Farmer Joseph Smith Founds Global Religion

The Farmer Who Started a New Religion

In 1820, a 14-year-old farmer's son in Palmyra, New York, walked into a grove of trees to pray. He had been troubled by the religious revivals that were sweeping the region, by the competing preachers who each claimed their church was the true one. He wanted to know which one to join. According to the account he would later write, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in the grove. They told him that none of the existing churches were true. He was to join none of them. He was to restore the true church himself.

Joseph Smith was not the only person in upstate New York in the 1820s who claimed to have visions. The region was a hotbed of religious experimentation, a place where the established churches had lost their hold and new movements were emerging. But Smith's vision, and what came from it, would outlast all the others. The church he founded in 1830 has 17 million members today. The Book of Mormon, which he said was translated from golden plates revealed to him by an angel, has been translated into over 100 languages.

The man who started it all was a farmer with no formal education, a treasure hunter who had been arrested for fraud, and a prophet who would be killed by a mob at age 38. His life was short. The movement he built was not.

What Everyone Knows

The story of Joseph Smith is usually told by Mormons as a story of revelation and restoration. A boy seeks wisdom, God answers, an angel guides him to ancient records, he translates them by the power of God, and he restores the true church that had been lost for centuries. The narrative is central to Mormon identity. It is taught in Sunday schools, repeated in missionary lessons, and embedded in the architecture of temples and visitors centers.

Outside the church, the story is often reduced to a few elements: golden plates, a seer stone, a man who claimed to see angels. The complexity of Smith's life, the social context of the movement he founded, and the theological innovations he introduced are usually omitted. The result is a version of Smith that is either revered or dismissed, but rarely understood.

What History Actually Shows

Joseph Smith grew up in a family that moved frequently, following the shifting fortunes of his father's farming and storekeeping ventures. The Smiths were poor. They were also spiritual seekers. Joseph's mother, Lucy, wrote of visions and divine dreams in the family. His father, Joseph Sr., had his own visions before his son's. The family was part of the ferment of early American religious life, a world where ordinary people claimed direct access to God.

Smith's first vision, in 1820, was not the only one he reported. Over the next decade, he described a series of visitations: an angel named Moroni who showed him the location of golden plates buried in a hill near his home; John the Baptist, who bestowed the Aaronic priesthood on him; Peter, James, and John, who bestowed the Melchizedek priesthood. The visits established his authority. They also established a pattern: revelation came to him alone, and he transmitted it to his followers.

The translation of the Book of Mormon was done with a seer stone, a practice that was not unusual in the folk magic of early 19th-century New England. Smith placed the stone in a hat, put his face over the hat, and dictated the text to scribes. The process was described by witnesses. The resulting book, published in 1830, claimed to be a history of ancient Israelites who migrated to the Americas, divided into warring factions, and were visited by Christ after his resurrection.

The book sold slowly at first. But Smith's ability to attract followers was immediate. By 1831, he had moved his growing community to Kirtland, Ohio, and established a separate settlement in Independence, Missouri. The movement expanded. It also faced opposition. Non-Mormons in Missouri and Illinois saw the community's political and economic consolidation as a threat. Smith was arrested repeatedly. In 1844, he was jailed in Carthage, Illinois, on charges of treason. A mob stormed the jail and killed him and his brother Hyrum.

The Part That Got Buried

Smith's theological innovations extended far beyond the Book of Mormon. In the years after its publication, he introduced doctrines that set Mormonism apart from other Christian movements. He taught that God was once a man and that humans could become gods. He taught that marriage was not just for mortality but for eternity, and that the highest form of salvation required plural marriage. He introduced temple rituals, including baptism for the dead, that had no precedent in Christian practice.

These teachings were not announced all at once. They developed over time, often in response to the needs of the community. The doctrine of plural marriage, which Smith began practicing in the 1830s, was kept secret from most members until after his death. It became one of the most divisive issues in the movement, leading to the formation of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ) under Smith's descendants and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under Brigham Young.

The secrecy around plural marriage, and the power Smith accumulated as the movement grew, made him vulnerable to accusations of tyranny. The non-Mormons who opposed him saw him as a threat to democracy. The Mormons who followed him saw him as a prophet. The conflict between these views ended in the jail in Carthage.

The Ripple Effect

After Smith's death, Brigham Young led the majority of the movement to Utah, where the church established a territory that became a state. The church that Young built was more centralized, more hierarchical, and more isolated than the movement Smith had led. But it retained Smith's innovations: the Book of Mormon, the temple rituals, the doctrine of eternal marriage, the belief in continuing revelation.

The church Smith founded is now a global institution with a vast administrative apparatus, a network of universities, a welfare system, and a missionary force that operates in every country where it is allowed. The farmer who started it with a vision in a grove of trees would not recognize the organization it has become. But the organization traces its authority back to him.

The Line That Says It All

Joseph Smith was a farmer with no education who claimed to have seen God, translated a book from plates no one else saw, built a city, ran for president, and was killed by a mob at 38—and his movement, which had 30 members when he started, now has more followers than the denominations that dismissed him as a fraud.