John G. Turner On Joseph Smith And Parallels With Charismatic Leaders - Ep. 2

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Now on to the episode. Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of Merging Wisdom with myself, Dan Heroy and my co-host here, Joel Hubbard. this episode I am very, very happy to have with us John G. Turner. He is a author and he's a professor of religious studies and history at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. And I have been really impacted by his work recently, especially.

And I'll show it here. This book, it's called Joseph Smith The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. This is a fantastic book that I think everybody should read, and we'll get into the why on this episode. I recently read it, and I recently John went through your what felt like a thousand part podcast series with the John Dylan at the Mormon Stories, that was just a fantastic contribution and expansion of this book.

Joseph Smith, The Rise and Fall of an American John Turner and John Dehlin did a 41 part series, kind of going in-depth into the chapters of this book. So if you're not going to go through the podcast series, at least by the book or get the audiobook, and I think start there because it's a fantastic book. And I agree with John Dehlin, I think it should become a New York Times bestseller.

John Turner has also written a book about Brigham Young called Brigham Young Pioneer Prophet. I've also read that. again, I'm going to agree with John Dylan. I think that this book, this Joseph Smith book, is the best biography written to date on Joseph Smith. I know you know, some really famous ones historically. And I think your book on Brigham Young also, I would consider the best biography of Brigham Young.

So fantastic work. Let me give a little intro to our viewers and listeners as to myself and why I'm interested in your work in the podcast and Joseph Smith and early Mormon history in specific. So I'm like John and Joel, a Protestant Christian, I'm not LDS, I'm not a Mormon. But recently, over the past year or so, I've been really heavily interacting and studying early Mormon history up until even more modern history, but especially focused on the life of Joseph Smith.

So this work has been really impactful for me. What you've done. Basically, I'm endeavoring to do a project which is probably going to end up being a book. I don't know how long I'm thinking 116 pages, but that's just a little Easter egg. But around 116 pages. That would be a chronological history of early Mormon history, starting at the birth of Joseph Smith, all the way up to the modern day, with a timeline of all, you know, the most important events, and then a brief narrative on all those events and then some doctrines and beliefs in the back.

That's kind of the format I'm working with, but I've been really pouring through hundreds and hundreds of hours of research over the past year, trying to glean from as many historical works and different podcasts and books that I can. So again, I'm not a mormon, I'm not LDS, but I'm here in the shadows of Joseph Smith's life.

We go to Joseph Smith's birthplace almost every year up in Sharon, Vermont. That's about ten minutes from my in-laws. My parents live in Lebanon. I lived in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Joseph Smith lived in Lebanon, New Hampshire. My wife grew up in Norwich, Vermont. Joseph Smith lived in Norwich, Vermont. I'm going to Palmyra, New York, next week to visit my cousin.

Been there several times. So I'm going to go to, you know, all the sites there. I went to Dartmouth for a medical procedure last week. Joseph Smith had life saving medical work done at Dartmouth College. I drive by where he used to live. It's now a Taco Bell. You know, I can't escape the shadow of Joseph Smith.

And I am fascinated by his life, the history of it, the religious aspect of it. And I see so many parallels between Protestant Christianity or just Christian circles in general, and Joseph Smith's life, Brigham Young's life, and a lot of things that are in the Mormon church. So I know this is a long intro, but I wanted to kind of give people a little context as to what I'm interested in.

Joel has read your book, too. When I read your Joseph Smith book, I told you all you got to read this book. It's it's incredible. My dad's read it. I want people to read your book if they care about history, great biographies, Joseph Smith, the Mormon church, Christianity, religion. I just think it's it's a great resource for anybody interested in any of those things.

So let me let me add, John, you're you're very good at keeping my attention. Someone who has significant ADHD. I had no problem staying with that book. You know, it's in depth, but it's story form. I love that I can follow it because there's a story unfolding. So just kudos man. That was that's excellent. And anybody else out there who's like boy that's a that's a big book.

Yeah. But it moves. It's very much a story. there are very few people that would have a more interesting biography than Joseph Smith, I would argue, and probably John as well. But one other thing I want to say, and John, I promise I'll let you talk at some point. Here I was, I've been obsessively, you know, consuming all this early Mormon history stuff.

And one day I was walking through my kitchen listening to you and John Dehlin on the Mormon Stories, the Joseph Smith Podcast. And I said to my wife, I'm like, you got to see this. And she was probably like, what, some other Mormon thing? I'm like, John, like the way you explain things and talk with with no ego attached to your analysis and your explanations to things, it was just a really refreshing take on a really cool, fascinating and important subject.

So I just loved your stance and just the way you articulate things as well. So John Turner, welcome to Merging Wisdom. We are very glad you're here. Yeah. Well, first of all, that is probably the nicest introduction I've ever had. So thank you for saying so many kind things about my my book. I agree, I'll just say I, I really agree with one of the things that you said Dan is this guy lived such a crazy and remarkable life.

