Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia available in Hardcover
Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia
- ISBN-10:
- 1598841076
- ISBN-13:
- 9781598841077
- Pub. Date:
- 08/13/2010
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN-10:
- 1598841076
- ISBN-13:
- 9781598841077
- Pub. Date:
- 08/13/2010
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Academic
Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia
Hardcover
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$103.00Overview
Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia helps readers explore a church that has gone from being an object of ridicule and sometimes violent persecution to a worldwide religion, counting prominent businesspeople and political leaders among its members (including former Massachusetts governor and recent presidential candidate Mitt Romney).
The encyclopedia begins with an overview of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—six essays cover the church's history from Joseph Smith's first vision in 1820 to its current global status. This provides a context for subsequent sections of alphabetically organized entries on key events and key figures in Mormon history. A final section looks at important issues such as the church's organization and government, its teachings on family, Mormonism and blacks, Mormonism and women, and Mormonism and Native Americans. Together, these essays and entries, along with revealing primary sources, portray the Mormon experience like no other available reference work.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781598841077 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publication date: | 08/13/2010 |
| Pages: | 449 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Ardis E. Parshall is an independent researcher and historian living in Salt Lake City, UT.
Read an Excerpt
MORMONISM
A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIAThomas Nelson
Copyright © 2010 ABC-CLIO, LLCAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59884-107-7
Chapter One
Eras
Foundation: 1820–1830
Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, could not help being affected as a youth by the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening. Beginning about 1790 and lasting for around 50 years, the Awakening manifested itself in many ways. In some cases, there were intense revivals in which people received visions and Pentecostal-like experiences and conversions. So prevalent was the Awakening in western New York that the area was dubbed the Burned-Over District. During one 12-month period beginning in 1819, revivals took place in at least 10 towns within 20 miles of the Smith home in Palmyra.
Around the age of 12, Joseph Smith became concerned for the welfare of his soul and took to studying the scriptures. He attended revivals and was influenced by them, though he did not succumb to the animated shouting, jumping, and loss of consciousness that some experienced. He later told a friend that, in attending a revival meeting with his mother and sister, he "wanted to feel & shout like the rest" but was unable to do so (Jesse, Accounts 25). He soon found himself concerned not only about his personal salvation but about which of the contending Churches, if any, was right. Sometime in the spring of 1820, he determined to follow the biblical admonition "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him" (James 1:5). He retired to a grove of trees near his family's log home and began to pray. Almost immediately, he was nearly overcome by some force that seemed intent on destroying him, but, after he struggled and prayed inwardly, the darkness left, and he beheld an astonishing vision. In a shaft of light, he saw the Father and the Son, both of whom spoke to him. He was told, among other things, that his sins had been forgiven, that he should join none of the Churches of the day, for their doctrines were incorrect, and that at some future time the "fullness of the gospel" would be made known to him. After the vision ended, he wrote later, "my soul was filled with love and for many days I could rejoice with great Joy and the Lord was with me but [I] could find none that would believe the heavenly vision" (Jessee, Accounts 7).
It was not uncommon in that religious climate for men and women to report such spiritual experiences, including visions of Christ. Smith, however, received ridicule rather than praise. Accordingly, he soon stopped telling the story, confiding in only a few friends and family members. Twelve years later, he wrote an account of the vision, but he did not prepare a version for publication until 1838.
For three years after the vision, he experienced no further heavenly manifestations. Meanwhile, according to Smith's own account, "I frequently fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and the foibles of human nature; which, I am sorry to say, led me into divers temptations." He was guilty not of any ,,great or malignant sins but, rather, too much levity and joviality "not consistent with that character which ought to be maintained by one who was called of God as I had been" (Smith, History 1:9).
The turning point came three years later. On the night of September 23, 1823, he went to bed and began to pray for forgiveness of his sins as well as for information about his standing before the Lord. Suddenly the room filled with light, and a personage calling himself Moroni appeared. Moroni said that God had a work for Smith to do and then described an ancient record, written on plates of gold and hidden in a hillside not far from the Smith family home. It contained a history of some of America's ancient inhabitants, including the record of a visit to them by the resurrected Jesus Christ. The angel showed Smith in vision where the plates were buried and cautioned that he should show them to no one. Then the angel vanished, only to reappear twice more that night. The angel repeated the same message, adding the caution that Joseph must avoid the temptation to use the plates to acquire wealth.
