O Lord; thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed; I am in derison daily, everyone mocketh me.
Jeremiah 20:7.

Underlining at the last page of the book, I stuck my pencil in the middle of page 560 at ‘.. every year of his fourteen years as head of the Church, he faced opposition from within and without’. Fourteen years, only fourteen! What a story, what a revolution, what a whirlwind of events in such a short span of time. Maybe it is my European background, where history is measured in centuries rather than in decades, but in any era and on any continent this would be the story of a revolution, of a total upheaval. Of course, the focus is on a rather small group, buffeted by strong winds of their political and religious surroundings, and the intense focus is on just one man, who even if he was in the eye of the storm, was never quiet, never at ease for a longer stretch of time, and never attained what he saw as his goals for more than a fleeting moment. This builder of cities, this seer of hidden truth, this revelator by translation, this founder of a fledgling church, an irritating impostor for his enemies, a profound inspiration for his people, the farm boy anointed as king, he did all of this in just a few years?

I read this story at home, in the plane, in my hotel room, at the airport waiting for a delayed flight, on a train ride, and finally again at my desk, and was fascinated wherever I happened to be. This is a splendid work, easily the best biography of Joseph Smith I ever happened to encounter. I learned from it, it revived old queries and generated new questions. Respect for Joseph Smith and for the integrity of his person, wonder at the fundamental question that any human but surely and certainly Joseph Smith is, and comprehension of the various parties in the many conflicts raging through the story mark a mature story teller, a reliable guide and a professional historian. Bushman has the good sense to confront all historical quandaries head on, but from the viewpoint of someone who has to tell their story, not ours. He explains but does not explain away, does not sanitize the story nor analyses to death, but uses the story to highlight the humanness of his protagonists, their fit in their cultural and social surroundings by telling their struggles, hopes, fears but before all their genuine convictions.

The story is about Joseph Smith of course, but behind it is a master story of early 19th century USA, of a Puritan heritage gone West, of a Biblical cultural entering terra nulla. For a European this reads as a study in the formation of America, in fact even as a mini-vortex of America. Whatever the claims of the Church, its history and this history make it an American church, with universal claims grounded in a history which could only have happened in America. Nowhere else could a visionary not only envision a religious kingdom but actually set out to build it. From the ‘City on the Hill’ – that old Puritan heritage – to a continent-wide Zion, the master story is that a of continent developing, of a – presumably, for an anthropologist such as me – empty space where one individual could inscribe his vision, not through his heritage but through his own determination and perseverance. Being a ‘plain man’, i.e. ‘nobody-very-special’ to start with is not a barrier, but an asset, as Homo americanensis not only inscribes his visions on his surroundings but also on himself. Perfectibility is the creed, not the backlog of history, human agency is what counts, not the confines of heritage.

Yet, this peculiar story is by no means a lineal descendant of the American dream, as Bushman rightly shows. Joseph was very much part of his American cultural background, but at the same time rose to defy it and the challenge the established norms of his society and time. He did this in a utopian age – if any century is characterized by utopian dreams it is the 19th, both in the Old and the New continents – and in some concert with other utopian thinkers, but definitely in his own way. He may be the ultimate American in that he made his mark on his time and society, but he was a peculiar one indeed, one who played havoc with fixed norms and values. He was anti-America but eventually ran for president. From his economic and political schemes in the United Order and the Council of Fifty, to his marital revolution of the New and Everlasting Covenant, his vision was in but also definitely out of America, out of sync with the mainstream of an evolving society. Also, most American heroes are judged by their success, and Joseph died a martyr, more a European than an American type of hero. Of course, without the later success of the Church he might have been as forgotten as his would-be successor James Strang, but usually American culture values success in life, not after. Yet, his blood as a martyr was not only the seed of the church, the story of his life and death still is one major inspiration for his followers. And even in his death he was the quintessential America frontier man, going down in a blazing gun fight, just the type of action he – uncharacteristically for America – had been avoiding throughout his life, even if attracted to it. His ambivalent relation with violence, also in self defense, is a good example of his standing on the border of his culture, being part of it and part of something very different at the same time. So indeed, this is a cultural biography highlighting both the cultural and the non-cultural aspects of his personality.

Joseph as an enigma? Yes, in many ways and any mystery will remain so, even deepening when scrutinized under a sympathetic magnifying glass. For me the main mystery is ‘What is a prophet?’ Joseph, who introduced himself as ‘the Mormon prophet’ had all the reason in the world to do so: he was totally convinced of his prophetic calling, and so were his followers, though some only for a period. His life was dominated by his calling: he lived under the continuous shadow of his prophetic mantle. Reading his life I thank God I am not a prophet. In my opening citation Jeremiah was angry; he did not want to be a prophet and was deceived , but God was too strong: ‘If I say “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,� there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.’ (Jer. 20: 9).

Joseph could not live without the word of God, and hardly managed to live with it. He strove to see the face of God, to have his followers behold the same vision, and put them on a course of continuous confrontation with society. The main question raised by the book and by Joseph’s life is indeed: ‘What is a prophet?’ This is both a theological and a sociological question. The latter definition is a starting point: anyone considered speaking to his followers with the name and authority of God. It is the original Greek Ï€Ï?οφητης, the speaker-for, the one who gives the words of someone else. That might be the closest to how Joseph saw himself: God spoke through him, using his very human, quite American, even rustic vocabulary, embellished with Bible language from the hallowed King James. Also as Translator – a question in itself – and Seer he was the mouth piece of the Lord; his visions were always interpreted as revelations from God: he saw what God showed him and told the people (sometimes much later, though). What is almost absent is the central notion of the folk conception of a prophet: someone who knows and foretells the future. But for the spectacular – slumbering and later rediscovered – revelation on the civil war, Joseph indeed knew very little about the future. His political, missionary and economic endeavors showed his as helpless before the vagaries of history as anyone. Indeed, but for his death, he could not predict the outcome of his many brushes with his enemies. Occasional flashes into the uncharted territory of the future notwithstanding, he was as human as any of us. That insight, I think, is an important one, which Bushman rightly stresses. The same holds for his charisma, which was not always discernible for the occasional visitor, and surely not for his enemies. Finally, the notion of power, so clearly associated in our correlated days with the prophetic calling, is also not more than incidental.

This warrants a comparison with other prophets, mainly the Old Testament ones. Here, we as LDS might be misled by the example of Isaiah with the magnificent Messiah predictions. But Isaiah is more an exception than a rule, not only because there has been probably more than one Isaiah, but also because other prophets are primarily of voice of warning, a lament for the past or an incisive questioning after the righteousness of God. And we do read Isaiah almost exclusively with our eyes towards the latter days, ignoring the clear political implications of his work in the monarchical period of Israel. LDS theology almost routinely treats prophecy as knowledge of the future and then runs into problems with its own founder. Viewing the history of Joseph we see a struggling prophet, one who in his prophesies manages to exalt the immediate circumstances that often trigger his questioning of the Lord, going from mundane questions straight into flashes of deep theology. So, in a way, Joseph is more a prophet like Jeremiah (or even like Habbakuk who knocked fiercely on the doors of heaven) while we tend to see him as we read Isaiah. I do think we tend to homogenize prophets and to assign them all the qualities we would like them to have: knowledge of the future, impeccable lives, imposing and charismatic personalities, organizers and statesmen, all the while being the mouthpieces of the Lord. The reality is more messy, more humane and definitely more convincing: there are many sorts of prophets, but struggle is almost always part of the calling: struggle with the calling, struggle to get the Lord’s ear, and the perennial struggle to get the Word of God, struggle for forgiveness. Prophets have to be forgiven by the Lord, and Joseph is the prime example of that! So, finally, their predicting of the future is highly unreliable (but then our own is even less reliable so we better listen).

This raises the moot theological question whether the future is knowable at all, for anyone, even for divinity. Bushman describes how Joseph’s last theological thinking narrows the gap between the human and the divine, defining man from an eternal core (intelligence) which gradually accrues embodiments of various sorts, in order to take those tabernacles into further degrees of glory. All this is based upon a free agency which is increasingly defined as absolute, making the future more unpredictable. If our agency is free, then our future acts are unpredictable, at least on the individual level. Joseph never ventured into the ‘omni’s’ of God (‘omniscient, omnipotent’) and for good reasons: God is for him a kinsmen farther down on the road to perfection, not an absolute entity encompassing all creation. The consequences for the ‘knowability’ of the future are complex, but Joseph’s theology and anthropology (they almost conflate) do raise questions about the reliability of detailed predictions of the future.

