is wanting to make them the happiest people in the world is the Gospel . . . and to feel its power. Their sectarian creeds and ceremonies would go to the moles and bats soon” (HC 5: 541--49).
Indians and the Book of Mormon in the Joseph Smith Years
Together, Parley Pratt’s Autobiography and Joseph Smith’s History point to four related dimensions of the Mormon approach to the Indians in the Joseph Smith years: (1) the role of the Book of Mormon; (2) the relative priority of the missionary task among the Indians; (3) the place of Mormons and Indians in a society which was dominated by gentiles; and (4) the manner in which the Joseph Smith years prefigure the rest of Mormon history.
In 1830, even before the first mission, Parley Pratt and others felt a concern for the "remnants of the house of Joseph" because they accepted the Book of Mormon as scripture. Received as such, it gave a particular impetus to missionary work among the Lamanites. As well, it provided much of the substance of the missionary message to them. Pratt, Cowdery, and Smith all preached the Book of Mormon to the Indians, presenting it as an indigenous American scripture. Moreover, though Indians might reject the Mormon claim that it was the record of their Lamanite forefathers, the Book of Mormon structured the way in which Mormons understood the problems faced by the Indians. Both Cowdery and Smith attributed the desperate plight of the Indians to the moral defects of their ancestors. Cowdery told the Delawares that their forefathers once "prospered, and were strong and mighty. . . . But they became wicked" (Pratt 1979, 55). Reading the Book of Mormon past into the present, Joseph Smith told the supplicant Pottawatamies why their "fathers" ·had been "poor and afflicted until now" (HC 5: 480).
The Book of Mormon set the measure of the degeneracy of the Lamanites. At the same time, it gave direction to the missionary task among them. Both functions were implicit for Cowdery when he told the Delawares that their ancestors "cultivated the earth; built buildings and cities, and abounded in all good things, as the pale faces now do" (Pratt 1979, 55). Here, he drew upon Mormon scripture to invest the life style of the pioneer farmer and its environing “civilization” with absolute moral value, while denying any value to the life style of the Indian. In rescuing Indians from their "heathen worship,” Mormons would do more than save them from "drunken frolic" and a supposed propensity for violence (HC 4: 401 ; 5: 480, 542, 548; 6: 402). In the Mormon view, the spiritual regeneration of the Lamanites would flow from their acceptance of Mormon teachings and would lead them to "cultivate the earth and build good houses Eke white men" (HC 5: 480). Beyond that, they would "become great, and have plenty to eat and good clothes to wear" (Pratt 1979, 55). In effect, then, the Book of Mormon sacralized the attitudes and values of the American pioneer) even as it engendered a missionary commitment to the Lamanite. Together, these otherwise disparate postures defined the Mormon missionary task as the displacement in the Indian of an identifiably Indian culture.
Missionary Work with the Indians and the Building Up of Zion
While shaping the Mormon understanding of the Indians, the Book of Mormon provided an impetus for missionary contact with them, substance for the missionary message to them, and direction for the missionary task among them. That task was tied to the work of building Zion, itself a prerequisite to Christ's millennial reign. In his History, Joseph Smith declared that “one of the most important points in the faith of the Church . . . is the gathering of Israel (of whom the Lamanites constitute a part)," and he continued: "In speaking of the gathering, we mean . . . the gathering of the elect of the Lord out of every nation on earth, and bringing them to the place of the Lord of Hosts, when the city of righteousness shall be built” (HC 2: 357-58). Certainly, the revelation which gave rise to the first Indian mission also set in motion the building of that city. It did not instruct the departing missionaries to establish Zion's location, specifying only that "it shall be given hereafter" and "shall be on the borders by the Lamanites" (HC 1: 111). But there is much to suggest that, for Joseph Smith, the mission assigned to Cowdery was an intentional first step in 'locating Zion and in relocating the Mormon community. Pratt leaves the matter open, saying only that he was appointed "to go into the wilderness, through the western States, and to the Indian territory" (1979, 4 7). Consistent with that mandate, missionary visits to the Indians near Buffalo and to the Wyandots were made hurriedly as Cowdery's party pressed onward to the western frontier. When access to western Indians was denied them, only Pratt returned to the East to give a report. Then, in his narrative, the Prophet made no mention of the frustrated mission to the Indians, but wrote instead of gathering the Saints to Missouri. It seems that he "dreamed of a city in Missouri" for "his migrating disciples," and did not share their "illusion" of an "immediate, wholesale conversion of the 'Lamanites'" (Evans 1940, 61).
In any event, Joseph Smith’s History does not include an account of the first Indian mission. Moreover, it lacks an extended discussion of missionary work with the Indians or of a Mormon duty toward them. Nothing in it suggests that Smith saw the work as essential to the "building up of Zion"—a task which found its primary expression in the creation of a viable Mormon community. But such a judgment rests on the virtual absence of certain topics from the History.[4] To extend and refine that judgment other sources must be employed.
Assessing the priority of missionary work among the Lamanites during Joseph Smith's lifetime, Lawrence G. Coates refers to the polemical exchanges of the Missouri years to argue that gentile suspicions made it difficult for Mormons to involve themselves with Indians. He also shows that Mormon contact with Indians could excite the suspicion of gentiles even after the move from
Missouri to Nauvoo 1969, 56). But he acknowledges that) in Nauvoo, Indians “were unable to contribute their nomadic skills to a growing, vibrant Mormon community. There was little attraction for the wandering red man" (p. 5 7). Earlier, in Kirtland—far from the tensions of the frontier—“even after the Mormons . . . had gained a measure of economic strength, mission work among the Indians continued to suffer because a higher priority was placed on building a temple . . . than on teaching the savage." While the temple was under construction, only three elders seem to have been "sent to the Indians, and their stay was very short" (pp. 43-44).
Brigham Young was one of the three who were called to the Indian work at Kirtland in 1835. As leader, he was to "open the door of the gospel to the remnants of Joseph, who dwell among the Gentiles”—that is, writes Wayne B. Lynn, to the "many groups of Indians . . . living peacefully among the white settlers in the eastern . . . United States," where they were much more accessible than western Indians to Mormon missionary work. Later in the year, at a conference held in Freedom, New York, it was resolved that Young "go immediately . . . to an adjacent Indian tribe to open the door of salvation to them. Hands were laid upon his head [and upon the heads of his companions] for that purpose." Young "mentions his call" and reports the travels which ensued from it in his own history. But "if any Indians were contacted enroute, the result apparently was not worthy of mention." Nor were Indians mentioned during 1836 and 1837, when Young engaged in "short missions" to the "Eastern States.” It appears that “little, if anything, was accomplished by this group [ of three] among the Lamanites" (n.d., 11-14).
A different impression is left by Robert B. Flanders's account of events at the Wisconsin "pinery," which served for three years as a source of timber for the temple and other projects at Nauvoo. "Church leaders thought that sawmills . . . might be operated in the Winnebago Indian preserve at no cost other than for outfit and equipment” (1965, 183). However, as soon as the second working party arrived at the mill, late in 1842,
they began to have trouble with the Indians. The Winnebagos . . . demanded provisions under threat of burning the mill; they claimed . . . that the timber was rightly theirs. But they were put off with a Iittle food. Again in the winter of 1843-1844 the Indians threatened to make trouble, this time by putting the government on the Mormons for poaching. If, on the other hand, the Indians received food, they offered to intercede with the Indian agent to allow the Mormons to cut . . . where the best timber was (p. 184).
By 1844, the leaders at the pinery were advising its abandonment—but not on account of the Indians. In letters to Joseph Smith, Lyman Wight and George Miller proposed that they take the pinery colony to Texas "and there establish a Mormon mission. They would sell the mills, urge the friendly Indians to sell their lands to the government, and all go west together. . . . The Wisconsin Indian friends . . . would there aid in· large-scale conversions of Indians." The :letters from the pinery "struck fire in the Prophet's heart" (pp. 290-91). Within a week, Smith and his advisers had elaborated the proposal into a scheme whereby the Mormons would render aid to an independent Texas "by settling west Texas, thus creating a neutral buffer zone between the Texans on the one side and the Mexicans and perhaps the Indians on the other." An emissary had been "dispatched to Austin to begin negotiations with the Texas government” (p. 294).
Along with the Autobiography and the History, these three sources clarify Mormon priorities in the Joseph Smith years. Certainly, the Book of Mormon impelled a number of elders to serve as missionaries among the Lamanites. But, as Brigham Young shows, the most dedicated Mormons were not always imbued with a particular concern for Indians. Even so, it seems that the initiative for Indian missionary work lay more with the members of the Church than with Joseph Smith. The revelation which sent Parley Pratt to Missouri was shaped by a "great desire” expressed by some of the elders; the Texas proposal was made by the pinery leaders and backed by colony members. While Smith was quick to respond to both initiatives, he embedded them in Mormon settlement plains. He sent Jonathan Dunham to scout for a settlement site in Pottawatamie territory. He sent colonists to the Winnebago "preserve" to cut timber for Nauvoo. Neither project was conceived as a missionary outreach to the Indians who visited Nauvoo. The Prophet's design for that community called for English tradesmen rather than dispossessed Indian hunters. In sum, as Coates has noted, the gentile threat is not sufficient to explain the absence of a consistent Mormon missionary thrust among the Lamanites.
Evidently, in Joseph Smith's time, Mormon relations with Indians were beset by contradictions. The Book of Mormon afforded a positive view of a distant Indian past and of an Indian future which Mormons themselves were to mould through missionary work. But it also offered a view which allowed Mormons to distance themselves from their Indian contemporaries. They did so in Missouri, disclaiming any particular interest in the Indians when Mormon survival was at stake. There, as elsewhere, the task of building Zion. was not allowed to wait upon the conversion of the Lamanites. An ambivalent theology of the Lamanite allowed Mormon and Indian interests to be distinguished so that Mormons could practice a flexible “politics of the Indian.”
Mormons and Indians in a Gentile Polity
Mormon relations with the Indians were tied in complex ways to the gentile presence. Attributing religious significance both to the territory and to the Constitution of the United States, Mormons had to accomplish their premillennial tasks within a polity which was dominated by gentiles and which effectively excluded Indians from citizenship. The nature and the potential of this ethnic triad are discernible in the related issues of property rights and threats of violence. In clamoring for the expulsion of the Saints, the gentiles in Missouri implied their own vulnerability to an alliance of Mormons and Indians. In responding to gentile threats of violence, Mormons sometimes hinted at such an alliance, though they also claimed that they stood with gentiles against the threatening "savages"—a pioneer epithet. In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith consistently urged Indians to forego violence among themselves and in their relations with whites. Yet, as Coates has noted, "Capitalizing upon his military image among the Indians> Smith frequently wore his Nauvoo Legion uniform. The Pottawatomies were so impressed that they invited the Mormons to join an alliance in which ten tribes had agreed to defend each other.” Smith demurred, but Brigadier General Henry King, the interpreter, was impelled to warn Iowa's governor: “It seems evident . . . that a grand conspiracy is about to be entered into between the Mormons and Indians to destroy all white settlements on the frontier” (Coates 1969, 56). Certainly, Smith did not decline the offer out of an inherent pacifism, for he accorded to Mormons the right to defend their lives and property. But he conceded no such right to the Indians, though he agreed that they had been much abused. Consistently, he interpreted recourse to violence on their part as a symptom of chronic Lamanite degeneracy rather than as an outcome of environmental disruption. Had he done otherwise, he would have called in question the underlying morality of the processes of the frontier, a morality which was grounded in the prophecies of the Book of Mormon.
Without justifying the actions and the attitudes of gentiles, the Book of Mormon validates their role as scourge to the fallen Indian (1 Ne. 22: 7). Though Joseph Smith found a place in his narrative for a protest made on behalf of the dispossessed Choctaws by one of their chiefs, he offered no comment other than that it provided a “specimen of the way the seed of Joseph are being ‘wasted before the Gentiles’” (HC 5:358–59). While he did not explicitly endorse the Indian removal policy of Andrew Jackson, "our venerable President," he suggests that the “joy that we shall feel . . . will be reward enough when it is shown that gathering them to themselves . . . is a wise measure” (HC 2:358–62). In 1844, when he became a. candidate for the American Presidency, "he said nothing about Indians" though his expansionist views were evident: "When we have the red man's consent, let the Union spread from the east to the west sea" (Coates 1969, 60; HC 6: 206).
Whatever Smith understood by "the red man's consent," it did not involve recognition of aboriginal title or other legal claims. At the pinery, the resources of an Indian "preserve" were treated as a free good. Having sympathized with the Pottawatamies over land they had already lost, the Prophet sent Jonathan Dunham to scout their territory for settlement. When visiting Sacs and Foxes "complained that they had been robbed of their lands by the whites," Smith agreed that "they had been wronged." But he countered that "we had bought this land and paid our money for if' before telling them not to sell any land in the future (HC 6: 402). Oliver Cowdery might promise that regenerated "red men" would "cultivate the earth in peace, in common with the pale faces, who were willing to believe and obey the same Book” (Pratt 1979, 55). But Mormon theology and practice conceded little to unregenerate foragers. Though Mormons spoke of an inheritance which they should share with Indians (2 Ne. 1: 5), they were as much involved as gentiles in the processes of the frontier. Like other Americans, they required that Indians accommodate themselves to those processes. At the same time, their millennial priorities distinguished them from gentiles. As millennialists on the one hand and as frontiersmen on the other, Mormons stood apart from gentiles and Lamanites. Yet, as the third member of an emergent ethnic system, they could find common ground with either.
Brigham Young and the Indians: Some Basic Continuities
For four decades after Joseph Smith's death, Mormons were more closely involved with Indians. In the Great Basin and southward, Mormons encountered viable Indian societies which had not yet been subordinated to American authority.[5] While the encounter produced "buckskin apostles," it also produced “Indian fighters.” Still, the God-given task of building Zion, with its premise of Mormon survival and prosperity, absorbed the energies of both, for their services were needed on the expanding frontier of Mormon settlement.[6] Along that frontier, Indians soon learned to distinguish between the “Mormon” and the “White man,” while “Americans” distinguished themselves from “Mormons” (Brooks 1944a, 18–19). Mormons and Indians were involved in the Mountain Meadows massacre of a gentile immigrant train (Brooks 1962). Mormons and Americans each suspected the other of attempting to activate Indian allies during the "Mormon conflict" with the United States (Furniss 1960, 161-62). Then, with American authority established in the Great Basin and Indians no longer a political factor, Brigham Young enlisted the aid of the United States in expelling them from the pale of Mormon settlement—an outcome which he had been seeking since 1850 (Christy 1978, 228–29).
Certainly, in the Brigham Young years, Mormon involvement with the Indians bore the stamp of that prophet's personality. As well, it was marked by the exigencies of settlement in the Great Basin. But, beyond the specifics of time and place, person and incident, the Brigham Young years were in various ways prefigured in Joseph Smith's time. Most obviously, the Book of Mormon continued to shape the Mormon understanding of the Lamanite. Yet that understanding was expressed in divergent "orientations" toward the Indian.[7] The "missionary" orientation fused condescension with an altruism which drew its strength from a prophetic view of the Lamanite future.[8] The "pioneer" orientation recognized the Indian as a rival—as a threat to Mormon interests or an impediment to their pursuit.[9] More evident when Mormons confronted Indians in the Great Basin, this almost secular perspective was incipient in Joseph Smith’s willingness to appropriate Indian land and resources for Mormon purposes.
Both the pioneer and the missionary perspectives were informed by the concept of the Lamanite, with its negative implications. Together, those perspectives supported a flexible theology of the Lamanite which let Mormons achieve pragmatic solutions to the problem of the Indian when altruism and the interests of the Mormon community were in tension. By giving priority to their millennial impulse, Mormons could pursue their own interests without regard for those of the Indian. They might argue, as Heber C. Kimball did, that Indians should not be paid for land which “‘belongs to our Father in heaven" (Larson 196-1, 314) . They might properly set aside the missionary task or subordinate it in other ways to that of building Zion. As in the Joseph Smith years, the Book of Mormon gave a pragmatic cast to relations with the Indians, and this in its turn gave greater latitude to Mormon relations with gentiles. The ethnic triad—more a matter of rhetoric in Joseph Smith’s time—was realized in action in the Great Basin.[10]
Parley P. Pratt and the Present
For the better part of seventy years, from the late 1880s, Mormons paid less attention to the Lamanites.[11] But, during the past three decades, their concern has been renewed. Once again, it bears the stamp of particular prophets—David O. McKay at first and then Spencer W. Kimball. Arguably, it is also a Mormon response to the growing political involvement of the Indian and the resurgence of Indian communities, not least in the American Southwest.[12] As in the Joseph Smith years, Mormons subscribe to a model of conversion which sees no value in Indian culture, and seeks to displace it, for example, through the placement program (Topper 1979). No less significant, though, for the relations of Mormons and Indians in the present, are their discrepant perceptions of the past.
Essentially, for Mormons, the "Indian history" of the Joseph Smith years has been collapsed into the story of the first mission to the Lamanites. That story has itself been reduced to a "ritualization" which focuses upon three ethnic stereotypes: dedicated Mormons, obstructive gentiles and incipiently responsive Lamanites.13 More specifically, this ritual history underscores a developing missionary impetus in the Church and, in particular, the renewed commitment to missionary work among the Lamanites (Britsch 1979, 22; Allen and Leonard 1976, 555-56). Coupled with Book of Mormon prophecy, Pratt's account now functions to validate the current missionary policies of the Church. But, as a representation of the Mormon past, it is history written backward. In expressing a commitment to the Lamanite, it gives Mormons the history they need—a sacred history in which altruism is untainted by self-interest, whether communal or personal. Of course, there is a historical continuity which links Parley Pratt’s journey with the present. It is the continuity of a missionary ideal which derives from the Book of Mormon. Mormons have, for a century and a half, shown a special concern for the Indian. But there is another continuity, a parallel continuity, to be discerned through a more critical approach to history. It is the continuity which carries the complexities of Joseph Smith's time through the Brigham Young years and into the present. Mormons will have to recognize that continuity if they are to cope with problems which are now arising in their relations with Indians—who have their own ritualized histories, and who are bringing them into the political arena (Parry n.d.).
Note: The Dialogue Foundation provides the web format of this article as a courtesy. There may be unintentional differences from the printed version. For citational and bibliographical purposes, please use the printed version or the PDFs provided online and on JSTOR.
[1] Though many other sources might have been cited, this composite statement drew in order upon: Burnett 1971, 12; Talmage 1976, 284; TSGD 1979, 194; Larsen 1966, 63; TSGD 1978, 69; Kimball 1971, 8; Doxey 1969, 198; MGD 1979, 145.
[2] Doxey 1969) 197; Evans 1940, 75; Petersen 1958, 55-59; Roberts 1965, 1: 220-25, 251-55; and TSGD, 1978, 70 all quote or paraphrase Pratt 1979, 47-57.
