Missing: The First Vision?

[Rescued One]

Yes, I did.

Good! Then you know that I didn't write the article.

 

[TasteForTruth]

I believe that it is not uncommon for churches to have historians to keep a record of what happens in the church, both religiously and socially. In which case, yes, if there was persecution, it would be documented somewhere.

So you're suggesting that Christian churches do commonly keep track of their own acts of persecution against persons such as Joseph Smith. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to make sure I understand exactly what you're suggesting.

 

[TasteForTruth]

Good! Then you know that I didn't write the article.

I know that you didn't, nor did I say you did. But you posted it for a reason. And since the material you posted made a claim, I was asking you to clarify your position, based on the claim it made.

 

[skylark1]

No 1820 Revival

Joseph Smith's neighborhood experienced no revival in 1820 such as he described, in which great multitudes joined the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches. According to early sources, including church conference reports, newspapers, church periodicals, presbytery records and published interviews, nothing occurred in 1820-21 that fits Joseph's description. There were no significant gains in church membership in the Palmyra-Manchester, New York area,3 during 1820-21 such as accompany great revivals. For example, in 1820, the Baptist Church in Palmyra only received 8 people through profession of faith and baptism, the Presbyterian church added 14 members, while the Methodist circuit lost 6 members, dropping from 677 in 1819 to 671 in 1820 and down to 622 in 1821 (see Geneva area Presbyterian Church Records, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA; Records for the First Baptist Church in Palmyra, American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, NY; Minutes of the [Methodist] annual Conference, Ontario Circuit, 1818-1821, pp. 312, 330, 346, 366).

In his 1838 account, Joseph Smith stated that his mother, sister and two brothers were led to join the local Presbyterian Church as a result of that 1820 revival. However, Joseph's mother, Lucy, tells us that the revival which led her to join the church took place after the death of her son, Alvin. Alvin died on November 19, 1823, and following that painful loss Lucy Smith reports that,

about this time there was a great revival in religion and the whole neighborhood was very much aroused to the subject and we among the rest, flocked to the meeting house to see if there was a word of comfort for us that might relieve our over-charged feelings (First draft of Lucy Smith's History, p. 55, LDS Church Archives).

Lucy adds that although her husband would only attend the first meetings, he had no objection to her or the children going or becoming church members . There is plenty of additional evidence that the revival Lucy Smith refers to did occur beginning in the spring of 1824. It was reported in at least a dozen newspapers and religious periodicals (see for example, a letter of George Lane, dated January 25, 1825, in Methodist Magazine 8, [April 1825]:159 and a note in a Palmyra newspaper, the Wayne Sentinel 1 [September 15, 1824]:3).4 Church records from that time period show outstanding increases in membership due to the reception of new converts. The Baptist Church received 94, the Presbyterian 99, while the Methodist work grew by 208. No such revival bringing in great multitudes occurred in 1820 in the Palmyra-Manchester area as Joseph claimed. It is clear from this evidence that the revival Joseph Smith described did not occur in 1820, but in 1824. When Joseph Smith wrote the 1838 version of his history, he arbitrarily moved that revival back four years to 1820 and made it part of a First Vision story that neither his mother nor other close associates had heard of in those early days. (For further details see, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1969, pp. 59-100.)

Does a discrepancy of four years cause a major problem for Joseph's story? It certainly does. Joseph described a 10-year sequence of events that begins with the First Vision and ends with the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830. If this sequence did not start until 1824, there are only six years in which to fit the ten year sequence Joseph claims occurred before the Book of Mormon was printed.
New Light on Joseph Smith's First Vision

Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn addressed this claim in 2006:

An oddity in Mormon studies has been the decades-long repetition of Reverend Wesley P. Walters’ claim in 1967 that “no revival occurred in the Palmyra area [of western New York State] in 1820.” Rejecting all reminiscent accounts by Mormons, he made this assertion because of an allegedly “massive silence” about such a revival in documents written or published during that year. Instead, he argued, “the statement of Joseph Smith, Jr. cannot be true when he claims that he was stirred by an 1820 revival to make his inquiry in the grove [of trees] near his home.”

