Exhibit on Joseph Smith's life opens

As leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints kick off their yearlong bicentennial celebration of Joseph Smith's birth, they emphasize that while he played a singular role in founding their faith, church members do not "worship" him.

Speaking after a press conference that opened a new exhibit in the Church Museum of History and Art highlighting Smith Friday, Elder Marlin Jensen of the Quorums of the Seventy said LDS leaders are "sensitive to the idea that we would somehow place Joseph Smith above Jesus Christ in our theology. Yet nothing could be further from the truth."

The museum exhibit, which opens to the public today, is largely composed of manuscripts and documents. It also includes a handful of personal items owned by Smith, including a watch and a book borrowed from a private collector. Replicas of medical instruments, like those used during a legendary leg operation Smith endured as a 7-year-old boy, are also part of the display.

Other items: an original Book of Mormon manuscript page containing Smith's handwriting; a family record book used by Smith's grandparents to record his birth; artifacts uncovered during excavation and reconstruction of the Smith log home site; stone fragments from the Nauvoo Temple baptismal font; wall fragments from Liberty Jail, where Smith was imprisoned; a first-edition Book of Mormon that belonged to early church member Martin Harris, one of 11 witnesses to the authenticity of the translation; a fragment from the vest Smith wore when he was martyred, as well as the Nauvoo Legion cloak he wore.

The items are "something you can heft that tells you he was a real person."

LDS critics have often chided the devotion many Latter-day Saints have to the man who they believe restored Christ's original gospel and translated a new volume of scripture — the Book of Mormon — in part through direct communication with God and Christ.

Elder Jensen said that among the greatest accomplishments of the faith's founding prophet is the fact that he "cast so much light on Christ and God and on their true nature."

Smith taught that God has a plan for all mortals with Christ as the central figure in providing salvation and eternal life, he said.

"He didn't seek to aggrandize himself. . . . Consequently, there's been an effort to keep the celebration of this year in perspective.

"He is entitled to some honor and appreciation, but he is a man — a great one, but a man."

Formal events planned by the church for the bicentennial include the new one-gallery museum exhibit, a new link on the church Web site, www.lds.org with information about him (yet to be posted) and a new film on his life that will screen later this year in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building Theater.