Prophetic Authority

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-23
Author(s):  
Michael Hubbard MacKay
Keyword(s):  
Religious Authority ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Prophetic Authority

To explore the foundations of Mormon religious authority, this chapter introduces the idea of a Mormon prophet, demonstrates how the production of the Book of Mormon established Smith’s claim to authority, and show how his ongoing revelation created a hospitable environment to maintain his prophetic authority hierarchically within his church. This will lay the foundational concepts for how Smith developed and maintained a hierarchal role while also developing a democratic priesthood. It will also set the scene for how an inclusive populist priesthood could eventually embrace a hierarchical ecclesiology, demonstrated by Kathleen Flake’s work. The chapter will begin to define what a Mormon prophet looks like and how Joseph Smith establishes his prophethood and authority through the charismatic practices of communing with the dead and producing modern revelation and ancient scripture. It will establish that this kind a charisma founds authority and creates a space in which prophetic authority can exist charismatically without the grounding of an institution.

Prophetic Authority

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hubbard MacKay
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Second Great Awakening ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
Communal Living ◽  
Prophetic Authority

This book is about how Joseph Smith established religious authority and a long-lasting, complex priesthood structure. The thesis of this book builds on three scholars’ major ideas about religious authority and Mormonism in the antebellum United States. In an effort to move the conversation toward politics and its relationship to religion, Porterfield focused on the constraint of populism. Though it is true that Mormonism grew, as Hatch shows, from the populist appeal of a lay priesthood and communal living in early Mormonism, Flake demonstrates that the Mormon priesthood was hierarchical. Left just outside the focus of the work of Hatch, Porterfield, and Flake is the role of Joseph Smith defining Mormon authority—a role that has not been fully examined. Smith’s authority grew in opposition to the civic and political authority that evangelicals were garnering and as a countertrend to the populist religious movements of the Second Great Awakening. In fact, Smith’s prophetic voice and scripture formed a hierarchical priesthood structure that eventually empowered every male member of his church to become a prophet, priest, and king, although they answered to each leader above them within the same structure. Reinforced by that structure, Smith’s prophetic voice became the arbiter of authority. It had the ultimate power to create and guide, and it was used to form a strong lay priesthood order in a stable hierarchical democracy devoid of the kind of democratic political authority that evangelicals fostered.

The Many Bibles of Joseph Smith

2018 ◽  
pp. 110-128
Author(s):  
Seth Perry
Keyword(s):  
Religious Authority ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Early National ◽  
The Many

This chapter examines scripturalization in early national America by focusing on the scripturalized community that formed around Joseph Smith and his scriptural productions to extend and amplify a universe of biblical citations and performed roles. In contemporary Mormonism, the story of Smith's career begins with the First Vision. He published the Book of Mormon in 1830, using bibles for its composition. The chapter discusses the place of print-bible culture, citationality, performance, and the scripturalization of biblically resonant visionary texts in earliest Mormonism. It also considers how Smith's texts invited their readers and auditors to regard them as scriptures and therefore to regard him as a prophet. It shows that these texts functioned by citing the Bible, both implicitly and explicitly, and argues that the scripturalized community conjured by Smith and those around him as a classic example of the type of religious authority made possible by early national bible culture.

Joseph Smith and the Bible

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent P. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The Past ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious System ◽  
Prophetic Authority ◽  
Newspaper Editorials

AbstractWith regard to sacred books, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism (1805 – 1844), is best known for his publication of the Book of Mormon, as a history comparable to the Bible, and for other texts he put forth as divine revelations. These volumes established the unique beliefs of Mormonism and set it apart from other religions. What is less well known and often overlooked by historians is the fact that virtually every aspect of Joseph Smith's career involved the Bible, which was central to his theology and to the religious system that he established – but always in ways unique to him. Priesthoods of Aaron and Melchizedek, the building of temples and the establishment of communities in promised lands are all themes for which he invoked biblical precedents. He also produced, but never published in his lifetime, a revision of the Bible itself, the result of three years of adding to and editing the text. In addition, as he taught doctrine in his correspondence, newspaper editorials and sermons, he drew his texts and illustrations from the Bible and virtually never from the Book of Mormon or his own revelations. This article explores the role of the Bible in each of these enterprises and examines the ways Joseph Smith used it in the establishment of Mormon beliefs. The article proposes that, in his extensive use of the Bible, he was making a statement regarding his prophetic authority and his relationship to prophets and scriptures of the past.

