M* recently asked the noted historian and author Richard Lyman Bushman to talk about his new book, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Knopf, 2005). Jed Woodworth, an occasional commenter at M*, interviewed Professor Bushman, who graciously provided the answers to questions provided by Jed.
Comments are welcome. In between speaking engagements Professor Bushman may dip into the discussion on occasion.
You say in the preface that Rough Stone Rolling pays more attention to Joseph Smith’s religious thought than previous biographies. Was there some aspect of his thought that you ended up falling in love with much to your delight? Did any aspect repel you?
Plural marriage is hard for anyone who is happily married to understand, but it does not repel me as it does many Latter-day Saints.
I can picture saintly people forming a communal bond within a household or series of households. It drops barriers that hedge up our strongest passions, and so strikes fear into our hearts, but it erects new barriers that in time the Utah Saints grew accustomed to. I love the King Follett doctrines about a vastly intelligent and powerful God taking wandering, primitive spirits under his wing and teaching them how to achieve glory.
What about Joseph Smith so charmed his followers? You make the point that most converts never knew the Prophet before they converted. What kept them believing after they met him?
I don’t think a lot of the Nauvoo Saints knew him intimately. They heard him speak and saw him around town, but were not his intimates. Yet they did love him, as you say. I think it was because he wore his heart on his sleeve. He let his anger rip and he overflowed with love. His impetuosity sometimes made him hard to live with but people knew where they stood. A great, emotionally-charged personality can be magnetic.
One school of thought says historians do better when they aggressively argue for a position on issues of controversy. Yet on many of the modern controversies surrounding Joseph Smith—Book of Mormon historicity, the date of Melchizedek priesthood restoration, the place of Church organization, the meaning of polyandry—you present the evidence without coming down definitively one way or another. Why is that?
I see no reason to solve problems that cannot be solved. When you go beyond the evidence, you get in trouble. Premature closure leads to error.
You have called your historical method broadly empathetic, a method sometimes mistaken for partisanship. Did empathizing with Joseph ever make it difficult for you to empathize with Emma?
Not in the least. I see their relationship as tragic. She believed in him but could not bear plural marriage. He loved her but could not resist his own revelation. They were both heroic actors on a large stage trapped in terrible moral dilemmas.
Mormonism as a violent religion is one of the most enduring images in the popular press, starting with E. D. Howe and coming down to the present in Jon Krakauer. Rough Stone Rolling, however, says Mormon militarism was reactive, not native, to the tradition. “What could the Mormons do but defend themselves like a nation?†you ask rhetorically at one point (235-36). Given the perception of militarism, has Mormonism been radically misunderstood? Is it important for Joseph Smith to be known as a peace-loving prophet?
I am not sure Joseph was a peace-loving prophet. He was outraged at the treatment his people received and was passionate to overcome his enemies. He also was desperate because he could not see how to accomplish it. He brought together military bodies in Zion’s Camp and the Nauvoo Legion, but he knew that resistance was futile. The Mormons would always lose in an outright war. He struggled to erect political institutions like the municipal court to protect himself and the Saints, but they were frail reeds. His failure to solve the problem of American violence was dramatically demonstrated by his death. Unfortunately, along the way he sometimes cultivated the violent elements among his followers who did wish to use force, and they were responsible for the greatest mistake in our history.
For a long time observers represented Joseph Smith’s Mormonism as authoritarian religion. More recently, scholars like Nathan Hatch have emphasized its democratic elements. What does Joseph Smith stand to gain in this debate? What does he stand to lose?
I have chastised Nathan Hatch for leaving Christ out of The Democratization of American Christianity. Evangelical Christians were not setting about to be democrats, but to preach Christ crucified. He acknowledged the lacuna but justified his work on the grounds that it made Christianity more attractive in the modern world. I don’t think we want to play that game. I think we are perfectly justified in claiming that Joseph Smith’s teachings were radically democratic in some respects, but they were thoroughly hierarchical in others. Both sides have to be stressed. The double-sidedness has to be kept in mind to understand the conflicts that arose when an Oliver Cowdery or a John Corrill switched from Kingdom language to republican speech. By going from one language to the other, the Kingdom virtues of obedience and consecration of properties are transformed into aspects of tyranny.