It's a biographers dream in terms of crafting a readable story, and it is almost one harebrained scheme after another and all sorts of conflicts and controversy all along the way. So it was a pretty wild ride for me in terms of how I got interested in the subject. It's probably this is probably the least interesting part of the story, but I also I'm not as Joseph Smith haunted as Dan, but I grew up on the east side of Rochester, New York, so not too far away from Palmyra, where the Book of Mormon was printed.

I actually, I don't think I knew any Mormons growing up, or at least not that I was aware of. And this wasn't a religious tradition that was really on my radar screen until I went to graduate school and was doing a PhD in U.S. history focused on American religion. I had a few close latter day Saint friends in graduate school.

I realized I wanted to learn about a tradition other than my own. I thought about writing something on Mormons and conservative politics in the United States. More recently realized I ought to know something about the history of this movement. Before I would try to do something like that. Started reading the 19th century history of the church, read about people like Brigham Young and Joseph Smith and all of their followers.

And I just got hooked, partly because the the sources are so abundant and rich and human. I agree, it's it's an American religious movement. Right. And again, we're kind of in the shadows of it in our own way, and I would hope everybody would be more fascinated. I struggle because nobody seems to want to talk to me about it or nobody seems interested.

A lot of people have a kind of a cartoonish version of Mormonism and Joseph Smith, if you mention it, they just start talking about underwear or, you know, plural marriage or some of the more eccentric notions of it. But they if they just got a little bit past kind of the more cartoonish versions of of the story, I think they would be enraptured, I would think by this very historical recent thing.

And that's still an ongoing religious movement. there's people all around us that are following what Joseph Smith has done. So it really is impactful to our country in a lot of ways. If it was today, he'd have his own reality TV show. Let me let me segue that into my kind of my first thought and question for you guys talk about.

So on episode 41 of the Joseph Smith podcast, John, you said smart, wise, well-informed people can look at the same sources and come to really different conclusions about Joseph Smith's life. It's just a great observation about it doesn't matter your background, where you live, your intelligence, you know, very smart people can come to two completely opposite conclusions when they look at his life.

That's true of Mormonism. It's true Joseph Smith. It's true of politicians. If I don't want to get into a Trump discussion here, but I used to listen to Scott Adams a lot. He made this observation of people, look at Trump. It's two movies on the same screen. You're you're both watching the same screen, but it's like you're watching two completely different movies and you go, that's the best guy I've ever seen in my life, or that's the worst guy I've ever seen in my life.

And Joseph Smith seems to have a lot of that. They said, this is the greatest prophet, or I want to kill him, you know, how what do you think? What caused people to come to these such polar different views of this man? Well, I think maybe let's start with actually why many people took umbrage with Joseph Smith.

Right. If if it was simply he published a book that other people regarded as heretical or as an affront to Christianity, and founded church with congregations, I think he'd really be a side note in American history, but he founded communities, really pretty large communities for the time in Missouri, in Illinois, in Ohio, and back in the 1830s and 1840s.

If you had thousands of people, you know, joining together in these communities under the leadership of a prophet, there were political implications. And that simply terrified other Americans who lived nearby. On the other hand, Joseph Smith was able to convince not a large percentage of people, but over time, thousands of people to join this movement, to join this church and become part of a really grand story that he was unfolding, usually very ordinary people who, like him, might have been very downwardly global and on the margins of society.

And he gave them purpose. He gave them community. He gave them a grand vision of their future and the church's future. And that was super compelling to people who converted to his cause, not unlike good politicians. And by good I mean ones that are good at crafting that kind of a narrative or other religious leaders, right? They give purpose or they, you know, give fear.

And, and people can kind of be catalyzed around that. I'm particularly interested, though, in, in well, I'm interested in a lot of things. So we'll get to. So one of them is his as he began he didn't he didn't take off. There was not like this precipitous like climb initially. Right. So he had this, these revelations and he's convinced that he's hearing from God, but nobody else is, or very few people are convinced.

I find that interesting, as I believe that there are probably other religious leaders over the course of history, movements and part of the Protestant, but more of the evangelical charismatic kind. Of course, that was my upbringing. So I'm familiar. Having gone through seminary and all that, I'm familiar with the history and these movements, and they always begin, you know, with some charismatic leader.

But it takes sometimes a little bit more time than expected for that message to catch. And I'm curious about if you've given any thought. If you haven't, that's okay. But given any thought to like, what is it that how that message eventually connects to the needs that people have in their real lives? Because I think you said some things about that revoked a lot for me as I'm listening to this like, oh, right, he's now having to marry his sort of revelation.

Whatever one thinks that the source of it is to the real needs, felt needs of people and make that marriage happen so that then the movement takes up. And I don't think that's that strategic, but I'm just sort of laying it out that way. Yeah. No, it's a great question. And I don't I don't really think Joseph Smith's movement got underway because he was an unusually charismatic figure or speaker.