Church

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Michael Hubbard MacKay
Keyword(s):  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
Institutional Status ◽  
Prophetic Authority ◽  
Church Governance ◽  
The Church ◽  
New Phase

The third foundational narrative that secured Joseph Smith’s religious authority surrounds the founding of his church, the Church of Christ. It marked Smith’s prophetic voice extending beyond his personal charisma into the institutional realm of an enduring religion. Scholars have observed that Mormonism is a kind of test case for Max Weber’s theory of the routinization of charisma since at Mormonism’s founding the religion was heavily tied to Joseph Smith’s prophetic power, and such movements do not often survive the death of their founders. Weber insists that charismatic authority can easily falter in its fragile state and that such leaders rarely form long-lasting organizations. Yet Mormonism did not fade after Smith’s death in 1844. In fact, Smith was obsessed with organization from the point that he merged his charismatic prophethood with the bureaucracy of church governance in a form of hierarchical democracy. A sustainable and manageable priesthood hierarchy was not possible until he grounded his tradition within an official church where ordinations could be performed and ordinances carried out with the legitimating force of the institution. The church would form its own ecclesiastical structure that was maintained through Smith’s prophetic voice and periodically reevaluated with changes in geography, demographics, and politics. The long-lasting priesthood order led to a new phase in Mormonism and religious authority in the antebellum United States. This chapter charts early Mormonism’s development into an institutional state, beginning with the 1829 charismatic revelations for the design of the church and ending with the 1830 establishment of the church and the official ordination of Joseph Smith as its prophet. The chapter traces the trajectory of how Smith’s voice maintained its singular value while securing an institutional status within a church, how he democratized his gifts through the priesthood while monopolizing his own prophetic authority.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

Priesthood Ordination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Stapley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Church ◽  
Power And Authority

Early Mormons used the Book of Mormon as the basis for their ecclesiology and understanding of the open heaven. Church leaders edited, harmonized, and published Joseph Smith’s revelation texts, expanding understandings of ecclesiastical priesthood office. Joseph Smith then revealed the Nauvoo Temple liturgy, with its cosmology that equated heaven, kinship, and priesthood. This cosmological priesthood was materialized through sealings at the temple altar and was the context for expansive teachings incorporating women into priesthood. This cosmology was also the basis for polygamy, temple adoption, and restrictions on the participation of black men and women in the church. This framework gave way at the end of the nineteenth century to a new priesthood cosmology introduced by Joseph F. Smith based on male ecclesiastical office. As church leaders expanded the meaning of priesthood to comprise the entire power and authority of God, they struggled to integrate women into church cosmology.

Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon

1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
Gordon Shepherd ◽  
Ernest H. Taves
Keyword(s):  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon

scholarly journals Religion and Revolution: Joseph Smith, Abraham Lincoln, and the Book of Mormon

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. p42
Author(s):  
Sri Michael Das
Keyword(s):  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Important Task ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Human History ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
False Prophet ◽  
Con Artist

The name Joseph Smith, b. 23 December 1803, d. 27 June, 1844 invokes words like heretic, false prophet, con artist and fruitcake. No stranger to con artistry or the interior of a prisoner cell, Smith was arrested numerous times on legitimate charges, he also accomplished something no other Prophet did: developed the character and strategies for First Citizen of Humanity, Abraham Lincoln and helped start a War Between the States that enslaved men might be free. Though he never lived to see his Book of Mormon accomplish its ends, he, along with the Latter Day Saints were never given recognition, not even informally for this, humankind’s the most important task. The most important in human history. In this paper I detail important elements of Smith’s and his Church’s work and also illuminate his ties to Mr. Lincoln, and mourn the wayward Church of today. Perhaps revisiting Mister Smith’s Vision will reignite all of us and cause us to rise up and wage one more War against tyranny, weaponry, waste, abuse, neglect, and utter ignorance of our innate spiritual principals.

Translation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
The Third ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Church

In 1823, Joseph Smith (1805–44), a farmer and treasure seeker in Upstate New York, had a vision in which a personage told him of ancient golden plates buried in a hillside, which Mormons claim he recovered, translated, and published as the Book of Mormon (1830) and which led to the founding of a restored church (1830). The revelation to Smith that Mormons now refer to as “D&C 3,” that is, the third revelation in the current edition of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' canonized Doctrine and Covenants, provides our first direct window into the emergence of early Mormonism. Although there is evidence to suggest that Smith received what he and others viewed as revelations prior to this one, this is the first revelation that was written down at about the time it was received. This chapter centers on that revelation, using it to reconstruct not only the event itself but the events that led up to and followed from it, as they likely appeared to those who were involved at the time.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Perry Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter concludes the book with a survey of the history of Mormonism and race after Brigham Young’s death in 1877 to the present. For more than a century, the church worked to fortify the racial boundaries around the Mormon identity that Brigham Young erected during his tenure as president and prophet. And yet, pressures from inside as well as outside the church continually contested these boundaries. This chapter also meditates on how and why the church has recently renewed its universalism, and done so in relation to a rereading of the Book of Mormon. Yet this contemporary Mormon universalism is a new universalism. It is cast explicitly in a different shade than the white universalism that was proposed, and in some ways practiced, by the church that Joseph Smith founded in 1830.

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