Joseph Smith was a man who sought to imitate the Bible. Is there anything extra-biblical about him?
“Imitate†is not exactly the word I would use. He certainly drew upon the Bible and justified virtually every doctrine with a biblical passage. The question here is which Bible. The Bible scarcely exists apart from interpretation. It is infinitely malleable. There is a Calvinist Bible, a Catholic Bible, scores of other Bibles, and then Joseph Smith’s Bible. His originality lay not so much in going beyond the Bible but in going beyond the Protestant Bible. Priesthood, temples, corporeal God, human divinization, are all in the Bible but not the Bible Joseph’s Protestant neighbors were reading. They would consider him radically extra-biblical as evangelists do today; he would think otherwise, and in some striking instances such as God working in councils, modern biblical scholarship supports Joseph Smith.
Is Joseph Smith an American tragedy? Does he have a tragic flaw in the spirit of Lear or Oedipus?
I have said as much, though it is a peculiar kind of flaw: the conviction that he spoke for God. It was the same flaw that brought down other American prophets like Anne Hutchinson, Nat Turner, and Martin Luther King. The flaw really, however, is within the American system that cannot accept its own prophets. To rid the republic of its fanatical enemies (see question 9 below), its citizens have to resort to undemocratic means. That is what I mean by the phrase “the logic of the visionary life†in the introduction. We cannot reconcile our two founding documents: the constitution and the Bible. One makes the people the voice of God, the other the prophets. The two are always in danger of clashing unless moderation is exercised on both sides.
Rough Stone Rolling devotes considerable time to Joseph Smith’s critics: Booth, Campbell, Howe, Bacheler, Turner, Bennett, and Law, among others. Was this choice conscious on your part? What do the critics have to teach us about Joseph Smith?
Partly I was thinking of balance. The attacks on Joseph Smith were as much a part of his world as the testimonies of the believers. He lived under constant critical pressure; to understand his life, we must be aware of the pressure cooker environment. Especially I wanted readers–Mormons and non-Mormons alike–to recognize the influence of the “fanatic†stereotype, which I say at one point, with perhaps a little exaggeration, was as influential in American thought as racial stereotypes. People came with a pre-formed category of religious fanaticism that went back as far as Martin Luther and beyond, really. It is part of the liberal mind to require adequate enemies who wish to crush all the liberal virtues of free speech and individual choice. The religious fanatic has served that purpose for hundreds of years and still does. This animus against fanaticism informs Jon Krakauer’s book. Mormons are the enemy he loves to hate. Since the stereotype turns up in its full beauty in the writings of Joseph’s critics, I wanted to give them voice.
What are the practical consequences of the golden plates for appreciating Joseph Smith’s place in American religious history? Are the plates an inevitable snag that get outsiders hung up on whether Joseph told the truth?
The truth of the implied hypothesis is borne out by the Larry McMurtry review in the New York Review of Books (November 17, 2005). All McMurtry could talk about was the plates and plural marriage, the two most sensational points of Joseph’s career. I gave a talk at the Princeton Club about Joseph Smith in mid-October dealing with this very point. The problem with seeing Joseph Smith as a fraud, based on the gold plates story and plural marriage, is that it stops inquiry. He can be dismissed out of hand, and everything else he did is obscured.
Is Joseph Smith’s kingdom-building useful in a post-9/11 world?
What defines the post-9/11 world? Fear of terrorism, American militarism, Samuel Huntington-type cultural conflict? I think Joseph Smith’s kingdom-building is useful in general. Perhaps its greatest use now is to restore calm and security, so that we do not take extreme measures. Knowing we have each other and the protection of God, we should continue to see all people as God’s children and avoid rash action that will hurt more than it will help. Unfortunately, I am not sure it always works that way. Our apocalyptic tendencies take hold, and we look for the worst. We should be immune to panic but we are sometimes not.