Apparently, early on he really wasn't a very good speaker. He got better toward the end of his life. I think there's a couple of reasons why what he attempted succeeded to the extent that it did. I mean, number one, he did something really unusual. You know, there were a lot of roving itinerant preachers in the United States, you know, Methodists, Campbell lights, all sorts of other people.

And the typical way to start a church or a movement was to simply travel around and preach. And maybe because he knew he wasn't very good at that, Joseph Smith didn't do that. So instead, he announced himself to the world with a 600 page book. That's a really especially if you're an uneducated guy and a first time author.

That's super unpromising. But it attracted a lot of notoriety and attention like it was. It was totally different then. The second second thing that I think helped get this off the ground was Joseph talked about religious experiences and ideas in a way that connected with questions and anxieties that at least a fair number of people had, such as why don't most Christians today exercise the spiritual gifts described in the New Testament?

Things like miraculous healing, speaking in tongues, prophesying, having visions. Well, Joseph either had or encouraged all of those things, and there were already other movements within Protestant Christianity that were open to them. And so those sorts of people were predisposed to at least take a look at Joseph Smith's church and then, you know, other, other sort of basic questions that a lot of Christians had.

How can I be sure that I'm saved? What about the fate of my loved ones? You know, is God? Does God still speak to people in the way that he spoke to people 2000 or 3000 years ago? I mean, those were those were questions that did interest people. Yeah. And one thing I wanted to kind of get into is it seems to me, as somebody who is a nonbeliever in his prophetic claims and claims, it seems to me that he was very opportunistic, more so than conniving or diabolical or had this all thought out.

It seems like the book that you've mentioned kind of seemed like a bad idea to to get this thing going. Most people don't start with a 600 page new Bible. He went from being a treasure digger, and that kind of seems like it gravitated pretty fluently and seamlessly into his writing of the Book of Mormon and just the revelations with that.

But do you find him to be more calculated, or maybe deceptive or conniving or more opportunistic? Like where do you land, John on his kind of journey with where he started and where he took things. Now that's such a tough question. So, like you, you know, I'm I'm not a latter day Saint. I'm not a mormon. And so I'm also outside the tradition.

And I don't accept Joseph's claim that the Book of Mormon was an ancient record, recorded on gold plates given to him by an angel. And so I think on some level, Joseph, you know, I think he contrived that story and proceeded in a way that on some level, you know, snookered some of his earliest followers, encouraging them not only to believe what he was saying, but also to devote their resources and time to this project.

I don't think at the same time that that is mutually exclusive of Joseph having had spiritual experiences and having a religious message that he wanted to broadcast to the world. So I think both of those things are true at the same time. Do you ascribe kind of to the Dan Vogel, who's a fantastic historian as well? Do you agree to his pious fraud kind of theory?

I like Dan's work, and I like the general concept. I think, where I maybe diverge just a little bit is I don't see those two things, as always, easy to assess or hold together. So I think there are times where I think Joseph just preceded and a pretty, you know, self-serving way. I try to articulate this at the at the outset of the book.

So there's this scene in 1842 where Joseph's really in a political meeting in western Illinois, and there's somebody else at the meeting who's disagreeing with what he wants or is opposing him, and he scribbles a revelation on a scrap of paper, you know, threatening this guy with some kind of divine punishment if he persists and he just scribbles this down and tosses it over to him, and that seems totally self-serving.

And then we have these other sources where Joseph is writing, you know, for instance, he writes a letter to his wife Emma, in 1832, and he writes about how lonely he is, how much he desires to be with Christ. And it's very easy to see that first instance as well. That's clearly duplicitous. Right. And then the second heartfelt letter to his wife, well, that's clearly religious sincerity.

And I think as historians, we have to be really careful. It's actually pretty hard to assess the motives of people that we encounter in our own lives. Like, are they always sincere? We often get fooled, right? It's really hard 200 years after the fact with, you know, historical documents as our guide. So, for instance, in these cases, Joseph's writing these things to his wife, that seems super sincere, but these are probably letters that are also going to be publicly read and consumed. Right.

So there's probably some level of contrivance there. On the other hand, maybe Joseph really does think that God's going to dam this guy who's opposing him at a political meeting. So I just think those those lines of sincerity and duplicity, they're really hard to they're really hard to assess. And I don't think we can go through Joseph's Joseph Smith's life and say, oh, definitely fraudulent there.

Definitely sincere there. I think we have to be willing to live with a lot of messiness. The the only thing because, you know, when you and John Dylan talk about this and Dan Vogel, the only thing where I push back is with the golden plates. Specifically, if he didn't have golden plates delivered from the angel, then he was knowingly deceiving people, right?

I think so, and I you know, I write that, I write that in the book, and I think it's a fair conclusion because we have we actually have a fair amount of evidence to go on here. We know he didn't show the gold plates to anybody in an ordinary way. So there seems to be an intentionality of deception.