Again, the history of Mormonism seems to be a major vehicle for theological reflection, as has been noted more often, and beyond the clear and well-told history this is one of the major contributions of the book. After all, a strongly historical religion such as our version of Christianity tends to conflate the ‘sacred history’ (Heilsgeschichte) with the lived and documented history. It is characteristic, I think, that in Mormon historiography this distinction which works so well in general history of Christianity, is hardly made at all. It might be important in one other issue. The hermetic influence on Joseph, at least on his revelations is hard to ignore. Yet in his treatment of Brooke’s book The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844, another book I do admire, Bushman notes the weak link between Joseph and hermetic traditions. He is probably right. The clearest connection comes quite late with Joseph’s initiation into masonry, while the first hermetic themes are pre-Nauvoo. But I do think Brooke’s thesis merits more than the rather cursory treatment Bushman gives it. Many of the concepts Joseph used, like ‘light’, ‘knowledge’, ‘power’ and ‘exaltation’, plus the notions of individual agency and responsibility in eternal progress, read like a short synopsis of Gnostic ideas. Masonic traditions need not be the only ones, though of course Masonic symbolism is no stranger to any American who has ever seen a dollar bill. Also the Book of Mormon, as the earlier theological exercise, shows some knowledge of this kind of secret society.

Historians sometimes seem to think that tangible traditions have to explain everything; as anthropologists we know that independent invention cannot be ruled out, or independent development from some core ideas. And in Joseph’s case we do see a gradual development of ideas reminiscent of a hermetic tradition, which run through his unfolding as a prophet. I think we fall into the trap of the standard Christian rejection of hermetic thought as apostasy; recent publications on Gnosticism place it much closer to the beginnings of Christianity. Interpreting it in the LDS fashion, one could argue that the great apostasy not only killed revelation and a lot of doctrine in the development as the Christian church, but that another revealed doctrine of a more hermetic signature, found its way in the Gnostic writings and got eradicated by this same church in the course of European history. Interpreting it as a more contemporary phenomenon, as a 19th century prophet, some ideas of the gnosis were lingering in the USA and have been elaborated upon by Joseph in solving logical puzzles Calvinist theology and incidental Bible verses posed. Whatever the interpretation, the sub-current of gnosis is too strong in my view and cannot be done away with by pointing at the lack of direct influence.

This brings me to an interesting contradiction which has escaped me serious treatment. Of course, the temple ordinances in Nauvoo, i.e. the second endowment, show Masonic influence in setting and symbolism. Bushman notes them and also notes the differences; to the latter one might add that Masonic ritual is very much death-oriented, which hardly figures in LDS temple rituals. But of more importance, in my view, is the completely symbolic treatment of sacred history in the temple ritual, where the present and the past not only are conflated, but also the figures of Adam and Eve with the people undergoing the initiation. The initiation drama of the temple fully dehistoricizes the creation story, rendering it open for a symbolic, psychological and ethical analysis, but never a historical one. This offers a fascinating contradiction. At a time when Joseph was turning out new creation stories in Moses and Abraham – all with their distinctive differences which should not be underplayed – he introduced an initiation drama which fills the creation story with symbolic, figurative and allegorical meaning. We tend to separate those ways of analysis, and I wonder whether in Joseph’s mind these varieties of explanation were really distinct. Also, here a similar development can be seen. In the Book of Mormon the traditional historic Adam and Eve comment on the consequences of their transgression. In the books of Moses and Abraham the story gradually becomes more complex and more loaded with symbolism, while the initiation drama in the temple stresses the timelessness of the creation story, filling it with people of almost all dispensations at the same time. Lévi Strauss, the famous French anthropologist, one called rituals ‘machines à supprimer le temps’ (time suppressing devices). In Joseph’s creative use of ritual they even become devices to do away with time, gathering all dispensations in one time frame.

Here one does need a fundamental difference between sacred and secular history. The distinction between the two kinds of history might ease a thorny methodological problem, the relative authority of consecutive versions of a text. The classical ‘earliest is best’ stance of historiography has been modified in Bushman’s treatment as he gives ample room for the later version of the First Vision and the later renderings of priesthood restoration. This is a large difference with the ‘insider’s view’ of Grant Palmer (to which Bushman does not refer). Palmer puts great stock in the specific circumstances and social environment of the revelations, and in the authority of primacy and ends up with an exercise in deconstruction, i.e. secular history. Bushman stays closer to ‘sacred history’, i.e. to the messages people wanted – eventually – to give, after mature thought and systematization, without falling into the trap of teleology and with a full description of the fundamental humanness of all involved.

As Mormons we are used to our early history – in fact we know the first decades of the Church better than any other part of it – so much so that we forget its breathtaking pace, its explosive nature and certainly its thoroughly controversial character. Also, we tend to oversee the contradictions, the internal dynamics and especially the mission impossible Joseph was engaged in. Here was a prophet and a people building an undiluted theocracy, aiming at a city, a string of cities and a total kingdom. Speaking with the astonishment of hindsight and from a European perspective: How could one seriously think that the United States of America – which after all was the dearest child of Enlightenment – could ever tolerate such a factual theocracy inside its borders? This does shed light on the re-christianization of America in the late 18th and early 19th century, on the model function of the Puritan heritage – which could have been more elaborated upon by Bushman, I feel – and on the notion of endless terra nulla during most of the 19th century. The world, i.c expanding America caught up with his movement time and again: in Kirtland, in Missouri (twice, even) and of course also in the ‘State of Deseret’, just as he himself caught up with his own United Order utopia. The idea of a theocracy is irreconcilable with any Enlightenment based state, and – I am tempted to say – all the better for it. No utopia is really nice to live in, and this holds for theocracies as well. The separation of church and state that was brought about by the failure of theocracy is a good thing, in my view; after all, D&C 121:41 is directed primarily at the Church, not at the world. So hindsight shows a contradiction between what Joseph wanted to accomplished and what he set out to accomplish, and the fact that this element has been thoroughly lost has helped the Church to flourish. But that contradiction goes with the ambivalence to America in general in this early phase of the church, an ambivalence the Church these days has lost, to great European regret. Even in 19th century America one could not build what one wanted, and the world and us are all the better for this.

Finally, this does bring us to the polygamy question, that mark of a ‘peculiar people’. The federal government faced a theocracy and had to deal with it. Of course, no government could ever acknowledge a group which will put its own rules above the rule of the land. ‘Antinomy’ this is called, and it is just the problem with fundamentalism in the world today: when the law of God is put above everything else, normal values are not guaranteed any longer. In this day it is random violence, for the Church under Joseph Smith it was public truthfulness. Polygamy in itself was antinomian , but even more so the constant public denial of its occurrence while practicing in secret. The 21st century Church would no longer tolerate this discrepancy between public and private, especially not for its leaders, but between Joseph’s days and us is a growing gap: the Church has been re-socialized, Americanized and made subservient to state law: we are the children of the new Enlightenment. So, in fact, Joseph Smith is no longer a prophet of our time: he belonged to another era in which we are strangers. In the white-washed official church history Joseph has been remodeled after our present conceptions of what a prophet should be, but the main and lasting contribution of this book is the bring Joseph back in the 19th century, and to offer all the readers a time travel to this wonderful and fascinating period of human experience.

Richard Bushman responds:

A hundred thoughts passed through my mind as I read Walter van Beek’s prodigious review. It overflows with conjectures and excursions that deserve a response twice as long as the review. I scarcely know where to begin. On the first page, van Beek’s European view of Mormonism as part of an American formation deserves far more extensive comment than I can possibly provide. In a smarty mood, I once told a Sunstone symposium session that I had problems with the phrase “an American prophet.� Joseph was definitely a prophet by any definition of the term, but was he American? I was thinking of the rough treatment the Mormons got wherever they went. If so thoroughly American, why were their American neighbors so consistently hostile? But on further reflection, we have to recognize that repudiation of its own whether slaveholders or abolitionists is thoroughly American. Contention and violence is in the American grain. In the case of the Mormons, the opposition uncovered a fundamental contradiction in our culture. Our two foundational documents, the Constitution and the Bible, are at odds with one another. One is based on the principle of vox populi, vox dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God, and the other that the voice of the Prophets is the voice of God. We conceal this contradiction by subscribing to common mottoes like freedom of conscience, but it is never eliminated and resurfaces periodically as in the current contests over right to life and intelligent design. Joseph was a particularly virulent form of a prophetic voice whose person embodied the antinomian theme to perfection. Try as he might to be law abiding, he was always suspected of putting his revelations above the law. That terrible potential for overthrowing the fundamental structure of democratic government made him a threat whose presence could not be tolerated–especially if his followers achieved a majority in their political jurisdiction. The reason for the outrage, his claims to a prophetic voice, was not alien in America, only contradictory. America’s prophets from Anne Hutchinson to Martin Luther King have always received rough treatment. It is the American way.

