{"id":49664,"date":"2025-06-03T03:05:45","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T09:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=49664"},"modified":"2025-08-21T08:14:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:14:41","slug":"49664","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/49664\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wait for the long-anticipated biography <\/span>Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet<\/span><\/i><\/a> by John G. Turner is soon over. Available through Yale University Press, this is the first major biography released about the founding prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement since the completion of the Joseph Smith Papers project. It is a notable contribution to the study of Smith\u2019s life by someone who has never been affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A lot of research went into the biography, and due to the smaller size of the book (464 Pages, 6.12 x 9.25 in), the narrative is kept moving tightly and concisely throughout. The size alone precludes the possibility of achieving the quixotic goal of an authoritative or comprehensive biography of Joseph Smith, though it does provide an updated view of an important figure in American and Latter-day Saint history with a balanced approach. While Turner is fair and even-handed in his approach, however, I suspect many members of the Church will not be happy with this book.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Richard Bushman once described how his biography, <\/span>Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling<\/span><\/i>, was unable to dethrone Fawn Brodie\u2019s <\/span>No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith<\/span><\/i>. \u201cBrodie has shaped the view of the Prophet for half a century. Nothing we have written has challenged her domination. I had hoped my book would displace hers, but at best it will only be a contender in the ring, whereas before she reigned unchallenged.\u201d Turner\u2019s entry will stand as a third viable contender in the ring, but I doubt that it will completely displace these earlier biographies of Joseph Smith, particularly Bushman’s. As I read <\/span>Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet<\/span><\/i>, I was reminded of Phillip Barlow\u2019s assessment of Turner\u2019s Brigham Young biography that was presented as a reader blurb on Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet<\/em>: \u201cTurner’s treatment of the complex Brigham Young is unsentimental, cogent, critical, and fair. It takes its place alongside Leonard Arrington’s magisterial American Moses<\/em> as the essential, mutually challenging portraits of one of America’s greatest colonizers and religious figures.\u201d The same could be said here\u2014Turner\u2019s treatment of Joseph Smith takes its place alongside Richard Bushman\u2019s biography as the essential, mutually challenging portraits of one of America\u2019s greatest religious figures.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Smith’s life is difficult to chronicle because of the truth claims he made and the ways they influence people’s lives to this day. The biggest difference between assessing the lives of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young is that while Brigham Young can be seen as sincere in his belief in Joseph Smith\u2014whether Joseph Smith\u2019s religious-making work was genuine or not\u2014Joseph Smith is the point or origin of the Latter Day Saint movement. Rather than skirting the topic by sharing the accounts and evidence and leaving the decision up to the reader, Turner takes this head-on at one point and makes it clear that he believes Joseph Smith fabricated the story of the gold plates. \u201cReaders deserve an author\u2019s best sense of what transpired,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIn this case, it is that Joseph did not have golden plates. When someone refuses to show a hidden, valuable object to others, the simplest explanation is that he does not possess it\u201d (40). Oddly, however, the statement felt a bit shoehorned into the book, like he had received feedback that he needed to take an explicit stand on the subject and dropped it in with minimal editing around the insertion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That decision, however, colored the entire book. The implication became that Joseph Smith was a gutsy scoundrel who wasn\u2019t motivated to do hard work, but who loved living on the edge. It also led to a bothersome instance of Turner forcing evidence to match his conclusions rather than the other way around. When it came to his explanation for why Turner concluded that Smith fabricated the story of the gold plates, Turner noted that Smith refused to show them to others and \u201cthere aren\u2019t witnesses in the ordinary sense of the term\u201d (40). This was a somewhat surprising statement, given that the Eight Witnesses document portrays an experience that was defined by physically handling the plates in a normal fashion. As a result, Turner engaged in some bizarre hand-waving. While he admitted that when it came to the eight witnesses, \u201cthe physicality of these claims is striking,\u201d he quickly dismissed the idea by stating that \u201cJoseph Smith had the \u2026 ability of enabling others to share those visions,\u201d allowing him to make \u201ca mysterious hidden object present for other people. The immaterial became real\u201d (59\u201360). It\u2019s a leap in logic to make a statement like that, even if it conveniently places the incident into a preconceived framework for the narrative of the gold plates.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Given the position of John Turner\u2019s biography as the first one post-Joseph Smith Papers to cover all of Joseph Smith\u2019s life, there was a tendency to focus on topics that biographers hadn\u2019t covered in detail for one reason or another. For example, Turner gave a more detailed look at his plural marriages (though he could have benefited from taking some time to incorporate the insights from <\/span>Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy<\/span><\/i>). And at times, it felt like it was difficult to see why so many thousands of people found Joseph Smith engaging and inspiring enough to leave family and friends, moving to a new community and donating money to the cause, even with Turner’s repeated references to Joseph Smith’s charisma. That is why I say that it\u2019s important to read it alongside Richard Bushman\u2019s biography, which does a much better job at highlighting that side of Joseph Smith.<\/span><\/p>\n

That being said, Turner\u2019s assessment of Joseph Smith (much as Barlow described his book on Brigham Young) is evenhanded, well-researched, well-written, and up-to-date. Throughout, it felt like a good-faith effort to portray Joseph Smith according to the best available scholarship of our time. I did not walk away feeling like John Turner had an axe to grind against Mormonism or that he was engaging in anti-Mormon polemics. The underlying disconnect is one of worldview between those who believe in Joseph Smith\u2019s claims and those who do not. <\/span>Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet<\/span><\/i><\/a> is an important contribution to the field of Mormon studies that deserves a place in the pantheon of top-notch Joseph Smith biographies.<\/span><\/p>\n

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