[3] Cowdery’s more vivid indictment specifies "Universalists, Atheists, Deists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and all the devils from the infernal pit" (Evans 1940, 75).
[4] A recent compilation of Smith’s personal writings points to the same conclusion. In it, the only indexed item which relates to his Indian contemporaries is a letter from Oliver Cowdery (Jesse 1984, 230–31).
[5] The competition for resources which led to the destruction of the "morally inferior" lifestyle of the Indian is discussed in Smaby 1975. See also Allen and Warner 1971; Euler 1966, 50-96; Peterson 1971.
[6] For missionary biographies, see Brooks 1944b and 1972; Brown 1960; Creer 1958; Little 1881; Smiley 1972. For early Mormon militia actions, see Christy 1978. For the role of the Indian mission on the frontier, see Campbell 1973; Peterson 1973, 212-13, and 1975.
[7] In a summary discussion of "stresses and strains" in Mormon society, O'Dea states that one of the "dilemmas" faced by Mormonism is that posed by "Mormon orientations to convert the Indians and their pioneer attitude of condescension and suspicion, as well of rivalry, toward them” (1957, 223). Here it is argued that O'Dea's "missionary" and "pioneer" orientations are not polar opposites, for they find common ground in the Book of Mormon. As well, they are not so much vocations as perspectives. Over time, a person might incline more or less toward one or the other, as Brigham Young did in his policies and pronouncements. See Larson 1963; O'Neil and Layton 1978.
[8] Condescension pervaded the missionary advocacy of Church authorities, as is seen in Jensen 1983. But, of all Mormons, the handful of men for whom missionary work with the Indians was a lifelong vocation were those least likely to hold that Indians were utterly degraded. See, for example, Jones 1960.
[9] In charge of the colonizing venture on the Little Colorado—officially an Indian mission—Lot Smith "became the symbol of trouble to the Indians" (Peterson 19 70, 412).
[10] Says Brooks of the Brigham Young years: "The three offer a triangle as intriguing as any provided by fiction" (1944a, 1).
[11] The responsibility of the Church toward the Indian disappears as a conference topic between 1890 and 1950 (Shepherd and Shepherd 1984, 241).
[12] In arguing that Mormons have an obligation to the Indian, Larsen notes: "In some states the Indian is becoming a factor to be reckoned with in the political power struggle" (1966, 58).
1985: Keith Parry “Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 18 No. 4 (1985): 65–80.
Shortly after the church was organized, one of Joseph Smith’s main priorities during his lifetime was preaching to the Native Americans, who he believed to be the descendants of the Lamanites.
[post_title] => Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 18.4 (Winter 1984): 65–80Shortly after the church was organized, one of Joseph Smith’s main priorities during his lifetime was preaching to the Native Americans, who he believed to be the descendants of the Lamanites. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => joseph-smith-and-the-clash-of-sacred-cultures [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-06-09 01:01:53 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-06-09 01:01:53 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16004 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Why the Prophet is a Puzzle: The Challenges of Using Psychological Perspectives to Understand the Character and Motivation of Joseph Smith, Jr.
Lawrence Foster
Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 1–35
This article will explore how one of the most open-ended psychological interpretations of Smith’s prophetic leadership and motivation might contribute to better understanding the trajectory of this extraordinarily talented and conflicted individual whose life has so deeply impacted the religious movement he founded and, increasingly, the larger world.
In 1945 Fawn McKay Brodie, a niece of David O. McKay, a Mormon General Authority and later president of the LDS Church, published a thoroughly researched, brilliantly written, and highly controversial biography of Joseph Smith Jr., entitled No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. Although Brodie was eventually excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of the disturbing questions her book raised for believing Mormons, her biography went on to become arguably the single most influential work of Mormon historical scholarship in the twentieth century—and certainly the best-known. Astonishingly, No Man Knows My History remained in print in a hardbound edition (with a final “Supplement” added in 1971) for a full fifty years until 1995, when its hardbound sales had decreased sufficiently that Knopf finally brought out the book in a paperbound edition. As Fawn Brodie flamboyantly portrayed the Mormon prophet, he was an enigma flinging down a challenge to his future biographers when he declared, in a funeral address before thousands of followers in Mormon Nauvoo several months before his murder in 1844, “You don’t know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it; I shall never understand it. . . . If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.”[1]
In 1973 the non-Mormon historian Jan Shipps took up the Mormon prophet’s challenge in “The Prophet Puzzle: Suggestions Leading Toward a More Comprehensive Interpretation of Joseph Smith,” a paper presented at the first conference of the John Whitmer Historical Association that subsequently appeared as the lead article in the first issue of the new Journal of Mormon History in 1974.[2] Shipps urged Mormon historians to begin to move beyond the two highly polarized and seemingly incompatible perspectives that had previously dominated almost all treatments of the Mormon prophet. On the one hand, believing Mormons typically portrayed Joseph Smith as God’s chosen prophet who could do no wrong. On the other hand, non-Mormon writers typically described him as a highly manipulative and psychologically disturbed scoundrel. Shipps suggested, instead, that any credible historical treatment of the Mormon prophet must take him as a whole human being and see him in all his complexity as a “harmonious human multitude,” as Carl Van Doren famously characterized Benjamin Franklin.[3]
Although Shipps did not elaborate on precisely how such a holistic effort to understand Joseph Smith might best proceed, this article will explore how one of the most open-ended psychological interpretations of Smith’s prophetic leadership and motivation might contribute to better understanding the trajectory of this extraordinarily talented and conflicted individual whose life has so deeply impacted the religious movement he founded and, increasingly, the larger world.[4]
I
Understanding the personality, psychological dynamics, and motivation of any human being is a daunting task, but to comprehend the nature of genius—especially the elusive and controversial nature of religious genius—is even more challenging. The basis for great creativity in fields such as art, science, or politics has been a subject of extensive investigation that has not led to any clear and generally agreed-upon criteria for assessing and explaining such creativity. Religious genius—especially the prophetic leadership of founders of new religious movements—has been even more difficult to evaluate with openness and objectivity. A major reason is that those who revere their founding religious prophets often unrealistically assume that the credibility of the entire belief system their prophet-founder promulgated depends upon the prophet’s personal character having been exemplary and beyond reproach.
William James and other scholars have argued that great religious creativity typically begins with a problem or complex set of problems that the future prophet finds deeply disturbing. To use psychological jargon, “cognitive dissonance” is present. Individuals who eventually become prophets tend to find such dissonance more disturbing than their more normal contemporaries do. Prophets thus seek with unusual intensity to try to make sense of both their personal lives and their world. The dissonance experienced by religious geniuses—as opposed to geniuses in other fields such as art, science, or politics—also focuses with special intensity on value conflicts and inconsistencies. And once religious geniuses find a way to resolve their own inner conflicts, they come to view the approach that works for them as being universally valid for others as well. William James aptly comments: “[W]hen a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce . . . in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. Their ideas possess them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or their age.”[5] In his essay “The Prophet,” the anthropologist Kenelm Burridge further suggests: “It is not appropriate to think of a prophet as reduced in size to a schizophrene or a paranoid, someone mentally sick. In relation to those to whom he speaks, a prophet is necessarily corrupted by his larger experience. He is an ‘outsider’, an odd one, extraordinary. Nevertheless, he specifically attempts to initiate, both in himself as well as in others, a process of moral regeneration.”[6]
The line between health and illness, between normal mood swings and those that might be viewed as extreme, is a very fine one indeed. It is often difficult for a contemporary psychiatrist who has worked closely with a patient to make an accurate diagnosis. To develop a nuanced psychological understanding of those who are long dead, even if their lives are extensively documented, is a far more difficult and speculative endeavor. Nonetheless, the judicious use of psychological perspectives may significantly enhance our understanding of influential individuals and their contributions. For example, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s study Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness draws upon both nineteenth-century and modern understandings of depression to show how Lincoln, gradually and with great effort, learned to harness his profound “melancholy” in ways that allowed him to address, creatively and effectively, the most severe threat the United States has ever faced to its survival as a unified nation. Perhaps Shenk’s greatest contribution has been to demonstrate how the skillful use of psychological insights can increase rather than decrease our appreciation of prominent historical figures and their achievements.[7] Similarly, although Joseph Smith’s complex and at times problematic personality could prove challenging, both to himself and to his followers, his internal contradictions and struggles to overcome them may have helped fuel his dynamism and success as a religious prophet.
I need to make three additional points before discussing one of the most compelling psychological approaches for understanding how Joseph Smith’s personality impacted his life and prophetic career. First, I believe that no single psychological framework, especially if rigidly applied, can fully explain Joseph Smith’s dynamic mental processes or why he did what he did throughout his larger-than-life career. For example, in The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Dissociated Mind, the surgeon William D. Morain has argued, in a brilliant but to my mind ultimately unconvincingly Freudian analysis, that the severe trauma young Joseph experienced when he went through major leg surgery without anesthesia at about the age of seven and then suffered a prolonged and difficult recovery period lasting several years somehow can explain all of his psychological characteristics and later prophetic activities as an adult.[8]
Equally unconvincing, in my opinion, is the other extreme position: that Joseph Smith can be credibly analyzed using any of a variety of different psychological approaches (just take your pick). This any-approach-will-work argument is illustrated by Terry Brink’s pretentious 1976 Journal of Mormon History article entitled, “Joseph Smith: The Verdict of Depth Psychology.”[9] In the article, Brink purports to show how Joseph Smith’s psychological dynamics might be analyzed using the approaches of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Erik Erikson. Brink naively concludes: “All of these schools of depth psychology reinforce the picture of Joseph Smith as a mentally healthy individual and recognize the important and positive role which religion played in his personality development.”[10] I believe that Brink’s superficial genuflection toward an eclectic mishmash of psychological approaches does little to help us understand anything about Joseph Smith that we don’t already know, or think we know.[11]
Finally, I must emphasize that many Mormons see any psychological interpretation of Joseph Smith’s actions and motives as unnecessary and inherently reductionistic. Most Latter-day Saints are convinced they can explain everything about Joseph Smith that needs explaining by acknowledging that his mission and revelations were divinely inspired. While sophisticated Mormon scholars may accept that naturalistic factors may have influenced a particular action Joseph Smith took or might provide valuable insight into his personality or actions, most committed Latter-day Saints are convinced that all they really need to know is that, however strange or puzzling Smith’s behavior may appear, he was simply following God’s will for his prophet and his Church. Ironically, this view that believing Mormons hold as a matter of faith is at least as reductionist as the extreme counterarguments made by non-Mormons who casually dismiss Smith as a fraud. I believe that both Joseph Smith’s supporters and detractors trivialize him by portraying him as either a stick-figure saint or a stick-figure villain instead of the complex, talented, and conflicted individual he actually was.
Just as Isaac Newton’s many well-documented psychological quirks and eccentricities neither prove nor disprove the validity of his brilliant discoveries about celestial mechanics, so Joseph Smith’s unusual personality characteristics neither prove nor disprove the validity of his religious insights, which ultimately remain beyond purely human proof or disproof. As William James noted in his classic study The Varieties of Religious Experience: “If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity.”[12]
The remainder of this article will discuss how one psychological approach might help us better understand the dynamics of Joseph Smith’s often puzzling personality and actions in a way that could be seen as credible by both secular scholars and by sophisticated Latter-day Saints who accept the divine nature of his religious mission.
II
The most useful psychological framework I have found to try to understand Joseph Smith’s prophetic motivation and dynamism is one that has been characteristic of many other leaders who have significantly impacted the world for good or ill. Stated most simply, the types of individuals we are talking about have a highly self-centered perspective. They see everything that happens in terms of how it impacts themselves; they believe that the way they see the world is the way others can and should see the world; and they manipulate others to achieve their own ends rather than viewing other individuals and their divergent goals empathically. Scholars use the term “narcissism” to describe this self-centered orientation. Initially all babies are highly narcissistic. They necessarily relate to the external world almost exclusively in terms of how the world impacts them personally. Yet as infants mature and become increasingly aware of the larger world and able to function more independently within it, they gradually realize that however much they may want or expect the world to revolve exclusively around them, in fact it does not. Mature adults thus eventually develop the ability to relate to others’ wants and needs empathically instead of simply relating to others in terms of their own needs and desires.[13]
Geniuses, however, often are highly intelligent and narcissistic individuals who become convinced that their unique insights or the particular ways they have resolved their personal problems can provide a universally valid way for others to solve their problems and understand the world. Narcissistic individuals may become convinced that the framework they have developed to explain the world is sufficient to account for everything—or at least everything of importance. This conviction can infuse their ideas with great emotional and analytical power. Yet because the insights of even the most brilliant individuals necessarily can only be a partial and incomplete representation of a more complex reality, when such insights are applied to the larger world, doing so may produce harmful or even disastrous results, especially if narcissistic individuals become powerful political or religious leaders.[14]
The concept of narcissism is more flexible and open-ended than many other psychological frameworks because narcissism refers to a certain personality type and does not necessarily imply that a person so diagnosed suffers from a mental illness or disorder, which can seem stigmatizing, dismissive, and reductionist. In addition, behavior that might initially suggest potential bipolar or manic-depressive tendencies—such as grandiosity, hypomania, or depression—may also occur in narcissistic individuals. Although my initial attempt to understand Joseph Smith’s psychology in my 1993 article “The Psychology of Religious Genius” explored the possibility that his behavior could have been influenced by manic depression, I have subsequently concluded that the behavior I initially viewed as bipolar can better be understood, instead, as associated with Smith’s narcissism.[15]
In order to assess whether or not Joseph Smith displayed narcissistic tendencies, it is helpful first to understand some of the personality characteristics associated with narcissism. A starting point is the description in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the so-called bible of modern psychiatry, about what it labels “narcissistic personality disorder.” Note that the DSM has been justly criticized because of its tendency to label behaviors it views as problematic as “disorders” or “illnesses,” even though milder forms of such behavior might fall well within the normal range of acceptable personality characteristics.[16] Qualifying its use of the term “narcissistic personality disorder,” the DSM-5 notes: “Many highly successful individuals display personality traits that might be considered narcissistic. Only when those traits are inflexible, maladaptive, and persisting, and cause significant functional impairment or subjective distress do they constitute narcissistic personality disorder.”[17] In this regard, I can’t help thinking of the Peanuts cartoon in which the hypercritical Lucy (of “Psychiatric-Care-Five-Cents” fame) hands Linus a scroll with a long list of his “faults,” to which he responds in exasperation, “These aren’t faults; these are character traits.”[18]
According to the description of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual:
Individuals with this disorder have a grandiose sense of self-importance. They routinely overestimate their abilities and inflate their accomplishments, often appearing boastful and pretentious. They may blithely assume that others attribute the same value to their efforts and may be surprised when the praise they expect and feel they deserve is not forthcoming. Often implicit in the inflated judgment of their own accomplishments is an underestimation (devaluation) of the contributions of others. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder are often preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. They may ruminate about “long overdue” admiration and privilege and compare themselves favorably with famous or privileged people.
Individuals with this disorder generally require excessive admiration. Their self-esteem is almost invariably very fragile. . . . They expect to be catered to and are puzzled or furious when this does not happen. . . . This sense of entitlement, combined with a lack of sensitivity to the wants and needs of others, may result in the conscious or unconscious exploitation of others. They expect to be given whatever they may want or feel they need, no matter what it might mean to others. For example, these individuals may expect great dedication from others and may overwork them without regard to the impact on their lives.
Vulnerability in self-esteem makes individuals with narcissistic personality disorder very sensitive to “injury” from criticism or defeat. . . . They may react with disdain, rage, or defiant counterattack. Though overweening ambition and confidence may lead to high achievement, performance may be disrupted because of intolerance of criticism or defeat. . . . Sustained feelings of shame or humiliation may be associated with social withdrawal, depressed mood, and persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia) or major depressive disorder. In contrast, sustained periods of grandiosity may be associated with a hypomanic mood.[19]
I believe that Joseph Smith’s narcissism was his most obvious psychological characteristic; he ultimately viewed everything in terms of how it affected himself. For most non-Mormons, Smith’s conviction that he had a unique mission from God to create a synthesis of all previously valid human truth that would allow him to restore true Christianity in preparation for the coming of a literal kingdom of heaven on earth would qualify as “a grandiose sense of self-importance.” This is even more evident when one juxtaposes Smith’s claims of greatness with his unpromising background growing up as a poor, struggling farm boy in central New York State during the early nineteenth century. Similarly, Smith’s belief during the last three years of his life in Nauvoo that he was entitled to take large numbers of women as his plural wives may bespeak a “conscious or unconscious exploitation of others,” and the expectation that he should be given whatever he might want or feel he needed, “no matter what it might mean to others.”[20]
In my 2001 article, “The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma,”[21] I discussed some ways in which the concept of narcissism might help us better understand Joseph Smith’s personality and motivation. My article drew heavily upon arguments developed by the New Zealand psychologist Len Oakes in his pathbreaking study Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities.[22] Oakes based his research on his intensive qualitative and quantitative studies of the leaders and members of twenty contemporary New Zealand communal/religious groups and on his wide reading and his personal experience as the historian of one such group, the Centrepoint Community.[23] His study skillfully analyzed how narcissism could influence the sense of religious mission and drive of charismatic figures. Oakes was concerned to understand why prophetic figures become convinced that their personal perception of the world provides a universally valid way of understanding the nature of reality,[24] and he created a typology of five stages through which he believes charismatic leaders progress as they develop their distinctive sense of mission and prophetic careers. Only a few of Oakes’s arguments that are most relevant to this analysis will be mentioned here.
Oakes argues that a narcissistic orientation may cause leaders to behave in paradoxical, contradictory, and often unpredictable ways, since “every leader in the study appears to have split off part of his or her self in order to pursue their vision.”[25] Prophetic leaders focus so intensely on their personal goals and sense of mission that they downplay, ignore, or entirely repress other aspects of their lives and awareness. Consequently, these leaders display blind spots about their own weaknesses and behavior that are obvious to all who know them but that they cannot see or admit.[26]
Oakes further argues that the prophet ultimately needs his followers more than they need him. He notes that prophets often display an infantile, magical view of the world “wherein one need only wish to make it so.” As a result, prophets may be willing to distort reality in ways that outsiders or critics view as wishful thinking or lying. The prophet also displays a peculiar experience and transcendence of time that can be associated with memory distortions.[27] Oakes argues that “what the prophet knows as reality has some of the qualities of a dream, with fluid boundaries between the real and unreal, self and other, past and future, . . . God and humankind.”[28]
III
The remainder of this article will consider whether using the psychological concept of narcissism might help us bridge the “great divide” in Mormon historical writing between devout Latter-day Saints, who are firmly convinced that Joseph Smith was nothing but a sincere prophet of God, and most non-Mormons, who are equally convinced that Smith was nothing but a scheming and self-serving charlatan. Could a more nuanced use of the concept of narcissism help us move beyond such simplistic prophet-versus-fraud dichotomies to better appreciate Joseph Smith in all his human complexity? And might a better understanding of Joseph Smith’s psychological dynamics also help us comprehend why tensions in Nauvoo began spiraling out of control by the mid-1840s, leading to Joseph Smith’s tragic murder in June 1844?