And then we also have the published Book of Mormon itself, and we can assess that. It's not, according to my reading of the evidence and most non-Mormons reading of the evidence, it's not an ancient record, it's in 19th century creation. And so I think you can kind of put those things together. No golden plates, stories of golden plates.

You know, this this is deception. At the same time, if you stop there, I think that's also inadequate. You know, there's still a religious message that's broadcast that contains things that I think were both genuine to Joseph Smith and resonated with a lot of other people. It's very difficult for us to hold all of that together. I think sometimes because we do look for motivation, we do look for, you know, truth or, you know, or falseness.

But I think to your point, it's extraordinarily difficult to look at anyone, even today, and fully assess someone else's motivations, never mind our own. I mean, it takes some times, you know, deeper awareness to recognize what's driving us. It seems to me I relate personality wise. I relate to him not to the extremes, but I relate to that sort of.

If you believe in something, you can you can almost it almost becomes real. You can believe something so hard and want it so much that that you can self deceive into believing it's real. And I think at times it felt like that maybe what's going on for the sky. But again, we don't know because we're not, you know, we're not him.

So to kind of borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis what do you think about Joseph Smith being a liar, leader or lunatic, to borrow the C.S. Lewis phrase? Oh my goodness, all of the above. Yeah, I mean, that's a nuanced take, right? I mean, he's obviously a successful leader on, you know, to a substantial extent. And I think one, I'll just say one thing that's indicative of that is he had a lot of failure in his life, beginning with these failed treasure quests, right?

To the repeated collapse of the communities that he established, sometimes due to his own foolishness and sometimes due to determined opposition from people outside the movement. And he managed to keep going and to keep growing his church despite all of those setbacks. So I think that's one impressive leadership characteristic, just a tremendous amount of resilience and persistence.

Liar. Well, I think he lied about the gold plates, and I think he also lied to his wife, Emma, and to others about polygamy. So, yes, in terms of lunatic, I don't know, I'm a little more hesitant to go there. That's a little more incendiary, of course. Yeah, it's a little bit more incendiary. things sort of went off the rails for Joseph Smith the last several years of his life, particularly the last half a year.

If listeners are not super familiar with this story, he's murdered in June of 1844 by non-Mormons, people who are opposed to his church. It wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a tremendous amount of division and dissension within the church. And Joseph brought a lot of that on himself in the closing months of his life. So I wouldn't say lunatic, but maybe self-destructive.

Yeah. It's it's interesting that you have obviously your thoughts on him. You've come to certain conclusions. Even though I love your take as a historian, it's, it's hard to come to, to conclusions. But you've also been accused of being like a Joseph Smith apologist in some ways. So sometimes that's a good badge to have. When you make both sides upset, you're at least maybe a free thinker in a lot of ways.

And I think that politically we want to look at again, I can just use Trump or whoever is like this, you know, magnetic political character when you go, are they this, this or this? But a lot of times they're not just one thing or another. And that's so true of many religious and political leaders. You can't just put one label on them.

And so so I appreciate you thinking, you know, through that and just being honest with with how you approach that. I think you said at one point in your draft of the Joseph Smith's biography, somebody was kind of trying to get you to pin down if you thought Joseph had his first vision experience seeing God in Jesus and all that.

And, you know, you said historians have a hard time substantiating religious experiences now, which again, I can appreciate that from his historian point of view. What about when we have our regular people had on as regular people? How do we substantiate revelatory experiences and these spiritual claims and truth claims from somebody like Joseph Smith or another religious leader?

That's a great question. So, I mean, if Joel were to share that he was praying a few nights ago and Jesus appeared to him and had this particular message, you know, what would we do with that? Well, we'd probably we'd probably interrogate Joel a lot. We'd want to we'd want him to tell us the story, you know, over and over again.

We'd probably want to. Maybe we would assess Joel's character, general reliability. Maybe we would find some other way of testing this. I think at the end of the day, it would be tough because I think we can't this isn't something special to historians, but we can't really penetrate to the marrow of anybody else's spiritual experience. What we're sort of left with is not Joel's numinous vision itself, but like what he tells us about it.

That's right. That's what we're left with. And we can analyze that. So in the case of Joseph Smith, historians and others have spent a lot of time arguing about what became known as the First vision, which is this visionary encounter with the Lord when Joseph was 14, 15, 16 years old. And historians have tried all sorts of things to either verify or disprove this, this vision.

And so this is what I would say. You know, Joseph grew up in a visionary household. His parents had visions and spiritual dreams. He had a grandfather who had a powerful, visionary encounter with Jesus Christ. Seems totally credible to me that given that environment, Joseph would have a vision. And that's a separate question from Did Jesus Christ appear to Joseph Smith?

