Episode 43 – Charisma and The Death of Joseph Smith
Charisma is a powerful force. What is it? How do I get it? Once wielded it has the power to make a person rich, famous, and powerful. I talk about all three categories in this episode.
If you’re interested in reading Doctrine and Covenants 132, you can read the entire thing here.
You can read about the Theranos job interview here.
October 14, 2021 @ 10:05 am
OK Tim… it took me a long time to respond to this one. I generally enjoy your podcast and still look forward to the next episode. But this one was disappointing. Because I know you’ve heard the other side of the Joseph Smith story, and you just decided not to report it here. You do a good job striking a middle ground with politics – but not with Joseph Smith it seems or Mormonism.
Here’s the key opening point with Joseph Smith.
Whether you believe his claims to divine guidance or not make a LOT of difference in what an INTELLECTUALLY HONEST person can or cannot believe about him. If you believe God was at work in key claims Joseph made, then you can find explanations for every criticism you made of Joseph that genuinely work. If you do not believe God was involved, then Occam’s Razor is probably going to lead you to conclude that you’re looking at a charismatic charlatan who let his sex drive, or his ego (or both) do all the talking.
You do not believe the religious claims of Joseph Smith. So to you, the logical and most likely explanation is that Joseph Smith was a charismatic fraud who abused his followers, tried to cover up his sins, and got smacked in the face by a dose of cruel reality or even poetic justice. But this is only one side of the issue. And you do not even attempt to cover the other side or even acknowledge it exists in this episode.
If you do believe that Joseph Smith had something from God going on in his life, that simply changes the picture. There is a lot of very good evidence that the vast majority of Joseph Smith’s 30+ “wives” were not even marriages in the sense that we regard marriages today – love, sex, children, living together. I’ve only personally found about three or four of the plural wives where I saw any evidence of romance at all. DNA tests have been run on potential descendants of Joseph Smith and found no genetic link with any descendants except through Emma – his original wife. It seems more accurate to describe the “marriages” Joseph had not as marriages at all – but rather the LDS doctrine of “sealings.” The idea being that Joseph was sealing himself to multiple women in heaven, but not really carrying out the usual practices that come with marriage on earth. Meaning – no sex. Not even living together.
Fanny Alger, Eliza Roxy Snow, and the Partridge sisters seem to be exceptions to this idea where genuine romantic affection seems to have happened. But I’m personally not seeing much of that narrative in any of the other marriages – though the last time I looked at this issue seriously was five years ago, so I could be rusty.
The women married to other men, were sealed to Joseph Smith – ostensibly to secure heavenly blessings – then went home to live with their original husbands. Some of those sealings even happened with the non-member husband’s blessing. Helen Mar Kimball – the teenage example – got sealed and went home to live with mom and dad. The marriage was never even consummated. It seems that Joseph Smith and his followers primarily regarded the sealing ordinance as a way to seal human relationships in heaven and secure heavenly blessings for those involved. They did not necessarily view the thing as living together and having sex and children.
I view Joseph Smith as a flawed man being told to do something unreasonable by God and muddling through it the best he could and making understandable human mistakes along the way.
What if the stories of the Israelite patriarchs in the Old Testament didn’t happen thousands of years ago, but happened only 100 years ago? How are you going to explain Abraham sacrificing Isaac in a way that isn’t going to sound like a bunch of thin excuses to anyone who doesn’t believe God actually talked to Abraham?
The only difference between Mormons and Evangelicals in this respect is we Mormons haven’t had 2000+ years to clean up and whitewash and fashionably obscure our key historical characters.
Now, the Nauvoo Expositor…
First off, let’s get one thing out of the way. It wasn’t all that unusual in 1800s America for a town mayor to destroy a printing press. It happened a lot actually. It happened to the Mormons in Missouri when their own printing press was destroyed by an angry mob outraged at rumors the newspaper was advocating for black slaves to turn on their white masters. The editor dragged out into the street beaten half to death, and covered in acidic burning tar and feathers and left unconscious in the street. But more “peaceful” printing press destructions were common enough in that era any time a mayor or sheriff or the local townsfolk thought a newspaper was being a “public nuisance.” Not going to say it happened all the time – but it was hardly unusual. The free press was not as sacred as we regard it today.
Joseph Smith ordered the printing press destroyed. Self-preservation impulse? Probably. But there was more to it than that. The Nauvoo Expositor wasn’t just calling for violence against Joseph Smith (and he’d had attempts made on his life multiple times – long before polygamy was even known about). It was calling for action against all Mormons. Missouri all over again. Theft, arson, mob violence, rape and murder. All of that happened in Jackson County Missouri, and William Law – who you gloss over as some sort of courageous hero – was pretty much calling for a Season 2 of that previously popular show.