The next morning, after telling his father, Smith went to the hill (now known as the Hill Cumorah) and found the buried plates, hidden in a stone box, but he was unable to retrieve them. Moroni appeared, chastened him for thoughts of personal gain, and told him that he must return to that spot each year for four years, at which times Moroni would meet and instruct him.
During the next four years, Smith continued to work on his father's farm, as well as other places. He developed a reputation as a village "seer" for his unusual powers of discernment. He possessed a small, smooth, egg-shaped stone, obtained from a well, that he called a seerstone, and he sometimes used it to help friends find buried objects. In the religious and social milieu of the time, many respectable people believed in the use of divining rods and in stone gazing in the search for lost articles and buried treasures. To some people, Smith's early involvement in such folk magic seemed only natural, giving credence in their minds to his story of buried golden plates. By 1827, however, when he finally received the plates, Joseph had abandoned such activity.
During these years, Smith also made many friends who would later prove valuable to the Church he would found. Among them was the family of Joseph Knight Sr., who lived in Colesville, Broome County, New York. Another was Josiah Stowell, who lived in Bainbridge. While working for Stowell, Joseph boarded at the home of Isaac Hale, where he met and fell in love with Isaac's daughter, Emma. However, when the two decided to get married, her parents refused to consent. Emma was 22 years of age, old enough to do as she pleased. The young couple eloped and were married by a justice of the peace on January 18, 1827. They then returned to Palmyra, where they lived in the Smiths' new frame home and Joseph worked the farm with his father.
In September, the time arrived for Joseph to receive the buried record. Both Josiah Stowell and Joseph Knight Sr. came to visit the Smiths on September 20, and on the morning of September 22 Joseph borrowed Knight's horse and wagon. Taking Emma with him, he drove to the hill where he had met Moroni each year for the past four years. This time Moroni gave him the plates, with a warning not to be neglectful or careless with them or he would be ,,cut off. He also received a curious instrument called the Urim and Thummim, consisting of ,,two stones in silver bows that could be fastened to a breastplate and used in translating the ancient record.
It is not clear exactly how Joseph Smith used the Urim and Thummim or what else may have helped in the translation process, for he left no firsthand account. Various associates left their own descriptions, sometimes slightly conflicting, of the process, but Joseph Smith wrote only that ,,Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift and power of God (Smith, History 4:537). However, he could not translate all of the record, for a third of it, for some unknown reason, was sealed.
The Hill Cumorah, near Joseph Smith's Palmyra, New York, home, where he reported finding the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. (Courtesy of the Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
It quickly became known that Smith had, or claimed to have, the golden plates. As a result, he became the target of ridicule and plots to get the plates. Preserving them from thieves and beginning translation was not easy. Former friends and others who thought of the plates as a source of wealth devised various schemes to steal them. Smith often changed their hiding place, sometimes just before the arrival of a mob.
It was not just potential thieves that delayed the translation process. Smith had to earn a living, and he could ill afford to take time away from work. However, he and Emma finally decided to move to Harmony, Pennsylvania, where they could live on property owned by Emma's father and translate in relative peace. Help arrived in the person of Martin Harris, a prosperous farmer in the area, who gave Smith $50 to pay his debts before leaving Palmyra.
In Harmony, Smith finally had time to translate, but the work was slow. As Richard Bushman observed, Smith had to learn the translation process, a challenge that took time (Bushman, Joseph Smith 63). In February 1828, Martin Harris arrived, expecting to help with the translation, but Smith soon sent him on a special mission. He was to take a transcript of several characters from the gold plates to a linguist and to attempt to obtain some kind of certification that the characters were genuine and that the translation was authentic. Harris took the transcript to Charles Anthon, a professor of classical studies at Columbia University, in New York. What Anthon actually said about the transcript is not clear, but when Harris returned he was more certain than ever that the plates were authentic. He then went to work helping with the translation, serving as scribe as Joseph dictated.
