Was the ism created in a eroding social context? Did it try to fill a gap? What had happened during that lead to the awakening that created the cult?

I'm not an expert, but you deserve a reply, Cauda, particularly because it's actually very interesting.


I don't know all the details (and can't find the links...), but the 1820s in the US were a period of massive religious yearning, debate and experimentation. The area of New York state where the Smiths lived was worked so often by the missionaries and preachers of the various churches spouting hell-fire and brimstone in their sermons that it was known as the Burned-Over District: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district

So you're right, Mormonism didn't arise in a vacuum - and indeed, we know that Joseph Smith Jr. was involved in this, as he became a methodist for a while (if I remember correctly) "before". Sidney Rigdon, JS's right-hand man for a long time, was even a preacher in this missionary effort (for the Campbellites, I think).

So your question is an important one, Cauda - and I hope the more erudite people on the board will be able to provide further details.

All the best to you.

Tom in Paris

No scholarly erudition to offer, but, want to echo what Soft Machine referenced.

As a young Mormon in the fifties and early sixties we were taught the beginnings of the church, there was never any mention that Joseph's "restoration" took place in a time when many were claiming visions of visitations with angels and what Joseph was doing in the regard was nothing out of the ordinary--not filling a void. All I heard was that there were many religions and this innocent uneducated farm boy wanted to know which one was true. That left out a lot of details.


But Joseph, in taking advantage of the pulse of the country religiously, was clever and imaginative and found a gimmick--the gold plates and ratcheted up a couple of notches his place in the prevalent religious revivalism of the day. One reason the gimmick of the Gold plates worked is the more nuanced the con, the more believable--the devil is in the details, as they say. Then changed his vision to God and Jesus instead of just the usual suspects--angels. So he pulled ahead into history while the others are mostly long forgotten.

Take the Word of Wisdom. My mother used to go on and on about how the Wow was proof of the truth of the church because, as she put it, "No one in those days knew that those things were bad for you so it had to come from God." Turns out there were tons of temperance movements and Joseph's WoW revelation was just a clever way to plagiarize one more thing and add it to the necessary list of "details" he was collecting.

Joseph took what had been long going on all around him and made it "his own." Say what you will, he had some talent,

"No one in those days knew that those things were bad for you so it had to come from God."

"No one knew" — funny. King James (yes, *that* one) hated tobacco and wrote an anti-tobacco screed in 1604. So yeah, people knew.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Counterblaste_to_Tobacco

It also filled a void in the early development of the United States with its ability to place the growing and changing country into a pivotal role in on time development of world wide Christianity. The relevance of this emerging country in the world could now boast a second promised land.

Cauda, I’ve been wondering where you’ve been.

I think mortality rates were higher then, and people were desperate (as they are now) to have connection to lost family members. So Joseph Smith sold them “sealing.”

Maybe Smith himself was desperate to believe what he had concocted after the death of his older brother, Alvin.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2021 01:51PM by kathleen.

Thanks, I fixed it. :)

Considering our question, I highly recommend reading "No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie who was a renowned biographer. For me personally it is the be-all-end-all of books on the subject. Thoroughly referenced as professional biographers should do.

After she was done, plenty of people knew Joe's history.

"No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie is excellent. There is also the website http://www.mormonthink.com, which examines early mormon history.

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/index2.htm is one of the several history sites put together by Dale R. Broadhurst (who used to post here).

The full list of the incredible resources he proposes can be found here: http://sidneyrigdon.com

I found all this fascinating - including the human stories and the evocation of the spread westward in the US (before the 'escape' to Utah).

I'm sure (or I hope ;-) there are now other sites too.

The Joseph Smith story in the Pearl of Great Price briefly mentions it was a time of religious excitement, but church lessons never put that in historical context. Only after I exited the church did I learn about the two "Great Awakenings" and what they meant in conventional Christianity.

I see the Great Awakenings as a theological equivalent of Silicon Valley in the '80s with all the tech startups springing up daily, competing for customers, and fighting to see which things will become standards and which will die off.