That's a little bit different. Secondly, can we trust that Jesus Christ communicated to Joseph Smith exactly what Joseph Smith later recorded? So I would say it's totally credible that he had a vision and a powerful spiritual experience, an encounter that he understood. As with the Lord, can we get to any kind of historical confirmation of Jesus Christ telling Joseph Smith exactly any particular thing in 1820?

I don't think so. I don't think that's historically provable. Yeah, this is interesting. And this is the stuff that now we're written into the real touch points of of my life and my experience and stuff. Me and Joel and my wife talk about all the time is I, I, I'm in a very kind of charismatic stream of Christianity and have been for most of my life.

So I am seeing parallels with Joseph Smith all over the place. There's not a week that goes by now that I don't look at something that happens in my personal stream of, you know, more charismatic, revolutionary Christianity and go and don't go, oh, that's Joseph Smith right there, angelic things and revelations and all sorts of parallels between my stream of Christianity and and what he did.

And so it seems like there is a lot of, I don't know, repeating patterns, but this is not a new thing to have to wrestle with, is what I'm trying to get at is, you know, dealing with a regulatory leader. There's tons of revolutionary leaders out there now that make tons of claims. It's like, how do we navigate through that?

How do we process that, and what do we do with it, especially if we're in one of those communities, you know? Yeah. Well, one of the things I, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts around that myself, but I think that there's the character is a big piece that you mentioned, John, I think it's looking at like, what do you what is the message pointing to?

Is it pointing to a greater accumulation of power for yourself? Is that what it's doing? Is it somehow, you know, infallible coming from you? At what part of your own vulnerability, your own truthfulness, your own self-awareness, your own, like your eyes being opened? Are you sharing that part? Was this something there for you? Not just, oh, I became aware that I'm a super apostle, you know, like, no, let me talk about, like, awareness of your flaws, of your I mean, if you don't I don't hear that coming from somebody.

Its immediate distrust. If someone can't do that when they're saying, I've heard from God, then that's like, I don't know that that's trustworthy. And of course there's also the fruit, the result of it, which that is difficult to also measure sometimes. But sure, you can start to see some fruit from things and take some time. I don't think you can do that immediately.

But the street. I think of several things like this. I'd love for you to expound on all of this stuff since this is your field, but like, do you see the street revival has a lot of that stuff that the early 1900s, you know, in California, this explosion which caused launched Pentecostals for those who don't know about these street revival.

But that was the same thing. It was like tongues and, you know, prophecy and and then, you know, there's been periodic ones like that, the whole like word faith movement that started mid 1900s around there, there's the charismatic Catholic awakening. Then there was the stuff that launched the whole vineyard movement from, you know, that I was a part of for a while.

So there's always, always been these sort of like the same question you would you had said, or this the statement you had made, John, which is people want to know if they can hear from God for themselves. That's always led this kind of stuff in the world of Pentecostal and Charismatic. So table set, John, take it away like so much there there is a lot there.

Well, one of the things that all of those other movements have in common with early Mormonism, in addition to the explosion of spiritual gifts, is derision from outsiders. Yeah. Who? You know, one person's spiritual power is ridiculous or dangerous or just lunacy to to others. I mean, one thing I would say about Joseph Smith is, and this is something that I would say critically, and I think you see this in a lot of other contexts as well.

I don't think for Joseph, this was only about the self-seeking accumulation of power, but that developed over time, I think. I do think the seeds of that are there from the start. So the when Joseph dictates the Book of Mormon, it contains a prophecy that there will be a choice seer who will have the same name as his father and who will have the same name as the biblical Joseph.

So there's a prophecy about himself embedded into the Book of Mormon. That's a lot of chutzpah. And it's either a necessary self-confidence or something that's also dangerous. It's both powerful and a touch dangerous to claim that God has anointed me for a very important purpose. John, can I say, because this is something I can't get away from when I'm studying and following his life to?

Do you think because I agree with you, I don't think this was a power grab money grab women grab at first it got there eventually. Do you think there's a redemptive story for his father? You just mentioned his father's also named Joseph Smith. The like we kind of referenced, they moved around a lot from town to town.

They were impoverished. And his father was not a successful person. Do you think at the heart of this, because I can't escape this feeling that there's this wanting to redeem the family and him anointing his father's kind of patriarch of the church, was that really, if you break it way down, like we can't do psychologically, is there something there that you've kind of observed to with wanting to redeem his family's story and his father especially?

Definitely. And I don't think that idea is it's not original to me. It's in also in Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling, which is biography, a, you know, faithful biography of Joseph Smith. No, absolutely. And I think that's one thing that's actually really endearing about Joseph Smith. I mean, he came from this downwardly mobile and destitute family that repeatedly lost its land, and his father was sort of washed up at a pretty early age and given to drink sometimes.

And a lot of people in Joseph knew this. A lot of people looked down on the family and on Joseph's father in particular. And Joseph. He didn't share that contempt for his father. He much he tenderly loved his father. And so he was brought to tears when his parents were baptized into his own church. And then he carved out this position of privilege for his father.