That so many Mormons and non-Mormons for the better part of the past two centuries have firmly believed that Joseph Smith’s motivation could be explained by either the “sincere prophet” or the “manipulative fraud” narratives alone suggests to me that neither contradictory approach by itself can be adequate. Instead, both approaches must be partly true and partly false. In order to understand why believing Mormons have shown such intense adulation for their prophet while non-Mormons have typically denounced him as a self-serving fraud and con man, I believe that we must hold these two antithetical ways of understanding Joseph Smith in creative tension with each other. In short, to comprehend the intense positive and negative reactions Joseph Smith aroused among his followers and the larger public, I am convinced that the Mormon prophet must be understood, paradoxically, as both sincere and as a charlatan at the same time.
I first developed this concept in my 1981 Church History article “James J. Strang: The Prophet Who Failed” as I sought to understand Strang, the greatest of the many unsuccessful would-be claimants to Joseph Smith’s mantle immediately after his death, although I did not attempt to apply the concept to Smith then.[29] Dan Vogel has similarly described Joseph Smith as a “pious deceiver” or a “sincere fraud,” while Robert N. Hullinger has suggested that Smith may have engaged in some fraudulent activities in order to try to convey his religious message most effectively.[30] The point this concept seeks to convey is that Joseph Smith may have been the type of person who genuinely believed in his prophetic role and message but who also may have been prepared, if necessary, to dissimulate in order to achieve his personal and group objectives, which he saw as inextricably intertwined.
The Mormon psychiatrist Robert D. Anderson has astutely noted that people do not appeal to any objective measure of Smith’s truthfulness when they characterize him as either a sincere prophet or a self-serving fraud. Rather, both characterizations result from different ways of interpreting what the available evidence means. Anderson notes that while “a number of [Smith’s] dealings with others give marked evidence of expediency, deceit, coercion, and manipulation,” such behavior might also be seen as justifiable “if one believes that God commanded Smith to engage in them, or as purely manipulative and narcissistic if one does not.”[31] The psychologist Len Oakes insightfully speculates: “Is it possible that the narcissistic mind locates its meanings as much in the future as in the past? In the telling of a great lie, the lie would not be felt as false because it would not be compared with facts located in memory. Rather, it would be compared with ‘facts’ from an imagined, yet-to-become future that is experienced as just as real as the past.”[32]
Prophetic leaders are rarely driven either by purely self-aggrandizing or purely altruistic motives. Instead, in more intense ways than most individuals, prophetic figures typically display a combination of both self-interest and altruism. Smith’s close associate Oliver Huntington recalled: “Joseph Smith said that some people entirely denounce the principle of self-aggrandizement as wrong. ‘It is a correct principle,’ he said, ‘and may be indulged upon only one rule or plan—and that is to elevate, benefit and bless others first. If you will elevate others, the very work itself will exalt you. Upon no other plan can a man justly and permanently aggrandize himself.’”[33] Effective leaders must weigh competing interests and make hard decisions, sometimes choosing the lesser of several evils in order to attempt to move toward what they see as a higher good. Such an approach can also lead prophetic individuals to exploit or mistreat others because of what they take to be the cosmic significance of the goals they feel called upon to achieve.
An important point to keep in mind is that Joseph Smith was anything but the straitlaced prophetic stick figure so many modern Mormons have been taught to believe in. Instead, he could also be an outgoing, fun-loving, earthy, quick-thinking, and at times even outrageous man, unafraid to break with convention, who once declared, “a prophet is a prophet only when he is acting as such.”[34]
One of the most revealing descriptions of Joseph Smith comes from the pen of Josiah Quincy (1802–1882), a prominent New England intellectual who served as the mayor of Boston from 1823 to 1828 and as president of Harvard from 1842 to 1845.[35] Little more than a month before Smith was murdered in June 1844, Quincy spent several days in Nauvoo. There he was given the red-carpet treatment by Smith, whom he described as a man of remarkable personal presence, authority, and “rugged power,” even though Quincy said that his readers might “find so much that is puerile and even shocking in my report of the prophet’s conversation.”[36]
Quincy was particularly struck by the degree of adulation Smith received from his followers, who raptly hung on his every word and enthusiastically affirmed whatever Smith said as true. In a revealing aside that suggests Smith’s narcissism, Quincy commented:
I should not say quite all that struck me about Smith if I did not mention that he seemed to have a keen sense of the humorous aspects of his position. “It seems to me, General,” I said, as he was driving us to the river, about sunset, “that you have too much power to be safely trusted to one man.” “In your hands or that of any other person,” was the reply, “so much power would no doubt be dangerous. I am the only man in the world whom it would be safe to trust with it. Remember, I am a prophet!” The last five words were spoken in a rich comical aside, as if in hearty recognition of the ridiculous sound they might have in the ears of a Gentile.[37]
The Mormon historian Danel Bachman summarizes another story recounted by the loyal Mormon Edwin Rushton. Rushton described how Smith disguised himself as a sort of “trickster” figure and “put on” a group of Mormon converts who had just arrived in Nauvoo. Bachman writes:
On another occasion, when some new emigrants were arriving at Nauvoo, the Prophet disguised himself as a ruffian and met them at the wharf. Edwin Rushton’s father told him that the Prophet questioned them about their conviction that Joseph Smith was a prophet. When the elder Rushton affirmed his faith, Smith asked, “What would you think if I told you I was Joseph Smith?” Rushton again said that would make no difference to his belief. Smith then explained that he dressed and spoke in the manner he did to “see if their faith is strong enough to stand the things they must meet. If not they should turn back right now.”[38]
Another curious but revealing story about Joseph Smith is one that may or may not have ever happened. The initial recorded version of the story comes from William Huntington’s journal in early 1881, as published in a Mormon magazine in 1892—nearly half a century after Smith’s death. According to the story, someone once asked Smith whether any people lived on the moon. Yes, he confidently replied. People who live on the moon typically are about six feet tall, dress in Quaker style, and live nearly a thousand years![39] Modern readers, knowing what we now have discovered about the moon, can’t help finding such a story laughable or just plain ignorant. Yet according to Erich Robert Paul’s scholarly study Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology,[40] the belief that people lived on the moon was widely held in nineteenth-century America and it might well have sounded plausible at the time, as it apparently still did to William Huntington when he recorded the story in his journal decades later.
One thought-provoking take on the story is provided in Samuel W. Taylor’s insightful novel Nightfall at Nauvoo. Taylor imagines Smith responding to the question about whether people lived on the moon but afterwards talking with Eliza R. Snow, who was puzzled and privately turned to him to ask “how he knew so much about the inhabitants of the moon. He replied with a shrug that she should realize that a prophet always had to have an answer to every silly question. Why would people suppose that he should know anything about the moon, anyway?”[41] Of course, Smith might equally plausibly have believed that what he said was true, just as he apparently believed his own ad hoc pronouncements on many other topics about which he was in no position to know the correct answer.
Viewing Joseph Smith as a “sincere charlatan” influenced by narcissistic tendencies might help explain why he secretly introduced polygamous belief and practice among a small group of his closest followers in Nauvoo during the early 1840s. Ever since I began investigating this controversial topic more than four decades ago, my working hypothesis has been that Joseph Smith probably believed that it was desirable for a man to have more than one wife at a time, under certain circumstances. I further assumed that Smith may have held such beliefs because he personally wanted to have more than one wife (or sexual outlet) himself and because he may have become convinced that God had (conveniently) commanded him to take more than one wife.
The double-speak and double-think that necessarily occurred when Smith privately attempted to introduce polygamous belief and practice among a small group of his most loyal followers in Nauvoo, while most Mormons there were unaware that the practice was sanctioned by him, provides a well-documented illustration of the challenges Smith faced and the difficulty of deciding whether to consider him either a sincere prophet or a self-conscious fraud. If we again assume as our working hypothesis that Smith may have sincerely believed that introducing the practice of polygamy was a good idea—and even a divine command—he was nevertheless well aware that polygamy was illegal in Illinois and that his Mormon followers, who had been repeatedly admonished that strict monogamy was God’s will, would reject or even kill him if they realized that he was advocating what they considered to be a heinously sinful practice.
To address this dilemma, Smith skillfully adopted a two-pronged approach. In the theological realm, he began to introduce the belief that if marriage and family relationships were properly “sealed” for eternity under the authority of the Mormon priesthood on earth, those relationships would continue throughout the afterlife as well. The idea of being reunited with loved ones after death was very comforting to many Mormons in Nauvoo because of the high death rates there. Extending the belief to its logical patriarchal conclusion, however, also opened the way for a man to be successively sealed to a first wife who died and then to a second wife, with both of them continuing to be his wives in the afterlife in an “eternal marriage.” Extrapolating that heavenly model back into this life meant that a form of patriarchal polygamy could also be practiced in this life. Smith’s own polygamous behavior, and the polygamous practice that he introduced to at least thirty of his closest male followers before his death,[42] thus became the ideal heavenly model and the basis for all growth and progression, both in this life and in the afterlife, since the largest patriarchal families would have the most power and influence in both realms.[43]
The other part of Joseph Smith’s two-pronged approach was to issue apparent denials about polygamy to the vast majority of Nauvoo Mormons who didn’t realize that Smith and other Mormon leaders were advocating the practice of plural marriage using a code language to let individuals who were in on the practice understand that the denials were simply for public consumption.[44] For example, plural wives were often referred to as “spiritual wives” rather than temporal ones, yet they also were temporal wives.[45] When Joseph Smith was accused of practicing polygamy, he would typically issue statements along the lines of “this is too ridiculous to be believed,” although he carefully avoided saying that the allegations weren’t true.[46] In the meantime, Smith’s proxy surrogates would make the air blue by accusing individuals who made allegations about Smith’s improper sexual behavior of having engaged in the same actions for which they were criticizing Smith. As Fawn Brodie summarizes: “The denials of polygamy uttered by the Mormon leaders between 1835 and 1852, when it was finally admitted, are a remarkable series of evasions and circumlocutions involving all sorts of verbal gymnastics.”[47] Whether such behavior constituted a misrepresentation necessary to introduce a divine principle or was simply self-serving narcissism depends, as always, on whether one is viewing the events from inside or outside the group.
Like other narcissistic individuals, Smith felt he always had to be right on matters he considered important. He was upset when others did not give him the praise he expected and felt he deserved. Thus, his self-esteem was very fragile if he was criticized. He tended to see any challenge to his authority as unwarranted “persecution,” and he lashed out in fury against those he deemed his opponents, which caused even some of his closest followers to break with him. For anyone who supported Smith wholeheartedly, nothing was too good, yet those who criticized him risked being consigned to the outer darkness unless they repented and submitted themselves to his full authority again.
Portraying in-group/out-group tensions as simply the result of unjust “persecution” of one group by another can be an effective way to rationalize or explain away an individual’s or a group’s misbehavior toward those outside the group. For example, the Mormons in Nauvoo understandably believed they had been mistreated when they were harshly driven out of Missouri in 1838–39. The experience may, in turn, have led some Mormons to feel justified in retaliating against Missourians or others by “despoiling the Gentiles” in various ways. Engaging in such retaliatory actions, however, risks setting off a vicious cycle of ever-increasing conflict between opposing groups that can eventually cause both sides to feel threatened and victimized, as happened so tragically in both Missouri and in Nauvoo.[48]
Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo and throughout their history have been quite successful in creating compelling persecution narratives that portray any external criticism as caused by religious “persecution.” But Mormon writers have typically failed to consider whether specific non-Mormon criticisms might have actually had some validity and identified real problems or excesses the Latter-day Saints needed to address.[49]
In Glorious in Persecution: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1839–1844, the Mormon historian Martha Bradley-Evans skillfully and sympathetically frames her narrative around the ways in which Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo created and utilized complex persecution narratives in order to cement Mormon in-group loyalty. From this perspective, she is able to present some details about highly questionable polygamous behavior in which the Mormon prophet engaged without judging whether his actions were right or wrong. I believe that most present-day Mormon and non-Mormon historians would find her narrative factually and analytically credible and that many scholars from both camps would probably feel that Smith’s actions in his polygamous relationships would be suggestive of exploitative or psychologically disturbed behavior if the events in question had occurred in the present day.
In his essay “Joseph Smith and the Hazards of Charismatic Leadership,”[50] Mormon historian Gary James Bergera has provided arguably the most convincing brief analysis of how Joseph Smith’s increasing narcissism and grandiosity eventually led to his tragic death. Bergera’s thesis is that:
When a charismatic person assumes a position of leadership and fails to recognize the limitations of his power, convinced he can “transform his . . . fantasies into reality for his followers,” he may develop what psychologists refer to as megalomaniacal fantasies, including paranoid delusions. . . . The group may willingly surrender its ego to the leader “in order to preserve [its] love of the leader, and whatever esteem [it] experience[s] comes from the sense of devotion to the ideals and causes established in the leader’s image.” Yet the leader may experience little resistance in influencing his followers to do things they would not do otherwise, reconfirming the breadth of his own power and the ease with which his followers are able to achieve the realization of their own dreams as defined by the leader. “Attachment and omnipotence [can] mutually reinforce one another, omnipotence turning into a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ in which ‘everything is allowed and nothing is off limits.’”[51]
Bergera continues:
Embodying both the strengths and weaknesses of charismatic leadership, Joseph, during the final two years of his life, from 1842 to 1844, tested more than once the boundaries separating fantasy from reality, succumbing to those hazards problematic to charismatic leaders. In significant and, I believe, revealing ways, Joseph’s leadership is a case study of the hazards confronting charismatic leadership in crisis situations.[52]
According to Bergera, Joseph Smith’s conviction that he possessed a divinely based prophetic power led him to believe he had “power that transcended civil law” and that this belief suggests “the tenuousness of the grasp he may have held, at times, on reality.”[53]
But the discussion of Joseph’s occasional difficulty to distinguish fantasy from reality should not be construed as an attempt to address the validity of his prophetic calling. Rather, it presents an admittedly speculative attempt to better understand the mental state—the strains, pressures, conflicts, and contradictions—we all experience when expectations clash with reality. With Joseph, the effects of such struggles were perhaps more dramatic, affecting the lives of more people than would have been the case with a lesser individual.[54]
Bergera identifies twelve “examples of the extent to which Joseph may have sought to interpose his will over that normally imposed upon human behavior by external reality,” and he argues that each example “reflects what may be either maladaptive responses to Joseph’s environment or possible evidence of a growing sense of self-importance and personal omnipotence.”[55]
Here I shall only summarize Bergera’s analysis of one of the most important of those twelve examples of Smith’s overreach, namely, his efforts to introduce plural marriage belief and practice to some of his most loyal followers.[56] After Smith’s twelve apostles returned from their missions to England in 1841, he rapidly moved to introduce the idea of “celestial marriage” to them, along with its corollary, plural marriage. He tested their absolute loyalty to him by asking each of his apostles, at different times, to relinquish their wives to him so they might become his plural wives. “This apparently continued for almost one year before one apostle, Orson Pratt, failed to pass the test in July 1842. Sensitive to the scandal that could erupt from additional failures, Joseph suspended requiring such a show of faith.”[57]
Later that same month, according to the Mormon historian Andrew Ehat, Smith began to go to some of his most loyal followers in Nauvoo who had daughters of marriageable age to teach them the principles of plural marriage and request that they teach it to their daughters as well. Evidently “the price some paid for their own sealing for time and eternity was the marriage of their daughter to Joseph.”[58] “If Joseph’s move away from asking for the wives of married men to asking for the daughters of faithful couples was intended to minimize the risk of public exposure, it shortly, and not unexpectedly, proved unsuccessful. Joseph’s courtship of Nancy Rigdon, daughter of former First Presidency counselor Sidney Rigdon, became as damaging to his reputation as his attempted liaison with Apostle Orson Pratt’s wife.”[59]
According to Bergera, the most important internal challenge Joseph Smith may have faced “resulted from anticipated opposition to his practice from both his brother Hyrum and his wife, Emma.”
Apparently never once during the first twenty-four months Joseph secretly promoted and practiced the “celestial law of marriage” did either Emma consent to her husband’s taking another wife or Hyrum offer to perform or teach the sacred ordinance. Joseph’s tests, it may be argued, evince the possible expression of what can be termed a paranoid delusion in which not even his most faithful friends could be completely trusted without their being first required to demonstrate unconditional allegiance to his leadership. . . . If Joseph could endure the rejection of others, he could not suffer rejection from either Hyrum or Emma, and initially refused to court their hostile responses.[60]
Although Emma eventually acceded to her husband’s wishes temporarily, “her support was short-lived, and she soon became an active opponent of her husband’s secret teachings.”[61] Hyrum, by contrast, preached publicly against polygamy in May 1843, but he eventually came to believe it was divine after Brigham Young explained the doctrine to him, and he then became its staunch supporter.[62] Bergera argues that “the greatest factor contributing to [Joseph’s] image of virtual omnipotence was . . . the acceptance of polygamy by his brother, wife, and closest associates. More than any other expression of allegiance, their willingness to obey Joseph’s commands in an area so at odds with conventional Victorian morality may have contributed to what appears to be the slowly eroding barriers separating reality from fantasy.”[63] This eventually contributed to the creation of an opposition movement and a newspaper, The Nauvoo Expositor, which in effect put Joseph “on trial before his whole people.”[64] In response, Joseph destroyed both the newspaper and the printing press. This led to his arrest and incarceration in a jail in nearby Carthage, Illinois, where a mob in collusion with the local militia guarding the jail murdered Joseph and his brother Hyrum on June 23, 1844.
Bergera concludes: “The irony is that the leader who succeeds in pushing his movement toward the realization of their fantasies may well be on the way to his own self-destruction. . . . Perhaps if any benefit is to be derived from Joseph’s death it is that it may have saved his followers from a similar fate.”[65]
In a sermon in 1856, Brigham Young declared that he did not base his belief in the truth of Mormonism on Joseph Smith’s personal probity but on his doctrine. Using typically blunt rhetoric, Young declared:
The doctrine he [Joseph Smith] teaches is all I know about the matter, bring anything against that if you can. As to anything else, I do not care. If he acts like a devil, he has brought forth a doctrine that will save us if we will abide by it. He may get drunk every day of his life, sleep with his neighbor’s wife every night, run horses and gamble, I do not care anything about that, for I never embrace any man in my faith. But the doctrine he has produced will save you and me, and the whole world; and if you can find fault with that, find it.[66]
In conclusion, psychological frameworks are most likely to produce revealing historical insights into complex individuals when they are deployed judiciously and non-judgmentally to analyze behavior that might otherwise appear out of character or not to make sense. Conversely, when psychological theory is simply used as a Procrustean bed into which one tries to force a dynamic human being who transcends simple categories of analysis, it can become reductionist and counterproductive. Although all psychological attempts to understand human behavior are imperfect tools, I believe that the limited, judicious, and nuanced use of psychological perspectives to try to come to terms with Joseph Smith’s personality and impact may help bring us closer to resolving “the prophet puzzle,” including some parts of the puzzle that even Joseph himself may not have fully understood.
