The Mormon Experience by Leonard J. Arrington

Published in 1830, the massive Book of Mormon provided the basis for a distinctive new American religion. When he had finished the translation, he said, John the Baptist appeared and baptized him. Smith reported that he used “seer stones” to interpret the text, translating the tablets over two years, from 1828 to 1829, dictating the result to his wife and several others. Smith thought there must be at least twelve disciples (apostles) at all times.Īccording to Smith, in 1823, an angel by the name of Moroni appeared to him and revealed Golden Tablets written in “reformed Egyptian” however, he did not possess the tablets until September 1827, after he had married and started farming in Manchester, New York.

They told Smith that Christianity had been in apostasy (i.e., a falling away from the faith) since the last of Christ’s twelve apostles had died, and that he was to rebuild the Christian religion on earth. In 1820, Smith claimed that while praying one night, he was visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ. In his late teens, he found the number of competing denominations frustrating, especially as he watched his parents attempt to choose one. The fourth of nine children in a religious family, the charismatic Smith regularly read the Bible and attended religious revivals. Vermont-born Joseph Smith (1805-1844) officially founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church, in western New York in 1830. Mormonism was one such denomination and it flourished. Myriad new Christian denominations had formed out of the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening. Massive religious revivalism along the Erie Canal in the 1820s earned the area the name “burned-over district,” which meant that it was a place of fervent religious conversion during the Second Great Awakening. It should be read after students have read the Chapter 6 Introductory Essay: 1828-1844. This Narrative explores the founding of the Mormon Church and its move westward to Salt Lake City.

The Mormon Experience by Leonard J. Arrington