Van Beek is grateful he has escaped being a prophet. Did Joseph Smith enjoy the call? It’s a question I would like to ask the Prophet. Some things he loved. I think he enjoyed translating. When reprimanding Joseph for losing the 116 pages, the punishment the Lord held over his head was loss of the gift. Joseph was thrilled with the capacity to see through the Urim and Thummim, and he told William Phelps he longed to look over the vast expanse of eternity. But the responsibility also weighed him down. As early as 1830 he began the refrain he was to repeat three or four times through his life: I have given you all you need; now we must simply carry on. His relief in having fulfilled his mission was then interrupted by some new requirement from heaven and Joseph went back to his usual fear that he would disappoint the Lord. He was not a complainer–only once did he say he wished he could escape the burden–but the load was heavy. He had to work with inexperienced, uneducated, and often recalcitrant followers; he asked them to believe unbelievable things and go against their Protestant instincts; he worried constantly that he would fail. Yet he stuck it out. Van Beek sees all this and expresses his appreciation.

I concur also in van Beek’s notion of prophet as speaker for. It is possible to think of Joseph Smith as giant egotist. Who but a hyper-bold Christian would undertake to revise the Bible or build the New Jerusalem. He can be seen as imposing his will on the landscape, on history, on the national government, on marital morality, on the sacred word. Nothing was too sacrosanct for him to meddle in. But his history is written in the passive voice. He does not write with a giant “I.� Revelations happen to him; he is told what to do; he is perpetually the agent for another. Joseph himself tended to delight in prophesying the future as if he hoped to impress his followers with his supernatural capacity. But his great acts were not predictions of the future, but projects for the present and revelations of heavenly ways. Nor did he try to agglomerate power, as van Beek rightly notes. His instinct was to disseminate power into councils and into individual priesthood holders. Power did accrue inevitably–and he never tolerated rival heads of the Church–but he did not campaign for power any more than for riches. Power was a by-product of his compelling vision.

I did slight Brooke’s The Refiner’s Fire, not because I dislike its thesis but because I think he failed to prove his case. There are indeed hermetic or gnostic qualities in Joseph Smith’s teachings, especially the emphasis on divine knowledge and godly intelligence. I might not have noted this peculiar and wonderful emphasis were it not for Brooke’s attempt to view Mormonism through an hermetic lens. Knowledge is salvific in Joseph’s teachings; that is gnostic rather than Protestant. As I said in a review of the book, I had actually hoped that Brooke would prove his case. Joseph’s gospel so overflowed standard Protestant Christianity that he needed language beyond what was conventionally available to express his truth. I argue in the book that divining and treasure-seeking helped him to escape the narrow limits of Palmyra’s churches. Looking in a stone for treasure prepared him to look into a stone for words. Hermeticism could have served the same function had Joseph been exposed to it, but as Brooke himself confessed he never found a smoking gun. Midwest masonry was simply not up to the burden placed on it in The Refiner’s Fire. Brooke should have marveled that Joseph picked up hermetic themes, as Harold Bloom marvels that Joseph echoes primitive Judaism without verifiable connections. Instead Brooke insists on causative influence that simply cannot be demonstrated. Moreover, drunk on his own thesis, he could not see the sharp differences between Mormonism’s view of God and the soul and hermemticism’s. Mormon not only makes the intelligence eternal but perpetuates gender into the hereafter, while the hermeticists believe the soul and the sexes emerged from God and are struggling to melt into the divine being once again, certainly not Joseph’s idea of heaven.

I concur in van Beek’s observations about reviving the distinction between sacred and secular history. We do invest history with high religious purpose which is and probably should be in tension with the humdrum recitation of secular history. Moreover, as I argue in a previous post, we are better off for not having built an actual New Jerusalem. We should pursue the ideal but within the practical world of the real where we won’t and probably should not be in power. Bloom thinks we will a power in the United States eventually as our numbers keep growing, but we are sure to crash and burn if we don’t learn how to use that power lightly and not to force our views on the world. Our religious ideals should inform our actions in politics as in our lives, but never seek enforcement through the coercive powers of the state. That path leads to Jackson County and Haun’s Mill with the horrible aftermath of Mountain Meadows.

Thanks Brother van Beek for an abundance of provocative and imaginative observations, and thanks to all the reviewers for the attention to the book and your extraordinarily astute insights.

What kind of personality does Bushman see in Joseph? An expansive, passionate, and sensitive one. He was always reaching out and trying to draw more and more of the world into himself–not because of pride, but because of a sense of deep estrangement that desired above all kinship, friendship, unity and peace. Young Joseph, as Bushman presents him, was sensitive to the fallenness and alienation of humankind; he felt it desperately himself, and it showed in his revelatory work. He was emotional and enthusiastic by nature: quick to trust and quick to reject and then quick to forgive once again; deeply moved by the beauty of the world, yet wretched at his own and others’ inability to connect with it. Joseph’s earliest accounts of his first vision of God emphasized both mourning and release: like “countless other revival subjects,” Joseph looked back on his experience as a boy and told of both a warning from the Lord that “the world lieth in sin” as well as an assurance of personal forgiveness (pg. 39). While the latter filled him with great joy, for Joseph it was the former which played most upon his mind–in part, Bushman suggests, because the broken quality of both Joseph himself and the world around him was so apparent, in his family and relationships. Joseph, in his early writings, “frequently felt cast down, lacking, or falling short, never enjoying all that he needed”; despite his obvious (in some cases arguably immature or at least boyish) excitement about the marvelous artifacts and gifts which God brought forth through him, for the most part in Joseph’s journals the dominant voice “was not triumphant . . . his ‘History’ contains more pleading with God than excitement about revelation” (pg. 234). Even in the scriptures he brought forth, as numerous scholars have noted, both the doctrine and the narrative tend to emphasize again and again traditionally pious themes: the inescapability of sin, the transitory quality of human repentance and success, and the need of all people to seek for an encompassing and infinite savior to redeem them from out of this world. “In these early writings,” Bushman concludes, referring to both the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses, “Joseph was a prophet of sorrow” (pg. 141).

It is interesting the degree to which the ideas of church government which Joseph laid out did not acknowledge or respond to such depressing realities in a typically American liberal fashion. On the contrary, Bushman observes that “Joseph’s confidence in the righteousness of [priesthood leaders] seems naive” (pg. 269). As Joseph’s thinking about the revelations he received crystalized, he moved towards a reduction in his own prophetic, “executive” role in the church, instead seeking to make church councils into a “charismatic bureaucracy” (pg. 258). Bushman compares the democractic-sounding but in practice (except in marginal cases) authoritarian church which emerged by the late 1830s from out of the scattered local councils that had preceded it to classical republican forms. It is an interesting comparison to make: in the same way that the authority of republican leaders depended upon their devotion to virtue, the authority of the priesthood depended upon the righteousness of its holders (pg. 268). But the best comparison, I think, is one which echoes Joseph’s constant search for unity and peace: the way certain romantic and pietistic thinkers, from the 17th to the 19th centuries, held moral authority and contentment to be instantiated through participation in their local conventicles and congregations; by constantly returning and tending to the authentic source of their own community (for Lutheran pietists, the Bible or devotional works like those by Johann Arndt or Philip Spener; for the Latter-day Saints, the “endowment of power” that Joseph variously sought to entrust to the church through new scripture, priesthood ordinances, patriarchal blessings, and finally the temple), the authority, direction and justification for action in that community would follow without need for debate. I am not suggesting that Joseph’s teachings were necessarily influenced by remnants of radical Protestant or Puritan social models in New England; I think his vision originated solely from his own appreciation of the Bible in general and the revelations he received in particular. Still, Bushman missed an opportunity to explore more pointedly the romantic and communitarian Joseph, who early on eschewed democracy (despite paying it lip-service in the jargon and office-titles of his emerging church–pg. 265) not primarily because of a recognized need for righteous paternalism in the social order, but because of an admittedly “naive” belief that in a righteous community “authority” emerges from the will of all equally, making the actual employment of that authority a matter of minimal interest or concern. In fact, one might suggest that from the first introduction of priesthood authority in 1831, Joseph foresaw in embryo the contemporary church system of “common consent,” wherein the “teaching of correct principles” would in itself constitute a “governing” (a disciplining, submitting, and committing) of the self. Through such mutual, lay submission, a positive liberty obtains: spiritual confirmation and the reception of power would create an environment of “kindness” and “pure knowledge.”