At the end of Josiah Quincy’s revealing account of his conversations with Joseph Smith in 1844, he expressed skepticism about Smith and his religious claims while also recognizing this rough-hewn man’s native intelligence and leadership ability. Quincy concluded, “I have endeavored to give the details of my visit to the Mormon prophet with absolute accuracy. If the reader does not know just what to make of Joseph Smith, I cannot help him out of the difficulty. I myself stand helpless before the puzzle.”[67]
Quincy’s words remind me of Immanuel Kant’s compelling statement in The Critique of Practical Reason, which I have taken the liberty to modify significantly here as: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the mind of man below.”[68] The mind of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, in all its dynamic complexity, must surely remain a subject of awe, wonder, and concern for anyone who attempts to understand it. Perhaps Joseph Smith most eloquently expressed his own and his biographers’ challenge when he declared: “No man knows my history. . . . If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.”[69]
[1] Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), vii. Brodie’s efforts to use psychological theory to help explain Joseph Smith’s personality and motivation are found in the 1971 “Supplement” to her original 1945 biography (405–25). Weaknesses in Brodie’s use of psychological theory are discussed in Charles L. Cohen, “No Man Knows My Psychology: Fawn Brodie, Joseph Smith, and Psychoanalysis,” BYU Studies 44, no. 1 (2005): 55–78. Newell G. Bringhurst, Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer’s Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999) provides her biography, while the continuing impact that No Man Knows My History has had on Mormon historical studies is explored in the essays in Newell G. Bringhurst, ed., Reconsidering No Man Knows My History: Fawn M. Brodie and Joseph Smith in Retrospect (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996). Brodie’s later biographies of Thaddeus Stevens, Sir Richard Burton, and Thomas Jefferson also highlight her continuing fascination with larger-than-life public figures, as well as her flair for ferreting out controversial details about their private lives.
[2] Jan Shipps, “The Prophet Puzzle: Suggestions Leading Toward a More Comprehensive Interpretation of Joseph Smith,” Journal of Mormon History 1 (1974): 3–20, reprinted with fourteen other essays about Joseph Smith’s psychological dynamics and prophetic motivation in Bryan Waterman, ed., The Prophet Puzzle: Interpretive Essays on Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999).
[3] Shipps, “The Prophet Puzzle,” 19.
[4] The literature by and about Joseph Smith Jr. is vast and often highly polemical because both Mormons and non-Mormons view him as the most important figure for understanding the early development and significance of the Mormon movement. For treatments before 1997, see James B. Allen, Ronald W. Walker, and David J. Whittaker, eds., Studies in Mormon History, 1830–1997: An Indexed Bibliography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 927–44. The ambitious Joseph Smith Papers editorial and publication project—currently underway under the auspices of the Office of the Historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—is anticipated to include two dozen or more volumes. In the meantime, B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930) remains an important source despite its limitations. Richard L. Bushman’s Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005) supplements, updates, qualifies, and in certain respects supersedes Brodie’s pioneering study, No Man Knows My History.
[5] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: New American Library, 1958 [1902]), 36. The first chapter, “Religion and Neurology” (21–38), is especially insightful. It brilliantly explores the complexities of religious experiences and debunks popular reductionist treatments of religious genius. Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002) assesses the book’s continuing influence and importance.
[6] Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (New York: Schocken, 1969), 162.
[7] Joshua Wolf Shenk in Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 211–45 also discusses how his methodology relates to previous scholarly efforts to understand the significance of Lincoln’s continuing struggles with depression.
[8] William D. Morain in The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Dissociated Mind (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 2005) attributes too much importance to this one traumatic event. Although Robert D. Anderson shares Morain’s view that young Joseph’s traumatic leg surgery significantly impacted his psychological development and subsequent career, Anderson nevertheless opines that “a single event, even an overwhelming one, does not make a prophet.” Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith: Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), xiii. Anderson’s study emphasizes the conflicted internal dynamics within the Smith family and young Joseph’s narcissism. Yet Anderson’s argument that the earliest sections of the Book of Mormon provide “a disguised version of Smith’s life” also could be criticized for being speculative and reductionist. Mind of Joseph Smith, 65. For a thought-provoking assessment of the tensions within the Smith family, see Dan Vogel, “Joseph Smith’s Family Dynamics,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 22 (2002): 51–74. Also see the documentary account by Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2001). I am grateful to Dan Vogel for his thorough and insightful critique of an earlier draft of this article.
[9] T. L. Brink, “Joseph Smith: The Verdict of Depth Psychology,” Journal of Mormon History 3 (1976): 73–83.
[10] Brink, “Verdict of Depth Psychology,” 83.
[11] My criticism of Brink’s article is not intended to deny the value of nuanced use of multiple analytical perspectives to try to understand an individual. In Makers of Psychology: The Personal Factor (New York: Insight Books, 1988), clinical psychologist Harvey Mindess critically yet sympathetically analyzes the lives and work of seven pioneering figures in psychology—Wilhelm Wundt, William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, B. F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, and Milton H. Erickson—arguing that each man’s distinctive personality influenced the type of personality theory and therapeutic approach he developed. In his tour-de-force conclusion on pages 147–68, Mindess suggests how one of his clients might have been analyzed and treated differently by Freud, Jung, a behaviorist, Rogers, or Erickson—and then how he treated her himself.
[12] James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 37.
[13] I alluded to this approach in my first book, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), reprinted as Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 227–28. While seeking to take the measure of the founding prophets of the three millennial religious groups I studied—Ann Lee of the Shakers, John Humphrey Noyes of the Oneida Community, and Joseph Smith of the Mormons—I realized that all three individuals appeared to view the entire world as revolving around themselves. After they eventually managed to work out a satisfying way of resolving their own religious and sexual problems, they became convinced that the same approach that worked for each of them could provide a universally valid way of resolving everyone else’s problems too.
A Calvin and Hobbes cartoon humorously characterizes narcissism. Calvin says to Hobbes: “I’m at peace with the world. I’m completely serene.” “Why is that?” Hobbes asks. Calvin answers: “I’ve discovered my purpose in life. I know why I was put here and why everything exists.” “Oh really?” Hobbes replies skeptically. “Yes, I am here so everybody can do what I want.” “It’s nice to have that cleared up,” Hobbes responds dryly. Calvin concludes, “Once everybody accepts it, they’ll be serene too.”
[14] One example is Mao Zedong, who became one of the most creative—and destructive—leaders of the twentieth century. After leading a decades-long struggle that finally brought the communists to power over mainland China in 1949, Mao went on to preside over two of the worst man-made disasters in human history before his death in 1976. Mao’s most destructive campaign was the misnamed “Great Leap Forward” between 1958 and 1962. It led to the largest man-made famine in human history, with famine-related deaths variously estimated at thirty, thirty-six, or forty-five million people. Mao’s second disastrous campaign between 1965 and 1969, his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, caused more than a million deaths and set the Chinese economy and educational system back at least a generation. See Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine (New York: Free Press, 1977); Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962 (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2008); Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 (New York: Walker & Company, 2010); and Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
The detailed memoir by Mao’s personal physician, Dr. Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, translated by Tai Hung-Chao (New York: Random House, 1994), describes Mao’s narcissistic and bipolar personality characteristics. In addition to Mao’s narcissistic unwillingness to trust even his closest advisers, his work and sleep schedules, which were not known beyond his closest inner circle of advisers, were extremely erratic. Periods of manic activity could last up to thirty-six hours at a stretch without sleep, followed by as much as ten to twelve hours of such deep sleep that nothing could wake him. Mao also suffered lengthy bouts of depression, during which he remained largely in bed for months at a time.
[15] In “The Psychology of Religious Genius: Joseph Smith and the Origins of New Religious Movements,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 1–22, I explored the suggestion of Mormon psychiatrist C. Jess Groesbeck that Joseph Smith might have exhibited manic-depressive tendencies. Robert D. Anderson, another Mormon psychiatrist, took sharp exceptions to this hypothesis, however, in the addendum to his “Toward an Introduction to a Psychobiography of Joseph Smith,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 27, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 268–72. Anderson wrote: “Here are some of the issues that the diagnosis of Bipolar Affective Disorder does not address: the results of an unstable and deprived childhood with many moves and periods of near-starvation; the results of a traumatic childhood surgery; the effects of being raised in a family with an alcoholic father, a mother predisposed to depression, and repeated failures and minimal esteem in the community; and the effect of being raised in a subculture of magical delusion, requiring deceit of self and others. I agree that Smith demonstrated grandiosity, but I see it as a progressive development going out of control toward the end of his life.” Anderson continued: “Five years ago, paying attention to the recurrent depressive episodes in Joseph’s mother and the life-long mental illness of his son [David Hyrum Smith], I seriously considered Bipolar II but abandoned it for the reasons given. Frankly I was sorry, for I would have liked to find an explanation for Smith’s later excesses that was out of his control. Other intellectuals in the Mormon world would understand this wish” (270–71).
[16] For example, editions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders before 1987 characterized homosexuality as a “psychiatric disorder,” although more recent editions no longer do so. In The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry (New York: Penguin, 2013), Gary Greenberg sharply criticizes the DSM and the psychiatric profession’s tendency to “medicalize” disruptive behaviors at the extreme limits of the spectrum of normal human variability.
[17] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013), 672, hereafter cited as DSM-5.
[18] DSM-5, 646, states that its diagnostic approach “represents the categorical perspective that personality disorders are qualitatively different clinical syndromes [than the personality characteristics of normal individuals]”; however, it also acknowledges: “An alternative to the categorical approach is the dimensional perspective that personality disorders represent maladaptive variants of personality traits that merge imperceptibly into normality and into one another.” This latter approach is the one adopted in this article and suggested by Linus’s comment to Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon.
[19] DSM-5, 670–71. For readability I have removed parenthetical references to the nine diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder in the original statement.
[20] DSM-5, 670.
[21] Lawrence Foster, “The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma: New Approaches to Understanding Joseph Smith and the Development of Charismatic Leadership,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 1–14, with a comment by Len Oakes, “The Prophet’s Fall: A Note in Response to Lawrence Foster’s ‘The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma,’” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 15–16.
[22] In Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997), Oakes conducted in-depth interviews with the leader of each group, as well as with two or three important lower-level leaders. He also administered a standard psychological inventory known as the Adjective Checklist to both leaders and followers in order to secure quantitative data about how both leaders and followers in the groups compared to “normal” populations.
[23] Len Oakes, Inside Centrepoint: The Story of a New Zealand Community (Auckland, N.Z.: Benton Ross, 1986) sympathetically describes this controversial therapeutic community’s development, way of life, and spiritual beliefs.
[24] Oakes, Prophetic Charisma, 44–73. The core of Oakes’s argument is that the highly narcissistic figures who eventually take on prophetic leadership roles are individuals who, as young children, were protected for an unusually long time by their mother or other primary caregiver from the inevitable adjustments necessary to adapt to a larger world in which they were not omnipotent, not the primary center of attention. When a crisis inevitably shatters the idyllic mindset of the future charismatic leaders, they seek to make the larger world conform to their own needs and desires rather than adapt themselves to the realities of the environment around them. In this article, however, I will not focus on the psychological roots of narcissism but on how narcissism may influence religious leadership.
[25] Oakes, Prophetic Charisma, 80–84, 165.
[26] Oakes, Prophetic Charisma, 170. Regarding Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s prevarications, Oakes caustically comments, “he couldn’t understand when others refused to take him seriously because he took himself so seriously that he believed his own lies” (emphasis in the original).
[27] Prophetic Charisma, 171–75.
[28] Prophetic Charisma, 175.
[29] In “James J. Strang: The Prophet Who Failed,” Church History 50, no. 2 (June 1981): 185, I stated: “The meticulous research of the non-Mormon historian Dale Morgan has established beyond any reasonable doubt that Strang’s letter of appointment from Joseph Smith was forged, and almost surely forged by Strang himself.” Yet I further argued that: “One cannot account plausibly for the sustained dedication that [Strang] showed in the face of all the hardships, poverty, and opposition he experienced, or the generally well-thought-out and humane quality of his ideals as due to simple fraud or psychopathology.” For scholarly studies of Strang, see Vickie Cleverley Speek, “God Has Made Us a Kingdom”: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006), the most thoroughly researched and insightful recent study of Strang, his family life, and followers, as well as Milo M. Quaife’s classic account, The Kingdom of Saint James: A Narrative of the Mormons (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1930). Strang’s polygamy appears to have been based more on pragmatic considerations than on religious principle. For example, he said simply that his wives were women “whom I would marry if the law permitted me.” Northern Islander, Oct. 11, 1855, as quoted in Quaife, Kingdom of Saint James, 101.
[30] Dan Vogel characterizes Joseph Smith as a “pious deceiver” or a “sincere fraud,” in “‘The Prophet Puzzle’ Revisited,” reprinted in Waterman, ed., The Prophet Puzzle, 50, after carefully analyzing several cases in which he believes there is solid evidence of conscious deception on Smith’s part. Vogel asks: “[W]hat were the rationalizations, or more precisely the inner moral conflicts of an individual who deceives in God’s name while also holding sincere religious beliefs?” (54). He concludes: “I suggest that Smith really believed he was called by God to preach repentance to a sinful world but that he felt justified in using deception to accomplish his mission more fully” (61). Vogel’s analysis draws upon ideas from Robert N. Hullinger’s Mormon Answer to Skepticism: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon (St. Louis: Clayton, 1980), reprinted as Joseph Smith’s Response to Skepticism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992).
[31] Mind of Joseph Smith, xxiv–xxv.
[32] Prophetic Charisma, 174; emphasis in the original.
[33] Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, comps., They Knew the Prophet (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1974), 61, as quoted in Vogel, “‘The Prophet Puzzle’ Revisited,” 63.
[34] History of the Church, 5:265. Statement from Feb. 8, 1843.
[35] Quincy’s account has been reprinted as “Two Boston Brahmins Call on the Prophet,” in William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen, eds., Among the Mormons: Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973), 131–42. Richard Bushman summarizes Quincy’s report as the prologue to his biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 3–7.
[36] Quincy, “Two Boston Brahmins,” 134.
[37] Quincy, “Two Boston Brahmins,” 140.
[38] Edwin Rushton, Journal, 2, as cited in Danel W. Bachman, “A Study of the Mormon Practice of Plural Marriage Before the Death of Joseph Smith” (master’s thesis, Purdue University, 1975), 169. Note that “Danel” is the correct spelling of Bachman’s first name.
[39] The original version of the story is a third-hand account found in Oliver Huntington’s Journal, Book 14, 166, and in The History of Oliver B. Huntington, p. 10, typed copy, Marriott Library, University of Utah. Huntington claimed he had received the information from Philo Dibble. Huntington’s story is retold in “Our Sunday Chapter: The Inhabitants of the Moon,” The Young Woman’s Journal 3, no. 6 (1892): 263–64.
[40] Erich Robert Paul, Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 109.
[41] Samuel W. Taylor, Nightfall at Nauvoo (New York: Avon, 1973), 163.
[42] Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy, 241–354, provides a detailed reconstruction of the circumstances under which Joseph Smith’s male followers entered into polygamous marriages prior to his death.
[43] Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 142–46, summarizes the new “sealing” ceremonies introduced into the LDS Church in the early 1840s. William Victor Smith, Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2018) is a thorough and sophisticated analysis that contextualizes many issues associated with the revelation on plural and celestial marriage. The book also includes an addendum with the full text of the earliest manuscript version of the revelation, as recorded by Smith’s scribe Joseph C. Kingsbury (227–39).
[44] In The True Origin of Mormon Polygamy (Cincinnati: Standard, 1914), Charles A. Shook analyzes, with lawyer-like precision, the reasons why the many Mormon statements in Nauvoo that appear to be denials of polygamy actually were not understood as denials by Latter-day Saints who had been initiated into polygamous belief and practice. The Peace Maker, or The Doctrines of the Millennium, a pamphlet defense of polygamy by Udney Hay Jacob published in late 1842, provides one example of such doublespeak. Although the pamphlet identified “J. Smith” as its “printer,” when Smith’s followers expressed outrage at the pamphlet’s argument, he backtracked and claimed he hadn’t been aware of the pamphlet’s contents before publishing it. Speaking out of both sides of his mouth, he added: “not that I am opposed to any man enjoying his privileges [a code word for polygamy]; but I do not wish to have my name associated with the authors [sic] in such an unmeaning rigmarole of non-sense, folly and trash” (emphasis added). Times and Seasons 4, Dec. 1, 1842, 32, as quoted in Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 319. For a more detailed discussion of the controversy, see Religion and Sexuality, 174–77.
[45] In her 1882 defense of plural marriage, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, a former plural wife of Joseph Smith, stated that during the early development of Mormon polygamy in Nauvoo, “spiritual wife was the title by which every woman who entered into this order was called, for it was taught and practiced as a spiritual order and not a temporal one though it was always spoken of sneeringly by those who did not believe in it.” Plural Marriage as Taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1882), 15, as quoted in Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 318.
[46] Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 322.
[47] Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 321.
[48] The mutual tensions between Mormons and non-Mormons in Missouri are discussed in Stephen C. LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987). For the tensions in Nauvoo, see John E. Hallwas and Roger D. Launius, eds., Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1995). The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri highlights the excesses on both sides. For example, on July 4, 1838, the Mormon leader Sidney Rigdon, in his controversial “salt sermon,” declared “it must be as a war of extermination of us against them,” while three months later, on October 27, 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs officially issued his infamous order that the Mormons “must be driven from the state or exterminated if necessary.” LeSueur, Mormon War in Missouri, 50, 152.
[49] Those seeking to develop a balanced understanding of controversial events in Mormon history would do well to compare the divergent approaches in such books as the sympathetic but generally candid Mormon study by James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976); the relentlessly hostile and one-sided, albeit factually accurate anti-Mormon exposé by Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002); and the wide-ranging, candid, and insightful non-Mormon study by Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999).
[50] Citations from Bergera’s article are from the reprint in Waterman, The Prophet Puzzle, 239–57. The original article was printed as Gary James Bergera, “Joseph Smith and the Hazards of Charismatic Leadership,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 6 (1986): 33–42. The concept of charismatic leadership that the great German sociologist Max Weber developed was influenced by his knowledge about Joseph Smith and the Mormons. Although Weber said that the Book of Mormon was possibly a “hoax” and he opined that Joseph Smith might have been “a very sophisticated type of deliberate swindler,” he nevertheless concluded: “Sociological analysis, which must abstain from value judgments, will treat all these [individuals] on the same level as the men who, according to conventional judgments are the ‘greatest’ heroes, prophets, and saviours.” S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Papers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 19, 49. I am grateful to Dan Vogel for calling these citations to my attention.