Now, you know, from the outside you could say, well, you know, of course this guy wants to, you know, give his own family members positions of, of, of privilege. And maybe that's true. And he did so for a couple of his brothers as well. But nevertheless, I find something very endearing about the way that Joseph loved his his dad.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it kind of shows the humanity of Joseph, which you do a fantastic job of in the book, and you're speaking on it and it kind of again, we can relate this to politicians, these very divisive figures, like if you look at any of them, from John F Kennedy to Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, if you consider them bad now or good, did they start bad or good?

It's like, no, there are so many psychological components, even modern day preachers and charismatic types and people that fall from ministry. Like, did they were they always bad because they did this bad thing at the end or whatever? It's like, no, we can't think that by narrowly about people because people aren't just one thing or another. So I think with Joseph, like anybody, there's a lot of complexity that I think is useful in trying to, you know, look at when you're talking about him or any religious leader.

Now, you said, John, you know, as a Protestant Christian, this is something you said on the podcast. I'm sort of wary of an individual really having too much spiritual authority. I actually see that as an endemic problem for human religious institutions. It's actually very frequently a problem in Protestant contexts. Would love for you to comment on that, because when you said, God, I was like, yeah, that is very good.

A really great observation that I think we can a lot of us can relate to. Yeah. So I've sort of always lived between mainline and evangelical Protestantism. I think in terms of spiritual community. This is by the way, this is I'm saying this not with any expertise. This is just my own life. You know, I think my my ideal is like a, you know, 200 member congregation where the pastor doesn't have a super big head, has a good session or board of elders that, you know, share a pretty or people know each other where things aren't toxic.

You know, this is my ideal, right? And I think if you think about what is so common in American Protestant Protestantism, now, you know, it's your 2 or 3000 member community, sort of megachurch, where the pastors necessarily this exalted figure celebrity by bodyguards. It's hard for ordinary people to communicate with him, even if the even with the best of intentions.

It's kind of hard not to not to be a little, you know, self important or to feel a little self-important in that situation. Everybody's telling you how magnificent you are. Yeah. And, you know, I think that is a little bit dangerous. And one reason why I've been pretty much a lifelong Presbyterian, despite many, many, you know, flaws and the mainline Presbyterian denomination is this model of church government that, you know, has these multiple layers of authority and this blend of lay and ministerial leadership.

I think those were really, you know, solid, solid ideas. They're not by any means a cure all, for it ails Christianity. But I will say the modern LDS church, you know, it's model of authority, actually hinges quite a bit less on the charismatic leadership of a single individual. Very much, you know, a matter of consensus among the church's highest ranking leaders.

I think there's, you know, all sorts of things one could say about that in Joseph's day. I mean, I wouldn't say that he was a religious dictator. I mean, I think, you know, it's this unwieldy fledgling movement. I think he had to negotiate a lot with his followers, but nevertheless to be affirmed as a prophet, seer and revelator.

That's pretty heavy stuff. Yeah. And you had some great examples of that in the book, too, because he had this charismatic culture and he wanted to empower the people to some extent, like any good leader does. But then was it Hiram Page that also wanted to be a seer like Joseph? And I found a stone himself and said, hey, look, I found a stone, I can do revelations.

And Joseph had to kind of stomp on that pretty quickly, and kind of a hilarious way where he had this revelation from God, and he ground the stone in like dust and blew it to the wind, basically, and burned the guy's revelations. It's like there comes a limit sometimes with these revolutionary leaders. And, you know, that's again parallels all over the place to modern day leaders in churches if they're unhealthy or insecure.

One observation I always seem to have, and I want to get your guys's thought, is why does the revelations from Joseph Smith or David Koresh, Jim Jones, or any even modern day the, you know, leader, they always seem self-serving. It's like, it's so unfortunate if I want to believe in any one of not maybe not those guys, but a leader out there that you respect.

Why are the prophetic declarations and words from God? They always seem to be very self-serving. And what do we do with that? Because it seems convenient. Great question, but I want to nuance. The question I want to please, for John is like, it seems like they don't always begin with that extreme exclusivity, exclusivity that seems to develop.

It seems like at the beginning it's it's sort of like, come on, come all, you know, and and I have found the truth that trumps maybe the truth of your particular faith, but I'm inviting everybody into it. Black. Right. Slaves, all of that. And then after that, it starts to become more dogmatic, more rigid. I find that even with some of the stuff you were saying about Joseph Smith is he would have these revelation, but he seemed to be fluid, able to move in and around them while the others were trying to get like, what's the how do you what are the rules?

What are we doing here? And I see that even with the movement of the vineyard where it began, with somebody with a lot of revelation, a lot of that. So and inclusivity, we're a friend of the church. That was the quote. We're friend of the church. We just want to be. And then it becomes a denomination and it becomes we have it right.