What does it mean to say that “the judgment of history has been that Joseph’s great achievement was the creation of the Mormon people†(559)?
By history I mean non-Mormon scholars who consider Joseph Smith’s achievements after 200 years. They may dispute the scope and literary power of the Book of Mormon, dismiss Zion, the temples, priesthood, the doctrinal revolution and everything else, but they do not deny the people who came into being because of Joseph. At a discussion between evangelicals and Mormons at the American Academy of Religion in November 2004, Mark Noll said he considered Joseph Smith’s claims to be “empty†but he could not gainsay the strength of the Mormon community.
Joseph Smith’s conception of a church of cities, rather than a church of congregations, you say at one point, was “doomed†in 1830s America (222). Despite the demise of Zion cities, the Zion idea has shown remarkable durability among believing Mormons for more than one hundred and fifty years. Why is Zion one of Joseph Smith’s most resilient theological innovations?
A difficult question to answer. In New York City we are 20,000 people scattered in a population of 7 million. How can we consider ourselves in any sense a city? One reason may be the lasting force of the gathering. For sixty years we formed actual cities, and that may have engrained the communal concept into our cultural genes. (I think in general we have not adequately weighed the influence of that gathering period on our culture.) Another reason may be the continuing force of the word “consecration.†The heart of Zion was the consecration of all our properties to God and each other. When we use that word in the temple the memories of that complete consecration still play over the word. We are more committed to one another than other religious groups.
Many thanks to Professor Bushman for these thoughtful answers. And thanks to Jed for putting together the interview. All comments in this thread are to adhere to Millennial Star’s comments policy.
Fascinating interview. Thanks M* and Prof. Bushman for these insights. I was curious about your thoughts and the etiology of your comments on p. 69 of your book where you talk about the evolution of magic, money digging and the occult as in a way preparatory to Joseph’s prophetic calling. I thought it an ironic twist on many who criticize the Prophet and point to these activities, as proof that Joseph could not have been a prophet. Where did your ideas come from here? Thanks again too for a great book on the Prophet. I’m still reading it; however, from a lay person’s perspective it is a good read–not too scholarly, and something we mere mortals and understand and enjoy.
I am almost finished Rough Stone Rolling and I find it one of the best biographies of the Prophet I have ever read. It presents a well-balanced picture of Joseph and Emma and allows me to see them in a realistic way. It has helped to strengthen my testimony of him and his calling.
One question you did not ask Professor Bushman had to do with the “culture of honor” he mentions frequently in discussing Joseph’s insecurities and verbal outbursts when he feels that he is not receiving the respect that he deserves. This culture of honor is still so very prevalent in many areas of our country and is somewhat responsible for the current cultural divide we see in modern US politics. I must admit that I was raised in the east coast megapolis and I find the “honor and respect” stuff to be beyond my comprehension. However, I find that it is a very real issue for many rural persons. What is it about this way of viewing life that allows it to continue to flourish? Is it just about education or is there something more to it?
Prof. Bushman, I want to thank you for this fascinating interview, and thanks to Jed for some really pointed and deep questions. I have not yet finished the book, but one of the more interesting things for me in the early chapters in the portrayal of Joseph Smith Sr. as something of a failure, a drinker who constantly fell short of providing for his family. You portray Alvin as the leader of the family in a way (until Joseph Smith Jr. took over). Most Latter-day Saints in my experience tend to see the more positive side of Joseph Smith Sr. as the patriarch of the Church and a spiritual (although not religious) man who immediately accepted Joseph Smith Jr.’s prophetic role. I would be interested in more info on your impressions of Joseph Smith Sr. and his role in Church history. Again, thanks for this great book and this interesting interview.