Walters insisted that various evidences showed Palmyra having no revivals from the fall of 1817 until 1824. Thus, Smith allegedly invented a fictitious revival to support his allegedly fictitious “First Vision” of deity in 1820 by superimposing on that year the extensive revivals which contemporary sources clearly described for Palmyra in 1824 and the following year.2 Likewise, a hostile biographer wrote in 1999: “There was no significant revival in or around Palmyra in 1820,” adding that “no known revival occurred in Palmyra between 1818 and 1823,” and repeating: “no revivals in or around Palmyra [--] 1820.”3

Such unconditional denials seem odd for several reasons. First, the published diary of minister Aurora Seager commented that Palmyra had a revival in June 1818. After returning to his “home at Phelps on the 19th of May,” he prepared to attend the annual meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Genesee Conference (the organizational subdivision for western New York):

I received, on the 18th of June, a letter from Brother [Billy] Hibbard, informing me that I had been received by the [eastern] New York Conference, and, at my request, had been transferred to the Genesee Conference. On [Friday,] the 19th [of June 1818,] I attended a camp-meeting at Palmyra [nearly fourteen miles from Phelps]. The arrival of Bishop Roberts, who seems to be a man of God, and is apostolic in his appearance, gave a deeper interest to the meeting until it closed. On Monday [at Palmyra's camp-meeting,] the sacrament was administered, about twenty were baptized; forty united with the [Methodist] Church, and the meeting closed. I accompanied the Bishop to Brother [Eleazer] Hawks, at Phelps, and on the 14th of July [1818,] I set out [from Phelps] with Brother [Zechariah] Paddock for the Genesee conference, which was to hold its session at Lansing, N.Y.


Reverend Seager's eye-witness narrative has greater importance than merely disproving the claim of no Palmyra revivals for years following 1817. Occurring almost exactly six months after Joseph Smith's twelfth birthday (23 December 1817), this three-day Methodist camp meeting in June 1818 provided a local context for the following statement from his earliest autobiography (with its errors of spelling and grammar):

At about the age of twelve years[,] my mind become seriously imprest with regard to the all importent concerns for the wellfare of my immortal Soul which led me to searching the Scriptures [--] believeing[,] as I was taught, that they contained the word of God [--] thus applying myself to them and [because of] my intimate acquaintance with those of differant denominations[, this] led me to marvel excedingly [--] for I discovered that they did not adorn their profession by a holy walk and Godly conversation agreeable to what I found contained in that sacred depository [of the Bible--] this was a grief to my
Soul [--] thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart​

http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/QuinnPaperless.pdf​

The article goes into much more detail, but since it is 54 pages in length I can only quote a small part. He has completed a great deal of research concerning this, and offers 248 references. I think that reading at least a part of it is worthwhile reading.

 

[TasteForTruth]

Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn addressed this claim in 2006:

An oddity in Mormon studies has been the decades-long repetition of Reverend Wesley P. Walters’ claim in 1967 that “no revival occurred in the Palmyra area [of western New York State] in 1820.” Rejecting all reminiscent accounts by Mormons, he made this assertion because of an allegedly “massive silence” about such a revival in documents written or published during that year. Instead, he argued, “the statement of Joseph Smith, Jr. cannot be true when he claims that he was stirred by an 1820 revival to make his inquiry in the grove [of trees] near his home.”

Walters insisted that various evidences showed Palmyra having no revivals from the fall of 1817 until 1824. Thus, Smith allegedly invented a fictitious revival to support his allegedly fictitious “First Vision” of deity in 1820 by superimposing on that year the extensive revivals which contemporary sources clearly described for Palmyra in 1824 and the following year.2 Likewise, a hostile biographer wrote in 1999: “There was no significant revival in or around Palmyra in 1820,” adding that “no known revival occurred in Palmyra between 1818 and 1823,” and repeating: “no revivals in or around Palmyra [--] 1820.”3

Such unconditional denials seem odd for several reasons. First, the published diary of minister Aurora Seager commented that Palmyra had a revival in June 1818. After returning to his “home at Phelps on the 19th of May,” he prepared to attend the annual meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Genesee Conference (the organizational subdivision for western New York):