I think the church intentionally omits context in order to make the JS story and early history of the church sound unique, exceptional. Heck, ChurchCo doesn't even bother with any of Christian history between the Bible and JS, except to say it all went astray and is corrupt. And I think they omit context and history because they want to keep members from realizing various doctrines were borrowed from other religious thinkers.

I hate to run counter to the general opinion but believe my point above is more valid to the argument of why Mormonism caught on. The very fact of the great religious revival taking place argues to the point of great religious interest. It does not explain why in the midst of all this people would flock to Smith's clearly outlandish or even revolutionary religious creation.

In his time and place the United States was very much in need of a defining identity, especially one that would bind incomers to that identity. America as a chosen, promised land fit the bill. The US is one of the most, if not the most, OTT countries in the world for outward shows of patriotism (nationalism). I get it that to instill such rah rah emotions and demonstrations was necessary to make the contents of the meting pot of a new nation into one. I think the religion of JS fit nicely into that and was a big factor in its initial sucess.

Well, western New York and the region was the frontier at that time, being settled by people who didn't fit in or who were chased out (Smith family), or who wanted land and opportunities. The percentage of fringy, nonconformist, anti-establishment, and plain old crazy folks tend to be higher among those pushing into new territory than among those who were happily ensconced where they were. I think they were open to new ideas, or actively rejecting the old ideas.

I didn't highlight it, but I agree with you, Kentish. The "americanity" of Mormonism was clearly important to the converts at the beginning, because it spoke of and to them, while justifying their presence on American soil.

I think another contributing factor was the fact that the US was entering the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which profoundly changed American life, and the entire world.

The Erie Canal was completed in 1825, which was a major development in the start of the industrialization of the Great Lakes states and cities like Detroit and Chicago, and upstate NY (Syracuse, Albany, Rochester). Early steam trains were developing. Ohio became a state in 1803. Illinois in 1818, Missouri in 1821. JS and the Mormons kept moving closer to the American frontier. BY actually went past the frontier, into the SL Valley, which was still part of Mexico at the time, though that was to change within the year.

Upstate New York, just a few dozen miles from where JS started Mormonism, and just a couple decades later, the Women's Suffrage movement started at Seneca Falls, NY. NY was a happening place in the early to mid 1800s. By the late 1800s, they had Wall Street, Kodak and what became IBM (the first "computerized" punched card census was 1890)

There were lots of Utopian community experiments in the Midwest during the early to late 1800s. I guess the Amana Colonies and the Mormons were the most famous, but there were others, and there are still a fair number of Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites in and near the Midwest.

Social experimentation was "in the air", as they say. Mormonism was one among many. I personally think BY going to Utah was what made the Utah Church dominant, because it gave them a chance to gel and have total economic and political control for a decade or two, and substantial control ever since.

The industrial revolution came on strong starting shortly before the US Civil War, and by the end of that decade, both the telegraph and transcontinental railroad had come to Utah.

Mormonism was very technology and culture friendly. They had live theater almost as soon as they arrived in Utah, built a preposterously large organ for the tabernacle, and created a huge choir, and got the choir on radio very early in the history of radio. The earliest radio station in a US city got to pick the initials of the city as the call-letters of the station. KSL in Salt Lake is still owned by the LDS Church.

The first paved coast to coast highway, the Lincoln Highway came through SLC in 1913. It is now I-80, from NYC to San Fran, basically the spine of the interstate highway system.


Mormons, partly through good planning, partly through autocratic rule, and partly through blind luck, spent a good deal of their early history being in the right place at the right time. Even in 1969 when the military created DARPANet, which later was renamed the Internet, SLC/UofU was one of the original first four nodes on the internet, the other three being in California. That worked out well. We're not Silicon Valley, but I think Utah gets a pretty good "honorable mention".

The suggestion that you read "No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie is excellent. It is a thorough examination of Joseph's early life and is most eye-opening :)

Hello everybody. Thank you for all the brain storming. You present a frame and context of great knowledge.