Just a note to readers: While Professor Bushman may (or may not) check in to add to the discussion, it’s probably not likely that he’ll be able to answer another long list of questions. So if you have a question for him, it’s certainly okay to post it here, but it might lead to a more robust discussion if we also post our own thoughts and reactions to the book/interview, etc, so that the discussion can sustain itself without relying solely on Professor Bushman’s help. Thanks.
…the Zion idea has shown remarkable durability among believing Mormons for more than one hundred and fifty years.
I’m not sure I agree with this statement. I think you could say Zion ideas have been durable, however, I imagine that both Joseph and Brigham would find modern conceptions deeply foreign.
I too wonder about Guy Murray’s question. In my own mind I imagine Joseph Smith with a natural gift for dealing with the supernatural that was misused with regards to early magic and found its proper function in his role as prophet. However, Dr. Bushman seems to imply that the early magic helped him to develop this gift. Can misuse of a gift ever be beneficial? Perhaps I am wrong to think he misused the gift. Any thoughts from other posters?
I don’t know what it is like to look in a seer stone, but I do know what it is like to try to separate my own thoughts from any message God may be delivering to me. Perhaps Joseph’s involvement in folk magic helped him concentrate and learn the limits of his own thoughts–sort of a revelation training ground, where nothing important was at stake.
One of the things I’ve noticed in the book is how often what Joseph was doing was part of a larger trend of similar things. (contents of WofW, visionary, communal society experiments). Some might find this disturbing, but it makes me wonder if we have not appreciated the role of a prophet–to get answers for the current time. In other words, instead of seeing the restoration soley as a checklist of items God wanted to reveal, also see that Joseph had questions that were generated because of the broader culture. God’s answer would either be totally different, or it would validate ideas already out there. So in a way, the broader culture shaped the restoration because it was one of the engines that drove Joseph’s questions, the answers to which may or may not have been close to already existing ideas. Does this make sense to anybody?
Great questions, Jed. And great answer, Professor Bushman. Good, good stuff.
Dear Patriarch Bushman:
I enjoyed the story of how your daughter got married in the book Mormon Lives and it helped me get through my daughter’s civil marriage.
You are my hero.
I think Joseph Smith got a bad rap, but I’m not going to discuss it because nobody understands but me.
I’m sorry I haven’t read your book yet. I haven’t even seen your book yet. I’ll check tomorrow.
I didn’t know Jon Krakauer hated Mormons. I didn’t get that impression from his book. I thought he tried to present a fair picture. There was one really stunning inaccuracy, but I can’t remember what it was. I just remember the stunned part.
I don’t think Krakauer hates Mormons in the least. I do think he is deeply suspicious of religion and tends to see the elements of violence in religion in general. But he knows lots of Mormons from his contact with climbers in Utah. Climbing, however, is often a kind of anarchistic mindset (not always) and I suspect many climbers have problems with church authority. Then there is the conflict between environmentalism with the views of many Mormons in Utah – especially rural Utah.
Those who have read the Preface may have noticed that I assisted in the research and editing of the book. I will take a stab at answering the questions, based not on a reading of Richard Bushman’s mind, but on my own reading of the book instead. I offer the answers for debate.
Kevin (#2): There is a large and growing literature on the “culture of honor.†Early interest in the subject coalesced in Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s seminal work Southern Honor (1982) and has taken off from there. Much of the recent literature comes out of a political space interested in identity formation, gender, and “manliness.†You raise an interesting question about the diffuseness of the culture of honor. I was once employed as a guidance counselor in Youth Corrections working with young men who took quick offense to insult and would stand by their friends to the death. Is that the same as honor culture? They are not quite the same, in my view. One involves people with more or less stable ego formation with a clearer sense of boundaries; the other, people with more fragmented, insecure egos more easily capable of transgressing boundaries.