I received, on the 18th of June, a letter from Brother [Billy] Hibbard, informing me that I had been received by the [eastern] New York Conference, and, at my request, had been transferred to the Genesee Conference. On [Friday,] the 19th [of June 1818,] I attended a camp-meeting at Palmyra [nearly fourteen miles from Phelps]. The arrival of Bishop Roberts, who seems to be a man of God, and is apostolic in his appearance, gave a deeper interest to the meeting until it closed. On Monday [at Palmyra's camp-meeting,] the sacrament was administered, about twenty were baptized; forty united with the [Methodist] Church, and the meeting closed. I accompanied the Bishop to Brother [Eleazer] Hawks, at Phelps, and on the 14th of July [1818,] I set out [from Phelps] with Brother [Zechariah] Paddock for the Genesee conference, which was to hold its session at Lansing, N.Y.


Reverend Seager's eye-witness narrative has greater importance than merely disproving the claim of no Palmyra revivals for years following 1817. Occurring almost exactly six months after Joseph Smith's twelfth birthday (23 December 1817), this three-day Methodist camp meeting in June 1818 provided a local context for the following statement from his earliest autobiography (with its errors of spelling and grammar):

At about the age of twelve years[,] my mind become seriously imprest with regard to the all importent concerns for the wellfare of my immortal Soul which led me to searching the Scriptures [--] believeing[,] as I was taught, that they contained the word of God [--] thus applying myself to them and [because of] my intimate acquaintance with those of differant denominations[, this] led me to marvel excedingly [--] for I discovered that they did not adorn their profession by a holy walk and Godly conversation agreeable to what I found contained in that sacred depository [of the Bible--] this was a grief to my
Soul [--] thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart​

http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/QuinnPaperless.pdf​

The article goes into much more detail, but since it is 54 pages in length I can only quote a small part. He has completed a great deal of research concerning this, and offers 248 references. I think that reading at least a part of it is worthwhile reading.

Thanks for the source Skylark. That looks like an excellent read!

 

[TasteForTruth]

Wow Skylark, that document you linked is excellent. I'm only to page ten, but it's already saturated with great, documented facts that show the claims against revivals in J.S.'s neighborhood during the time in question to be totally baseless. And this is coming from an excommunicated (1993) member of the Church who presented the article in 2006. Thank you for posting this!

 

[A New Dawn]

Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn addressed this claim in 2006:

An oddity in Mormon studies has been the decades-long repetition of Reverend Wesley P. Walters’ claim in 1967 that “no revival occurred in the Palmyra area [of western New York State] in 1820.” Rejecting all reminiscent accounts by Mormons, he made this assertion because of an allegedly “massive silence” about such a revival in documents written or published during that year. Instead, he argued, “the statement of Joseph Smith, Jr. cannot be true when he claims that he was stirred by an 1820 revival to make his inquiry in the grove [of trees] near his home.”

Walters insisted that various evidences showed Palmyra having no revivals from the fall of 1817 until 1824. Thus, Smith allegedly invented a fictitious revival to support his allegedly fictitious “First Vision” of deity in 1820 by superimposing on that year the extensive revivals which contemporary sources clearly described for Palmyra in 1824 and the following year.2 Likewise, a hostile biographer wrote in 1999: “There was no significant revival in or around Palmyra in 1820,” adding that “no known revival occurred in Palmyra between 1818 and 1823,” and repeating: “no revivals in or around Palmyra [--] 1820.”3

Such unconditional denials seem odd for several reasons. First, the published diary of minister Aurora Seager commented that Palmyra had a revival in June 1818. After returning to his “home at Phelps on the 19th of May,” he prepared to attend the annual meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Genesee Conference (the organizational subdivision for western New York):

I received, on the 18th of June, a letter from Brother [Billy] Hibbard, informing me that I had been received by the [eastern] New York Conference, and, at my request, had been transferred to the Genesee Conference. On [Friday,] the 19th [of June 1818,] I attended a camp-meeting at Palmyra [nearly fourteen miles from Phelps]. The arrival of Bishop Roberts, who seems to be a man of God, and is apostolic in his appearance, gave a deeper interest to the meeting until it closed. On Monday [at Palmyra's camp-meeting,] the sacrament was administered, about twenty were baptized; forty united with the [Methodist] Church, and the meeting closed. I accompanied the Bishop to Brother [Eleazer] Hawks, at Phelps, and on the 14th of July [1818,] I set out [from Phelps] with Brother [Zechariah] Paddock for the Genesee conference, which was to hold its session at Lansing, N.Y.