Two poignant passages from Bushman’s pen underline this early vision of Joseph’s. He describes a conference in June, 1831, “[i]n a log schoolhouse on a hill in a forested countryside, [where] plain people of little education and much zeal sit before [Joseph] on slab benches.” As Joseph binds them through his preaching of “his visions and their possibilities . . . [t]hey listen transfixed, puzzled, and sometimes fearful. . . . Sometimes they are uncertain. Sometimes they burn with perfect certainty. They feel their lives are being elevated, their persons empowered. The concerns of farms, shops, and families drop away, and they dedicate their lives to the work” (pg. 160). What kind of work? For many, missionary work, preaching Christ far and wide. But also, simply the work of membership, of changing one’s person and temper and interests into that which supports the whole. In a second passage, following a long chapter discussing Joseph’s own susceptibility to anger, depression and feuding, and his wish for Zion as an alternative to the compromised world of offense and insult he knew so intimately, Bushman describes the Prophet’s reaction to a simple act of charity: some of his friends cutting his family’s winter’s wood one day in December, 1835. In this humble act, the sort that even a fallen man can perform for a neighbor, Joseph saw the occasion to praise and bless in his fellow man the gifts of the body, then the mind, and then the heart, and then ultimately the promise of everlasting life (pgs. 302-303). The Zion which Joseph longed for, and the vision of which that inspired so many others, was to be just such a neighborly place: a place of social peace, a refuge from both personal and political contestation as well as economic deprivation. It was an alternative which Joseph may well have thought only those simple men and women who knew their own weakness and dependency could build–since they alone were graced with the ability to find spiritual strength outside the substitutes and refinements which more worldly organizations offer.

Of course, the argument which has always been brought against such romantic utopias is that they do not provide sufficient institutional strength for those times when adversity challenges the common purposes they depend upon. And it is an argument which is relevant to Joseph’s story, since to say that Joseph did not change as he grew is, Bushman demonstrates, a clear falsehood. The dedication of the Kirtland temple in 1836, the relatively rapid collapse of the Kirtland community soon thereafter, and the months of conflict and imprisonment in Missouri that followed, all make for a definite turning point; the Joseph who came to Nauvoo in 1839 was not the same man he was three years previously. Following the dedication, Bushman informs us that “the frequency of announced revelations slowed . . . doctrine came through sermons, offhand comments, and letters, reports on revelations rather than full revelations themselves . . . [Joseph] began to speak of revelations they could [the Saints] could not bear . . . On the large issues of the next eight years–plural marriage, the temple endowment, the plans for the kingdom of God–we hear virtually nothing from Joseph himself” (pgs. 320-322). A major part of this, of course, is simply the vicissitudes of record-keeping turning an often chaotic and violent time. But that is not all of it. Joseph, in his later years, seems less focused on finding some healing of the world, to say nothing of his and his friends’ and family’s place in it. Perhaps the violent crucible of Missouri dissuaded him from continuing to seek solace and unity by drawing as much of the world as he could into a settled and stable harmony, and instead convinced him that he needed instead to constantly build and plan and grow, leaving somewhat aside the humility and simplicity that characterized his earlier efforts and embracing the desperate pace of the world–indeed, outpacing it, if at all possible. Hence, Joseph accustomed himself to the idea of being “news,” of having a place in the contestations of the public world, of having a story to tell and interests to press (pgs. 377, 390). In Nauvoo, “the refuge principle [of Zion] was reduced to a minor theme,” and Joseph no longer spoke of “an immediate end to the wicked world” (pg. 415). The plans he conceived for cites of Zion in Missouri had been communalistic (even farmers who worked land outside the city would live within it), organized by quorums, with multiple temples serving as sites of not just worship but also civic coordination (pgs. 220-221); Joseph’s plans for Nauvoo, while still focused on the temple, abandoned the consecration of property, made room for “the drills and splendor of civic life” (complete with martial costumes and titles for Joseph and those closest to him), and ultimately aimed for the building of a great capital, rather than merely a holy city (pgs. 405, 414, 423-424). He not entirely reluctantly threw himself into public arguments over the regional politics of Illinois; in defense of his people as anti-Mormon hostility developed once again, rather than speaking apocalyptically Joseph presented himself as a true “son of America” and launched an apparently seriously intended candidacy for U.S. President (pgs. 513-517).

One could, of course, see this as a simple maturing through experience: the idealistic Joseph is harshly brought down to earth, and thus becomes more “mainstream” in his attempts to implement the revelations he has received. But that doesn’t fit the historical record very well. As Bushman details with admirable care, it is during the post-Missouri years that the accusation of antinomianism–particularly in regard to marriage laws and polygamy–has its greatest force. It is fascinating to reflect upon, as Bushman’s expert prose makes possible, the contradictions that drove Joseph in the 1840s. He seems to have been convinced simultaneously of the need to emphasize the distinction of the Mormon project from that of other churches amongst those who accepted his claims (a conviction which coincided with an often much more demanding interpretation of “acceptance”), while at the same time resisting the tendency for such a distinction to translate into a rejection of ordinary society. For example, Joseph’s accounts of the First Vision changed over the years: “[t]he promise of forgiveness through faith in Christ was dropped from the narrative, and the apostasy of Christian churches stood as the central message of the vision,” (pg. 40); at the same time, Joseph in Nauvoo explicitly encouraged greater religious diversity and tolerance amongst his people (pgs. 415-416). One can also see this dynamic in Joseph’s church and personal affairs. In Nauvoo, Joseph was willing to embrace–and had the opportunity to embrace–as never before the reputation and regular responsibilities that come with being a husband, father, businessman, citizen, public figure and civic leader; at the same time, developments which he initiated within the church and his own life, developments which he often kept restricted and secret, and sometimes outright denied when asked about them, kept him on the run, pursuing an ever more desperate and unsettled pace. (And that running metaphor was often quite literal: in the last few chapters of his book, Bushman shows us with great sympathy a Joseph who often was frantically on the run, from town to town or from house to house or even from wife to wife, while Emma or dissenters or anti-Mormon lawmen watched carefully and distrustfully.) He recorded dreams which suggested he saw all around him as turning against him, and yet at the same time, as Bushman makes clear, feared nothing so much as being alone (pgs. 485-486, 499).

Perhaps it isn’t surprising, then, that the extremes of Joseph’s personality become more apparent in the last stage of his life. Joseph had always been impulsive, and accounts of his early years show a young man frequently penitent about his own roughness and jocularity. Such mourning and repentance may have continued in his later years, and simply was never recorded; then again, perhaps he had outgrown such regrets or suppressed them, having lost the (arguably immature) hope that one could find in this world any particular place or teaching that could recuse one entirely from one’s lot in life. Perhaps he was simply moving too fast for such reflection. In any case, it is in Nauvoo that the records give us the rambunctious, sometimes irreverent, and not infrequently boastful prophet (pgs. 483-484). Such extremes surely lay at least in part behind his elaboration of the “Kingdom of God” and the Council of Fifty in the last months of his life. (Incidentally, this is the only time in the biography that Bushman appears to make what looks to me like a curt aside about the church’s support of this biography, writing that “the council’s original records are not available to researchers”–pg. 521.) The doctrine of “theodemocracy” which Joseph said he stood for in a sermon in 1844, is by no means entirely unrelated to his earlier, more pious vision of Zion from the Kirtland and Missouri eras; but neither, at least if the other writings Bushman marshals are any evidence, is it entirely the same. In the intervening years, Joseph had introduced the temple ceremony as the fullest expression of that “endowment of power” he had always sought to instantiate in and through the church, and the language of that ceremony was much more explicitly hierarchical: holy communities would be led by priests and kings, who should be prepared to step in and rule as monarchs or aristocrats over the community itself should the people–apparently envisioned or at least accepted here as agents unto themselves as opposed to members of a covenanted unit–support laws which are not just. As Bushman summarizes Joseph’s views, “[r]ule by the wise seemed more sensible than government by the mistaken” (pg. 523). Again, Joseph’s notions of monarchy were still outgrowths of what he had made of God’s revealed will before: his position of “King and Ruler over Israel” was bestowed upon him by the Council by vote, thus suggesting a kind of constitutional monarchy, and the constitution of the Kingdom itself was not written, but was “living,”embodied in the participation and involvement of the members themselves (pg. 524). So the goal of a consecrated group entering into a place of mutually felt power and peace remained. But it was a smaller group now, a group within a group, a secret group, a group of those few who could catch onto the coattails of the whirlwind that the Prophet in his last days became. To those–like many of his earliest friends and supporters–who preferred the humbler, more communal and “naive” vision of Zion of the Kirtland or Missouri era, a vision so much more in line with innumerable other 19th-century American efforts to revivify Christianity, what Joseph became in later years was unacceptable. But perhaps, in the face of the crushing opposition and violent dissent, such secretive, complicated, transitory moments of unity is the best that any religion can offer.