[51] Bergera, “Charismatic Leadership,” 239–40.
[52]. Bergera, 240.
[53] Bergera, 241.
[54] Bergera, 241.
[55] Bergera, 242.
[56] Bergera’s 1986 summary of the development of Mormon polygamy is supported by major recent studies by professional Mormon historians. These include: Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997); George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: “. . . but we called it celestial marriage” (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008); Martha Bradley-Evans, Glorious in Persecution: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1839–1844 (Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 2016); and D. Michael Quinn. “Evidence for the Sexual Side of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy” (presentation, Mormon History Association annual conference, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, June 29, 2012), enlarged final document dated December 31, 2012 available online at https://mormonpolygamydocuments.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Quinns-FINAL-RESPONSE.pdf. In addition, in Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), Brian Hales, who is not a professional historian, has compiled almost all known documents from Mormon and non-Mormon sources relating to the development of early Mormon polygamy. Professional Mormon historians who have studied early Mormon polygamy most closely, however, have not found Hales’s apologetic interpretation of much of the evidence convincing.
[57] Bergera, “Charismatic Leadership,” 248. For Bergera’s reconstruction of the complex issues raised by the Orson and Sarah Pratt case, see his Conflict in the Quorum: Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 7–51. Orson F. Whitney’s biography of his grandfather, Life of Heber C. Kimball: An Apostle, the Father and Founder of the British Mission (Salt Lake City: Kimball Family, 1888), 333–35, states that Joseph Smith asked Heber to give his wife Vilate to him, stating that it was a requirement. After three days of intense mental turmoil, Heber presented Vilate to Smith. Smith then wept, embraced Heber, and said that he had not really wanted Vilate. He had just been determining if Heber’s loyalty to him was absolute. For similar tests of loyalty in which Smith asked Brigham Young and John Taylor to relinquish their wives to him, see Quinn, “Sexual Side of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy,” 42–46. Apostle Orson Hyde’s case was different. During Hyde’s mission to Palestine, Joseph Smith apparently took Hyde’s wife, Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde, as one of his plural wives without informing Hyde. When Hyde returned from his mission, he was reportedly very upset, but Smith apparently placated him by giving him two other women as plural wives. The details of this and other similar cases have understandably remained in contention. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 228–53; Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy, 327–29; and Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 452–55.
[58] Bergera, “Charismatic Leadership,” 248.
[59] Bergera, 248–49. The Nancy Rigdon controversy is detailed in Richard S. Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 290–310.
[60] Bergera, 249. The best-documented case in which Joseph Smith was married to a daughter of a close associate is that of Heber C. Kimball’s fourteen-year-old daughter Helen Mar Kimball. She described the experience retrospectively as extremely traumatic. In a detailed reminiscence to her children in 1881, she wrote: “Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet, Joseph, he [her father] offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the alter [sic]: how cruel this seamed [sic] to the mother [Vilate] whose heartstrings were already stretched untill [sic] they were ready to snap asunder.” Before Helen reluctantly agreed to become Smith’s plural wife, he told her: “If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.” She continues: “This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward.” Quoted in Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 498, 499.
[61] Bergera, “Charismatic Leadership,” 252.
[62] Bergera, 249–50.
[63] Bergera, 252.
[64] Bergera, 250.
[65] Bergera, 252.
[66] Brigham Young, Nov. 9, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 4:78, as quoted in Quinn, “Sexual Side of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy,” 56–57.
[67] Quincy, “Two Boston Brahmins,” 142.
[68] Immanuel Kant’s original statement, in the Thomas Kingsmill Abbott translation of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics (New York: Longmans, Green, 1927), 260, reads: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”
[69] As quoted in Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History, vii.
[post_title] => Why the Prophet is a Puzzle: The Challenges of Using Psychological Perspectives to Understand the Character and Motivation of Joseph Smith, Jr. [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 1–35This article will explore how one of the most open-ended psychological interpretations of Smith’s prophetic leadership and motivation might contribute to better understanding the trajectory of this extraordinarily talented and conflicted individual whose life has so deeply impacted the religious movement he founded and, increasingly, the larger world. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => why-the-prophet-is-a-puzzle-the-challenges-of-using-psychological-perspectives-to-understand-the-character-and-motivation-of-joseph-smith-jr [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:49:50 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:49:50 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=26355 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Joseph Smith and the Structure of Mormon Identity
Steven L. Olsen
Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 89–100
Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of the First Vision has taken priority in structuring Mormon identity, despite the existence of different versions. This article explores why that version is so meaningful to Latter-day Saints, reflecting on the symbolic strucutre of the account.
In 1838, Joseph Smith reduced to written form the sacred experience which led him to establish Mormonism.[1] his narrative relates a series of heavenly visitations which Smith said had begun eighteen years earlier and had continued until 1829. Although Smith drafted earlier and later accounts of these events, only the 1838 version has been officially recognized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Smith commenced his official History of the Church with this narrative. It also appeared in an 1851 collection of sacred and inspirational writings published by the Church in the British Isles. The permanent status of this text in Mormonism was secured in 1880 by its canonization at the hand of John Taylor who had recently succeeded Brigham Young to the Mormon Presidency. Since its canonization, the "Joseph Smith story," as it is known among Mormons, has become a primary document for the explication of Mormon doctrine and the introduction for many proselytes to the Church. The text has come to demand the loyalty of orthodox Mormons and has become one of Mormonism's most sacred texts.
Remarkable is the contrast between the official status of the 1838 version and the general neglect by the Church of the other accounts. This difference in status cannot be explained by the historical accuracy of the respective accounts. Despite some serious challenges to the chronology of the official account, Mormons have firmly defended its historicity, even though several of the non-canonized versions do not suffer from these perceived historical inaccuracies.[2] Neither can this distinction be demonstrated by the degree of complementarity of the different versions. Although some inconsistencies exist among the accounts, no official attempt has been made to supplement the canonized version with many rich details from the other versions.[3] Finally, despite the principal use of the official version to validate Mormon doctrine,[4] other versions could conceivably perform these didactic functions as well. In short, the Mormon Church seems to view the 1838 "Joseph Smith story" as an account apart, a different kind of narrative from the other versions, even from those written by Smith himself. This exclusive and inviolate position reinforces its sacredness in Mormonism.[5]
One possible reason for the considerable contrast in the Mormon attitude between the canonized and all other accounts is their respective relation to Mormon identity. That is, the unquestioned loyalty to the official version may be an expression more of Mormon ideology than of Mormon historiography or theology. One of the most important roles of this text in Mormonism may be the manner in which it articulates Mormonism's self-conscious mission to mankind.
The social and humanistic disciplines abound with studies of the significance of sacred narratives, often called creation myths, for the expression and maintenance of cultural identity.[6] Meaning in such narratives has been found to be communicated through symbolic as opposed to propositional logic. That is, sensory elements in the story connected with objects, images, persons and places are combined and recombined in discernible patterns which give the story cultural significance considerably greater than that given by the events themselves. As Alan Heimert has observed,
To discover the meaning of any utterance demands what is in substance a continuing act of literary interpretation, for the language with which an idea is presented, and the imaginative universe by which it is surrounded, often tell us more of an author's meaning and intention than his declarative propositions.[7]
This imaginative universe or these symbolic patterns constitute the structure of a narrative. This article will seek to analyze in the context of Mormon identity the structures used by Smith to express, and thereby interpret, his early sacred experiences.
Although many structural theories have been developed, the structuralism of Jean Piaget possesses two distinct advantages for the present study.[8] n the first place, Piaget sees "structuring" as the human process of imposing greater degrees of order upon and deriving additional levels of meaning from preexisting oral, visual, material, written and other cultural traditions. From this perspective, the Joseph Smith story becomes as much the reflection of Smith's perceptions and intentions within an expanding Mormon world-view as the description of a series of historical occurrences.
Secondly, Piaget identifies three characteristics of a well developed symbolic logic, namely wholeness, transformation and self-regulation. These provide the model with a method of analysis and criteria of falsifiability which allow for a level of scientific rigor unattainable from more impressionistic structural theories.
Piaget's first principle, wholeness, requires that the structure of a narrative be completely developed within the story. In the same way that a good story includes all relevant elements for its complete exposition, an adequate symbolic logic must be fully expressed within the narrative.
The symbolic structure of the Joseph Smith story exhibits the quality of wholeness. Briefly, the structure of the text is based on the dynamic contrast between two pairs of opposed yet fundamental concepts in Mormonism, namely Kingdom/World and heaven/earth.[9] The Joseph Smith story symbolically expresses the ideal Mormon relation between these two binary oppositions. That is, the Kingdom/World distinction is magnified and the heaven/ earth distinction is diminished throughout the narrative until the Kingdom overcomes the World and heaven and earth are united. These developments are wholly contained within the narrative.
Piaget's second characteristic, transformation, suggests that the events of the story are ordered not only in chronological and geographical sequence but also in terms of the text's symbolic logic. In the words of the anthropologist Edmund Leach, “the chronological sequence is itself of structural significance.”[10]
Two transformational principles operate within the Joseph Smith story to produce the ideal relationships between the Kingdom and the World, on the one hand, and between heaven and earth, on the other. The first principle, evolution, is the process of creating a new condition from a quite different and outmoded condition. The evolutionary process in the Joseph Smith story symbolically creates the ideal Kingdom/World contrast. The Kingdom overcomes the World in the narrative by destroying the World's institutions, eliminating the World's influence on members of the Kingdom, and ceasing all communication with the World. The Kingdom establishes itself in the narrative through the evolution of an institutional framework of action with the Kingdom and the regeneration of the individual in the ideal image of the Kingdom.
The second transformational principle of the Joseph Smith story is dialectics, that is, the process of increasingly approximating an ideal state through the resolution of contrasts. Dialectics operate in the narrative to symbolically unify heaven and earth. This is accomplished through the resolution of two pair of contrasting elements characteristic of the heaven/earth opposition, namely light/dark and high/low.
Piaget's third characteristic of a well-developed symbolic logic is self-regulation. Self-regulation refers to the patterns in the narrative, which are analogous to meter and stanzas in poetry and rhythm and movements in music. These patterns help set the mood of the story and reinforce its meaning.
The most obvious rhythms in the Joseph Smith story consist in the division of the narrative into three vignettes, each of which is characterized by a significant heavenly manifestation. More specific devices of self-regulation in the text include repetition, series, climax, ·and denouement.
The first vignette (vv. 1-26), known to Mormons as the "First Vision," finds young Joseph searching for God's true religion but being confused and bewildered by the organized churches of his day. Strengthened in his resolve to find the truth, Joseph retires to the woods near his home to ask God directly the whereabouts of the truth. During the prayer, he is assailed by an evil presence which nearly causes his destruction. At the point of Joseph's abandonment, the evil is dispelled by a glorious light in which appear two heavenly beings, identified as God the Father and Jesus Christ. They instruct the lad to avoid all modern religions.
Three years pass before the second vignette begins (vv. 27-54), during which Joseph has been adversely influenced by his friends. Wishing to be cleansed of the resulting taints, Joseph withdraws to the security of his bedroom to seek God's forgiveness. His prayers are answered by the appearance of an angel named Moroni who calls Joseph to restore the Kingdom of God to earth.
The third vignette (vv. 55-75) opens with Joseph digging for buried treasure. Unsuccessful at this enterprise, he withdraws from the working world to begin translating sacred records which Moroni has entrusted to his keeping. This translation is eventually published as the Book of Mormon. Wishing to verify the accuracy of the translation, Joseph sends a sympathetic neighbor, Martin Harris, to Professor Charles Anthon. The professor first attests to the accuracy of the translation, but upon learning of its reputed source, he withdraws his approval in disgust.
Following this rejection, Joseph immerses himself in the work of the Kingdom, and God rewards him first by providing him a scribe, Oliver Cowdery, to assist in the translation, and second by sending the resurrected John the Baptist to authorize Joseph and Oliver to baptize each other and anyone else who believes them. The Joseph Smith story ends with Joseph secure in the heavenly Kingdom he has just restored, yet increasingly persecuted by former friends and strangers alike.
We will now consider how these events are expressed by Joseph Smith in an imaginative universe or symbolic structure which defines Mormonism's self-conscious identity. The Kingdom/World dichotomy is symbolized most dramatically by the demise of the major institutions of the World. In the first vignette, institutionalized religion is overcome by the Kingdom. As the narrative begins, Joseph has no other concern in life than to find God's true church. Instead of truth, Joseph experiences hypocrisy, contention and confusion among the “different religious parties" of the day and feels himself unable "to come to any certain conclusion who was right and who was wrong."
To seek an answer, Joseph removes himself from the religions of the World and in a grove of trees near his home communicates with two heavenly beings. They repeat four times the answer to his question of the whereabouts of the true religion. Joseph is told a) he "must join none" of the existing churches; b) "that their creeds were an abomination"; c) "that those professors [of religion] were all corrupt"; and d) again not "to join with any of them" (vv. 19-20). Although Joseph alludes to "many other things" (v. 20) he learned during the "First Vision," the divine condemnation of existing religions is the only information included in the text.
Following his experience with the heavens, Joseph defends his newfound truth not only to the minister of the sect which had once attracted him (v. 21) but to "professors of religion" in general (v. 22) and to the very "powers of darkness" (v. 20) which had so recently nearly proven his demise. From this point in the text, Joseph has no further contact with organized religion. As far as the Kingdom is concerned, this institution of the World has been negated.
The society of the World is at issue in the second vignette. For three years after the "First Vision" Joseph mingles with "all classes of men" (v. 27) and in "all kinds of society" (v. 28). In defending his supernatural experiences, Joseph is persecuted by "those who ought to have been my friends and to have treated me kindly . . .” (v. 28). These associations lead Joseph into "all kinds of temptations" (v. 28). Although he confesses that such "foolish errors" and 0foibles of human nature" were not serious (v. 28), he seeks forgiveness of God after having withdrawn from the society of the World. His visitation from the angel Moroni takes him out of the World to define his initial status in the Kingdom—translator of sacred records (vv. 34–35). Following his experience with Moroni, Joseph has no further social contacts with any worldly associate. In short, the coming of Moroni negates the society of the World.
The third vignette contains two encounters between the Kingdom and the World. As with previous encounters, the representative of the Kingdom is adversely affected by his involvement with the World. God, however, provides him a means of escape. First of all, Joseph becomes involved with the economy of the World. Although, he is not alone in this enterprise, Joseph refers to his fellow workers only in occupational terms. He does not relate to them in the text as companions or friends (v. 56).
This get-rich-quick scheme earns Joseph nothing but the reputation of being a "money-digger." Embarrassed, he withdraws from the economy of the World and begins his mission to the Kingdom. From this point in the text, Joseph never again encounters the World's economies. God, however, provides for his temporal needs by sending a "farmer of respectability," Martin Harris, with the "timely aid" of fifty dollars (vv. 60-61).
Once Joseph has begun his mission in the Kingdom, the narrative has him no longer personally involved with any institution of the World. As a result, it is Martin Harris who takes a portion of the translated manuscript and some transcribed characters from the plates to a professor of education for verification. The professor approves of both until he learns of their reputed source. Hearing that they came from an angel, he withdraws his support stating that "there was no such thing now as ministering of angels" (v. 65).
This response climaxes the widening Kingdom/World opposition. At this point, the distinction has become categorical. The World is now the arch-enemy of the Kingdom in principle as well as in practice. Reconciliation between them is no longer possible. Consequently, no further contact with the World is sought by the Kingdom. As far as the Kingdom is concerned, the institutions of the World have been overcome.
From the perspective of the World, however, the principle of opposition becomes the practice of persecution. As the Kingdom progressively overcomes the World’s institutions, the World increasingly mobilizes against the Kingdom. Opposition to the Kingdom comes first from a single Methodist preacher (v. 21) and then from "professors of religion" as a group (v. 22). In the second vignette, the source of persecution has expanded to include "all classes of men, both religious and irreligious" (v. 27). By the third vignette, "persecution became more bitter and severe than before, and multitudes were on the alert continually to get [ the plates] if possible" (v. 60).
Despite the increased opposition, the World's influence on the Kingdom wanes as its institutions are negated. In the first vignette, Joseph is ignorant, isolated and powerless as a result of his involvement with the World. In the second vignette, the World affects only his moral integrity. Joseph's involvement with the economy of the World leaves him embarrassed and penniless but does not assail his character, and the involvement with the education of the World results only in disappointment. The narrative suggests that as the World mobilizes in opposition to the Kingdom, its influence on the Kingdom declines.
Joseph's patterns of communication in the text reinforce this logical progression. In the first vignette, Joseph discusses his spiritual experiences only with the World, in the form of sectarian preachers (vv. 21-22). He comes no closer to communicate his experiences with trusted family members than to inform his mother that her religion was "not true" (v. 20).
The second vignette finds Joseph's communications exclusively with "those who ought to have been my friends" (v. 28). After the visitation of Moroni, however, Joseph initiates open communication with family members and ceases direct communication with the World. In the words of Joseph, Moroni "commanded me to go to my father and tell him of the visions and commandments which I had received,, (v. 49).
The World, however, is still informed of the activities of the Kingdom, but only in an oblique manner, as indicated by the use of the passive voice in the text: '' . . . no sooner was it known that I had [ the plates], than the most strenuous exertions were used to get them from me” (v. 60). Joseph also indicates that by this time profane communication or "rumor with her ten thousand tongues was all the time employed in circulating falsehoods" about the Kingdom (v. 61).
After Joseph begins to translate the sacred record and after he becomes authorized to enlarge the Kingdom through baptism, communication with the World ceases altogether, and communication within the Kingdom, including that between heaven and earth, becomes well developed.
Our minds being now enlightened, we began to have the scriptures laid open to our understandings, and the true meaning and intention of their more mysterious passages revealed unto us in a manner which we never could attain to previously, nor ever before thought of. In the meantime we were forced to keep secret the circumstances of having received the Priesthood and our having been baptized, owing to a spirit of persecution which had already manifested itself in the neighborhood (v. 74).
In short, as the Kingdom grows, the institutions of the World—religion, society, economy and education—are destroyed until the Kingdom has no more use for the World. The adverse effects of the World upon members of the Kingdom are also progressively eliminated. The increasing rift between the Kingdom and the World is seen as well in the mounting persecution of the Kingdom by the World and in the decreasing communications between them.
In the process of destroying the institutions of the World, the Kingdom recreates the individual in the ideal image of the Kingdom. In this respect1 Joseph Smith becomes the model of conversion in this sacred Mormon text. In the first vignette, Joseph describes himself as ignorant of the truth and unable of himself to find it: ". . . so great were the confusion and strife among the different denominations, that it was impossible for a person young as I was, and so unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain conclusion who was right and who was wrong" (v. 8). The "two Personages" in the 11sacred grove" give Joseph sufficient knowledge not only to satisfy his own yearnings but to withstand the opposition of the "great ones of the most popular sects of the day" (v. 23) and the very /✓powers of darkness" (v. 20). After receiving this knowledge and throughout the rest of the narrative, Joseph never lacks for confidence or resources in establishing the Kingdom.
