Question for Lulu

[_zeezrom]

Might you be so kind as to please expound on your sig?

Advocating since 2001 that Lucy was a principal founder of Mormonism.

Yours,

Zee.

[Guest]

Might you be so kind as to please expound on your sig?

Advocating since 2001 that Lucy was a principal founder of Mormonism.

Yours,

Zee.

I thought you'd never ask. I'm avoiding work big time in the heat but I'll try to be brief.

1. As Lavina Anderson points out no one reads Lucy's Memiors to learn about Lucy. It is only read to learn about Joseph. What does it say about Lucy herself?

2. In her memiors, Lucy wanted a different and better religion long before her son did, and, in the Smith family, the most unique ideas of Mormonism originate with Lucy. Lucy has it that the idea of right religion (which morphs into the restored fullness of the everlasting gospel) directly from heaven was her idea dating from her near death experience.

3. In Lucy's age, a few, very few, other women had started religions in the US, but it would have been a stretch for Lucy to have done so all by herself.

4. Almost everyone who's commented on the memoir has noted what a dynamic person she was. It's all about her and her son, Joseph, Sr., although respected, is almost a shadow.

5. Almost everyone who's commented on the memoir sees Mormonism as a family religion. According to the memoir, who was the religious leader until Joseph Smith Jr. came of age? It was Lucy not Joseph Smith, Sr., the husband is more of an impediment in Lucy's view until the son has helped create the religion that Lucy wanted and which the whole family could then join.

6. Once Joseph Smith Jr. is of age, if you read the memior with an eye towards gender, you can see the interplay between mother and son. But it is a mistake to paint Lucy as passive at this point. She was not a passive person. Lucy knows what she's doing, she yields to Joseph Smith, Jr. but she's crazy like a fox, she's taught him what she wants him to know for her to get what she wants. 2 of those ideas were that Jesus appears to people, as he had done to Lucy's sister, Lovisa, and that one could obtain pure religion directly from heaven.

7. While Lucy was not Joseph's only teacher of the faculty of abrac, she was one of them. Lucy, the rest of the family, which includes, Joseph Smith, Jr. use the faculty of abrac to get pure religion directly from heaven. But Lucy was the family leader before Joseph Smith became of age.

8. BY feared Lucy, the Smiths and the memior. But it gets over looked that Lucy was one formitable woman and, as impressive as her son was, she had used her abilities to get the religion she wanted. But it was not a religion headed by BY (and quite posssibly, like her daughter-in-law, not a religion that included polygamy.) BY knew she was part of the power behind the throne.

One could do a similar analysis for Emma starting with her presence being required for the comming forth of the Book of Mormon.

Do you think MI will publish, or are they still too tied down with scoll lengths?

[_Cicero]

I think Lulu's 8 is a bit of an understatement. Brigham Young once called her memoir a "tissue of lies" and actually ordered members of the church to destroy all copies of it.

[Guest]

I think Lulu's 8 is a bit of an understatement. Brigham Young once called her memoir a "tissue of lies" and actually ordered members of the church to destroy all copies of it.

But my question is, what does that say about Lucy herself and the creation of Mormonism?

[_sock puppet]

7. While Lucy was not Joseph's only teacher of the faculty of abrac, she was one of them. Lucy, the rest of the family, which includes, Joseph Smith, Jr. use the faculty of abrac to get pure religion directly from heaven. But Lucy was the family leader before Joseph Smith became of age.

Of course, the 'faculty of abrac' topic by Lucy is also the topic of an asschat FAIR excerpt from Billy Hamblin's FARMS review of Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn, FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394. See here.

When Lucy was explaining that the Smith family did not focus so much on magic that their farm was neglected (to refute then current claims that the Smiths were lazy farm tenants), she did not deny that in the Smiths' spare time (after those farm chores had been attended to) that they were involved in the magic--just that their involvement in the magic was not so obsessive and consuming as to cause the Smiths to neglect those farm chores, to be 'lazy.' Of course in the apologetic pea-brain of Bill Hamblin, he inflates that to be Lucy denying that the Smith's were engaged in the 'faculty of abrac', despite so many other instances of magic (black, folk, or otherwise) permeating the Smiths', and in particular JSJr's, conduct.

Would Hamblin be able to resist twisting the plain and obvious truth if his very existence depended upon so resisting? I doubt it.

[Guest]

7. While Lucy was not Joseph's only teacher of the faculty of abrac, she was one of them. Lucy, the rest of the family, which includes, Joseph Smith, Jr. use the faculty of abrac to get pure religion directly from heaven. But Lucy was the family leader before Joseph Smith became of age.

Of course, the 'faculty of abrac' topic by Lucy is also the topic of an asschat FAIR excerpt from Billy Hamblin's FARMS review of Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn, FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394. See here.

When Lucy was explaining that the Smith family did not focus so much on magic that their farm was neglected (to refute then current claims that the Smiths were lazy farm tenants), she did not deny that in the Smiths' spare time (after those farm chores had been attended to) that they were involved in the magic--just that their involvement in the magic was not so obsessive and consuming as to cause the Smiths to neglect those farm chores, to be 'lazy.' Of course in the apologetic pea-brain of Bill Hamblin, he inflates that to be Lucy denying that the Smith's were engaged in the 'faculty of abrac', despite so many other instances of magic (black, folk, or otherwise) permeating the Smiths', and in particular JSJr's, conduct.

Would Hamblin be able to resist twisting the plain and obvious truth if his very existence depended upon so resisting? I doubt it.