Geoff (#3): You make an interesting point. What do the foibles of the father have to do with the son? Keep reading. Joseph Sr. reappears when he is baptized in chapter 5 and becomes a patriarch in chapter 13. I think the narrative tension of showing the weak Joseph Sr. of the 1820s helps accent the strong Sr. who emerges in a “restoration of fatherhood†of the 1830s. The weak is eventually made strong. We must remember that Joseph Jr. burst into uncontrollable sobs at the sight of his father’s baptism. Why? One reading is that a keen awareness of the past as failure makes a recognition of the present as new birth all the more emotionally forceful. Another reason for the 1820s portrayal is simple fidelity to the source material. Probably the best self-assessment comes from Sr.’s own patriarchal blessings to his children where he mentions his own drinking. He himself emphasizes his weaknesses, not his strengths. The book follows his emphasis.
J. Stapley (#5): I am not so sure Joseph and Brigham would find modern notions of Zion “deeply foreign.†The notions are different, to be sure, but I think they would have appreciated the practical limitations, as Joseph did by the end of his life, of asking people to pick up and move to a single location when the church is as large as it is today. Brigham Young lived to see the second generation of Utah territory farm owners inherit much small parcels than their fathers (one reason why he asked young men to learn a trade) and it was his own colleagues who within a few years of his death discouraged further aggressive migration to the Great Basin. He might have done the same had he lived longer. I think both prophets would be pleased to see the multiplication of stakes with temples at the center.
Jared (#8): At one point in the biography, Richard Bushman says that the Prophet had a “green thumb” for growing ideas. Like any good CEO, Joseph was an observant person; things stuck in his craw and he went God in prayer about them. He asked questions about mysterious scriptural passages. One of the revelations is a series of questions about the Book of Revelation. Another addresses the practices of a nearby Shaker community in Ohio. He had to have been a curious person, an aware person, for such revelations to exist side-by-side with the other revelations coming at someone’s request.
In general I think the interactions of culture and revelation have yet to be worked out in our history. Is the bickering of Palmyra religionists “responsible” for the First Vision? I don’t think Mormons want to go that far. In some ways Jesus’s teachings offer a useful comparison. His message clearly critiqued his surrounding culture using allusions from his surrounds but at the same time his message transcended local conditions, as the subsequent growth of Christianity shows. He drew on Mosaic tradition to condemn narrow forms of scribal religion. The critique is not unlike that of contemporary American religion offered in Joseph Smith’s revelations.
Prof. Bushman, I attended a fireside at the Manhattan Stake center and heard you speak recently. I enjoyed hearing your thoughts about how Joseph Smith’s idea of “intelligences” differs in some ways from the philosophy of reason.
I’m still waiting for my copy of your book to come in the mail. I’m looking forward to reading it.
I would not underestimate the continuing pervasiveness of the “culture of honor” nor do I think it is as limited to rural areas as Kevin suggests. Its echos reverberate through the ‘western’ with its mano-a-mano shootout on Main Street (clearly derived from dueling) to the fierce and vengeful pride of ‘Rambo’ style modern movie protagonists to the the resentment of ‘dissing’ (disrespect) in hip-hop or gangsta’ culture and music which is widely popular and influential beyond its African-American (and therefore ultimately southern) origins. And “cultures of honor” are hardly limited to the US. I suspect that even a nice, well-trained group of LDS youth would immediately understand what the “culture of honor” is about if you explained that Joseph Smith was raised in a time when if someone “got in your face” or “dissed” you that the socially expected reaction was “you want a piece of me?”
While Richard’s insight into how the “culture of honor” explains Joseph’s short fuse when opposed, I find even more fascinating his insight into how Joseph struggled with the consequences of the “culture of honor,” how he hated the brawling and feuding that it entailed. Joseph never overcame the impulse to respond initially as dictated by the requirement of honor, but counterbalanced it with a quickness to forgive that is astonishing. For example, it is amazing to me that, less than a year after giving traitorous testimony in court that sent Joseph to Liberty Jail and might have got him executed, Orson Hyde was forgiven and restored to the Quorum of Apostles (see pages 369 and 407). Indeed I would be curious to know if anyone knows of any articles on this (Richard cites Orson Hyde’s own history in the Church Archives, which aren’t exactly convenient for me).