The question I wrote was inspired by a process I am in at the moment. The answers I have received from everybody are very good and pedagogical answers that help me to relate in theory with a greater distance to so called ”cult expressions”. It is a relief that the culture of cults can be placed in sociohistorial contexts that explain it as a product for its specific time without any inherent universality. The geographical contexts described in your analytical answers indicate there was a dynamic that contained many more aspects than the irrational narrative that the cult is often allowed to present in the debate. A narrative without depth and often in a very black and white perspective concerning what is the truth. If a person lacks meanings in life and have a need to find a way forward, there is always a risk that you may get caught up in the myth narrative and not develop the way you really need to develop. In life there is a need for analytical tools and people need to develop a broader ability to practice critical thinking. In your answers many of you presented books and interesting links that boost knowledge that help people see that cult leaders worked and always in their time on specific sociohistorial terms and not in any real place of universal validity that the church can always describe on its own terms and determine what is true.

At the moment I am participating in an unemployment program and undergo training to possibly be able to return to the work force after several years of unemployment. The Swedish government procures services from private companies that takes care of retraining. The company responsible for my training allows me to participate in lectures and most of them are held by two charismatic "mindfulness" people. One male and one female. They time from time quote narrow esotericists and have a couple of times done some manipulative maneuvers such as distracting at the beginning of the lecture to shake our world view and then offer us to unwind the confusion in meditation exercises. One of the teachers sometime formulate in a way that if a guest lecuterar say something analytical with a greater afterthought the teacher says in a devaluing way: "You are on to understanding MY way of thinking".

Everything is done online through the Teams app and you do not need to have a camera activated so I get up and go out to the kitchen or go to the bookshelf in my room and flip through a randomly selected book until the exercise is finished or until the lecturers stopped manipulating.

What I experience at the moment in a positive way is that a lot of the fear and naivety is gone concerning religious things, I do not feel obligated to listen to cult jargon or participate in exercises. The teachers say that we do not need to participate, but in a way it feels as if the Government has judged that they see quality in this kind of lecturing. I do not think it is proper, this kind of cult ideation should be questioned and not accepted as respectable. Personally I think it is more important that the government hires companies that offer opportunities for the development of critical thinking because that skill are more useful if you are to train for a job. The idea in this programme is that you are somehow weak and should grow inward in life, and in that way I see there is always a tone of regression and inferiority. I do not really feel inferior. I know that I played myself but also was robbed and had my naive trust exploited.

I have sat down and googled and found articles about cult training and a perspective one can use is to see that the ideation used is seen as something in our time that can fill some kind of sociohistorical void when previous institutions that helped people grow and develop autonomy had disappeared or become redundant. Right now, as I said, I am sitting in a program with an ideation that is inspired by concepts from Eastern philosophy. These concepts that are used today in terms of mindfulness are loans from old self-realizing schools that ravaged the 1970s and 1980s in the corporate world of the United States. A family member was hired around three years ago by a global company to fill a management position. My family member was sent to another country and in a very peculiar building complex (monastic building) to take part in a training process and my suspicion is that they put the person in a regression therapy to instill corporate values. My family member changed mentally and I have no clue who this new person is anymore and it is not my job to fix the problem.

lecuterar =lecturer

That's a very wise post, Cauda. You are clearly working through this thoughtfully.

The world is a rough place. Without knowledge it can feel a bit like walking on egg shells. With knowledge one can know where to step and not walk into at wll from the beginning. There is a drive to quench the ego, some ”Gurus” have that drive, but while reading about the different schools one random user wrote ain a funny way that most of the great ego-quenchers have built up bureucratic structures and sit in office milieus and use their own ego to think out business plans on how to quench othee peoples egos.. So it is important to get the context and broaden it with knowledge to see the contradictions.

Every time I see this post on the list, I read it as "The sociopathic context of Mormonism." Even after I realize that's not what it says, it still seems appropriate.