Something Anthon said to Harris had a significant impact on the way Mormons came to view the Book of Mormon. According to Harris, Anthon signed a paper confirming the authenticity of the characters and their translation but then asked where Smith got the plates. When Harris reported that they came from an angel, Anthon tore up the certificate, saying there was no such thing as ministering angels. He told Harris to bring the plates to him and that he would translate them. Harris replied that the plates could not be shown and that part of the record was sealed. Anthon rejoined, "I cannot read a sealed book." Joseph Smith saw this story as a fulfillment of a biblical prophecy recorded in Isaiah: "And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: And the book is delivered to him that is not learned [i.e., Joseph Smith], saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned" (Isaiah 29:11–12). Mormons have since used this passage as biblical evidence of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
By June 14, 1828, Harris had recorded 116 translated manuscript pages, but then tragedy struck. Convinced that if he showed the manuscript to his unbelieving wife she would change her mind, Harris repeatedly pressured Smith to let him take it home. Smith finally relented, extracting a promise that Harris would show it to five specified people. The next day, June 15, Emma nearly died in childbirth, losing her baby boy in the process. Smith spent the next two weeks caring for Emma but also worrying about the manuscript. Smith went to Palmyra, where he confronted Harris, who sadly confessed that he had shown it to more people than was authorized and that it had disappeared. What happened to the manuscript may never be known, but the loss so shocked Smith that he felt condemned. A revelation chastised him for allowing it to leave his possession; for a time, he lost the power to translate, and the plates were taken from him. The result was a time of anguish and soul-searching, which ultimately strengthened Smith in his resolve to be more careful and more faithful.
The plates and the ability to translate were restored later that summer. However, Smith was told in a revelation that those who took the 116 pages planned to prove Smith a fraud by altering the words of the manuscript. If Smith retranslated and the new manuscript did not agree with the old, his detractors would expose him as a charlatan. Nevertheless, there was an out. The plates actually contained two parallel records. One was a first-person account by the original recordkeeper, an ancient American prophet named Nephi, and a few others. The other was an abridgement by Mormon, the last in a string of recordkeeper/historians of a larger record covering the same period. Joseph had translated from the abridgement, but now he was told to translate from the first-person record. When he began again, Joseph picked up his translation where he had stopped in the abridgement, then, when finished, went back and translated from the first-person account. The translation, with Emma assisting, proceeded only slowly and intermittently. Then, on April 5, 1829, Oliver Cowdery arrived. This young schoolteacher had boarded at the Smith Sr. home in Palmyra and had become intrigued with what he heard about Joseph. After earnest prayer, he became convinced that Joseph's story was true and insisted on going to Harmony with Joseph's brother Samuel. Cowdery proved a godsend. Two days later, he began transcribing, and, by the end of June, a period of less than 60 days, Smith had translated virtually all of the Book of Mormon.
This two-month period was an exhilarating time, for new revelation and spiritual experiences seemed to pour from heaven as Smith and Cowdery worked. One of the most important events occurred on May 15, when the two men came to a Book of Mormon passage dealing with baptism. They wondered who had the authority to baptize, and they decided to retire to a spot on the banks of the Susquehanna River and pray. What ensued would form the foundation of the Mormon claim to legitimate authority from God to perform baptism and other priesthood ordinances. Smith and Cowdery reported that, as they prayed, a heavenly personage appeared who said that he was John the Baptist, a resurrected being, the same who had baptized Jesus Christ. He announced that his purpose was to restore the long-lost Aaronic Priesthood. He laid his hands upon Smith and Cowdery and conferred upon them that priesthood, which, he said, "holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins" (Doctrine and Covenants 13:1). He then instructed them to baptize each other. The importance of this event, and the later bestowal of the higher or Melchizedek Priesthood authority by Peter, James, and John, cannot be overemphasized when it comes to understanding both the distinctiveness and the spread of early Mormonism. For some converts, it fit beautifully with their quest for a restoration of the "ancient order of things," as expressed by Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples of Christ. Scholars have called these people Christian primitivists, for they looked forward to the reestablishment of the primitive Church of Christ. For many converts, the Mormon claim to authentic priesthood authority, traceable directly to God himself, fulfilled what they were looking for. As one non-Mormon historian put it, "Indeed, the origin and whole doctrinal development of Mormonism under the Prophet may be characterized as a pragmatically successful quest for religious authority, a quest that he shared with many other anxious rural Americans of his time, class, and place" (De Pillis, Quest 88).
One believer was David Whitmer, who in June moved Smith and Cowdery to his father's home in Fayette, New York, where they completed the translation. Shortly thereafter, Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris were told that they would be allowed to see the plates, fulfilling a promise in the Book of Mormon itself that certain witnesses would be given that privilege. These three, along with Joseph Smith, knelt in prayer in the woods near Fayette. Each prayed twice, but with no effect, until Martin Harris withdrew, thinking he might be to blame. The others then knelt again, whereupon, as Smith later related, "we beheld a light above us in the air, of exceeding brightness; and behold, an angel stood before us. In his hands he held the plates which we had been praying for these to have a view of. He turned over the leaves one by one, so that we could see them, and discern the engravings thereon distinctly." They also heard a voice from out of the bright light above them, saying, "These plates have been revealed by the power of God, and they have been translated by the power of God. The translation of them which you have seen is correct, and I command you to bear record of what you now see and hear." Smith then looked for Harris, finding him engaged in fervent prayer. Harris asked Smith to pray with him, which he did, and ultimately the same vision opened and Harris cried out in ecstasy, "Tis enough; tis enough; mine eyes have beheld; mine eyes have beheld." He then jumped up, shouted "Hosanna," and blessed God (Smith, History 1:54–55).
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Preface and AcknowledgmentsMormonism in Historical Context: An Introduction
ERAS
Foundation: 1820–1830
Development: 1831–1844
Exodus and Settlement: 1845–1869
Conflict: 1869–1890
Transition: 1890–1941
Expansion: 1941–Present
EVENTS
Black Hawk War
Book of Mormon
Colonization
Correlation
Exodus from Nauvoo
First Vision
Handcart Migration
Haun's Mill Massacre
Immigration
Kirtland Pentecost
Manifesto
Martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith
Missouri War
Mormon Battalion
Mountain Meadows Massacre
Nauvoo Legion
Organization of the Church
Pioneering
Priesthood Revelation of 1978
Reformation
Relief Society
Seagulls and Crickets
Smoot Hearings
Temple Work by Proxy
Temples
Ungathered
United States v. Reynolds
Utah War
Word of Wisdom
Youth Programs
Zion's Camp
PEOPLE
Arrington, Leonard James
Bennion, Lowell L.
Benson, Ezra Taft
Brooks, Juanita
Cannon, George Q.
Cannon, Martha Hughes
Clark, J. Reuben Jr.
Grant, Heber J.
Hinckley, Gordon B.
Hunter, Howard W.
Kimball, Spencer W.
Lee, Harold B.
Lyman, Amy Brown
McConkie, Bruce R.
McKay, David O.
Monson, Thomas S.
Nibley, Hugh
Parmley, LaVern Watts
Pratt, Orson and Parley P.
Rigdon, Sidney
Roberts, B. H.
Rogers, Aurelia Spencer
Sessions, Patty Bartlett
Smith, Barbara Bradshaw
Smith, Emma Hale
Smith, George Albert
Smith, Hyrum
Smith, Joseph F.
Smith, Joseph Fielding
Smith, Joseph Jr.
Smith Family
Snow, Eliza R.
Snow, Lorenzo
Spafford, Belle Smith
Talmage, James E.
Taylor, Elmina Shepherd
Taylor, John
Wells, Emmeline B.
Witnesses to the Book of Mormon
Woodruff, Wilford
Young, Brigham
ISSUES
Church Organization and Government
Divergent Churches
Genealogy and Family History
Local Worship
Mormon Missiology
Mormon Scripture
Mormonism and Blacks
Mormonism and Economics
Mormonism and Education
Mormonism and Men
Mormonism and Native Americans
Mormonism and Other Faiths
Mormonism and Race
Mormonism and Science
Mormonism and Secular Government
Mormonism and the Family
Mormonism and Violence
Mormonism and Women
Mormonism as a World Religion
Mormonism as Restoration
Mormonism's Contested Identity
Non-Mormon Views of Mormonism
Polygamy
Chronology
Selected Bibliography
About the Editors
List of Contributors
Index