JWL: Admit that you watch Rambo once a month.
JWL (#15): I think your word “echoes†is about right. The question is whether an analytical construct ripped out of its original context is still the same thing. Wyatt-Brown’s original formulation was set in the Old South, a place where insufficient law enforcement and a herdsman economy required men to take quick offense to those who would threaten their livelihood. The rural context fell when historians found honor culture among the northern urban poor. Does honor culture require an absence of refinement? Possibly, but then you have people like Andrew Hamilton who upset the picture. Are Hamilton and Rambo doing the same thing? I am reluctant to go all the way. The culture of honor is like republicanism: everywhere we look we find it. It remains to be seen whether honor will fall out of vogue just as republicanism has in the last decade.
JWL (#15). As I see it one of Joseph’s most endearing qualities is the ability to forgive quickly. After confession it was time to move on. Again, very different from some versions of the honor culture where vendettas are held and men have long long memories.
Orson Hyde’s autobiography has almost nothing about his return. Those sketches from the 12 were dictated to Brigham Young’s clerks in the early 1850s and designed for publication. The emphasis was on loyalty not its opposite. Myrtle Hyde may have more.
Clark #12 “Mormons are the enemy he loves to hate” that’s what the interview said.
I’m thinking the stunning thing I thought about was he completely left out The First Vision.
And I had to smile at your comment about climbers and authority. Sounds kind of like bloggers.
This stuff broadens my horizons immeasurably. I might not even have heard of the book or have necessary insights to help me understand if it were not for blogging. That, for me, is the beauty of blogging. I’m going to look for the book this morning at the bookstore.
JWL, chapter seven of Myrtle Hyde’s biography does contain a section on Orson Hyde’s return. His return is detailed on pages 103-110. The bio can be read on amazon.com.
Anne, I think climbers, kayakers and ski bums are all their own kind of culture. And I say that with some love having been a climber and skiier and at least tried to be the kayaker until I almost drowned. (My brother a great kayaker) I’m not quite sure it’s the same as blogging culture.
Re: 18 and 20 — Thanks, I was not aware of the Myrtle Hyde biography.
Richard Bushman said:
“Plural marriage is hard for anyone who is happily married to understand ….”
Perhaps that is a culturally specific response to polygamy. After all, many people have lived with it successfully. I don’t see why it would be inherently “hard to understand”, at least not for everyone. And there are several good reasons for it, in both mortality and eternity. For one thing, it might be a major solution to the problems of many fine women going unmarried and of some poor marriages.
I once heard a radical feminist anthropologist (and not religious) say that polyandry would be good because it would permit women to have children who also wanted professional careers by leaving them at home with another wife whose preference was full-time mothering. And, polyandry would make it possible for a woman to choose almost any man (who was willing), thereby increasing competition among men and forcing more of them to shape up in order to find a wife.
Allen Lambert
You obviously are confused about polygamy and polyandry. Polyandry is when a woman has multiple husbands. This was the case when Joseph Smith married women while there husbands were on church missions. Polygamy is multiple wives for a single husband, Joseph did that too. We will address that at a later time when we discuss that specific chapter.
But also, Geoff, some of those women were sealed to Joseph without his knowledge or consent, because they misunderstood the doctrine of exaltation. They thought they, and their husbands, would be further exalted if they were sealted to the prophet.
I think that’s right Anne. I think that while the doctrine of adoption is almost certainly more expansive than we typically practice now, I also think that the early brethren had some confused notions about it. Confusing being sealed to make a family with a better chance at exaltation. Fortunately that didn’t really persist that long. To be fair you read about the early days of baptism for the dead and many other doctrines and there were initially a lot of misunderstandings. I think was what essential was probably setting up the ideas rather than necessarily having the practice entirely right at the beginning.
I dont think “further exaltation” was either promised or available. That is too much like the plan Lucifer presented in the War in Heaven. The Free Pass concept just doesn’t hold up, there must be better explainations which we can discuss later.
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