Joseph Smith

American religious leader

• Born: December 23, 1805
• Birthplace: Sharon, Vermont
• Died: June 27, 1844
• Place of death: Carthage, Illinois

The founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—an indigenous American religion that was the fastest-growing religion in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century—Smith developed a novel exegesis of the traditional Protestant Bible and provided new scriptures, including the Book of Mormon.

Early Life

Joseph Smith was the third son of Joseph Smith, Sr., and Lucy Mack Smith. The Smiths were a hardworking but impoverished farm family of New England stock. Through the first ten years of his life, his family moved from one rocky New England farm to another, unable to achieve the financial success that would enable them to settle and become established members of the community. In 1816, the Smiths joined the stream of migrants leaving New England for the trans-Appalachian West. They settled in upstate New York, eventually purchasing a farm near Palmyra.

The Smiths, in moving to Palmyra, had arrived at one of the focal points for the religious revivals that convulsed the nation during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. In the fervor of religious controversy, mainstream denominations splintered and sects multiplied, especially in upstate New York, which was known as the “burnt over district,” because it had been repeatedly scorched by the fires of the spirit. There, shouting evangelists from the mainstream denominations competed with prophets of a forthcoming millennium and communitarian groups such as the Shakers. Others, disgusted by revivalism and competition between denominations, longed for Christian unity through a restoration of the primitive Church of apostolic times.

The Smiths, like other poor farmers during the 1820’s, suffered from the precarious conditions caused by the developing American economy. Young Smith, with only limited schooling, worked as a laborer on his father’s mortgaged farm. Upstate New York was dotted with Indian mounds. Like many others in the area, Joseph sometimes searched for buried treasure. In 1826, he was brought to trial as a disorderly person and impostor in connection with these “money-digging” activities.

Life’s Work

Smith’s outward life was that of any other farmer’s son. In 1827, he married Emma Hale and seemed to have embarked upon an ordinary life, marred only by his lack of financial security. However, Smith’s life was far from ordinary. In 1830, he emerged as a prophet and began to build the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The series of extraordinary events that transformed Smith into the Mormon prophet began when he was fourteen. As he later told his followers, he had gone into the forest to pray for guidance as to which of the competing denominations and sects he should join. The Lord and Christ Jesus appeared to him and told him that all the denominations were in error.

The revelations that led to the formation of the Mormon Church began in 1823, when, according to Smith, he was visited by the Angel Moroni. The angel guided Smith to a buried stone box, which contained a book written on gold plates and a set of spectaclelike stones that, when worn, enabled Smith to read the book. In September, 1827, Smith was allowed to take the plates home and began translating the book, dictating the text to various scribes from behind a curtain. When the translation was completed, the plates were given back to the angel. In 1830, the Book of Mormon was published.

The Book of Mormon tells the story of a pre-Columbian settlement of Hebrews in America. They are visited by Christ after his crucifixion. He establishes his church in America. After two hundred years, this church and the Hebrew civilization in America are destroyed in a war between the Hebrew tribes, the Nephites and the Lamanites. One of the Nephite survivors, Moroni, buries golden plates containing a history of his people in a hill in upstate New York, where they could be recovered and used to restore Christ’s church in America.

With the publication of the Book of Mormon, Smith, then twenty-four, began to attract a nucleus of believers. In 1834, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized. Believers were to be guided by the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and subsequent revelations announced by Smith. The new church grew rapidly, and the Saints gathered into communities to be near their prophet, who promised that a Mormon city, a new Zion, would soon be built on the western frontier in Missouri. Mormons moved into Missouri to prepare the way, while Smith and the Church’s leadership moved from New York to a Mormon community in Kirtland, Ohio.

The Mormons’ clannishness and religious unorthodoxy aroused hostility among the old settlers in Missouri. In addition, the Mormons were nonslaveholding Yankees, moving into a slave state. A small-scale war broke out between the old settlers and the Mormons. Smith himself was arrested in 1838 and convicted of treason by a Missouri court. Sentenced to death, he managed to escape to Illinois.

There, Smith and the other Mormon refugees, joined by new converts from Great Britain, began to build a model city on the banks of the Mississippi. Incorporated in 1840, Nauvoo became one of the wonders of the American West. Mormons moved there by the thousands, and construction began on a massive temple.