That's not the 1/2 of it. Lucy says that she fears that turning herself to a new topic in her memoirs will lead to accusations of using the faculty of abrac.

So the $65,000 question is, leaving aside the faculty of abrac, what was the new topic?

[_Cicero]

I think Lulu's 8 is a bit of an understatement. Brigham Young once called her memoir a "tissue of lies" and actually ordered members of the church to destroy all copies of it.

But my question is, what does that say about Lucy and the creation of Mormonism?

Broadly speaking, I think it had more to do with Lucy's failure to support Brigham Young then anything else. Succession in the church today is a fairly orderly process. Of course, reality often interrupts the orderly process and forces adjustments when a prophet is stricken ill and incapable of fulfilling his duties, but there at least there is never any drama about who the next prophet will be. The church teaches that this orderly process was ordained by God and that it is therefore God who determines who leads the church (by determining who keels over first). The succession of Brigham Young was anything but orderly. With the exception of some of Hyrum's family, nearly all the remaining Smith clan did not support Brigham Young's claim to Smith's mantle, and that infuriated Young. Moreover, the Smith clan accused Brigham Young (falsely, it turns out) of initiating polygamy. William Smith even claimed that Brigham Young ordered the death of Samuel Smith in order to snuff out his biggest rival.

By 1865 when he ordered her memoirs to be destroyed, Young had a visceral hatred of Emma and Lucy Smith, and he was very good at holding and nursing grudges (see, e.g., Orson Pratt). I think it has more to do with that than with the creation of Mormonism.

[_lulu]

I think Lulu's 8 is a bit of an understatement. Brigham Young once called her memoir a "tissue of lies" and actually ordered members of the church to destroy all copies of it.

But my question is, what does that say about Lucy and the creation of Mormonism?

Broadly speaking, I think it had more to do with Lucy's failure to support Brigham Young then anything else.

Women are frequently and falsely seen as being passive. Can you change that to an active statement about Lucy?

[Guest]

Dan Vogel and, to a lesser degree, Richard Bushman have argued that Joseph Smith wanted to unite his family religiously and rescue them from their crushing poverty. I think there's a lot of truth to that. One of the projects Don Bradley is working on is the way that Joseph's scriptures frequently addressed the concerns of their immediate "dictation" audience, whether that was the Smith family, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, or whoever. The Smith family certainly seems to have been Joseph's first and most enduring audience.

Smith's scriptures, for instance, vacillate between Lucy's evangelicalism and Joseph Sr.'s universalism. They affirm revivalistic conversion, but also a religious role for rods, stones, and the treasure quest. They affirm the Bible, but also account for the freethinking critique of it. The image of Adam gathering his family and blessing them at Adam-ondi-Ahman was evidently intended as a model for the role Joseph Jr. wanted his father to play in the family and the faith, and there's a profoundly moving passage where Joseph Jr. describes his feelings about his father's baptism. But it's not as if he was strictly trying to bring his father around to his mother's point of view. Joseph Jr. clearly sided with his father against his mother when Lucy joined the Presbyterians after Alvin's death. Joseph hotly told his mother that he could learn more in the woods with his Bible than she could learn at that church.

But aside from being Joseph Jr.'s first audience, did the Smiths play any active role in founding Mormonism? Maybe, but again, the evidence is at least as good for the involvement of other family members as for the involvement of Lucy.

Alvin, in particular, is said by Lucy to have been obsessed with the Nephite record and to have urged Joseph Jr. to obtain it when he was on his deathbed. It's also worth noting that a family tradition (really a prophecy by grandpa Asael) said there would be a prophet in the family, and the mantle may have fallen first on Alvin before shifting to Joseph Jr. after Alvin's death. Alvin held the "right of the firstborn" according to Joseph's later theology, and also seems to have been the de facto head of the family while he was alive.

Joseph Sr. had a similar interest in the project, and bragged about it to his neighbors. Joseph Sr.'s brother Jesse seems to have regarded him as a major player in the fraud, and all but accused him of having constructed a lead book and passed it off as gold. William D. Purple reports that at the 1826 trial Joseph Sr. said "his constant prayer to his Heavenly Father was to manifest His will concerning [Joseph Jr.'s] marvelous [scrying] power." Joseph Sr.'s prophetic dreams also provided some of the Book of Mormon's material.

Lucy, for her part, eventually expected to display the plates for 25 cents per viewing. She later did precisely this with the Book of Abraham papyri. And Hyrum may have contributed some Masonic material.

The Book of Mormon, in short, was a religious, financial, and social boon for the entire family, so they all had reason to be excited about and perhaps actively involved in the project.

[_Fence Sitter]

It's also worth noting that a family tradition said there would be a prophet in the family, and the mantle seems to have fallen on first on Alvin and then on Joseph Jr. after Alvin's death. Joseph Sr. had a similar interest in the project, and bragged about it to his neighbors. Joseph Sr.'s brother Jesse seems to have regarded him as a major player in the fraud, and all but accused him of having constructed a lead book and passed it off as gold. Joseph Sr.'s prophetic dreams also provided some of the Book of Mormon's material. Lucy, for her part, eventually expected to display the plates for 25 cents per viewing. She later did precisely this with the Book of Abraham papyri. The Book of Mormon, in short, was a religious, financial, and social boon for the entire family, so they all had reason to be excited about and perhaps actively involved in the project.

CK,

Do you think, had Alvin lived, he would have replaced Hyrum as 2nd to Joseph or would he have replaced Joseph himself? I know, lots of speculation there.