Founder of Mormonism
Victor R. Claveau, MJ
The self-proclaimed visionary who millions of Mormons have come to revere as a prophet of God and founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or as it is commonly known today, Mormonism, was born Joseph Smith, Jr., in Sharon Township, Vermont, on December 23, 1805, the fifth of eleven children to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith.
In 1817, the Smith family had relocated to a district in New York west of the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains called the “burned over district” (“repeatedly singed by the fires of revival that swept through the region in the early years of the nineteenth century”)[1] where religious revivals and the formation of new religious movements of the Second Great Awakening[2] were being formed. Joseph Smith grew into his maturity in this area and, although the Smith family held contrasting views on the basics of religious movements of their day, they believed in visions and prophecies and they practiced the religious folklore of their era. In fact, Smith’s maternal grandfather, Solomon Mack, self-published a book describing serial heavenly visions and voices that led to his conversion to Christianity in his late seventies. His mother, prior to Smith’s birth, claimed also to have experienced a dream-vision after praying in a grove about her husband’s refusal to attend church that he would one day accept “the pure and undefiled Gospel of the Son of God.” It was also she who claimed that her husband, Joseph Smith, Sr., had experienced seven visions between 1811 and 1819,coming at a time when he was “much excited upon the subject of religion,” which confirmed in his own mind his adamant denial of all organized religions and his steadfast notion that he would be one day divinely directed along the proper path to salvation.
Smith’s paternal grandfather, Asael, was a Universalist(a person who believes that eventually all humankind will be saved) who was in discord with the Evangelicals, and who, according to Lucy Mack Smith, came to their door one day after they had attended a Methodist meeting, and in a fury tossed a copy of Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason into the house, ordering them to read it until they believed it.
Townspeople described Joseph Smith, Jr. as a “nondescript farm boy” who was “lazy and superstitious” and they described his family as “treasure-seekers, not eager Christians” who practiced folk magic, using divining rods and seer stones to search for buried treasures. During the time immediately preceding Smith’s First Vision, his mother and siblings had joined the Presbyterian Church while he was predisposed toward the Methodist teachings.
One of the early character descriptions of Joseph Smith is as follows:
“At this period in the life and career of Joseph Smith, Jr., or ‘Joe Smith,’ as he was universally named, and the Smith family, they were popularly regarded as an illiterate, whiskey-drinking, shiftless, irreligious race of people— the first named, the chief subject of this biography, being unanimously voted the laziest and most worthless of the generation. From the age of twelve to twenty years he is distinctly remembered as a dull-eyed, flaxen-haired, prevaricating boy—noted only for his indolent and, vagabondish character, and his habits of exaggeration and untruthfulness—taciturnity was among his characteristic idiosyncrasies, and he seldom spoke to anyone outside of his intimate associates, except when first address’ by another; and then, by reason of his extravagancies of statement, his word was received with the least confidence by those who knew him best. He could utter the most palpable exaggeration or marvelous absurdity with the utmost apparent gravity. He nevertheless evidenced the rapid development of a thinking, plodding, evil-brewing mental composition—largely given to inventions of low cunning, schemes of mischief and deception, and false and mysterious pretensions. In his moral phrenology the professor might have marked the organ of secretiveness as very large, and that of conscientiousness omitted. He was, however, proverbially good natured, very rarely, if ever, indulging in any combative spirit toward any one, whatever might be the provocation, and yet was never known to laugh. Albeit, he seemed to be the pride of his indulgent father, who has been heard to boast of him as the ‘genius of the family,’ quoting his own expression.”[3]
The second attestation is by Daniel Hendrix, a resident of Palmyra, New York, at the time of which he speaks, and an assistant in setting the type and reading the proof of the Mormon Bible:
“Everyone knew him as Joe Smith. He had lived in Palmyra a few years previous to my going there from Rochester. Joe was the most ragged, lazy fellow in the place, and that is saying a good deal. He was about twenty-five years old.
“I can see him now in my mind’s eye, with his torn and patched trousers held to its form by a pair of suspenders made out of sheeting, with his calico shirt as dirty and black as the earth, and his uncombed hair sticking through the holes in his old battered hat. In winter I used to pity him, for his shoes were so old and worn out that he must have suffered in the snow and slush; yet Joe had a jovial, easy, don’t-care way about him that made him a lot of warm friends. He was a good talker, and would have made a fine stump speaker if he had had the training. He was known among the young men I associated with as a romancer of the first water. I never knew so ignorant a man as Joe was to have such a fertile imagination. He never could tell a common occurrence in his daily life without embellishing the story with his imagination; yet I remember that he was grieved one day when old Parson Reed told Joe that he was going to hell for his lying habits!”[4]
According to William J. Whalen, Professor of English at Perdue University, historian, and author of The Latter-day Saints in the Modern World, Joseph Smith, Jr., in 1820 at age fifteen had gone one day into a wooded area in Manchester, New York, which his followers now call the Sacred Grove, in order to ask God Himself which, if any, of the divergent sects prevalent in his day was true.
What happened next is dubious since there are varying attestations claimed by numerous witnessing authors regarding the First Vision—some testifying that it happened one way, others, another—so that there are several versions of the First Vision set forth by Smith, each differing from the other, either in minute detail or in egregious miscalculation, depending upon your opinion as to how essential exactitude is for a sincere trust in any prophet.