Joseph was killed; the church endured, moved west under the leadership of Brigham Young, and flourished. For years, I assumed that the experiences of the church in Utah were uniquely a result of its particular time and place: under Brigham’s leadership, we experimented with communal economic and social orders, defiantly lived the doctrine of polygamy, shrugged off the modern world in general and the U.S. in particular, and sought to build a theocracy in the desert. Of course, we ultimately failed to do that, but the decades of struggle which came out of that effort–the longings, regrets, compromises and so forth–make us what we are today. In that sense, I had long felt that while Joseph was our Prophet, it was Brigham and the Utah years which gave us the range of possibilities and concerns that define the sociality of our religion today. Thanks to Bushman, I don’t think that any longer. I now see that the same tense engagement with the world–over authority, pluralism, social justice, respect for law, and righteousness–that was writ large throughout the Utah-era church’s long and violent showdown with American modernity had been foreshadowed, on a very local and sometimes even very intimate scale, in the life and work of Joseph Smith. He has the first to receive the burden of living at a prophetic life, of leading those who accept the Book of Mormon and the gifts which attend it in the project of turning Christian teaching into practical living. Despite all of the changes since Joseph’s day, despite all of the ways the public church has quietly learned from his efforts, despite all that has been added to and removed from his legacy by subsequent prophets and revelations, the fact remains that his short life continues to define the basic choices and opportunities which lay before this church, and indeed probably before any group that seeks to bring the revelatory into the modern liberal democratic order. This, then, is the best thing I can say about Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith: that it has taught me that we are, after all, Joseph’s church still.

Richard Bushman responds:

Russell Arben Fox’s review of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, besides presenting an evaluation of the book, contains within it a broad interpretation of Joseph Smith’s achievement. He suggests a meaning for his life that puts the Prophet’s work into a new light from beginning to end. What could be more satisfying to an author than to stimulate the kind of speculation which Fox offers? And what is more hopeful for Mormon letters than to have these thoughts expressed beautifully? I wish I had written some of the passages Fox purports to draw out of the book.

He suggests that Joseph envisioned a model of community governance that was authoritarian in appearance but deeply participatory in operation: “Joseph foresaw in embryo the contemporary church system of ‘common consent,’ wherein the ‘teaching of correct principles’ would in itself constitute a ‘governing’ (a disciplining, submitting, and committing) of the self. Through such mutual, lay submission, a positive liberty obtains.” Because communal governance emerges from the will of all, ‘the actual employment of that authority’ is ‘a matter of minimal interest or concern.’ In other words, because we all love and honor President Hinckley, the immense power he wields is not experienced as domineering or alien. We have granted him the authority to speak and act for all, and so he speaks for us as well as for God. I am sure that Fox would concede that not everyone under the Church’s broad umbrella willingly grants governing power to President Hinckley, but he could never exercise his authority if the huge body of faithful Saints did not approve. Mormons are not jealous of governing power as political liberals are but wish to enhance the Prophet’s authority and seek its blessing on their lives. This fact of Mormon life is perhaps its most puzzling aspect for liberal reporters writing about the Church.

Fox emphasizes the satisfactions of membership in a community grounded in mutuality. The conventicles and congregations of seventeenth-century Puritans before Joseph enjoyed unity and peace, and so did the Saints who joined the Mormons in the 1830s. The Mormon Zion became ‘a place of social peace, a refuge from both personal and political contestation as well as economic deprivation’–at least before the Missouri expulsion in 1839. The encounter with violence in Missouri deflated Joseph’s romantic dreams. In Nauvoo, in Fox’s scheme, Joseph saw the need to embrace ‘the desperate pace of the world,’ to have a place in ‘the contestations of the public world,’ and leave aside ‘the humility and peace’ of the earlier Zion. He aimed to construct ‘a great capital, rather than merely a holy city.’ As he was thrust more and more into the public arena, he tried simultaneously to be part of the world (he tolerated all religions in Nauvoo) and still to distinguish Mormonism from the world. His doctrines became more radical–plural marriage and the temple–while he became more active as mayor and lieutenant general. The hope for simple mutuality bonding the inhabitants of Zion into a romantic utopian sodality were replaced by a hierarchy of kings and priests and an inner circle of favored ones who shared in this authority.

Apparently Fox once thought that this engagement in worldly contestation coupled with distinctive Mormon retreats into the temple had been the legacy of Brigham Young’s era. Joseph was the idealist, Brigham the pragmatist. Now, he says, he finds the seeds of Brigham’s Utah in Joseph’s Nauvoo. Joseph too had to pull back from the romantic communitarianism of the early Zion to the practical politics of Illinois. The question is have we retreated from the true way in engaging the world. Have we lost something precious? The early Saints felt the expulsion from Jackson County was a defeat. They were denied entrance into their holy land. And as if stung by the rejection, the Mormons never reinstituted the consecration of properties in its pure form. They paid tithing, they cooperated, they experimented, but never required the whole program for the entire Church. Was that a regrettable loss?

I think not. I think Fox would agree that the Smith-Young legacy is still vital in all its parts. Political practicality has not extinguished our utopian idealism. As Fox says at the beginning, the mutuality of the early Zion persists in the virtually unanimous consent to the Prophet’s authority. Modern Mormons still retreat into the Church community for refuge from the strife of the world; we still find unity and peace in our wards as the Puritans did in their conventicles.

Moreover, backing down some from utopianism may have been for the best. For being an inveterate idealist, Joseph was a practical man. He had experience enough with the bickering that consecration evoked. After struggling manfully to organize the Jackson County Saints and failing, he let a compassionate capitalism govern the economy in Nauvoo. But the genius of the Church and of Joseph Smith is that the principle of consecration was not discredited by the termination of consecrated properties. The failure was blamed on the persecutors, not on the system itself. It remains as an ideal of sainthood, in fact a requirement, and Jackson County lives on in Mormon memory as the ideal embodiment of complete consecration. The speculations about a return to Jackson includes a realization that more sacrifice may yet be required of us. Tithing is only a down payment on consecrating everything. We still aspire to all that Jackson County represents.

I sometimes think that religion exists in the space between the ideal and the real. Religion arouses our aspirations for a higher life. It sets us to striving for a state beyond our present condition. God is our ideal in heaven, and for Mormons, the early Zion is our ideal for earth. If the early Saints had tried any longer to live the ideal, they might have become entirely disillusioned and cast Zion on the scrap heap of utopian failures. But the early expulsion coupled with Joseph’s compromises preserved the ideal. We still yearn for complete consecration while never realizing it. The earthly part of our religion functions in the force field between what we once hoped to achieve and what we have since become. Fox has turned our attention to a critical theme in the work of our first Prophet and in the course of Church history ever since.

National Publications:
New Yorker
Kirkus Books
New York Review of Books (subscription required)
Knight Ridder newspapers
Foreign Affairs
Associated Press
Christian Science Monitor
Books and Culture (Christianity Today)
New York Times Book Review

Mormon Publications:
Sunstone
Association of Mormon Letters
Jeffrey Needle/ AML

Local Publications:
Salt Lake Tribune
Deseret News
Decatur Daily
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Others:
Clark’s links to Bloggernacle discussions of RSR
Amazon readers reviews

Bushman’s title — “Rough Stone Rolling” — is an image that Joseph used to describe himself. Both the adjective and the verb are important. The year before Joseph’s murder, Brigham Young, picking up on the image, said:

This is the Case with Joseph Smith. He never professed to be a dressed smooth polished stone but was a 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 very poliched & smooth in the beginning get badly defaced and spoiled while they are rolling about.

In contrast to Brodie’s narrative of secret revelations, Bushman offers us a picture of a rough and human Joseph, but one who is nevertheless becoming smooth and polished. Hence, he offers “warts and all” history, but it is not embedded in Brodie’s implicit framework of expose. Bushman is not ripping aside the veil of tradition to show the real and unvarnished Joseph Smith. Rather, he shows the real and unvarnished Joseph Smith within a context that nevertheless grants to him the possibility of progress, refinement, and prophecy.

And to be sure, Bushman’s Joseph Smith has warts enough. Rough Stone Rolling goes through the story of Joseph Smith Sr.’s financial and personal failures, the Smith family involvement in folk magic, Joseph’s early money-digging adventures and trials, his suspicious in-laws, feuds and petty arguments in Kirtland, financial mismanagement, early accusations of adultery, Joseph’s (peripheral) involvement with Danites in Missouri, the secret introduction of polygamy, polyandry (i.e. marriage to women already married to other men), and all the rest. No doubt many will take issue with the way that Bushman interprets these events, but nothing is swept under the rug. The same is true of other issues in Church history. For example, Bushman offers a summer of 1830 date for the visit of Peter, James, and John, which would suggest that the organization of the Church on April 6, 1830 occurred without the Melchizedek priesthood. More importantly, he acknowledges that priesthood — as opposed to generalized authority — does not appear as a concept in contemporary sources until the Kirtland period and that there were no ordinations to the “high priesthood” until the summer of 1831.