William Law was an angry and vengeful man who wanted to see some payback, and was saying all the key words that were going to get people killed. Not just Joseph Smith, but Mormons in general. Mormons were terrified of a repeat of Missouri happening. And here’s William Law doing his darndest to make it happen again. In fact, it did happen again. We were driven out of Illinois with all our property stolen or torched.
In light of this, honestly I probably would have destroyed the press too. You might have as well.
The destruction of the printing press wasn’t even illegal under the relevant laws of the time. The only crime that happened that day was that the printing type was scattered into the street – which constituted confiscation of said type, and was a misdemeanor crime, punishable by fine, which Joseph Smith immediately offered to pay.
Let’s be clear here – there was no legal authority for Joseph Smith to be in Carthage Jail in the first place. None. And everyone knew that he’d probably be killed there. All legal authorities had turned their back on Joseph Smith, he’d been hauled into unfair kangaroo courts repeatedly throughout his life. Mobs were openly boasting of murdering him. The state militia had refused to do anything about it. The governor was indifferent. Everyone knew Carthage was a death trap.
Then you get into the most distasteful part of this episode – you try to throw shade on the claims that Joseph Smith was martyred.
“He wasn’t wearing his sacred undergarments!” “He called out – gasp – FREEMASON code language!” “He had a spooky Jupiter talisman!” “He drank alcohol the night before!”
Tim – so what? So what?
This is somehow supposed to be justification for 100 men armed with muskets storming the jail to murder Joseph Smith? Or, is this supposed to be an argument to make us feel less sympathetic with Joseph Smith? What are you trying to accomplish with any of these arguments? What is the narrative objective? Because I don’t even think you were aware of the narrative objective of this story you told.
The episode was supposed to be about charisma and how it can let people get away with fraud. Sure – you can look at Joseph Smith’s life to try and tell that story – sure. But this story of yours was all over the place. I had a hard time figuring out where you were going with it, and how it all demonstrated your thesis. All this smearing of Joseph in Carthage Jail just drove it home and really left me wondering what your point was.
The only point I got out of it was, you don’t like Joseph Smith and wanted an excuse to unload a lot of bog-standard Evangelical anti-Mormon talking points about him. I’m not calling you anti-Mormon, but these arguments are all a part of the same tired repertoire Mormons have been putting up with for over 50 years now. And they made no narrative sense in your argument. What does a Jupiter talisman have to do with Joseph Smith even being a fraud in the first place?
Who is going to care that Joseph had a talisman – except the same Evangelical listeners who wanted to boycott Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? All of this segment felt like a lot of dog-whistle meant to target either the most rabid fundamentalist Evangelicals who would find such trivialities scandalous, or emotionally vulnerable Mormons who are upset about their religion for a lot of other things and are easily triggered by anything that doesn’t fit the very limited faith-promoting narrative they grew up with as a barely educated member of the faith.
At least you had the decency not to use the silly argument that Joseph Smith had a pistol, and therefore the whole incident wasn’t a martyrdom, but rather a brawl like the OK-Corral…
(Listens to Episode 44…)
Sigh…
Look, if John Brown can be a martyr for the cause of Abolitionism, Joseph Smith can definitely be a martyr for the cause of Mormonism and its Restored Gospel. Nowhere in the definition of martyrdom does it have a requirement to make like Gandhi and be completely compliant and non-resisting. Nowhere.
You play some bait and switch here. You make Jesus Christ the ONLY standard for being a true martyr. You set the bar for martyr status astronomically high, and then claim Joseph Smith doesn’t meet it. How convenient.
You and I are in agreement that Jesus Christ is really great. He was the truest martyr we know of. His actions were beyond reproach. He did it all right.
Joseph Smith is not Jesus Christ. Nor is any human being. That perfection is not going to be seen again. Expecting it from Joseph Smith is absurd. Over one hundred men armed with muskets storm a jail cell with four prisoners to murder them. One of the prisoners fires a pistol blindly into the hallway – discouraging the men from storming the room, and likely saving the lives of his companions in the process – then gets shot to death and you don’t think this was a martyrdom?
This is ridiculous.
You think the Apostle Paul didn’t do anything petty or self-serving or questionable before he died? We’ll never know – because it’s buried in forgotten history.
Like I said, the only difference here between Mormons and Evangelicals is that we haven’t had over 2000 years to whitewash our heroes.
OK…
I need to end this here. I’m not happy with how one-sidedly you told the story of the Maxwell Institute either. There are a lot of problems with that narrative as well. But this is a long response already. I need to leave that for later.
Seth R.