And the others. So I mean, that's my observation. Push back. If I'm completely, you know, wrong here. I think for as far as early Mormonism goes, as Dan's prior observation was alluding to, you can't have a church. You can't have a church full of revelations going in different directions. I mean, you're not you're not going to have a movement.

You can't have 100 new scriptures either. Well, you know, published by different people. So. You know, setting aside self-aggrandizement or power, I mean, there was there was no way to proceed as a movement without having some, you know, clear lines of authority, which sort of became everybody is entitled and able to receive revelations from God. Everybody is able to have a vision of the Savior, but only one individual is empowered to dictate revelations to lead the church.

Yeah, I see so many parallels with modern my stream. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So many. Yeah, I don't know what else or actually would be workable for a movement point. Good point. Very practical. Yeah. And otherwise it would just be ecclesiastical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just seems like an example with David Koresh when he was getting into the polygamy thing too, which again, is a kind of a common trope.

It's like you become the leader and all of a sudden God happens to tell you you have to take all the wives. Not only that, with David Koresh, the Branch Davidians observed, he was only taking the attractive women to be his wife, you know, and every step of the line, it's like, at what point does it become obviously self-serving?

With Joseph Smith, I saw somebody observe. And of all the times for an angel with a drawn sword to appear to Joseph Smith, I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, John. The only time was when he was threatened by the angel with the drawn sword to marry this young, probably attractive woman. If you want to believe in Joseph Smith, why couldn't the angel of the drawn sword appeared at any other impactful moment to save their lives in these conflicts and battles?

But it makes it hard to step into beliefs sometimes with with some of these events and revelations. And your thoughts on that. Well, I mean, I have lots of thoughts on Joseph and polygamy. I'll just say one thing somewhat flippantly is that he didn't only pursue the young, attractive women, he did pursue them, but he also he kind of took all comers.

You know, he had this I think he he he did believe that the extent of someone's eternal glory hinged on his number of wives, in the extent of his family. So you think he believed that? I think he believed that because it's the best explanation for why he so rapidly pursued so many polygamous ceilings. This is for people who aren't familiar.

Joseph was sealed to around 30, maybe 35 women in the last three years of his life, mostly over a two year time span, and these women ranged in age from 14 to the late 50s, and some of them were previously single. Some of them were already married, couple of them were widowed. And this was incredibly risky and I would say self-destructive behavior on Joseph's part.

If he'd only wanted to have sex with other women, probably would have been a somewhat smaller number, probably would have proceeded a little bit more carefully. But I think he told one of his closest followers, get all you can. And he practiced what he preached, and I think he really did believe that he would have more eternal glory if he was sealed to more women on on earth, which I think it had all sorts of moral problems in terms of its impact on the women, their families, on his first wife.

But I think that explains why he just rushed headlong into this. Do you think these enigmatic and kind of more extreme religious figures in particular, end up believing what they're preaching and what they're talking about? Because, again, if we couch with that, he faked the golden plates and he was it was a scam at first, but then at the end, he's believing these things.

Do we actually believe a lot of these leaders, not just Joseph Smith, end up believing, even if it starts with broader deception? So answer. Yeah, that's a great question. I do think he believed that, although I said half an hour ago or so, that it's really hard for historians to assess the sincerity of historical figures. So don't take that with like super high confidence.

But it also polygamy. You know, it's one of the few things that people probably if they don't know much about Mormonism, they've probably heard of polygamy, maybe from a reality TV show or something like that. I think, you know, it sounds like, oh, this is just a crazy, nefarious thing. It does also fit into Joseph's pattern of reading the Bible and finding ancient practices to restore and sometimes flesh out.

And so Joseph's revelation on the subject begins with the question of why God apparently thought it was okay for Abraham and Solomon and others to have multiple wives. And so for a prophet bent on restoring ancient practices, it's not illogical to restore that one. I don't think it was. I don't think it was wise, and I don't think he pursued it in a moral way.

But it's not it's not quite as crazy as it sounds. It's just funny how all the a lot of these revelations do end up being self-serving. It'd be more convincing sometimes if some of these leaders would do things that are so giving or contrary to human inclination, I would find it more believable, but. Well, and that's where, you know, being, you know, you and I, Dan, you know, and of course you John as well.

I mean, we look at the scriptures and we see things like Jesus at the end of John saying, I have to go away. You know, like the thing is that the temptation is to turn, you know, become your own brand, create your own brand, expand your brand, become more powerful. And, you know, Jesus approach is more of a descent than an ascent.

And, and for a lot of the leaders you're mentioning and who I'm thinking about, too, it's it's hasn't been that that journey at all. And I wonder to, to an earlier point of the dialog is I've been thinking a lot about adversity and what it does to us and our response to adversity in terms of our own deepening and growing and wisdom and all that.