What is interesting about Bushman’s history, however, is that there are basically no startling new revelations in it. One will search these pages in vain for evidence that Bushman has found some new document that reshapes our vision of early Mormon history. I don’t mean to suggest that Bushman has not done an impressive amount of research in original sources for this book, nor am I suggesting that he has not uncovered new information. However, it seems that with Bushman’s biography we can declare that the revelation and expose narrative in which Brodie implicitly placed her biography has run its course. Having reached its apotheosis in the work of Michael Quinn, which at times seems to be little more than a collection of obscure new sources interspersed with half-hearted commentary, the lets-find-a-startling-new-story brand of Mormon history seems to be well and truly dead. (If it was not killed by Hoffman two decades or more ago.) As no less an iconoclast that Will Bagley has stated, “There is no secret history of Mormonism to be written.”

The fact that there is no secret history of Mormonism to be written, however, does not mean that Mormon history is finished by any means. Within the community of the Saints, we have yet to appreciate fully what two or three generations of serious history hath wrought. I am hopeful that Bushman’s book, by replacing Brodie’s work as the biography of record, will in some sense “authorize” the Mormon mainstream to deal with its history in a way that writers mired in the expose narrative never could. Bushman’s work lacks the aura of iconoclasm and illicit knowledge that has too often served as a boundary maintaining device between the insiders of Mormon intellectualdom and the Mormon mainstream. Bushman’s book includes no manifesto of historical honesty or implicit or explicit attacks on the shameful white-washed history produced by correlation, etc. etc. He simply sets forth his story of Joseph in a sympathetic and straightforward manner. One can read his faith between the lines (more on this later), but he does not duck from telling stories that some might find uncomfortable. If, as I hope, Bushman’s book becomes a source untainted by the air of illicit knowledge that attached to Brodie’s work, then I think that a more realistic view of Joseph will work its way into mainstream Mormon consciousness, albeit one that maintains a commitment to his role as prophet in some literal and authoritative sense. All this, I think, would be for the better.

Unlike Brodie, who confidentially took her readers into Joseph’s mind, in Bushman’s biography Joseph frequently moves in obscurity. The sad truth is that for many aspects of Joseph’s life we simply have very few sources. For example, most people, I think, are unaware of the extent to which there simply aren’t that many contemporary sources about Joseph’s pre-1830 activities. We have whole years of his later life where there are only a handful of documents from his pen. Rather, as Bushman puts it, we frequently see Joseph only through the screen of other minds. One of the startling things about Bushman’s biography is the extent to which he is content to admit our ignorance of certain things and allow the narrative to focus on family or communal stories where Joseph becomes a bit player. (Bushman’s account of the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri is a good example of this; Joseph flits through the action, but prior to his surrender to the authorities, he is not a major protagonist in the story.) To the extent that Bushman does try to recapture Joseph’s inner world, what he offers us — based on the sources — is Joseph’s personal religious life. What he shows is a Joseph who was deeply concerned about working out his own salvation and who was frequently anxious about his standing with God.

Those looking for a journey into Joseph’s inner thoughts will find Bushman’s biography a disappointment. What he offers in its place is context. One way of capturing this is to look at Bushman’s self-citation in the bibliography. Not only does he draw on his earlier works on Mormon history, but he also draws on The Refinement of America and From Puritan to Yankee, two books that he has written on American social history. In this sense, Bushman is very much a historian of his generation. A student and grad-student at mid-century, he was schooled by a discipline that was abandoning the various nineteenth-century certainties (e.g. progress, psychology, economic determinism, etc.) that had dominated historiography in the first half of the twentieth century. Rather, he came to professional consciousness at the time when history was turning instead to a less theoretically ambitious focus on social milieu and cultural context. Hence, we see Joseph’s squabbling in Kirtland against the background of an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century “culture of honor” among the poor. We see the early trials of the Smith family against the social world of marginal farmers in the early republic. We see the conflicts in Missouri and Illinois against the background of extra-legal democratic violence in ante-bellum America. There are no grand causal narratives, only a detailed backdrop against which the story in its particularity unfolds.

What does this mean for the future study of Mormonism? Bushman’s work suggests that the future of lies in synthesis rather than discovery and expose. Regrettably, this probably means that the days of the amateur in Mormon studies are in retreat. Bushman’s work is great not simply because he is an expert in Mormon history, but also because he is an expert in something else, in this case the social history of the early republic. If, as Bagley suggests, there is no secret history left to tell, progress in our study of Mormonism will come by offering ideas about what it means as a historical and intellectual phenomenon. Those who wish to offer major contributions to the field are going to have to know something other than Mormon history. One will have to be an expert in Mormonism in addition to being an expert in something else, something that can be related to Mormonism. Increasingly, we will live in an intellectual world where showing connections and implications will become more important than documentary discovery.

I think that Bushman’s biography should legitimately emerge as the definitive study of Joseph Smith’s life, at least for a generation or two. I am less certain that it actually will. Frankly, I would be unsurprised if Brodie continues to be regarded by most non-Mormons as the definitive interpretation of Joseph. Despite the fact that Bushman’s work represents a much more impressive scholarly synthesis than Brodie’s and despite the fact that Bushman ties together 60 years of intervening research, he lacks what Brodie offers: A clean, clear naturalistic account of the founding stories of Mormonism. To be sure, Bushman offers us a compelling portrait of the visionary, millenarian, and restorationist context in which Joseph had his visions and brought the Book of Mormon to publication. However, Bushman’s narrative is “tainted” throughout by his belief. He is willing to let contemporary or near contemporary sources speak for themselves, even when they speak of angels and gold plates. He offers no meta-narrative of fraud (pious and otherwise) or delusion to render such stories safe for a secular present. In doing this he adheres scrupulously to historical canons, since the visionary stories he relates are firmly entrenched in what sparse contemporary and eye-witness accounts we have. But I suspect that for many non-believers Bushman’s approach will always seem unsatisfying and somehow unfair. They just know that things couldn’t have happened the way that Joseph and others described them and will regard Bushman’s willingness to end his narrative with contemporary stories as an illegitimate intellectual punt.

Ultimately, I think that this to is all for the good. Even if it is possible to have discussions that move beyond a simple prophet-fraud dichotomy when approaching Joseph Smith, I don’t think that it is possible to suppress completely the issue of belief and unbelief in how one tells Joseph’s story. Nor do I think that we would wish to. In this sense, no believing Latter-day Saint, in my opinion, can ever write a biography of the Prophet that is honest to his or her view of Joseph that will not be offensive in some sense to most non-Mormons. In the end, while I admire Bushman for producing a scholarly biography that presents Joseph warts and all to the believers, I admire him more for his willingness to offend the Gentiles.

Richard Bushman responds:

Nate Oman’s acute observations about Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling and his judgments about the state of Joseph Smith historiography won my assent from beginning to end. It is true, as he says near the beginning, no new documents surfaced to reveal hidden aspect of Joseph’s character, and it is likewise true, as he observes at the end, that a biography by a believer will inevitably be tainted. Robert Orsi, the immensely empathetic observer of twentieth-century Catholic devotion, with the same approach to Joseph Smith, could likely win over readers that I will never reach because my belief throws all my conclusions into question. The recent half-column New Yorker brief notice used one of its five sentences to note that “Bushman is both an emeritus professor of history at Columbia and a practicing Mormon, and his exhaustive biography carefully treads a path between reverence and objectivity.” The implication is that my reverence forever draws me away from objectivity, presumably tainting every judgment.

Oman also identifies one motivation for the book, a desire that “a more realistic view of Joseph will work its way into mainstream Mormon consciousness.” The “warts and all” image is one way to characterize what the book tries to accomplish. The so-called “warts,” however, do not have to be looked on as blemishes. A censorious spirit might think of them that way, but they could be seen as aspects of Joseph’s character. I like a rugged, sometimes fierce prophet, with depths of melancholy and even despair. Do those qualities have to be seen as “warts?” On the other hand, are his affection and immensely strong will to be listed as virtues or simply as other parts of the package? Whether flaws or characteristics, it is my desire to make the whole part of Mormon consciousness. We put ourselves in a precarious position if we propagate a view of Joseph Smith that conceals part of the man. When a young graduate of BYU learns for the first time about Joseph’s plural marriages or his temper, disillusion can set in. If all this was hidden from me in my religious courses, the graduate asks, can I trust what I have learned? To be credible we must be candid.

My discoveries about his character–new to me at any rate–cause me to wonder why Oman thinks that the book does not take us into the mind of Joseph Smith. I thought I was explicating Joseph’s religious views far more extensively than Brodie and that I uncovered aspects of his character, such as his melancholy, that she scarcely touched upon. Oman’s sense that Brodie purports to tell us about Joseph’s “very thoughts and motivations” presumes a particular view of the inner Joseph Smith. It may be Oman is looking for an explanation of the revelations: why Joseph Smith came to have visions or write the Book of Mormon. Brodie undertakes an answer; I do not. I don’t have explanatory theories. I think it marvelous he claimed so much and cannot exactly say why he did.