The second vignette is concerned with Joseph's moral integrity. His involvement with the society of the World results in his committing 11many foolish errors" and displaying "the weaknesses of youth, and the foibles of human nature" (v. 28). Joseph's repeated visits with the angel Moroni assure him of his acceptance by God. From this point in the narrative, Joseph shows no evidence of any faults in his character.
In the third vignette, Joseph acquires the trait of sociality. Until this point in the narrative, Joseph's companions have been either worldly as with 1 'those who ought to have been my friends . . ." or temporary as with his father and Martin Harris. Oliver Cowdery becomes Joseph's first companion in Kingdom building, assisting the Prophet to translate the plates. Not until Oliver begins his service does Joseph use the first person plural to describe his activities in the Kingdom (v. 68).
A final quality acquired by Joseph in coming to personify the Kingdom is power. Although he experiences the great power of the Kingdom from reading the Bible (vv. 11-12), he does not possess a portion of that power until John the Baptist confers on him the "Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys [authority] of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. . . " (v. 69). Upon being baptized, Joseph also receives the Holy Ghost which becomes an unexpected key of knowledge in establishing the Kingdom.
Joseph's experiences with the Kingdom withdraw him from a declining World and initiate him into the emerging Kingdom by developing in him the qualities of knowledge, purity, sociality and power. By the end of the narrative, Joseph has acquired not only these traits himself, but also the mechanisms in the form of baptism, Priesthood and the Holy Ghost to extend the qualities of conversion to all who will accept the Kingdom.
The evolution of the Kingdom is manifest, finally, on an institutional level in a series of activities having increasing significance for the Kingdom. The first activity, namely instruction, characterizes the Kingdom through the first two vignettes. The "First Vision" and Moroni's repeated visitations are wholly concerned with giving Joseph "instruction and intelligence . . . respecting what the Lord was going to do, and how and in what manner his Kingdom was to be conducted in the last days" (v. 54).
After Joseph receives the plates, the focus of institutional activity shifts to production. That is, Joseph now applies the instruction he has received to produce the first material evidence of the Kingdom's restoration, namely the Book of Mormon.
With the coming of John the Baptist the institutional activity of the Kingdom begins to shift once more from production to reproduction. That is, the Kingdom has evolved to the point at which others can begin to share in its growth. The ordination and baptism of Joseph and Oliver initiate this stage of the Kingdom's expansion.
In sum, the symbolic evolution of the Kingdom in the Joseph Smith story consists of destruction of the institutions of the World and the concurrent construction of the Kingdom. The former consists of the demise of the World's institutions, the World's influence on the Kingdom and its communication with the Kingdom. The latter involves creating the individual member in the image of the Kingdom and developing a framework of institutional activity consistent with the Kingdom's ultimate scope.
The second principle of systematic transformation in the Joseph Smith story is dialectics, which integrate the contrasting elements of heaven and earth in the text. The unification is symbolized first in the contrast of illumination, or light/dark dichotomy. As Joseph prays in the woods to find God's truth, "thick darkness gathered around" him. This darkness signals the presence of "some actual being from the unseen world," whose power causes Joseph nearly to "sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction.” Yet “just at this moment of great alarm," a pillar of light appears to disp·e1 the darkness. Joseph reports, "It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound." Within the light are "two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description'' (vv. 15-17). A more powerful contrast between light and dark could not be imagined than that which introduced Joseph to the Kingdom.
The light/dark contrast in the coming of Moroni is striking, but less so than in the "First Vision." Moroni comes to Joseph at night, which is simply the absence of light, not the presence of evil. The contrast is further muted by he light gradually dispelling the darkness. Joseph reports, "a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday" (v. 30). Joseph also uses language less sublime in describing Moroni's appearance than the "First Vision." Joseph describes Moroni's robe as having "a whiteness beyond anything earthly I had ever seen" and Moroni's countenance as being "glorious beyond description, and . . . truly like lightning" (vv. 31-32).
In the final manifestation of the Kingdom, John the Baptist appears to Joseph and Oliver during the day. The only contrast between the glory of the Baptist and the surrounding daylight is that John "descended in a cloud of light" (v. 68). Not only is the contrast minimal but it is made without further textual elaboration. In the three successive light/dark oppositions in the narrative, the contrast decreases and is the least at the point in the story when Joseph and Oliver are inducted into the Kingdom. In short, the resolution of the light/dark dichotomy symbolizes the union of heaven and earth which the restoration of the Kingdom was effecting.
Confirmation of this symbolic pattern exists as well in the opposition of elevation, or the contrast of "high" and "low." In the "First Vision," Joseph describes the "pillar of light" as appearing "exactly over my head" and descending "gradually until it fell upon me" (v. 16). The contrast between Joseph's position, namely "lying on my back, looking up into heaven," (v. 20) and the position of the "two Personages," "standing above me in the air," is considerable.
In the second vignette, Moroni appears somewhat elevated above Joseph, but less than the "two Personages." In Joseph's words, Moroni "appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor" (v. 30). The final vignette mentions no specific distinction in elevation between John the Baptist, on the one hand, and Joseph and Oliver, on the other. The only suggestion of a difference is that John lays his hands on Joseph and Oliver to confer on them the "Priesthood of Aaron" (vv. 68-69).
As the Kingdom becomes established, two of the principal symbolic distinctions between heaven and earth, namely light/dark and high/low, are eliminated. The evolution of the Kingdom also destroys all effective opposition so that by the end of the Joseph Smith story the Kingdom is secure in its foundations and optimistic in its directions. At the conclusion of the narrative, Joseph "prophesied concerning the rise of this Church, and many other things connected with the Church, and this generation of the children of men. We were filled with the Holy Ghost and rejoiced in the God of our salvation."
The symbolic logic of the Joseph Smith story expresses a fundamental aspect of Mormonism's self-conscious identity. Mormons believe that the religion founded by Joseph Smith embodies the Kingdom of God restored to earth following a long separation of man from the truth. According to Mormon reckoning, this heavenly kingdom in temporal form is destined to overthrow the kingdoms of the World and literally transform the earth into heaven. In other words, the 1838 Joseph Smith story not only experientially confirms much of Mormon theology, it symbolically defines its self-conscious identity.
None of the other versions express Mormon identity so simply yet so completely and elegantly as does the 1838 account. In fact, no other Mormon document can serve so well the role of cultural charter or creation myth. Smith's introduction to the 1838 version suggests that he intended to compose an official charter when he began to write.
Owing to the many reports which have been put in circulation by evildisposing and designing persons in relation to the rise anq progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . . . I have been induced to write this history, to disabuse the public mind, and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts ... so far as I have such facts in my possession (v. 1).
By integrating fundamental aspects of Mormon historical, theological and ideological consciousness into a simple narrative form, the Joseph Smith story becomes the model testimony among a people whose declarations of faith are often expressed in experiential terms. The text also establishes Joseph Smith as the model convert to a religion for which "overcoming the world" and "establishing heaven on earth" are as significant for the individual member as for the entire church. These slogans have been used throughout Mormon history to validate its theology, ethics, social organization and cosmology. Because the ideal Mormon relations between the Kingdom and the World and between heaven and earth are symbolically expressed in the Joseph Smith text, the narrative provides Latter-day Saints with an interpretive framework to order their lives and make meaningful their social and religious experiences.[11] The use of the text as an absolute marker of Mormon history and doctrine is largely a function of its ability to articulate the structure of Mormon identity.
[1] Joseph Smith Jr., The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith 2 (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1978), pp. 46-57, originally published serially in Times and Seasons (Nauvoo, Illinois), 15 March-1 August 1842. Numbers in parentheses throughout this article refer to the verse(s) in the Joseph Smith text from which the information was taken.
[2] E.g., Reverend Wesley P. Walters and Richard L. Bushman, "Round table: The Question of the Palmyra Revivals," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 4 (Spring 1969), pp. 60-100.
[3] James B. Allen, "Eight Contemporary Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision: What do we Learn from Them?" The Improvement Era 73 (April 1970), pp. 4-13; Paul R. Cheesman, "An Analysis of the Accounts Relating Joseph Smith's Early Visions" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1965).
[4] James B. Allen, "The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision' in Mormon Thought," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1 (Autumn 1966), pp. 29-45.
[5] The Durkheimian tradition has viewed sacred phenomena as those which are separated and protected from mundane existence by ritual and moral imperatives, Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1915).
[6] Michael Lane, ed., An Introduction to Structuralism (New York: Basic Books, 1970); Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology I, II (New York: Basic Books, 1963, 1976); International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968 ed., "Myth and Symbol," by Victor Turner.
[7] Alan Heimerl, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 11.
[8] Jean Piaget, Structuralism, trans. Channah Maschler (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970).
[9] For present purposes, "Kingdom," "World," "Heaven" and "earth" are roughly equivalent to "sacred," "secular," "spiritual," and "material," respectively.
[10] Edmund Leach, "The Legitimacy of Solomon," in Genesis as Myth and other Essays (London: Cape Editions, 1969), p. 79.
[11] See Gifford Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System," in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 193-233.
[post_title] => Joseph Smith and the Structure of Mormon Identity [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 89–100Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of the First Vision has taken priority in structuring Mormon identity, despite the existence of different versions. This article explores why that version is so meaningful to Latter-day Saints, reflecting on the symbolic strucutre of the account. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => joseph-smith-and-the-structure-of-mormon-identity [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:50:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:50:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16445 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
JOSEPH SMITH'S EXPERIENCE OF A METHODIST "CAMP-MEETING" IN 1820
D. Michael Quinn
Dialogue E-Paper July 12, 2006
As an alternative to myopic polarization, this essay provides new ways of understanding Joseph's narrative, analyzes previously neglected issues/data, and establishes a basis for perceiving in detail what the teenage boy experienced in the religious revivalism that led to his first theophany
Since 1967, disbelieving critics of Joseph Smith Jr.'s accounts of his “First Vision" of deity have repeated the arguments and evidence given by minister-researcher Wesley P. Walters against the existence of an 1820 "religious excitement" (revival) in or near Palmyra, New York, as affirmed by the Mormon prophet's most detailed narrative. Since 1969, Smith's believing apologists[1] have repeated the rebuttal arguments and evidence given by BYU religion professor Milton V. Backman Jr. in support of such a revival which, Smith declared, led to his vision in 1820. For four decades, both sides have continued to approach this debated topic as if there were no alternative ways to examine the materials Walters and Backman cited, and as if there were no additional sources of significance to consider. The skeptics have been uniformly intransigent, while some apologists have made significant concessions.
This essay maintains that both sides have examined their evidences with tunnel vision, while both have likewise ignored issues and documents crucial to the topic. As an alternative to myopic polarization, this essay provides new ways of understanding Joseph's narrative, analyzes previously neglected issues/data, and establishes a basis for perceiving in detail what the teenage boy experienced in the religious revivalism that led to his first theophany. This is conservative revisionism.
An oddity in Mormon studies has been the decades-long repetition of Reverend Wesley P. Walters' claim in 1967 that "no revival occurred in the Palmyra area [of western New York State] in 1820." Rejecting all reminiscent accounts by Mormons, he made this assertion because of an allegedly "massive silence" about such a revival in documents written or published during that year. Instead, he argued, "the statement of Joseph Smith, Jr. cannot be true when he claims that he was stirred by an 1820 revival to make his inquiry in the grove [of trees] near his home." Walters insisted that various evidences showed Palmyra having no revivals from the fall of 1817 until 1824. Thus, Smith allegedly invented a fictitious revival to support his allegedly fictitious "First Vision" of deity in 1820 by superimposing on that year the extensive revivals which contemporary sources clearly described for Palmyra in 1824 and the following year.[2] Likewise, a hostile biographer wrote in 1999: "There was no significant revival in or around Palmyra in 1820," adding that "no known revival occurred in Palmyra between 1818 and 1823," and repeating: "no revivals in or around Palmyra [--] 1820.”[3]
Such unconditional denials seem odd for several reasons. First, the published diary of minister Aurora Seager commented that Palmyra had a revival in June 1818. After returning to his "home at Phelps on the 19th of May," he prepared to attend the annual meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church's Genesee Conference (the organizational subdivision for western New York):
I received, on the 18th of June, a letter from Brother [Billy] Hibbard, informing me that I had been received by the [eastern] New York Conference, and, at my request, had been transferred to the Genesee Conference. On [Friday,] the 19th [of June 1818,] I attended a camp-meeting at Palmyra [nearly fourteen miles from Phelps]. The arrival of Bishop Roberts, who seems to be a man of God, and is apostolic in his appearance, gave a deeper interest to the meeting until it closed. On Monday [at Palmyra's camp-meeting,] the sacrament was administered, about twenty were baptized; forty united with the [Methodist] Church, and the meeting closed. I accompanied the Bishop to Brother [Eleazer] Hawks, at Phelps, and on the 14th of July [1818,] I set out [from Phelps] with Brother [Zechariah] Paddock for the Genesee conference, which was to hold its session at Lansing, N.Y.[4]
This narrative in itself undermined Reverend Walters' emphatic declaration that Palmyra had no revival for more than six years after the fall of 1817.
In 1969 BYU religion professor Milton V. Backman Jr. made him aware of this diary entry, and Walters should have recognized that it demonstrated a fundamental flaw in part of his argument. However, he never acknowledged this document. Furthermore, in a 1980 article where he claimed to have read the "entire manuscript" which summarized the above entry from Seager's diary,[5] Walters ridiculed a Mormon author's assertion that Palmyra's revivals of 1817 continued into 1818.[6]
The second oddity about the decades-long repetition of the minister-researcher's denials involves Palmyra's weekly newspaper. Its edition of 28 June 1820 referred to out-of-town visitor James Couser, who died on June 26th, the day after he drunkenly left "the Camp-ground" following the evening services of "a camp-meeting which was held in this vicinity."[7] The Palmyra Register’s next edition denied that its editor intended "to charge the Methodists" with selling alcohol at "their camp-ground" while they "professedly met for the worship of their God."[8] Third, farmer's almanacs—on which the Smiths and other village dwellers depended—specified that spring began on 20 March 1820 and ended when summer commenced on 21 June.[9] Traditional LDS statements that Joseph's revival-inspired theophany happened at an unspecified time "in the spring of 1820"[10] thus allow for an event as late as one minute before midnight on June 20th. Fourth, starting with Backman and BYU religion professor Richard Lloyd Anderson in 1969, for more than thirty years LDS authors cited one or both of those newspaper articles as proof that there was at least one religious revival in Palmyra during the first six months of 1820.[11]
Why have some scholars continued to deny that there was a religious revival that year? First, because Joseph Smith's most detailed narration about the pre-vision revival (and especially commentaries on it by his mother Lucy in the preliminary manuscript of her "History," by his brother William, and by his scribe Oliver Cowdery—after consultation with Joseph) referred to circumstances of Palmyra's revival in 1824-25 (such as its occurrence after the death of Alvin Smith—who died in November 1823, the preaching by Methodist minister George Lane, the revival's expansion to include the Baptists and Presbyterian preachers like Benjamin Stockton, and the conversion of "great multitudes," including several Smith family members to the Presbyterian Church). Thus, nay-sayers conclude that Joseph's dating of the crucial revival as 1820 was "anachronistic" at best, and fraudulent at worst.[12]
Second, in his 1969 expansion of the original 1967 article, Walters himself mentioned the Palmyra Register’s articles about the camp-meeting of June 1820. Paradoxically, he cited them in a footnote to support his narrative statement: "Even the Palmyra newspaper, while reporting revivals at several places in the state, has no mention whatever of any revival in Palmyra or vicinity in 1819 or 1820.”[13]
It seems mind-boggling for the minister-researcher to cite confirming documentation as if it were disconfirmation, but Walters did so for a reason he only implied (that the articles did not specify the "camp-meeting" was a "revival"), as well as for two incomplete explanations. In the footnote, he wrote: "Even the Methodist camp meeting being held in the vicinity of the village has nothing more significant reported about it than that a man had gotten drunk at the grog shops while there and died the next morning." In other words, this meeting was insignificant because Palmyra's newspaper mentioned it in passing as simply the background for reporting a man's death, not as a newsworthy event in its own right. Later in the narrative text, he gave another explanation (again only partly stated): that this 1820 meeting was merely an outdoors gathering of the local congregation at "the Methodist camp grounds a mile from Palmyra, in the wooded area adjoining the Methodist chapel." Therefore, by implication only, Reverend Walters dismissed this "camp-meeting" as a regular congregational service on the evening of Sunday, 25 June 1820—thus, not a special revival.[14]
A third reason why some scholars have continued to deny that there was a revival that year is the evidence he presented in 1967 and 1969 that there was no dramatic increase (or "spike") in the denominational membership of Palmyra and surrounding towns during 1820, as one might expect following a religious revival as extensive as Smith described: "Indeed, the whole district of country seemed affected by it, and great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties . . .”[15]
In 1969 Backman chipped away at Walters' arguments. During 1819-20, there were revivals in seven towns "within a radius of twenty-five miles of the Smith farm" and also throughout New York State, with increases among Baptists and Presbyterians both locally and statewide. Furthermore, although Methodist records for the immediate vicinity of Palmyra did not survive, existing records verified the denomination's conversions during 1820 in nearby towns, with a total increase of 2,256 Methodists in western New York as a whole for that year.[16]
Backman did not specify it in this way, but his expansive geography was justified because Joseph's phrase "the whole district of country" indicated the young man's familiarity with Methodist terms and regional organization. In July 1819 the Genesee Conference of western New York created the Ontario District, which comprised Ontario County, in which Palmyra was then located.[17] Specifically, Palmyra and Farmington (later named Manchester) were among the villages within the smaller Ontario Circuit of the Ontario District, and the Smith family lived in both villages from late 1816 through 1830.[18]
As the subdivision of a district, a Methodist circuit comprised "stations" or villages for preaching. One circuit might have few stations, while another had more than forty. Each circuit was served by an itinerant preacher (Methodist "circuit rider") who traveled on horseback to visit each station within a circuit.[19] For example, in 1817 the Genesee Conference assigned Alvin Torry to a circuit dozens of miles east of Palmyra, which circuit "embraced Scipio, Cayuga, Mentz, Elbridge, Jordan, Manlius, Onondaga, Owasco, Otisco, Auburn, Skaneateles and Spafford. . . . It was a four weeks' circuit, and all we could do in the preaching line, was to give each congregation one sermon once in two weeks; and this required us to preach almost every day in the week . . .” After the weeks necessary to make one circuit of preaching visits, the circuit-riders started all over again, whether they traveled in pairs or alone.[20]
From 1773 onward, the Methodist Episcopal Church published its annual statistics of membership for each conference (such as the Genesee), for each district within that conference, and for each circuit within that district. However, the published statistics did not reach to the level of each "station" (town/village within a circuit).[21]
Previous to 1819, Palmyra was in the Genesee Conference's same-named subdivision, "the Genesee District [which] embraced the whole territory from Cayuga Lake to Lake Erie, and from Lake Ontario, on the north, into Pennsylvania . . .”[22] Backman explained that this was "about five hundred miles" east-to-west, and "about three hundred miles" north-to-south. Also, contrary to Walters' initial assumption that the June 1820 camp-meeting took place at an existing chapel, Backman pointed out that the Methodists did not build a meetinghouse in Palmyra until 1822.[23]
In his 1980 article, the minister's most significant rebuttal was to challenge as "wishful thinking" the application to Palmyra of Methodist growth in western New York as a whole. This is the "ecological fallacy" in statistics, because an individual case can be very different from the general pattern of which it is only one part. Specifically, Walters charged Backman with wrongly calculating the statistics for Ontario Circuit:
What he should have done is to subtract the July, 1820, figures from the July, 1819, figures to look for any [Methodist] increases for the spring of 1820. Had he done this[,] he would have discovered a total loss of 59 members for the Ontario District [sic], the district where Joseph Smith lived.[24]
However, to arrive at this net loss, the minister-researcher actually did the opposite of what he described and then (at best) made an error of subtraction in the direction for which he was arguing. First, he inaccurately claimed that his calculations were based on "District" membership (roughly the entire county), when he meant the smallest Methodist unit of reported affiliation, the Ontario Circuit of a few towns/villages. Membership differences at the district level were in the hundreds during those years, and bore no similarity to the result he tabulated. Second, a comparison of the July 1819 Methodist affiliation of the Ontario District's Ontario Circuit (677 total) with the circuit's July 1820 membership (671 total) reveals a net loss of only six members. Walters was able to arrive at the non-existent "loss of 59 members" in only one way: he compared the circuit's July 1821 affiliation (622 total) with the July 1820 total of 671,resulting in a net loss of 49 which he then increased by ten. Those errors in his 1980 article (directed to evangelical ministers) appeared to be intentional, since his 1969 article (directed to Mormon apologists) correctly stated in the narrative text that the Methodist decline "for the entire circuit" was "6 for 1820," which he repeated in a 1969 source-note as "a net loss of 6."[25]
In fact, his eighteen-page article in 1980 was a polemical screed that began with the emphatic statement: "there was no revival either in Palmyra or anywhere near Joseph Smith's home in the year 1820," which Walters restated sixteen times before his concluding comment that "one cannot expect to find historical support for legendary events." Among the article's denials were: "this supposed 1820 camp meeting," and "without any evidence that there was either a camp meeting or a revival," and "nor can even a spark of a revival be found within at least a 15-mile radius of his home during that year." This 1980 response made no reference to the Palmyra Register’s articles about the villages “camp-meeting” in late June 1820—which Reverend Walters had at least mentioned in his 1969 footnote.[26]
He then prepared a book-length response, which H. Michael Marquardt revised and published in 1994 after the minister's death. Despite the expansiveness of Smith's phrase "the whole district of country," they countered that statewide, region-wide, and even county-wide indications of revivalism and moderate growth cannot compensate for no documentation to support Joseph's narrative of dramatic revivalism "in the place where we lived" during 1820.[27] By contrast, the spike in conversions described by Smith can be found only in 1824-25. In effect, they also thanked LDS apologists for demonstrating that Palmyra's Methodists had no chapel in June 1820 and therefore had camp-meetings outside for congregational purposes, apparently nullifying the significance of the newspaper's observations.[28] Like-minded authors have continued to restate Walters' 1967-94 arguments in part or whole.[29]
However, there was a crucial contradiction in Walters' claim for "massive silence" about Palmyra's 1820 revival. On the one hand, he insisted that it "is completely beyond possibility" that the local "Presbytery should have been ignorant of a great awakening at Palmyra" in 1820. On the other hand, he acknowledged that this same local Presbyterian Church declared in September 1824 that there had been "no remarkable revival of religion within our bounds," even though the Methodists were publishing reports of their own revivals near Palmyra since the late spring of that same year. Rather than acknowledging these as equivalent examples of Presbyterian myopia about the competing revivals by Methodists, Walters cited the Presbyterians for making a curious denial of the 1824 Palmyra revivals he emphasized, while he polemically used their 1820 denial as alleged proof of his argument that Palmyra had no revival that year.[30] Ironically, the minister openly used unequal standards to assess the same kind of evidence from the same source in order to arrive at opposite conclusions about 1820 and 1824.