Other accounts bear witness that Smith had experienced his first theophany of Jesus Christ and God the Father in that wooded area and at that time; but, be that as it may, and coming straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth, the following words were once quoted by Joseph Smith himself in a part of his daily journal that was faithfully recorded by his secretary, Warren A. Cowdery, and noted in the book, The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, authored by Dean C. Jessee.
“Monday Nov. 9, 1835…Being wrought up in my mind respecting the subject of Religion, and looking at the different systems taught the children of men, I knew not who was right or who was wrong, but considered it of the first importance to me that I should be right, in matters of so much moment, matter involving eternal consequences. Being thus perplexed in mind I retired to the silent grove and there bowed down before the Lord, under a realizing sense (if the bible be true) ask and you shall receive, knock and it shall be opened, seek and you shall find, and again, if any man lack wisdom, let of God who giveth to all men liberally & upbraideth not. Information was what I most desired at this time, and with a fixed determination to obtain it, I called on the Lord for the first time in the place above stated, or in other words, I made a fruitless attempt to pray. My tongue seemed to be swollen in my mouth, so that I could not utter, I heard a noise behind me like someone walking towards me. I strove again to pray, but could not; the noise of walking seemed to draw nearer, I sprang upon my feet and looked round, but saw no person, or thing that was calculated to produce the noise of walking. I kneeled again, my mouth was opened and my tongue loosed; I called on the Lord in mighty prayer. A pillar of fire appeared above my head; which presently rested down upon me, and filled me with unspeakable joy. A personage appeared in the midst of this pillar of flame, which was spread all around and yet nothing consumed. Another personage soon appeared like unto the first: he said unto me thy sins are forgiven thee. He testified also unto me that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I saw many angels in this vision. I was about 14 years old when I received this first communication …. [5]
So much for the reputed First Vision. The Second Vision On September 21, 1823, in a wooded area near Manchester NY, which his followers now call The Sacred Grove. Smith claimed to have had a mystical visitation of Moroni, a heavenly messenger, who entrusted to him the revelation that a civilization had existed in the western hemisphere approximately 1,400 years prior. On September 22, 1827, during another alleged apparition, Smith was told that a record of this people, engraved upon golden plates, along with the Urim and Thummin (two disc-shaped stones engraved with the symbol of “The All-Seeing Eye,” fashioned into a pair of spectacles to be held over the eyes for access to ethereal writings and to be used by Joseph Smith Jr. for translation of “scripture”) were to be found on that same Hill Cumorah[6] in western New York.
Around 1820 Smith is said to have experienced a theophany, now known as his First Vision among Mormons. Around this time, he, along with other male members of his family, was hired to assist in searching for buried treasure. In 1823, Smith said an angel directed him to a nearby hill where he said was buried a book of golden plates containing a Christian history of ancient American civilizations. According to Smith, the angel prevented him from taking the plates in 1823, telling him to come back in exactly a year. Smith made annual visits to the hill over the next three years, reporting to his family that he had not yet been allowed to take the plates.
Meanwhile, during one of Smith’s treasure hunting expeditions, he met and fell in love with Emma Smith from Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, whom he married in 1827. Returning with Emma to the hill in 1827, Smith said the angel allowed him to take the plates but forbade him from showing them to anyone except those to whom the angel directed. As news of the plates spread, Smith’s former treasure hunting associates sought to share in the proceeds, ransacking places they thought the plates were hidden. Intending to translate the plates himself, Smith moved to Harmony Township to live with his in-laws.
[1] Randall Herbert Balmer, Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism, (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press), 2nd edition, 2004, p. 110.
[2] TheSecondGreat Awakeningwas aProtestantreligiousrevival movementduring the early 19th century in theUnited States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800 and, after 1820, membership rose rapidly amongBaptistandMethodistcongregations whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1850s. The Second Great Awakening reflectedRomanticismcharacterized by enthusiasm, emotion, and an appeal to the super-natural. It rejected the skepticalrationalismand deismof theEnlightenment.
The revivals enrolled millions of new members in existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age. The Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the anticipated Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
People at the time talked about the Awakening; historians named the Second Great Awakening in the context of the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s and of the Third Great Awakening of the late 1850s to early 1900s. These revivals were part of a much larger Romantic religious movement that was sweeping across Europe at the time, mainly throughout England, Scotland, and Germany. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening) September 14, 2016.
[3] Pomeroy Tucker, Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism: (New York: D. Appleton and Company) 1867, p. 16.
[4] San Jacinto, California, letter of February 2, 1897, to the St. Louis Globe- Democrat.
[5] Dean C. Jessee: “The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” B.Y.U. Studies, IX, 284.
[6] Joseph Smith located the Hill of Cumorah (or Ramah) between Palmyra and Manchester in New York State. It was here that the Angel Moroni, supposedly, hid the golden plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, pp. 232-241.) The LDS Church has long maintained, as attested to by references in the writings of General Authorities, that the Hill Cumorah in western New York state is the same as referenced in the Book of Mormon. There is no historical or physical evidence to support the Book of Mormon claim that 2,230,000 men died in battle using steel weapons and armor at the small Hill of Cumorah, now owned by the LDS Church.