D.C. to host symposium on Joseph Smith

PROVO — Next year's bicentennial of Joseph's Smith birth will spur a flurry of commemorations and discussions about his contributions to religious and American history, and the list now includes a scholarly symposium at the Library of Congress.

Library and Brigham Young University officials announced Friday they will co-sponsor "The Worlds of Joseph Smith" at the library in Washington, D.C., on May 6-7, 2005.

The conference will explore Smith's world, his recovery of "past worlds," his challenges to the theological world and his founding of a global religion.

"He's the pre-eminent American visionary," said author Richard Bushman, whose biography of Joseph Smith is due to be published next year by Knopf. "There have been others who have claimed to have revelation, actually many, like Nat Turner, John Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson. But Joseph Smith is the only one who produced a biblical text. Joseph is the only one who put himself on the level of the Bible. I think that qualifies him as the pre-eminent American visionary."

James H. Hutson, chief of the manuscript division at the Library of Congress, believes the public will be interested to hear distinguished scholars explain how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, founded by Smith with six members in 1830, has grown to more than 12 million members.

"It's a major church, and I think for that reason the symposium will be of interest," Hutson said. "Other religious persuasions important in American history — Puritanism, for example — traced the same trajectory but, unlike Mormonism, reached a limit from which their influence receded."

Church officials haven't announced plans for commemorating the birth of the faith's first president and appear more interested in spearheading conferences through Brigham Young University.

Elder Henry B. Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve and the church's commissioner of education asked BYU's Robert Millet to have the university sponsor conferences on Smith during 2005.

The Library of Congress symposium grew out of efforts by Millet, the Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding and law professor Jack Welch.

Welch and other BYU officials formed a relationship with Hutson when the Library of Congress exhibit "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic" visited BYU in 2000.

Millet and others have successfully planned a second conference on Smith at Claremont College next summer.

Friday's announcement comes less than a month after the National Archives endorsed the "Joseph Smith Papers" project, a compilation by BYU and the LDS Church archives of historical documents by and about Smith.