The question of a naturalistic explanation of revelation probably will haunt us for a long time to come. To bring Joseph Smith into the modern world we must have a common-sense explanation of the gold plates. It is hard to imagine him being deluded into thinking he dug up gold plates and carted them around for two years, so he must have concocted a scheme for deluding his followers. What is the alternative? Actual gold plates? Out of the question in modern thinking. The delusion has to extend to the witnesses with their concrete testimonial to having seen the plates? Even empathetic outside observers have to balk at the plates. I think we can ask sympathetic general readers to grant the possibility of Joseph Smith sincerely believing he saw a vision of Christ and God; lots of people did. The plates and the remaining Book of Mormon are the sticking point. I elide the conflict by asking readers to go along with the early Mormon believers. Let’s see what they thought about the plates and what resulted from their belief. Many will give me the benefit of the doubt while reading the book, but a reservation will remain: Joseph could not have had the plates and he probably therefore was a fraud from the beginning. In that deep sense, the book cannot satisfy them.

Would we have it otherwise? I don’t think so. Our religion is based on a founding miracle–like the incarnation or resurrection or parting of the Red Sea. Founding miracles are always the strongest evidence of God’s intervention in human affairs and at the same time the greatest evidence of prophetic deception. Miracles define the line between belief and unbelief. Crossing that line is what makes us Mormons. We don’t necessarily want the difficulty of belief to diminish, or to offer halfway points where you can accept the plates without actually believing. Allowing for compromises would diminish the force of the founding miracle.

The consequence, however, is the impossibility of a believer writing a biography of Joseph Smith that will ultimately satisfy non-believers. They may be taught to appreciate his achievements and understand him as a man. Readers will get a sense of what led people to believe in Joseph. They may come to admire the Prophet. But they will always entertain reservations. Nate Oman understands this dilemma and the price that must be paid.

A question for the blog is how to work around this central conundrum. How can we use Mormon thought to explore cultural issues and propose resolutions of our social problems without forcing non-believers to stumble over our founding miracle? Can we purvey the fruits of Mormonism without forcing non-Mormons to confront the roots?

But first, here’s my very brief review of RSR for the general reader:

Rough Stone Rolling is the definitive biography of Joseph Smith for this generation. Bushman does an able, if not artful, job of telling the prophet’s story. His reading of Joseph’s use of seer stones, of his troubled relationship with his financially unsuccessful father, of the Book of Mormon’s countercultural take on Native Americans, and of the changing place of women and blacks in unfolding LDS theology are gems. But Joseph Smith, in this book, is not a majestic, triumphant, haloed, barely-mortal dispensation head. He is, by Bushman’s portrait, a flawed man—one making many mistakes and subject to many weaknesses. His straightforward style might be a little jarring to those used to sanitized Church history, but this book is and will be the benchmark biography of the founding prophet for a long time.

And now for the questions:

(1) By way of prefacing the book you write: “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.” This is, obviously, not the approach of official, correlated Church history. What are the benefits and drawbacks of your approach—and what would you say to a Church member whose faith has been jarred by the disconnect between what s/he learned about Joseph Smith in Sunday School and what s/he learned from reading your book?

I believe the disconnect can damage young Latter-day Saints who learn later in life they have not been given the whole story on Church history. They are tempted to doubt the credibility of their former teachers; what else are they hiding, the shocked young people want to know? On the other hand, are we obligated to talk about Joseph’s character defects in Sunday School class, or his thirty wives? That may defeat the purpose of Sunday School or Institute. I am hoping that a book like mine will help to introduce all aspects of Joseph’s life into common lore about the Prophet the way most people know he had a seerstone. These now disturbing facts will become one more thing you accept along with visitation of angels and gold plates. People will wonder, question, and eventually assimilate.

(2) There’s been a flurry of news stories recently about some newly rediscovered arrest records for Joseph Smith. Have you been able to examine these? Is there anything of interest in them?

We now know Joseph Smith was involved in over 150 law suits. He had a court case hanging over him virtually every day of his life after 1830. Individually, the cases do not reveal surprising new aspects of his character or his thought, but as a whole they are a new factor to be weighed. When the legal and business volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers are published we will have a better sense of how constant litigation bore on the Prophet.

(3) It seems paradoxical that Joseph translated from physical objects (plates, papyri) when he didn’t technically need (or in some cases even look at) them while translating. Were you able to get a sense of what purpose these physical objects served?

The question is a good one, but we can only speculate about the technology of translation. I have lamely likened the plates to a computer, a physical object that gives us access to large bodies of information.

(4) Your characterization of Joseph Smith, Sr. as an inadequate provider is full of sympathy and sadness. You trace some ways in which Mormonism—particularly its concept of priesthood—compensated for his failings. Is there any evidence indicating that his fathering affected Joseph Smith as a father?

Joseph, Jr., was not a failed father like Joseph, Sr. He was eminent, confident, commanding. On the other hand, he did not leave his son much of a worldly estate either. He intended to leave him priesthood as his patrimony, which eventually Joseph III accepted. For all his lacks in providing for his children, however, Joseph, Sr., did not fail in the affection department. He was the one Joseph, Jr., turned to for comfort during the leg operation. Joseph the Prophet gave the same kind of affection to his wife and children.

(5) A perpetually busy Joseph Smith devoted quite a bit of energy to learning Hebrew, which seems odd given his gift for translation–when he didn’t know the original language. Why did Joseph Smith study Hebrew?

He studied German too and was fascinated by all languages, except the most obvious ones, Latin and Greek, which were associated with the classical civilization that he bypassed entirely. His willingness to engage a Hebrew teacher is some indication Joseph recognized that the word “translation� for his dictation of the Book of Mormon was a misnomer. He knew his mode of translating was different from the scholars’. He wanted Seixas to teach him the other way. I interpret the Egyptian Grammar as a failed attempt to bring the two processes together, that is, to learn Egyptian while he was translating by inspiration.

(6) Why do you think the history of the reception of the Melchezidek priesthood is unclear, especially when compared with the Aaronic priesthood?

I am not sure the history of the reception was clear to Joseph either. He was able to give a clear account of the Aaronic Priesthood when he wrote his history in 1839, but not of the High Priesthood. His records actually note three occasions for bestowal of the Melchizedek Priesthood: Moroni said Elijah would reveal the priesthood; Joseph’s history said God commanded him to ordain Oliver an Elder; and Joseph and others said he bestowed the Melchizedek Priesthood for the first time in June 1831 when he had himself ordained too. The scriptures say that Peter, James, and John bestowed the apostleship, not the Melchizedek Priesthood. I do not know how to bring clarity to this picture. Our own presuppositions also hinder us from reading the record. We think Joseph had to have had the Melchizedek Priesthood before organizing the Church, and we believe that ordination had to be by the laying on of hands. Those presuppositions add to the difficulty of interpreting a confused record. My tentative conclusion is that Joseph saw the restoration of the priesthood as a cascade of keys, bringing one authority and power after another, not a simple one-two punch of Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood restorations.

(7) You write of Joseph Smith “engaged in a series of small quarrels, domestic disturbances, and squabbles. He did not rise above the fray in the serene majesty of his calling.â€? The Joseph Smith who throws a bugle in a fit of rage and who signs letters “with utter contemptâ€? doesn’t remotely fit a 21st-century Church member’s conception of what a prophet should be. What are your thoughts on this?

I hope these descriptions will help us expand our ideas of prophetic character. We are so wedded to the nineteenth-century idea of the feminine Christ, soft, gentle, forgiving, that we lose track of the more fractious and demanding prophets of the Old Testament. I rather like the idea of a rugged prophet with sharp edges and fierce reactions.

(8) Do we know if the writings of Joseph of Egypt were translated? If they were, do we know where they now are?

No.

(9) A major tenet of the Church today is that the prophet will not lead the Church astray. Contrast that with John Corrill’s explanation of why he left the Church:

“When I retrace our track, and view the doings of the church for six years past, I can see nothing that convinces me that God has been our leader; calculation after calculation has failed, and plan after plan has been overthrown, and our prophet seemed not to know the event till too late. If he said go up and prosper, still we did not prosper; but have labored and toiled, and waded through trials, difficulties, and temptations, of various kinds, in hope of deliverance. But no deliverance came.”

You then write, “Everything Corrill said was true. The great work had met defeat after defeat.� How do you reconcile Joseph’s mistakes with the idea that the prophet will not lead the Church astray?

There is a difference between leading the Church astray and keeping the Church out of trouble. The early Christian apostles could not end opposition to and persecution of the primitive Church. Sometimes doing the right thing leads to suffering and death.