Reverend Seager's eye-witness narrative has greater importance than merely disproving the claim of no Palmyra revivals for years following 1817. Occurring almost exactly six months after Joseph Smith's twelfth birthday (23 December 1817), this three-day Methodist camp meeting in June 1818 provided a local context for the following statement from his earliest autobiography (with its errors of spelling and grammar):

At about the age of twelve years[,] my mind become seriously imprest with regard to the all importent concerns for the wellfare of my immortal Soul which led me to searching the Scriptures [--] believeing[,] as I was taught, that they contained the word of God [--] thus applying myself to them and [because of] my intimate acquaintance with those of differant denominations[, this] led me to marvel excedingly [--] for I discovered that they did not adorn their profession by a holy walk and Godly conversation agreeable to what I found contained in that sacred depository [of the Bible--] this was a grief to my
Soul [--] thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart​

http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/QuinnPaperless.pdf​

The article goes into much more detail, but since it is 54 pages in length I can only quote a small part. He has completed a great deal of research concerning this, and offers 248 references. I think that reading at least a part of it is worthwhile reading.

Thanks for posting this Skylark. I had actually read one of the original studies done by one of the researchers mentioned in his article (I think it was Backman) back in 1978, or so. I trust D. Michael Quinn more, so I'll read it with interest.

 

[A New Dawn]

Wow Skylark, that document you linked is excellent. I'm only to page ten, but it's already saturated with great, documented facts that show the claims against revivals in J.S.'s neighborhood during the time in question to be totally baseless. And this is coming from an excommunicated (1993) member of the Church who presented the article in 2006. Thank you for posting this!

I find it interesting that the LDS embrace D. Michael Quinn when he presents papers that favor the LDS history that they have accepted as 'true', but reject, and even excommunicate, him when he presents papers that do not embrace the LDS history that they have accepted as 'true'.

 

[fatboys]

I find it interesting that the LDS embrace D. Michael Quinn when he presents papers that favor the LDS history that they have accepted as 'true', but reject, and even excommunicate, him when he presents papers that do not embrace the LDS history that they have accepted as 'true'.

that is not the reason for his excommunication

 

[A New Dawn]

that is not the reason for his excommunication

It is the reason for his excommunication. He wrote a paper that disagreed with the accepted church history, and he was asked to rewrite it so that it agreed with accepted church history, and he refused.

According to an interview with him

You were excommunicated. What happened, why did it happen, and how did you feel?

For a believing Mormon, one who sees Mormonism as the true church and believes in the priesthood and the revelations that have been published, Mormonism is their whole life. All their hope, all of their anticipation is connected with that. Now, to be deprived of membership in the LDS Church is to lose all of that. And for a Mormon who is an ardent believer, that is a kind of death. ... When I began facing that potential, I was on the faculty of Brigham Young University, and what threw me into the jeopardy of losing my membership in the church were my publications on LDS history.

I was fulfilling what I believed was God's mission for me: to understand the leadership of the church and the history of the church as well as I could, and to present it as honestly I could with the perspective that my training gave me so that members of the church wouldn't be disturbed when they learned about these problem areas, because anti-Mormons were using history as a club to beat the faith out of people. I felt this wouldn't be possible if they already knew about these problems. ...

I felt earnestly that this was what God had prepared me to do, to present these problem areas in a context that allowed for faith and still acknowledged what the anti-Mormons or the critics would bring up, but to say: "Yeah? So what? These are human beings." God works with fallible human beings, whether they're your parents or your prophets. This is a way of understanding it and maintaining faith.

Well, the problem was that -- well, actually, it was a double problem. I was getting reports back from people who had read and heard the things that I'd say that that, in fact, was how they were understanding it. They were saying: "Oh, thank you. This makes it understandable for me." ...

On the other hand, I was hearing officially from apostles, whom I regarded as God's chosen prophets and apostles on earth, that this kind of approach to history was not faith-promoting; that it was contrary to what God wanted. ...

What specifically were you writing about that was particularly problematic?

The things that I was learning that were not pleasing to the leaders of the church that I had been publishing about were policy changes in the LDS Church; the existence of certain councils, such as a theocratic Council of Fifty that I published about that the LDS Church leaders didn't know about themselves, and if they did know about, they didn't want rank and file to know that there was a theocracy that was a part of Mormonism; polygamy, and the practice of polygamy after the Manifesto, that had been secretly practiced or practiced by Joseph Smith before it was publicly announced in 1852 as a doctrine of the LDS Church.

These kinds of things, policy changes and doctrinal changes, were things that I had written about and had tried to put into a context of seeing this as a process of change and a process of revelation, but nonetheless to acknowledge that there were these problem areas, but they didn't need to be problem areas. They could be understood as a part of the human experience or as a part of God's changing patterns of dealing with the LDS Church, or as a part of the LDS Church responding to differing circumstances. But it became clear that criticisms from apostles of the LDS Church -- Mark E. Peterson, Boyd K. Packer, [Ezra Taft] Benson -- were being directed directly at the kinds of things I was publishing, and in some cases, by title, at some of these publications of mine.

It became clear to me, when I published a long article, almost 100 pages, about plural marriage after the Manifesto, that this was coming to a breaking point between me and the church, because my local LDS Church president, the stake president, was visited by a General Authority and told that I was to be called in and punished, and that at a minimum I was to lose my temple recommend, which was the basis for church employment, and I was a professor at BYU.

Then the leader of this meeting said, "And if this doesn't keep him from doing this kind of thing, you should take further action as appropriate." And he started to get up and walk out. He thought that was the end of it. And the stake president said, "Now, wait a minute." He said: "Michael Quinn gave me a copy of this article on plural marriage after the Manifesto. I and my counselors have read it, and we don't find anything in it that is contrary to faith. It talks about some difficult experiences the church went through, but we don't see this as a reason to punish him. ... And he hasn't done this secretly, and we don't see -- we've read it." And they asked, "Have you read it?" And he said, "No, I wouldn't read anti-Mormon trash." And they said, "Well, how can you judge that what he's written is destructive of the faith if you haven't read it?" And it went around and around, and finally after two and a half hours, the stake president said, "Well, I'll call Michael Quinn in, and I will explain to him what you have said to us, and then we'll go from there."

And this representative said: "Oh, no. You can't tell him that I told you what I've told you. You can't tell him that this came from church headquarters. This has to be your objection that he is to be informed of, that you have objected to, and that you're going to punish him for." And the stake president said: "I'm not going to lie to him, so you decide: Am I going to tell him the truth and call him in, or am I not going to say anything to him? Because I am not going to lie to him." This stunned this General Authority who had been sent from church headquarters, and he said, "Well, then you do [what] you feel you need to do."

So the stake president called me in and explained this whole process, including the fact that he had been told to lie to me and to say that this was his personal objection to what I'd published. The stake president said: "I feel obligated to do something. I have to do something." And he said: "I'm taking your temple recommend. You will not be able to go back to the temple without it. But," he said, "I'm afraid that they're going to use this as a grounds for firing you from BYU if you do not have temple recommend. So," he says, "if anyone at BYU asks if you have a valid temple recommend, you tell them yes, and don't volunteer that it's in my desk drawer. And when it expires, I'll renew it, but I'll keep it in my desk drawer."

And I knew at that moment that I was dead meat, that as long as that stake president was there to protect me I would be protected, but as soon as he was relieved of his position -- and these are temporary positions; it's a lay ministry -- and another stake president who was more compliant was in the position, or if I happened to move ... out of his stake, then I was dead meat. ...

I was fulfilling my mission as I felt that God had led me to, and yet it had put me on a collision course with the leadership of the church I regarded as his prophets. ... So I prayed a lot to God: "Help me to know. If I'm wrong, I'll confess that I'm wrong. If you want me to stop my research as a Mormon historian, I will." ...

And I received the confirmation that I had received since childhood of God's presence, of this burning within, of this sense of peace which, as Jesus says, passes all understanding. I felt that I was doing nothing wrong in what I published and that they were wrong in condemning me for it. I couldn't sort this out. It didn't make any sense to me, but I felt there was no way I was going to retreat, no matter what it required, and eventually it ended up in my excommunication.

The Mormons . Interviews . D. Michael Quinn | PBS

 

[pdudgeon]

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