Scholars & Saints
Scholars & Saints is the official podcast of the University of Virginia’s Mormon Studies program, housed in the Department of Religious Studies. Scholars & Saints is a venue of public scholarship that promotes respectful dialogue about Latter Day Saint traditions among laypersons and academics.
Scholars & Saints
A Biographical Look at Joseph Smith (feat. John G. Turner)
200 years later, Joseph Smith, Jr. continues to draw popular and scholarly interest within the American imagination. But how can modern historians navigate diverse and controversial religious perspectives to offer a fair record of such a man's life?
John G. Turner, Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at George Mason University, is the latest historian to undertake such an endeavor in his 2025 biography, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet (Yale University Press). Dr. Turner sits down with host Nicholas Shrum on today's episode of Scholars and Saints to discuss his methodological approaches to studying Joseph Smith outside of denominational polemics. He also analyzes key moments in Smith's life and the lasting legacies they have left for America's religious and political conscience.
To find out more about Dr. Turner, click here.
Introduction (00:00)
Nicholas Shrum
You're listening to Scholars and Saints, the UVA Mormon Studies podcast. I'm your host, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD candidate in American religions at the University of Virginia. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism. We engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up-and-coming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism's relevance to the broader study of religion. Scholars and Saints is brought to you by support from the Richard Lyman Bushman Endowed Professorship of Mormon Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.
The podcast’s goal is to discuss some of the most pressing issues and cutting-edge methods in Mormon studies and put them in conversation with scholarship from the discipline of religious studies. While the podcast’s content explores Mormonism, the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organizations they represent or study, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the University of Virginia.
Today on the podcast, I speak with Professor John G. Turner, a historian of American religion at George Mason University, about his recent biography, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, published with Yale University Press in 2025. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, has been the subject of academic and popular attention since the nineteenth century. Heralded as the prophet of the restoration, the translator of the ancient American scripture The Book of Mormon, and the nineteenth-century visionary who saw God, Jesus, and angels by his followers, and criticized as a fraud, conman, and adulterer by his detractors, Joseph Smith continues to be an individual of interest for historians to research and write about. On today’s episode, I talk with Professor Turner about his decision to continue a long history of Joseph Smith biographies, ranging from Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History to Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling. Today, we discuss his methodological approach and obligations as a historian, the major takeaways from his research, and why Joseph Smith remains a compelling and fascinating character for scholars, followers, and critics alike. I hope you enjoy today’s conversation with John Turner.
Welcome, listeners, to another episode of Scholars and Saints, the UVA Mormon Studies podcast. Today, I am so happy to have Professor John G. Turner on the podcast. He is a professor of religious studies and history at George Mason University. He is most recently the author of Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, published with Yale University Press in 2025. Super excited to have John on the podcast today. Thank you.
John Turner:
Great to be with you, Nicholas. I love your podcast title, by the way. It’s fun.
Nicholas Shrum:
Yeah, it’s a good one. We’ve enjoyed having it. Excited to talk to you about this new book that you have that is coming out with Yale University Press. This month, correct, is it June?
John Turner
June 17th.
Background and Introduction to Mormon Studies (3:10)
Nicholas Shrum
June 17th. Great. Thank you so much for letting me read an advance copy so that we could talk about it and hopefully get listeners excited to go buy a copy so they can read it themselves. So, thank you for that. As we begin our conversation today, I’m wondering if you can give listeners a little bit of background about yourself, your education, the projects that you’ve done, and kind of how you got into Mormon studies.
John Turner
Sure. Well, I’m much less interesting than Joseph Smith, but I can talk about myself for a few minutes, I guess. I have a PhD in US history from Notre Dame, which I finished around 20 years ago, so I’m starting to feel really old. My initial research focus as a PhD student was not on the history of the Latter-day Saints; I was interested in American evangelicalism, partly because I had grown up in movements such as Young Life and Intervarsity. But when I was getting near the end of my PhD and dissertation, I started thinking about what I wanted to research for a second project. Thought about writing on Mormons and conservative politics in the United States in the years after 1945. I think I really got interested in the subject for a couple of reasons. I had some good Latter-day Saint friends in graduate school, like Matt Grow and Patrick Mason. They’re such amazing individuals, I thought, “Boy, I’d like to understand the tradition that helped shape them.” I also grew up outside of Rochester, New York, so at some point it clicked in my mind that this was sort of local history for me. When I started thinking about Mormons and conservative politics, I quickly realized that I wanted to know a bit more about the history of this movement, and I started reading just broadly in Mormon history. Took a keen interest in the figure of Brigham Young and ended up writing a biography of Young. Also got interested in the question of how Mormonism intersects with the broader tradition of Christianity, and that led me into a second book project called The Mormon Jesus, which is about Latter-day Saint thought, artwork, and piety related to the figure of Jesus Christ. And then, eventually, I circled back to Joseph Smith. I had sort of been able to sidestep him when writing about Brigham Young, not that he wasn’t an important character in that story, but I didn’t directly try to assess some key elements of his life. Eventually just thought, I certainly couldn’t be finished writing about the Latter-day Saint tradition without writing about Joseph Smith, couldn’t quite let him go, so I came back to him.
