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Joseph Smith, Jr., is suddenly everywhere. Two centuries after his birth in 1805, the first prophet of the Mormon faith is experiencing a renaissance of national publicity. The anniversary year just ending represented not only an opportunity for believers to resuscitate the scholarly respectability of their leader but also an economic boon for those who profit from the growing public thirst for things Mormon. Major university presses such as Oxford and Columbia published significant works in Mormon Studies, and venues from Claremont Graduate School on the West Coast to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., sponsored academic conferences highlighting the contributions of Smith's legacy to American history and the study of religion. Now Richard Lyman Bushman, a respected American historian and a believing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has produced what must surely be regarded as the crowning achievement of this year of celebration and reflection: an exhaustively researched and beautifully written biography of Mormonism's enigmatic founder.
Joseph Smith: |
Bushman, equally at home within the university and the Mormon tabernacle, has three essential goals in this work. First, he seeks to explore faithfully the story of Joseph Smith's life. He attempts, in his words, "to think as Smith thought" in an effort to explain his actions and the development of the Mormon movement between 1820 and 1844. Second, Bushman strives to present an apologia to a secular (and most often hostile) world. Thus, he labors to convey the reasonableness, coherence, and historicity of Smith's doctrinal world. Finally, Bushman wants to legitimate Smith's importance beyond the Mormon world by situating him within a pantheon of American icons, as well as within broader intellectual currents of Western civilization. Bushman wants to make Joseph Smith more than Mormon.
Bushman clearly succeeds on the first front. He seeks the middle ground between a hagiographic portrait of Smith and an exposé of his more colorful exploits. The Smith that emerges here gets angry, sometimes impetuously and violently so. He agonizes over his family situation. He runs up debts and runs away from the law. But Bushman provides social and cultural context that renders many of the prophet's reactions understandable, if not always laudable. Bushman gamely tackles the most controversial elements of Smith's life: the early visions, the translation of the Book of Mormon, the failures of the community in Kirtland and in Missouri, and the intra-communal tensions surrounding the revelation on plural marriage. Believing Mormons, particularly those who regard the humanity of Smith in the face of revelatory bombardment as one of his more endearing attributes, will surely appreciate this sympathetic interpretation of his life.
From an academic perspective, however, Bushman's is a rosy rendering. In order to depict how Joseph Smith himself thought, Bushman has to make quite a few assumptions along the way. Almost invariably, he assumes that Joseph (unlike most mortals) had only the best motives and intentions. For example, when creditors begin to catch up with early church leaders in Kirtland after Smith had encouraged heavy investment in the church bank, Bushman chalks up the resulting turmoil to the leader's natural enthusiasm amidst the infectious climate of Western boosterism. While this may be true, it would also be useful to consider alternative explanations—even if they do not shed as flattering a light on the prophet. Bushman judges Smith by a different standard than his compatriots—especially those who disagree with the young visionary. Smith's friend Sidney Rigdon is depicted as having a temperament that "ran to excess," and Smith's detractor Ezra Booth is "bitter and disillusioned." Conversely, when Smith lashes out at his critics, Bushman consistently provides a good reason: "He had to be tough. … He was just a twenty-six-year-old, learning on the job."
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