Joseph Smith's complexity a tough test for scholars

WASHINGTON — For the past two centuries, historians have invariably portrayed Joseph Smith as either a money-digger and religious charlatan or a religious genius and revolutionary theologian.

But historians today — those of all religious and academic stripes — seem to be reaching agreement that the man who founded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is far more complex and far more complicated than any of the simplistic biographies that have defined the LDS prophet.

"A small history will not account for such a large man," said Richard Bushman, a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University whose own definitive analysis on Joseph Smith will be released this fall.

"Something in him transcends time and space," he said, adding that historians must now consider the prophet in broader terms than "uniquely American" or simply a product of New England revivalism.

Bushman headlined the morning session of a two-day conference at the Library of Congress on "The Worlds of Joseph Smith," a series of lectures and scholarly commentary commemorating the bicentennial of Joseph Smith's birth.

For many of the LDS faithful in the audience, it was an opportunity to embrace academic debate about the man they revere as a modern prophet. For more secular students of religion, it was a chance to delve into the spiritual nuances of 19th century America with its abundance of restoration philosophy, apocalyptic idealism and millennialism.

And the defining figure of that religious renaissance is Joseph Smith, "the quintessential American" and a man "strange and different," said Robert Remini, a Jacksonian scholar and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was just named historian for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Remini, who also just published a sweeping biography of Joseph Smith, said it is impossible to consider the historical importance of the man without appreciating his New England roots, his place in the westward expansion of a new nation and his collective religious experiences in a fervently religious society.

"I don't think the examination of Joseph Smith is complete," he said.

Richard T. Hughes, a professor of religion at Pepperdine University in California and an expert in restoration movements of the early 1800s, agreed that historians have long been divided along religious lines, with non-Mormon historians arguing that uniquely American circumstances created Joseph Smith and Mormons believing he was chosen by God to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ.