First Vision
Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, remembered that his first audible prayer, uttered in spring 1820, resulted in a vision of heavenly beings who forgave him and told him Christianity had gone astray. “The Mormon narrative,” according to a 2012 blog post, “seems to always start with a young boy who asked God a question one spring morning in 1820.” That is true if one qualifies the always, for it has not always been so. When and why and how did Joseph Smith’s “first vision,” as Latter-day Saints or “Mormons” know the event, become their seminal story? What challenges did it face along the way? What changes did it undergo as a result? Can it possibly hold its privileged position against the tides of doubt and disbelief, memory studies, and source criticism—all in the information age? First Vision tells how Joseph Smith—by remembering his past in various present contexts—opened the way for alternatives, how saints chose the collective memory they did, and what difference it has made for them and their critics. This book is the biography of a contested memory and how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it.