It's you know, I thought about his adversity early on in life and the way he reacted to it. But there comes a point when you grow in power, when you grow in influence, where adversity stops having as much of an effect on you as it did early on in life. So you were talking about the mega-church pastors of two, 3010, 15, 20, 30,000 people.

It's like, yeah. At what point do you first of all, you have an echo chamber. Most of the people that are that you're surrounded by are going to mostly agree with you. And even if there's division or disagreement, you've got more that are with you than against you. And so you've got that going for you, you know, and then you also have an ability to avoid adversity that normally would challenge you.

And I think about that, like if you pull away too far from that, whether you isolate completely from humanity, you can lose your mind or you're surrounded by this echo chamber and you're avoiding a lot of adversity. I don't know what it does psychologically to you, but it certainly doesn't seem like it's it's very beneficial for you or the people that you're leading.

And Joel, real quick, that's your observation with how Jesus approached leadership and ministry is just a great example to to kind of go back to is that he was anti kind of human inclination because I'm giving examples of a lot of like frail, fallen or compromised people just, you know, like we all are in some ways. But you know that I think that's what makes Jesus appealing.

And the Scripture is powerful, is they were expecting him to come in and be like one of these narcissistic, militant leaders that destroys their enemies. And he's going, no, we're actually going to love our enemies. And he kind of flipped everything, which goes contrary to the point of sacrificing his life So I think he is a great example, as opposed to a lot of, you know, other fallen leaders we can look at as to how to do things in a way that's not just self-serving, but is other serving.

In one more point before I want to hear your reflections on this too, John, and anything else, anywhere else you want to take it to as well. But I think about King David, you know, he's being he's leaving Jerusalem because Absalom has taken over. And there's these, this this guy that's throwing down rocks on him. And his men say, should we kill them?

And he says, no, no, no, I think it's Shimei. Maybe. And anyways, he leaves. And then at the last part of his life, where he's on his deathbed, he tells his son, make sure that Shimei does not go down. I mean, he's forgiving of this guy as he's leaving Jerusalem. But then when he's on his deathbed, he says, make sure this guy does not go down in death in peace.

It's like it's just it's it's just remarkable the humanity. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's so complex. Well, no, I of course I agree with that. I think it's really hard for Christian leaders, for human leaders in general, not to conflate. Themselves with the church or with their cause. So, you know, I think, for instance, I read a great fee of Robert Schuller.

Oh, of the, you know, Crystal, I sure Hour of Power fame. The biography is written by a sociologist and the other person's either historian or theologian, Mark Mulder and Gerardo Marching. It's a great book. The mantra really was the church must grow or die. And so there's this pursuit of constant growth through evermore bold on a dashes plans that bring more people into the fold.

And so that seems to be really good thing, but it creates all of this constant pressure and, you know, sort of exposes weaknesses over time. And I would sort of go back to, you know, you're not you're maybe you don't feel like you're changing the world through a healthy 2 or 300%, but that's a good vineyard as well.

Yeah. And churches don't need to have constant growth in order to be doing God's work. And the the future of Christianity does not hinge on a church's ability to grow 20% a year. You know, we have to have, you know, we all have to have far more faith in God and less faith in our human leaders, I think.

Yeah. Well, John, I want to be observant at the time. Any other thoughts that you kind of wanted to share on Joseph Smith or parallels with Christianity or culture? Anything else you wanted to draw out? Well, I'll say one more thing that, you know, if if you're a total outsider to this and you don't know anything about Mormonism or Joseph Smith, you can definitely just plunge in and read the story of his life and enjoy it as sort of and I it's almost an iconic American story.

I think if you want to push a little deeper, I think one reason why, for me, Joseph Smith also remains a compelling religious figure, even though I'm not part of his own tradition, is I like the fact that he was willing to go back, sort of, as he would put it, he'd go back to first principles and ask questions about things that most people thought were settled.

Things like, what's the nature of God? What's the nature of a human being? What's the relationship between the two? What's the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ? What do humans have to do to be saved? What does that even mean? And, you know, Christians have answers to those questions, and a lot of Christians regard them as fully settled and therefore maybe don't spend as much time examining them as they might.

I like the fact that, yeah, I don't agree with certainly all of Joseph Smith's answers to those questions, but he didn't shy away from the tough stuff. He wasn't afraid to ask big questions and articulate his own answers to them. And I find that gracing and admirable also. So I just wanted to end on a on a positive note.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, I love that nuance and that, that way of thinking. So I'm going to say it again, everybody should go by Joseph Smith, The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. Or if you don't buy the physical copy, listen to the audio book. I've done both, John. If I was given unlimited time, we would never stop talking about Joseph Smith together.

But that would be unhealthy for my life and my marriage and everything. So I appreciate this time. It was great. I would love to, you know, maybe in the future if it happens to have you back on, or at least I might need to hire you to help me with my book, please. But that's beside the point.

You are a fantastic resource for all these things, so appreciate you coming on here. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Joel. This was a lot of fun. Thank you. Merging Wisdom