Smith was the acknowledged leader of the city’s spiritual and political life. He was prophet and “lieutenant general” of a Mormon legion of two thousand troops. Still a young man in his thirties, Smith impressed visitors with his vibrant personality. Tall, handsome, with light-brown hair, blue eyes, and a sharp, prominent nose, Smith was a commanding presence in Nauvoo. He also wielded considerable political power in Illinois. Nauvoo’s city charter made it almost independent of state authority. However, the Mormons, by voting as a bloc, could swing Illinois state elections. The Mormons’ power made their neighbors suspicious and afraid; their fears were not allayed when, in 1844, Smith announced his intention to run for the presidency, hoping to focus the public’s attention on the injustices to which his people had been subjected.

Smith’s control over the Church also made some of his followers uneasy, as did the rumors (later proven true) that the prophet had privately authorized plural marriage, or polygamy. In 1844, Mormon dissidents set up a press, intending to publicize their discontent. Smith ordered the press destroyed. He was arrested by the state of Illinois, charged with treason, and incarcerated in the Carthage, Illinois, jail. On June 27, 1844, a mob attacked the jail, and Smith was killed.

In death, Smith became a martyr. His church continued to grow and prosper, establishing a center in Utah and eventually becoming a respected American denomination with millions of converts throughout the world.

Significance

Historians have argued that Smith founded the only truly native American religion, and that his theology reflected both the optimism and the anxiety of early nineteenth century United States. The new church was especially appealing to Americans who were tired of sectarian squabbles, because it offered a restoration of apostolic and priestly authority. The Latter-day Saints could cut through endless debates as to which church was right and promise Christian unity. The Church also appealed to those offended by the emotionalism of the revivals. Finally, the new church tapped into the stream of millennialism then current in American religious thought, promising the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, the building of the new Zion in the United States.

Smith’s church also appealed to Americans who disliked the intensely competitive economy and society characteristic of the United States during the 1830’s. For every individual who achieved success, there were thousands like the Smiths who barely scraped by, lacking money and status. The early Mormons experimented with communally held property; although these experiments were not successful, the Church continued to offer a ready-made community that promised economic security to all members. In addition, the structure of the Church itself provided positions of authority and respect for all male believers.

Smith’s views on the afterlife can be seen as the quintessence of American optimism. After a life spent progressing in the service of the Church, Mormon men could continue to progress after death and would themselves become gods. Non-Mormons would be relegated to a lesser Heaven, but very few people would actually be doomed.

Smith thus founded a highly successful church that offered stability and security as well as progress to people living in an era of rapid change. For his followers, he was also an inspired prophet who had provided them with new scriptures authenticated by divine revelation.

Bibliography

Arrington, Leonard J., and Davis Bitton. The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. A sympathetic but objective Church history by two Mormon historians, placing Smith in the context of his times. The first section deals with Smith and the early days of the Church.

Bailyn, Bernard, et al. “Dissent: The Mormons as a Test Case.” In The Great Republic: A History of the American People, edited by David Brion Davis. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1977. A brief but highly informative analysis of the Mormons as dissenters from the economic, social, and sexual norms of nineteenth century America.

Barrett, Ivan J. Joseph Smith and the Restoration: A History of the Church to 1846. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1967. Written for Mormons and published by the press of a Mormon university, this book is hardly objective but does offer an interesting and detailed chronicle of Smith’s life as seen by his followers.

Brodie, Fawn M. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. The most famous biography of Joseph Smith. According to Brodie, Smith was a likable phony who made up the Book of Mormon as part of a money-making scheme. In later life, surrounded by people who believed in him as a prophet, he became what he had pretended to be. A revised 1971 edition of the work contains a psychoanalytic interpretation of Smith’s actions, concluding that he may not have been a deliberate fraud, but rather an impostor, using fantasy to resolve his own identity conflict.

Bushman, Richard L. Believing History: Latter-day Saint Essays. Edited by Reid L. Neilson and Jed Woodworth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Part 3 of this collection of essays, “Joseph Smith and Culture,” contains eight essays analyzing various aspects of Smith’s life, ideas, and influence within the Mormon Church.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Mormon historian Bushman recounts the history of the Mormon movement prior to 1831, focusing on Smith and his family and describing events as participants perceived them.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Expanded biography that examines Smith’s entire life in detail, using all available sources.

Flander, Robert B. Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965. This history of the Mormon model city explores Smith’s role as city planner and town leader.

Hansen, Klaus J. Mormonism and the American Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. In this volume in the University of Chicago’s History of American Religion series, Hansen discusses the origins of the Mormon Church, summarizing most of the theories historians and psychologists have propounded about Smith, and analyzes Smith’s theology and its applications in the history of the Latter-day Saints.

Remini, Robert V. Joseph Smith. New York: Viking Press, 2002. An accessible biography, recounting Smith’s life and creation of a new religion. Remini traces the origins of Mormonism to early nineteenth century religious evangelism.