Topic: Joseph Smith

Another paper was presented by a scholar from mainland China named Qi Duan, a researcher at Beijing's Institute for the Study of World Religions. "She has made herself a student of Mormonism," Givens said, coming to Hong Kong where he met with her for almost an hour and "fielded a number of perceptive and very informed questions."

She made a presentation that was videotaped for the conference in Taipei, discussing her reasons for the success of Mormonism. Her reasons "weren't groundbreaking or novel, but it's significant to have a researcher from mainland China making this her focus."

Academic interest

Givens said scholars from Bangladesh and Indonesia participated in a late-spring conference on Smith in Australia, both of them Muslims "who had very positive things to say about Mormons. I was surprised to find familiarity and insight from nations so disparate as those."

Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of history and religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University, has studied Mormonism for 45 years. She said that while the Library of Congress symposium on Smith attracted a lot of attention, "it was of interest to many more LDS than people who were not LDS. It turned out to be . . . triumphalist in nature. Don't think that will be as important as Richard Bushman's new book in the academic community."

Bushman, a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, has just completed "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling," a biography many believe will be the most definitive look at the church's founding prophet to date.

"It has become a reason for us in the academic community to pay more attention to Joseph Smith, and that's for people outside the church," she said.

Shipps and Bushman are both presenting papers this weekend at yet another conference focused on Smith, this one the annual meeting of the John Whitmer Historical Association in Springfield, Ill. Bushman's topic will be "Joseph Smith and Abraham Lincoln," while Shipps will focus on "Prophets and Prophecy in the Mormon Tradition," as a way for scholars outside the church to understand why his followers believed him.

Shipps said a careful study of the revelations Smith said he received before the LDS Church was organized shows "these revelations have predictive value in that they are fulfilled. . . . There were rational reasons, not just spiritual reasons, to accept Joseph Smith as a prophet."

Other presentations at the conference place Smith alongside Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science) and Ellen G. White (a founder of Seventh Day Adventist theology), examine his personality as well as his family, his associates and the doctrines he taught.

Observing the variety of scholarly presentations on Smith and the LDS Church ever since Yale University hosted a conference in 2003, Givens believes the church "has a reputation and Joseph Smith has an influence that, in some ways, exceed the recognition of many church members."

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