Four Things You Didn’t Know About Joseph Smith
August 7, 2012 by Tarcher/Penguin
Filed under Books, DailyTarcher, Fun Fact.
Despite its presence in popular culture—from TV’s Big Love to Broadway’s The Book of Mormon—Americans still don’t know what to make of Mormons and the Mormon religion. According to a 2011 Pew Forum, “half say they know little or nothing about Mormonism”! If you feel in the dark about Mormonism yourself, then PBS documentary writer Jane Barnes’ fascinating memoir FALLING IN LOVE WITH JOSEPH SMITH: My Search for the Real Prophet (Tarcher/Penguin hardcover; on-sale Aug 16) will shed some light on this very timely subject. (READ AN EXCERPT!)
In anticipation of FALLING IN LOVE WITH JOSEPH SMITH’s publication on August 16, 2012, author Jane Barnes has compiled a list of four things that you didn’t know about Joseph Smith and the Mormon religion:
1.) Contrary to popular opinion, Joseph Smith’s religious genius was not triggered by the excesses of the Second Great Awakening that took place close to his home in the Burnt Over District. Joseph was more influenced by the culture of his family’s passionate love of Christ, The Bible, prophecies, visions, folk magic and longing for a church where they would fit in.
2.) Joseph Smith had essentially three years of education, yet he wrote The Book of Mormon—a work that essentially amounts to the Declaration of Independence for scripture. It is a wildly radical work. Not only does it break Christ out of the Bible and the closed Christian canon, but it also understands the consequences. If the Bible needs to be supported by further scripture, then all sorts of prophets, all sorts of individuals will claim their scripture is the holy one. Joseph’s scripture sees to the bottom of this crisis.
3.) Contrary to popular belief, and to what many critical works have argued, polygamy was not simply a way for Joseph Smith to sleep with more women or impose his own wantonness on the church. Polygamy was a serious experiment to alter the relationship between sexes, increase the bonds between his people, and project the Mormon religion and its devotees into eternity.
4.) Joseph’s marriage to Emma, a strong, passionate, intelligent woman, was painfully tested by plural marriage. She fought it from the start, and he was affected by her objection. After she threw his written revelation telling her to cooperate into the fire, he took no new plural wife in the last eight months of his life. We’ll never know what that meant for his marriage because he was murdered by people who felt he was a menace to a society of law.
Order FALLING IN LOVE WITH JOSEPH SMITH on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound.
I’m an LDS teenager, and all I’ve seen said about Mormons, especially since the presidential election started up, has been nothing but lies. It’s been awful, because they’re terrible lies that have no basis in our religion whatsoever. And things like “Big Love” and the Broadway show are just insulting, because they make light and entertainment of our beliefs and our livelihoods. I don’t think there should be Broadway shows where people can laugh at the way we live.
But anyway. I’m subscribed to the pro version of Shelf Awareness because I’m a review blogger, and I was incredibly wary to see an ad for this book on there. I decided to click on it and see if it was just another lie, or if it had some basis to it. And all I can really say is /thank you/. The only objection I have to anything in what you said in this piece is that Joseph Smith didn’t write the Book of Mormon, but translated it.
But mostly, thank you for addressing polygamy. The early church memebers believed that you needed to be married in order to get into the highest degree of heaven–and widows (whose husbands were murdered by mobs) and women who weren’t married were afraid. Men who took more than one wife generally (and I say that because there will always be exceptions) never slept or lived with anyone other than his first wife, the wife he married out of love and not duty. Josepth Smith never slept with anyone besides his own wife, within the convenant of marriage, and it makes me sick that people claim our religion is based on a man who just wanted to “get it on with the main” with no consequences.
Anyway, thank you again for being willing to actually tell the truth. I don’t know Ms. Barnes, if she’s LDS or not, but I appreciate the honest and truthful piece written here.
Know your real history if indeed you are devoted, you have to take the good with the bad as well. Facts are facts and some of these claims are not lies but well known facts