(10) There are only a handful of majestic, powerful images of Joseph Smith in this book, such as the scene where he orders the prison guards silent on pain of death lest they continue their blasphemy, obscene jests, and filthy language. Why are there not more “faith-promoting stories� in Rough Stone Rolling? Are they not substantiated by the historical record? Are they not germane to your portrait?

I did as a policy avoid stories told long after Joseph’s death. There are so many reasons to exaggerate and distort that it complicates the writing terribly to enter all the qualifications necessary to evaluate these posthumous accounts. Actually I felt there was plenty that was inspiring in the materials I was more confident of. I find inspiration in prophetic sorrow and defeat as well as in triumph.

(11) In the context of the revelation commanding polygamy, you wrote, “The possibility of an imaginary revelation, erupting from his own heart and subconscious mind, seems not to have occurred to Joseph.� But it apparently occurred to you. For some members, what is most troubling about pre-Utah polygamy (besides, of course, the practice itself) includes the secrecy, public disavowals, and the fact that many of Joseph Smith’s wives were already married to other men. How do you make sense of the Church’s history of polygamy?

I sense two related questions here. One has to do with the possibility that Joseph was misled; the other about the miseries and deceptions following from plural marriage. I don’t think Joseph entertained the possibility of self-deception. He knew all too well the horrendous consequences for the Church and himself personally in instituting plural marriage. Though usually punctilious in obeying the commandments, he delayed nearly a decade (save for the unhappy experiment with Fanny Alger) before complying with this one. Once into plural marriage, he found himself ensnared in all the convoluted activities you name. The expediencies he adopted made him and lots of other people unhappy. I don’t know anyone who can make real sense of this. All I can say is that the practice did result in the creation of a powerful culture in fifty years. The descendants of the people who came through those times are the core of faithful members today. In actual fact, plural marriage did raise up a people to the Lord.

(12) Your epilogue begins with the famous statement from Joseph Smith: “You don’t know me—you never will I don’t blame you for not believing my history had I not experienced it [I] could not believe it myself.� After researching and writing this book, you come closer to experiencing his history than most of the Saints. Do you feel that you know Joseph Smith?

Only in part. There are too many veils between us and Joseph Smith. I am pretty sure there were struggles and sorrows in his life we know not of. Were there visions and glories too? Probably. I do know he was an exceptionally strong man who could bear defeat and discouragement without giving up. Courage may have been one of his strongest traits.

(13) Melissa also asked: Do you think this is the sort of book that, had you written it as a young scholar, would have negatively impacted your career? In other words, do you think that the fact that you are retired gave you some freedom to write a book that you couldn’t have written if you were trying to get tenure?

I don’t think writing about Joseph Smith would have counted against me so long as the scholarship was sound. My historical colleagues respected my first book on the Prophet which contains all the really demanding episodes, save for plural marriage. It was published five years before I was offered the job at Columbia.

To introduce the symposium and provide a contrast to the coming reviews we thought it might be of interest to offer a window into what sorts of questions Rough Stone Rolling is raising for some non-LDS scholars. Last month at the annual meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, one session was entirely devoted to responding to Bushman’s book. Here is the gist of what these scholars had to say.

The first presenter pressed Bushman on his subtitle. What is a “cultural” biography exactly? Is it about contextualizing the figure? This is not what it seems to mean to Bushman who takes a quite different approach. Culture is not used to give a naturalistic explanation of Joseph Smith, but to show how he’s unique. For example, Bushman writes that the Book of Mormon might be considered a “profound social protest.” But, in fact, it makes sense to say, and many have in fact said, that the Book of Mormon is rather the very embodiment of the cultural period.

His second critique was that Bushman does not portray Mormonism as a new religious movement with a charismatic leader although it belongs in this category. Joseph is described as an emotionally and verbally abusive leader who insists on strict loyalty from followers. When that loyalty is breached there are heavy consequences. When proper contrition is showed, followers are welcomed back to the group. These are characteristics of charismatic cult leaders. Another feature of such movements and their leaders is the perception sexual perversions. Sexual excess was considered the all-too common fruit of new religious leaders. Here is another example where Joseph Smith seems to be a representative of his culture rather than an anomaly. Hence, the book can’t properly be considered a sociological or “cultural” biography since it fails to illustrate how JS was similar to rather than distinct from other charismatic leaders of the time.

The second presenter began by referring to Bushman’s claim that Joseph Smith was a product of his environment that couldn’t be contained by it, that Joseph transcends his context. He questioned Bushman’s desire to distinguish Joseph from the other visionaries of his time to try to shed some light on why Joseph’s movement succeeded when other similar movements failed.

He went on to call Rough Stone Rolling “believing history” and to suggest that believing Mormon historians share more than we might think with radical feminist sociologists since both reject a positivist epistemology. We can neither evaluate Vogel’s work with Bushman’s tools nor Bushman’s work with Vogel’s tools. So, what tools do we use? He asked whether believing history has an agenda and wondered what the prospects of believing history are in the academy where positivist methods reign

The third paper focused on the “very thin tight wire” Bushman had to walk between writing a serious work of scholarly integrity on the central character who founded his religion and repudiating the core assumptions of his faith. The presenter commended Bushman for walking that line admirably well and acknowledged that both the open minded believer and the open minded skeptic will encounter much, new valuable insight here.

He then suggested that a purely sociological biography would flirt with being a contradiction in terms. Of course, every person is a social being with a social history of self-meaning, socializing relationships, influences and pressures emanating from others, etc. A good biography will take into account such influences on the character, development and actions of its individual subject. Bushman does this throughout much of his book. The sub-title of the book, “a cultural biography of Mormonism’s founder,” indicates that he takes the cultural emphasis quite seriously. As an historian of the era in American history when Joseph lived, Bushman is knowledgeable about the social and cultural currents of that time period and repeatedly links these to his account of Joseph’s career, character, assumptions and even personality quirks. In fact, one of the ways in which Bushman’s approach differs from many standard biographies is that he doesn’t give us a rigid, detailed, chronicle of every activity or encounter the subject is known to have engaged in. His chapters are identified with significant themes which keeps the narrative from getting bogged down with the minute, inessential details.

But, ultimately a biography is in fact the story of a particular individual, even though it can and should be anchored in the larger social, cultural, and historical milieu in which the individual lives. For a biography to become a purely sociological treatise would amount to more than just taking into account some of the social forces operating on a particular individual. The social forces themselves become the ultimate focus; the career of an individual become a case study to illustrate the nature and effect of these forces. The task of sociology is to study social relationships and the group structures in which they are anchored. The sociologist qua sociology seeks either to develop general social concepts or even theories that have explanatory scope or seeks to apply already existing social concepts or theories to illuminate a specific case.

The book advertises itself as a “cultural” biography, but Bushman doesn’t adequately draw upon existing sociological insights that might broaden or otherwise benefit his interpretation of the singular life, career and character of Joseph Smith as the prophetic founder of a radically controversial, new religious movement. One will look in vain throughout the entire text and endnote section for inclusion of any specifically sociological concept of theory. There is an enormous scholarly literature in sociology on topics like charismatic authority, prophetic leadership in the founding and early development of new religious movements and countless other conceptual themes like reference groups, plausibility structures, utopian social movements, deviance labeling, inter-group conflict, etc. These are issues that have been theoretically and empirically pursued by sociologists for a hundred years from Max Weber to Rodney Stark. None of these works is cited by Bushman. Bushman’s book would have benefited from judicious use of this literature.

The last paper argued that believing history is the same thing as religious apologetics and that sociological analysis must restrict itself to naturalistic explanations. Although Bushman’s book offers a superbly detailed description of JS, there is not general theoretical framework for accounting for Joseph Smith; there is no sociological typology. Sociology necessarily parts company with the particularizing moves of biography.

Richard’s response to these papers was gracious as well as compelling. He acknowledged feeling out of place among the sociologists in the room and then explained his aim was to recover the world of Joseph Smith because that’s the only way to understand the people of the past. If we poke holes in their stories we become unable to understand their power. As an historian he is interested in knowing why Joseph Smith was able to command such allegiance?

Social scientists try to colonize the past. But, as an historian he seeks to enter the exotic and foreign. He wants to know that *other* land. History is like traveling. We have to recover past worlds.

Bushman admitted to being handicapped in this project in one way. He kept trying to answer the question of how JS went from an unpromising rural boy to a prophet, but, just couldn’t answer the question partly because he didn’t want to. He said he *wants* it to be a marvel. He wants Joseph to be as difficult to understand as Muhammad is.

And so he is for many.

These are the questions the scholars are posing. What questions do you have? Perhaps some of your questions will be answered this week as we discuss Rough Stone Rolling on Times and Seasons.