In addition, before and after Palmyra's camp-meeting of late June 1818, the village's newspaper did not refer to this three-day revival (Friday to Monday). This silence is even more glaring because its principal speaker was Robert R. Roberts, one of only three Methodist bishops in North America.[31] This Palmyra revival (which commenced in the last days of spring 1818) also followed the pattern of "massive silence" in the kinds of documents that Walters emphasized to dismiss Joseph's affirmation of an 1820 revival in the spring.
This contemporary silence about two Methodist camp-meetings that unquestionably occurred two years apart in Palmyra should have raised fundamental doubts about the assumptions and assertions by Walters, as well as about his methodology. He discouraged such assessments by maintaining his own silence about the documentation of Palmyra's 1818 revival. Truly mystifying, however, is the fact that during four decades most apologists ignored the evidence for this 1818 revival, a confirmation that Backman himself buried in a footnote.[32]
Given ample opportunities for challenging the factual errors, historical misrepresentations, statistical gaffes, logical fallacies, and withheld evidence by Reverend Walters, various authors chose other alternatives for nearly forty years. Thankfully, LDS apologists generally avoided the disreputable approach of ad hominem attack, but a rigorous academic critique does not need to be polemical. Instead, many wrote as if his articles and book did not exist, others critiqued his writings superficially, and some apologists actually deferred to him.
Nevertheless, the most significant problem with Palmyra's camp-meeting of late June 1820 is that the Prophet specifically stated that his vision of deity occurred "early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty.”[33] Therefore, citing the Palmyra Register in June-July 1820 to demonstrate pre-vision revivalism would seem to be a fallacy of irrelevant proof, and skeptics can accurately say there is no indication of a revival there in March, April, nor even in May of that year. FARMS reviewer Gary F. Novak acknowledged that "merely finding a revival does not clear up every seeming problem with Joseph's story. . .”[34]
As a historian who has analyzed original narratives and revised documents that anachronistically changed Mormon developments,[35] I have another perspective about the fact (and it is a fact) that Smith's official narrative about 1820 included circumstances which occurred during Palmyra's revivals of 1824-25. Merging (conflating) circumstances from similar events that happened years apart will certainly confuse the historical record and will perplex anyone trying to sort out basic chronology. Nonetheless, conflation of actual circumstances from separate events is not the same as fraudulent invention of events that never occurred. Conflation also is not the combination of an actual event with a fictional event. Instead, it is very common for memoirs and autobiographies to merge similar events that actually occurred, due to the narrator's memory lapses or her/his intentional streamlining of the narrative to avoid repeating similar occurrences.[36]
I think the latter was the reason that in describing his 1820 vision, Joseph Smith's 1838 official history conflated circumstances of Palmyra's solitary Methodist revival in late spring of 1820 with the circumstances of Palmyra's extensive revivals of 1824 that resulted in his mother, his sister Sophronia, his brothers Hyrum and Samuel joining the Presbyterian Church. Joseph merged the two revivals, combined two different kinds of family conversions, and dated this multi-year conflation as 1820. While this is partially inaccurate, I see it as streamlining his narrative, not as an example of fraudulent invention.
This is not "privileging" Joseph's narrative. It is, in fact, acknowledging a general pattern in all autobiographies. A repeatedly published handbook for historical research explained that "not all discrepancies signalize a myth or a fraud. In autobiographies, for instance, one must be prepared to find errors in dates and names without necessarily inferring that the account is false. . . . It would be absurd to disbelieve the main fact [simply] because the date is two years off."[37]
Significantly, New York's Methodist Magazine also conflated its reports of multiple revivals into a single revival. For example, a March 1818 article about "REVIVAL OF RELIGION" in Maine described camp-meetings and chapel revivals in eight towns during four months, and an article that same year about "REVIVAL OF RELIGION" in Suffolk County, New York, referred to eight towns during a ten-month period.[38] An 1821 "ACCOUNT OF THE REVIVAL AND PROGRESS OF THE WORK OF GOD IN FOUNTAIN-HEAD CIRCUIT THROUGH THE LAST YEAR" likewise described eight towns during ten months.[39] An 1824 article about "REVIVAL AND PROGRESS OF RELIGION" referred to ten towns in six months.[40]
This conflation into one revival also appeared in reports about multiple revivals in a single city of New York State. "A SHORT SKETCH OF THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION IN THE CITY OF TROY" started with February 1816 and concluded: "Upwards of a year has elapsed, since this good work commenced."[41] Another "SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION IN THE CITY OF SCHNECTADY" referred to separate outbursts of religious renewal from December 1818 through April 1819.[42] Beyond the Empire State, an article on "REVIVAL OF THE WORK OF GOD IN PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA" also referred to camp-meetings from August 1819 to "last August" (1820).[43]
Even more relevant to the conflation in Joseph's 1838 history, New York’s Methodist Magazine—as indicated by the previous example—conflated into a single event various instances of revivalism that actually occurred during a year or more. The magazine's report of one "REVIVAL OF RELIGION" in four towns skipped from camp-meetings in July 1818 to camp-meetings in June of 1819.[44] Another article referred to "the memorable revival of religion in Chillicothe in 1818-19."[45] In an 1819 article, its minister-author concluded: "It is now fourteen months since this revival began, during which time it has spread an extent of more than twelve miles.”[46] An 1825 article about the "Revival in Bridgetown, N.J." referred to intermittent revivals "in this place during the two last conference years."[47] Even in the official magazine of New York's Methodists, it was standard practice to conflate time and space by regarding multiple camp-meetings and revivals as a single "revival."
This is consistent with Joseph's using the phrase "an unusual excitement on the subject of religion"[48] for local revivals that were actually separated by an interval of three or four years.[49] Then, as now, the word "excitement" has no plural, and can refer to multiple events.[50]
Whether the Mormon prophet, or a Methodist minister, or magazine editors—early nineteenth-century narrators saw no problem of accuracy when they conflated multiple revivals into one revival while giving retrospective narratives. It reflects the "presentist bias"[51]—used polemically in this case—to hold the unschooled Mormon prophet to a standard of literal accuracy not manifested by the well-educated editors of New York's Methodist Magazine in their reports about the religious “excitement” of revivalism.
Thus, when LDS apologists insist on the technical accuracy of every detail in Smith's official account of the First Vision,[52] they misread nineteenth-century narrative style and unnecessarily adopt the assumptions of disbelievers. As the most prominent example, LDS historian Richard Lyman Bushman wrote in 1994:
Can we be absolutely sure that we know Joseph must have been referring to the 1824 revival when he wrote his story? Marquardt speculates that he conflated events: "Perhaps Smith in retrospect blended in his mind events from 1820 with a revival occurring four years later" (p. 32). Possibly, but that conclusion, based on the confidence that we know better than the person who was there, seems premature to me.[53]
Resisting the reasonable explanation that Smith's official account conflated two different responses within his family to different revivals happening four years apart—an explanation which preserves the emphasis on 1820—Bushman paradoxically retreated from the traditional affirmation of 1820.[54]
He omitted from his 2005 bicentennial biography any reference to a revival that year. His "JOSEPH SMITH CHRONOLOGY" mentioned no revival, and his narrative gave specific dates only for Palmyra's "revival of 1816 and 1817." The text and source-notes also made no reference to Palmyra's camp-meeting of June 1818, although Bushman's 1969 response to Walters had cited the manuscript which mentioned it and even though Bushman's 1970 response to another skeptic had paraphrased the manuscript's description of this 1818 revival.[55]
One of the source-notes in Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling even seemed to defer to the minister-researcher's assessment "that revivals in 1824 were the background for Joseph's first vision." The book's index reemphasized this with its entry for "Palmyra, New York . . . revivals in," whose only page referred to the revival "the year after Alvin's death" (in November 1823).[56] In view of Bushman's complaint in 1994 about the Walters-Marquardt "attempt to dynamite a segment of the traditional story" by ignoring the 1820 Palmyra Register’s references to a local camp-meeting,[57] it seems extraordinary that eleven years later his 740-page biography made no mention of the newspaper article he once found so important.
Aside from citing Walters, Bushman's only implied explanation for this lapse in 2005 was the observation: "When the census taker came to the Smiths in 1820, Joseph Jr. was not listed, probably because he was living elsewhere earning [money] during the growing season."[58] Like Donald L. Enders,[59] Bushman apparently assumed that the census enumeration commenced in June 1820 (the starting month for subsequent censuses). Since he concluded that young Joseph was absent from the Palmyra area during its camp-meeting, Bushman declined to mention the Palmyra Register’s articles. However, census-takers did not begin their work until 7 August 1820.[60] Joseph's absence from the census of his family had absolutely nothing to do with his whereabouts during Palmyra's religious revival two months earlier.
Nevertheless, Bushman is only one example of the withering effect that Reverend Wesley P. Walters has had on the previously confident declarations by Mormon apologists about dating the First Vision. In a 1994 interview (not published until 2005), Milton V. Backman Jr. declined to name "a Presbyterian minister" whose "pamphlet" had prodded him to begin researching New York State's early revivalism, but the BYU religion professor commented: "During this research, I found no evidence of a great revival in Palmyra in 1819 or 1820." In a remarkable turnabout, Backman said nothing about Palmyra's 1820 camp-meeting that had been a sort of rallying cry by LDS authors for the previous decades. Instead, he claimed that Joseph Smith had been wrongfully interpreted as saying there was an 1820 revival in the immediate vicinity of Palmyra-Manchester, whereas "I found that probably there were more revivals and more people joining churches in upstate and western New York in 1819 and 1820 than in any other region of the United States." Thus, the crucial revivalism was strictly regional and allegedly not in Joseph’s neighborhood—a view that seemed to be a full-scale retreat from Backman's earlier emphasis on the Palmyra Register’s articles of 1820.[61]
Also for the bicentennial of the Mormon founder's birth, after a footnote citation to the findings and objections by the minister-researcher, James B. Allen and John W. Welch ended their 2005 essay (published by Church-owned Deseret Book Company) with these words: "In sum, this examination leads to the conclusion that the First Vision, in all probability, occurred in spring of 1820, when Joseph was fourteen years old. The preponderance of the evidence supports that conclusion."[62] While I applaud such willingness to be tentative when necessary, the evidence does not require it. In face, it demands a forthright emphasis on revivalism in Palmyra during the late spring of 1820.
For instance, there is a reasonable explanation for the lack of local reference to religious revivals in or near Palmyra, and for why the village newspaper ignored the "camp-meeting" of June 1820 until someone died. Aside from paid advertisements, it was unusual for small newspapers of this era to report local events.
In his book about New York State's village newspapers, Milton W. Hamilton explained more than forty years ago that "the editor's definition of his function included neither the purveying of neighborhood gossip nor the describing of outstanding happenings in the immediate vicinity." Why? Because small-town editors assumed that local residents would not "pay for information which they could secure by word of mouth from their neighbors." According to Hamilton, not until 1827 did a village newspaper start to regularly include local events, an editorial practice that took years to become common in rural newspapers of New York State. This was Walter A. Norton's 1991 response to the assertion of "massive silence" by Reverend Walters, a critique that skeptical authors have not acknowledged.[63] Likewise, as indication of his own silent abandonment of an 1820 revival, the seemingly exhaustive bibliography of Bushman’s 2005 Rough Stone Rolling cited neither Hamilton nor Norton,[64] even thought Bushman had criticized Walters and Marquardt in 1994 for ignoring the evidence and rebuttal.[65]
Apparently unaware of Reverend Seager's published account of a June 1818 revival in Palmyra that the village newspaper also ignored, Norton omitted this data that would have significantly strengthened his argument. However, as Norton did emphasize, the Palmyra Register was not merely reporting a local death in June 1820. Despite a disingenuous disclaimer, its editor used the dead man's drunkenness as reason to make snide comments about the Methodists who "professedly" gathered for worship. A strident advocate of alcohol "temperance," editor Timothy C. Strong was echoing a decades-long controversy.[66]
Unlike other evangelical Protestants, Methodists of this era did not require abstinence from alcoholic drinks, nor did most of the denomination's leaders even suggest it. English founder John Wesley "did not hesitate to recommend ale or beer" and approved drinking "a little bit" of wine every day, but he "drew a rather sharp line between a fermented liquor such as beer, ale, or wine and a distilled liquor such as rum or brandy." The American church's general conference meetings did not include alcohol abstinence among their numerous regulations governing personal conduct, and also followed Wesley's emphasis by forbidding Methodists only from engaging in the sale and manufacture of distilled liquors from 1780 to 1812. Until 1848, their official Disciplines did not even mention beer or wine with regard to the rank-and-file’s conduct.[67]
This official policy (or lack of it) became obvious during Methodist revivals. In a defense of camp-meetings (published in Brooklyn, New York), one minister acknowledged in 1806 that "some of the wild beasts of the people had half intoxicated themselves with ardent spirits.”[68] Two years later, a critical participant wrote that he "saw many" Methodist revivalists “drinking wine.”[69] In 1810 an observer of a camp-meeting at Bern, New York, reported that the Methodists even set up "grog-tents" to sell alcohol.[70] The official explanation for alcohol-selling "shops" at camp-meetings was to blame "those in the community who, [are] actuated from monetary motives. . ."[71] As described later in this essay, the isolated setting, physical dimensions, and duration of camp-meetings required the organizers to provide beverages for thirsty revivalists, even if a stream, river, pond, or lake was nearby. Therefore, because bottled beverages of some kind were a necessary supplement to the natural sources of water, Methodist camp-meeting attenders often brought or purchased bottles of beer and wine, which did not have the same stigma as distilled liquors and whiskeys (often called "spirituous drinks," or "spirits," or "ardent spirits").[72] Such behavior resulted in the Palmyra Register's sarcastic comments about the local camp-meeting.
This leads to the very specific understanding about the kind of religious gathering mentioned in Palmyra's newspaper of June 1820—a perspective that Walters never acknowledged and that Mormon apologists have insufficiently emphasized. In 1800 Methodists invented both the practice and term of "camp-meeting."[73] From its first issue in January 1818 through December 1828, New York's Methodist Magazine never used the term for the regular Sunday service of a congregation, whether it had a chapel or not. After attending such meetings for decades, a Methodist minister wrote emphatically: "Camp Meetings were never held to supply the lack of church buildings."[74]
Although it was customary to refer to a camp-meeting "in" or "at" a community, the gathering's structured space actually required a forest within walking distance from the outskirts of the community. Thus, the 1820 Palmyra newspaper referred to the "camp-meeting which was held in this vicinity."
Even when convening near a chapel, as in the 1819 "camp-meeting at Fountain-head meeting-house," Methodists shunned the confining structure of a building: "Here we had a large encampment" of revivalists in tents, and the writer observed that by the end of this camp-meeting, "the slain of the Lord [i.e., ecstatic converts] were lying in almost every direction—in the altar, in the woods, and in the tents. . ."[75] Even this camp-meeting's "altar" was not inside a chapel, as a non-Methodist observed at one of New York's forest-revivals in 1810: "Before the [preaching stand or] stage was a yard about thirty feet square, (which they called the altar). Their tents were made chiefly of canvas. . ."[76]
Correspondingly, in an 1819 "revival of religion" in Westchester County, New York, although there were too few Methodists to have a "house for divine worship" in the community, they could sleep in their own houses during the locals-only revival which, therefore, was called "the assembly," not "camp-meeting."[77] Repeatedly, when Methodists held a "revival of religion" in a chapel, they called it an assembly, or a "prayer meeting," or a "class meeting," but never “camp-meeting.”[78] Ignoring the denomination’s procedures, Reverend Walters and like-minded authors have also contradicted all historical documentation by even implying that Palmyra's 1820 "camp-meeting" was a regular Sunday meeting of local Methodists—with or without a chapel.
A camp-meetingwas a revival, but Methodists rarely used the cumbersome phrase "camp-meeting revival."[79] In fact, because local Methodists had no need to sleep in tents overnight in order to worship, the Palmyra Register's articles were actually emphasizing the noncongregational nature of this June 1820 gathering and its non-local attenders by referring to its "Camp-ground." In view of Palmyra's newspaper articles, it is significant that the Prophet's official reminiscence said this "unusual excitement . . . commenced with the Methodists."[80]
Moreover, there was no relevance in the objection by Walters that "the Methodists did not acquire their property in Palmyra `on the Vienna Road' until July 7th, 1821."[81] The Methodist Church rarely (if ever) owned the forested land on which its members held camp-meetings, because the only necessity was to obtain permission from the landowner for this temporary use.[82]
But if the crucial revival "in the place where we lived" actually commenced in late spring of 1820, then Joseph Smith's First Vision occurred no earlier. Why did he specify "early in the spring"[83] while giving his most detailed account in 1838? First, "early" or "late spring" might have seemed a distinction without a difference as he related events that happened eighteen years earlier in his tumultuous life.
Second, and more to the point, "early spring" of 1820 was too cold for a New York farmboy to visit "the woods" in "the morning of a beautiful clear day" for the motionless activity of solitary prayer.[84] During that year, an official of the U.S. Weather Service recorded temperatures for western New York at 7 AM, 2 PM, and 6 PM daily. After the technical arrival of spring, temperatures were under 50 degrees Fahrenheit even at two in the afternoon for all but two days during the rest of March 1820. Those relatively warmer days of 25-26 March reached no higher than 64 degrees at 2 PM, after the mornings started at 54 degrees and 56 degrees, respectively. It was snowing on 31 March, 5 April, and 7 April 1820. The first two weeks of April 1820 were chilly, reaching no higher than 58 degrees at two in the afternoon on the fifteenth, which began with a temperature of forty degrees at 7 AM. The last two weeks of April were not much better, and when the temperatures finally reached 72 degrees at 2 PM on April 21st, the morning commenced at 50 degrees. The next day was a bit warmer, but then the month cooled again until morning temperatures were in the low-fifties. The last two days of April 1820 reached only 62 degrees by 2 PM.[85] Although such weather conditions can occur on "the morning of a beautiful clear day," those frigid temperatures would not encourage any teenager to think of kneeling in a shaded grove of trees, which would be even colder than temperatures recorded by the weather service in the open air.
Published in Canandaigua, seventeen miles from Palmyra,[86] The Farmer's Diary had even predicted: "Clear and pretty cold" weather for 6-8 April 1820, with "some showers of hail, rain, or snow" for 14-18 April.[87] In one of its rare observations about local events, the Palmyra Register commented on 24 May 1820 that “we have been visited with two or three severe frosts, followed by a storm of snow, which happened on the morning of the 17th inst. [instant, i.e., of this month] . . . It is worthy of remark, that on the morning of the 17th May 1819, we had a similar snow storm, preceded and followed by very similar weather."[88] Therefore, because most people connect spring with warmer temperatures (above 70 degrees Fahrenheit), it is understandable that (eighteen-years-after-the-fact) Joseph forgot the late-arrival of spring weather to western New York in 1820.
He remembered it was warm enough to kneel in the wooded grove for an hour or so. This seemed like "early spring" in retrospect, especially because he began dictating this official narrative to clerk George W. Robinson on 27 April 1838 in Missouri, a southerly latitude where early spring was much warmer. This memory conflation (which changed western New York's chilly "early spring" of 1820 into comfortably warm morning weather) continued in the late spring of 1839 (on 10 June), when clerk James Mulholland started rewriting Robinson's 1838 version (now missing) into the final form known officially as "Joseph Smith's History."[89] Both believers and non-believers should accept the assessment of non-Mormon historian Lawrence Foster about Smith's first theophany: "whether or not an error was made in dating precisely when a vision occurred has no necessary connection with whether it [actually] occurred . . ."[90]
The unpredictability of warm days followed by chilly temperatures, rain, and even snow from March through May was why New York State's Methodists waited until late spring to schedule the first of each year's camp-meetings. They wanted a reasonable likelihood of several days with "agreeable weather,"[91] by which camp-meeting organizers meant "no rain,"[92] and "no breezes to disturb the candles, and no cold winds nor chilling damps, to render it very uncomfortable," even at night.[93]
In every report by New York's Methodist Magazine about revivals from 1818 through 1828, where the report included the word "camp-meeting," not a single one in the Northern States began earlier than June and none occurred after September.[94] The earliest reported date was 4 June 1819 when the "camp-meeting for Erie circuit" commenced.[95] In 1825 the earliest was June 7th,[96] while Palmyra hosted an 1826 camp-meeting that also started on 7 June.[97] Concerning the Susquehanna River border of western New York State, one minister wrote in 1825 that "our last camp-meeting in the district commenced on the 15th of September,"[98] and another New York camp-meeting began as late as September 26th.[99] Nevertheless, Methodist revivalists wanted to avoid the unfortunate experience of a camp-meeting in western New York's Genesee Conference that pushed the weather boundary too far into September 1817: "the season being cold and rainy, rendered our situation in the tented wilderness very unpleasant."[100] Therefore, for the best outcome, a Camp Meeting Manual later specified that these outdoor gatherings in "the latitude of the Middle States" should start no later than "the 15th of September."[101]
Small revivals did occur in the Northern States from October through May each year, but rain, cold weather, and snow limited such gatherings to homes, chapels, barns, or school houses.[102] Compared with forest camp-meetings attended by hundreds or thousands, the October-May revivals were family-sized. Because there were too few Methodists in Palmyra to have a meetinghouse until 1822, it was impossible for the village (in Ontario County at that time) to host a revival of significant size except during the camp-meeting "season," as Methodists called the revival period from June through September.[103]
A revival that "commenced with the Methodists ... in the place where we lived"[104] was not available to teenage Joseph until the late spring of any year. The "camp-meeting" mentioned by the Palmyra Register in June 1820 was the first local revival he could have attended that year.
In fact, Methodist revivals had uniform characteristics, as reported in numerous publications before 1820. By referring to early descriptions of camp-meetings, we can understand what fourteen-year-old Joseph saw and experienced at Palmyra that June. Even those who disbelieve his account of an 1820 revival have agreed that Methodism was the only denomination for which he showed any interest and participation.[105]
Methodist camp-meetings did not happen spontaneously, but were planned far in advance to occur in a physical space created according to instructions by the denomination's ministers and in printed guidelines. As the Camp Meeting Manual observed, “it was soon reduced to a regular system.”[106]
By 1817, multiple editions of a New York hymn book advised: "A Camp-meeting ought not to consist of less than fifty or one hundred tents or places for lodging" in the woods. Its Methodist author John C. Totten further specified: "It should continue, if the weather admitted, not less than three days and nights. It is not desirable to have more than two or three thousand people present, unless the majority were [converted] Christians."[107] The several-day duration was standard, and his caution was necessary because Methodist camp-meetings were sometimes attended by "two or three hundred spectators" who were not believers.[108]
Out-of-town worshippers dominated camp-meetings because the most devout followed revivalist preachers from place to place, while word-of-mouth notified an entire region of what would otherwise be a local event. From June to September, people journeyed "from fifty and sixty miles around" to attend Methodist camp-meetings.[109] While most traveled such distances in carriages, wagons, or on horseback, "a Sister Hendricks, who is the mother of seventeen children, fifteen of whom are living, walked seventeen miles to this [1819 Methodist] meeting."[110] Fifteen-year-old David Marks, a New York Baptist also living in Ontario County, walked "about 25 miles" in all kinds of weather to revivals in the early months of 1821.[111]
During the Methodist camp-meeting season, there was need for outsiders to "camp" in tents, while local residents could sleep at home--unless they wanted to participate in late night revivalism that "was carried on until morning without interruption."[112] For example, "several thousands of precious souls" attended a four-day camp-meeting at Rhinebeck, New York. There "the line of tents encircled the [preaching] ground, in most parts three deep, in number eighty five, besides covered waggons [sic]. On Thursday a person undertook to count the waggons [sic] and other carriages, and after reckoning several hundred, was obliged to desist, as he could not go through them all."[113]
Another Methodist author explained: "Sometimes there were many circles of tents divided by narrow streets and alleys, allowing room for the vast multitudes to pass, and space for small fires for the purpose of cooking." In keeping with Methodist regimentation, each camp-meeting's tent-lined "several streets, [were] numbered and labelled, so that they may be distinguished one from another" within the surrounding forest.[114]
Having a three-day duration as their minimum, camp-meetings most commonly lasted four days, according to New York's Methodist Magazine. At Long Island in August 1818, "there were from six to eight thousand people on the encampment" from Tuesday morning to Saturday morning.[115] "Between five and six thousand" attended a "Camp-meeting, held at Barre, Vermont" from Thursday to Monday in 1820.[116] "Not less than five thousand people" attended another 1820 "Camp-meeting, which commenced on Friday, July 14th," and ended on Tuesday, followed by "an extra Camp-Meeting" lasting from Friday to Tuesday in August.[117] One of the "highly favoured Camp-Meetings" in the Hudson River Valley began on 2 September 1822 "and closed on the 6th of September."[118] In 1825 a camp-meeting in the Champlain District lasted from Thursday, "the first to the morning of the fifth of September," Monday.[119]
Five-day revivals were the next most common. An 1821 camp-meeting in Kentucky started "on Friday night," and "we continued the meeting until Wednesday."[120] Another "camp-meeting” in New Hampshire "commenced on Thursday, and closed on Tuesday."[121] An 1823 camp-meeting in Maryland began on Friday, ending on Wednesday.[122] "From four to five thousand persons" attended a New Jersey camp-meeting that "commenced on [Thursday] the 5th and continued till [Tuesday] the 10th of August, 1824."[123] One in August 1825 started on Thursday and ended on Tuesday,[124] and two camp-meetings in 1826 began on Friday and ended on Wednesday.[125]
A six-day camp-meeting on Long Island was attended by "not less than 10,000" New Yorkers in August 1821.[126] An 1830s history of American Methodism (by the editor of New York Methodist Magazine in 1820-28) noted that “the meeting generally continues for four or five days, and in some instances eight or nine days.”[127]
Even that was not the maximum duration in the 1820s. One minister wrote in 1822: "This is the tenth day of the revival," and an 1825 camp-meeting in the Genesee Conference "continued ten days."[128]
Although Palmyra's 1820 camp-meeting might have been as short as three days or as long as ten days, its mention in the newspaper's weekly issue on Wednesday, 28 June 1820 gave clues for the revival's commencement. Camp-meetings started on various days of the week, but Methodists showed a clear preference for beginning them on Thursday or Friday.[129] This was so widely known that a Methodist minister in Illinois (whose first camp-meeting was in 1818) wrote: "The meetings generally commenced on Friday."[130] For example, Palmyra's three-day camp-meeting of June 1818 began on Friday.[131]
This Methodist preference indicates a likely start-date of June 22nd or 23rd (early summer) for a short revival before the newspaper story about Couser's death, with an equally likely start-date of June 15th or 16th (Thursday-Friday) for a long camp-meeting commencing in late spring of 1820. While not precise, these beginning parameters are possible because his death was "a fixed point: [where] no doubt is possible" for verifying chronology.[132]
Neither the weekly newspaper nor another "fixed point" indicated when this camp-meeting revival adjourned, but almost none did so on Sundays, according to New York's Methodist Magazine. If a camp-meeting included Sunday, it typically ended on one of the following weekdays—in the morning or around noon. Palmyra's Methodist revival was definitely not concluding when Couser left it on the Sunday "evening preceding" his death.[133] Even with the extended daylight of summer, camp-meetings never ended during evening hours, because single females and out-of-town revivalists with children needed at least half a day of sunlight to travel safely back to their homes.[134]
Six years after this revival in late June 1820, "not less than ten thousand people" attended a camp-meeting "near the village" of Palmyra.[135] Such multitudes dwarfed the total population of host-villages such as Palmyra which had 3724 residents in 1820.[136] This was just one reason why camp-meetings were sensational events wherever they occurred.
Minister-researcher Walters repeatedly distorted the historical evidence by implying that a camp-meeting was an inferior kind of revival, not even worth mentioning as "a spark of a revival" in his discussion of Joseph's narrative about "religious excitement" in 1820. For American Methodists from 1800 to 1830, a camp-meeting was the most significant kind of religious revival.
As previously indicated, Zechariah Paddock was the traveling companion of Reverend Seager after Palmyra's camp-meeting in June 1818. Paddock "was licensed to preach in Canandaigua, N.Y., in the spring of 1817," and later wrote concerning the year "1817-18," that "the woods seemed to the Methodists to be God's special earthly temple. Their greatest revival triumphs were achieved in the grove."[137] Likewise, in describing "the great revivals of religion," the 1830s History of the Methodist Episcopal Church (be the editor of Methodist Magazine in 1820-28) stated that “the camp meetings were among the most efficient means of awakening the attention of the people to the things of eternity.”[138]
In keeping with their general silence about local matters during this time-period, weekly newspapers did not need to inform a town's residents about what had happened days earlier at such gatherings. Aside from the enormous increase of visitors, another reason for not reporting the obvious to village residents was "the sound of the singing, which was heard several miles" from a Methodist camp-meeting.[139] In addition, both favorable and unfavorable observers reported that the blare of trumpets heralded the commencement of Methodist preaching at 8 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, and even at midnight during these camp-meetings.[140] After the midnight sermon, it was common that "singing, prayers and exhortation were continued more or less until three o'clock next morning . . ."[141]
In the stillness of June nights, sounds from the 1820 camp-meeting's trumpets and singers easily reached the Smith farm, creating an irresistible magnet for curious teenagers who were not already at the "Camp-ground." Fourteen-year-old Joseph was known around Palmyra as "inquisitive."[142]
Aside from unusual sounds, in the evenings a Methodist camp-meeting created an enchanting sight, "illuminated in every part by lamps, and formed the appearance of a populous city." In these forest-revivals, "at night the whole scene was awfully sublime. The ranges of tents, the fires reflecting light amidst the branches of the forest-trees, the candles and lamps illuminating the ground, hundreds moving to and fro with torches like Gideon's army . . ."[143]
But three-to-ten days of religious revivalism were only part of a camp-meeting's actual duration for a community. First, it took days to clear the "Camp-ground."
It required "two whole days" to clear the campsite attended by "several thousands" at Rhinebeck, New York. "Some of the brethren came more than ten and twelve miles to assist in the preliminary labours. When the underwood and lower branches of the trees were cleared away, the [preaching] stand for the preachers [was] erected and covered with an inclined canopy of boards . . ."[144] This took days because camp-meetings required a huge space.
For example, an 1825 Connecticut "encampment stretched about three quarters of a mile through a beautiful grove of oaks and cedars." Equal to thirteen American football fields placed end-to-end, this was the space necessary for the 1825 camp-meeting's "congregation of ten thousand" as they camped in tents.[145] Because that was two or three times more people than at Rhinebeck, it would correspondingly require more time to clear the "Camp-ground" of trees and foliage—probably four to six days. This was the only description of a camp-meeting's physical dimensions in New York’s Methodist Magazine, but its attendance was the same as the following year’s camp-meeting in Palmyra.[146]
Whether at Rhinebeck or at Palmyra, New York Methodists chose heavily wooded areas in order to control access. For instance, near Albany, "the place, that they had chosen for their rendezvous, was situated in a forest, at the foot of a large hill, with a creek on the opposite side, and about one hundred rods distant [i.e., 550 yards, five football fields] from any clearing or road; so that it could not be easily approached with a carriage or on horseback, except in one narrow path."[147]
In describing a camp-meeting at Petersburgh, New York, Reverend Francis Ward specified why he and fellow Methodists preferred the painstaking labor of carving out a worship space within a forest of dense undergrowth: "The place was chosen in a close forest, and was well suited for the purpose. Surrounded on all sides by a thicket, which was rendered almost impassable by the brush and underwood piled outside the lines, and only one narrow road opening into it, we found ourselves well secured against any annoyance from the wicked: a guard having been placed at the entrance to keep out those who came intoxicated or riotously . . .”[148]
Palmyra had not hosted a revival since June 1818.[149] Even if the organizers chose the same location for this 1820 camp-meeting, they had to use axes, saws, and hatchets against two years of new trees, branches, bushes, and brambles. Reverend Ward noted that this was noisy work: "The groves echoed with the strokes of the axe . . ."[150]
Furthermore, clearing away trees and undergrowth was only the first phase in the physical preparations for a camp-meeting. As indicated, the second phase required those with skills in carpentry to build the preaching stand and cover it "with an inclined canopy of boards."[151] The third phase, which the Camp Meeting Manual regarded as “especially” important, was “the grading” (or leveling) of the ground on which tents would be pitched and of the cleared space of ground (“the altar”) in front of the preacher’s platform.[152] This flat, cleared area for the standing listeners was at least 25-30 feet square, and sometimes “two or three acres, nearly square.”[153]
There was yet a fourth phase in the physical preparations for a camp-meeting. While some families brought small tents of their own, the organizers also provided huge tents, "many of which would hold several hundred persons" each.[154] These Methodist "society tents" were of substantial construction, as described for an 1819 camp-meeting: "The place was in a beautiful grove—the tents were generally well built of plank, with good floors, so as to be quite comfortable."[155] This required more days of work by volunteer carpenters after they finished the preaching stand, plus the time needed in the surrounding woods for "the cutting of poles for [these] tents."[156] Furthermore, it required time for laborers to erect these heavy poles to secure the massive tents against collapse from the multitudes jostling in and out of them almost constantly for days. In the Champlain District, "one week preceding