Bushman - Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

Table of Contents

FOR
DEAN JESSEE AND RONALD ESPLIN
MASTERS OF LATTER-DAY SAINT HISTORY

[I am like a] rough stone roling down hill.

JOSEPH SMITH, May 21, 1843

I [am] a rough stone. The sound of the hammer and chisel was never heard on me nor never will be. I desire the learning and wisdom of heaven alone.

JOSEPH SMITH, June 11, 1843

This is the Case with Joseph Smith. He never professed to be a dressed smooth polished stone but was rough out of the mountain & has been rolling among the rocks & trees & has not hurt him at all. But he will be as smooth & polished in the end as any other stone, while many that were so vary poliched & smooth in the beginning get badly defaced and spoiled while theiy are rolling about.

BRIGHAM YOUNG, September 9, 1843

Acclaim for Richard Lyman Bushmans

JOSEPH SMITH

ROUGH STONE ROLLING

Captivating.... A stunning accomplishment. The New York Sun

A sympathetic but perceptive appraisal in this important new study. Readers of this sensitive and comprehensive account will find a new and deeper understanding of Smith, the religion he founded, and the popular culture of the United States during the thirty-nine years of his short but eventful life. Foreign Affairs

Illuminating.... A landmark biography. Booklist (starred review)

An astonishing achievement that is meticulously researched, wonderfully grounded and rich in cultural context. Tucson Citizen

A fine entry into the study of the development of Mormon doctrine through an examination of the life of its founder, Joseph Smith. The Decatur Daily

[Bushmans] exhaustive biography carefully treads a path between reverence and objectivity. The New Yorker

A painstakingly researched historical document. The Miami Herald

A splendid cultural biography.... No one has come close to re-creating a full and satisfying portrait until Bushman. It is unlikely that another book about Joseph Smith will supercede this one for many years to come. Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

A remarkable book, wonderfully readable and supported by exhaustive research. For anyone interested in the Mormon experience, it will be required reading for years to come. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Pen and ink sketch of Joseph Smithby Sutcliffe Maudsley, 1844.

MAPS

JOSEPH SMITH CHRONOLOGY

FOUR GENERATIONS OF JOSEPH SMITHS FAMILY

PREFACE

Two hundred years should be long enough to gain perspective on Joseph Smith. Over the years, hundreds of books and articles have been written on every detail of his life. There have been a score of biographies and doubtless more are on the way. A six-volume collection of original documents has long been available, and many more sources are accessible on DVD and in archives. We are dealing with mountains of information.1

Yet, it is unlikely there will ever be consensus on Joseph Smiths character or his achievements. The multiplication of scholarly studies and the discovery of new sources have only heightened the controversies surrounding his life. The central difficulty is that Joseph Smith lives on in the faith of the Mormons, like Abraham in Judaism or Muhammad in Islam. Everything about Smith matters to people who have built their lives on his teachings. To protect their own deepest commitments, believers want to shield their prophets reputation. On the other hand, people who have broken away from Mormonismand they produce a large amount of the scholarshiphave to justify their decision to leave. They cannot countenance evidence of divine inspiration in his teachings without catching themselves in a disastrous error. Added to these combatants are those suspicious of all religious authority who find in Joseph Smith a perfect target for their fears. Given the emotional crosscurrents, agreement will never be reached about his character, his inspiration, or his accomplishments.

A believing historian like myself cannot hope to rise above these battles or pretend nothing personal is at stake. For a character as controversial as Smith, pure objectivity is impossible. What I can do is to look frankly at all sides of Joseph Smith, facing up to his mistakes and flaws. Covering up errors makes no sense in any case. Most readers do not believe in, nor are they interested in, perfection. Flawless characters are neither attractive nor useful. We want to meet a real person. My model for this book has been W. Jackson Bates biography of the eighteenth-century man of letters, Samuel Johnson. Bate saw all of Johnsons weaknesses, including his crippling doubts and fears, and yet found nobility and genius in his mammoth personage. Joseph Smith had none of Johnsons learning or finesse, but he was mammoth too and a genius in what the literary scholar Harold Bloom has called religion making.2

Joseph Smith is one of those large Americans who like Abraham Lincoln came from nowhere. Reared in a poor Yankee farm family, he had less than two years of formal schooling and began life without social standing or institutional backing. His family rarely attended church. Yet in the fourteen years he headed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Smith created a religious culture that survived his death, flourished in the most desolate regions of the United States, and continues to grow worldwide after more than a century and a half.3 In 1830 at the age of twenty-four, he published the Book of Mormon, the only person in American history to produce a second Biblean entirely new revealed work to stand beside the traditional scriptures. He built cities and temples and gathered thousands of followers before he was killed at age thirty-eight.

Smith is interesting for what he was as well as for what he did. He was the closest America has come to producing a biblical-style prophetone who spoke for God with the authority of Moses or Isaiah. He was not an eloquent preacher; he is not known to have preached a single sermon before organizing the church in 1830.4 But he spoke in Gods voice in revelations he compiled and published. A revelation typically began with words like Hearken O ye people which profess my name, saith the Lord your God.5 Many thought him presumptuous if not blasphemous, and he made no effort to prove them wrong. He did not defend his revelations or give reasons for belief. He dictated the words and let people decide. Everything he taught and most of what he did originated in these revelations. The question of this book is how such a man came to be in the age of railroads and the penny press. What was the logic of his visionary life?