Why Biography Appeals to Professor Turner (6:50)
Nicholas Shrum
Awesome, yeah, that leads into my next question. If you’re writing about Mormonism, if you’re writing about Mormon understandings about Jesus, you’re writing about he second prophet-president of the Salt Lake-based Church, Brigham Young, you’re going to have to think about and write about Joseph Smith to some extent. What about the idea of biography? I guess this is a question I have for you as well, because you’ve written quite a few biographies; what about biography is appealing to you to do another, you know there have been multiple biographies of Joseph Smith over the history ofthe Latter-day Saint tradition, ranging from Fawn Brodie, to Richard Bushman, Dan Vogel and others. What led you to write a biography as opposed to an earlier history rooted in Rochester in the Palmyra area? What was it about biography?
John Turner
A couple of things. I think biography lends itself to narrative storytelling, which I enjoy as a historian. It almost forces one to stick with a pretty chronologically organized approach to the past. Which has strengths and weaknesses. But for me, telling the story of an individual life, it’s an opportunity to also tell the story of a movement or of a historical subject. And I suppose in terms of having written several biographies, maybe I get stuck in a bit of an intellectual rut, I don’t know. I enjoy it, and I think when you encounter figures like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, they are ideal biographical subjects. Their lives are relatively well-documented, and they are just colorful and capacious individuals and so they’re really fun to write about. In terms of my biography of Joseph Smith in relation to prior biographies. The first thing I’d say is that I didn’t write mine as a response to those previous biographies. Obviously, I’m well aware of them, I’ve read them, and I’ve thought about them. My own approach is simply to immerse myself in the sources and try to allow those to guide my interpretations, rather than making my biography a historiographical argument against other biographers. The reality is that Joseph Smith’s life is pretty well known, it’s pretty well-documented. Richard Bushman’s biography in particular reflects outstanding access to sources and expert contextualization in nineteenth-century American culture, and it's called a cultural biography for a good reason; it’s simply outstanding in that respect. And Dan Vogel also reflects this. His work reflects a tremendous amount of diligent research, and some of his excavation of biographical sources for Joseph Smith’s life, I mean, everyone else in a way has relied on his work, even when subsequent documentary editing projects like the Joseph Smith Papers have advanced that work. Just to say a little bit more about prior biographies and how mine differs. So Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History is an artfully, beautifully written biography from a very critical perspective. It was published 80 years ago. I think she published an updated edition in 1970, but that’s still 55 years ago, simply before the much expanded access to sources that we’ve enjoyed in recent decades, so it’s rather out of date. For any virtues and shortcomings that it has, it is simply out of date. My approach is different from Richard Bushman’s in terms of my perspective. I’m a great admirer of Richard Bushman in almost every respect, a real gentleman and a great scholar. He forthrightly identifies himself as a believing Latter-day Saint and privileges faithful sources of individuals who were close to Joseph Smith. I think that is a perfectly legitimate approach. My approach is a little bit different. I’m not a Latter-day Saint. I certainly don’t discount the testimony of individuals close to Joseph Smith, but I think I’m a little bit more critical when it comes to certain aspects of Joseph’s life, such as plural marriage or the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. So it’s a rather different interpretation of Joseph Smith.
Nicholas Shrum
Well, I really appreciate your writing style, and I really enjoyed reading the book. One of the things that stood out to me, that I feel like biography is able to get and differs from other treatments of Joseph Smith, especially within Mormon studies or “faithful” studies of Mormonism, is the pacing of the book. One thing that readers might notice if they read this, especially if they’re part of the tradition, is that you move at a good clip. It goes from event to event to event. Often, at least one of the ways that I have approached Joseph’s life as a Latter-day Saint, both in church contexts and then also in scholarship, is by focusing on the theological developments, where you go from just enough context to get to the theological development, for instance something like the Kirtland Temple. Historians or scholars will spend a significant amount of time talking about what happened in the Kirtland Temple, the vision of Christ, the vision of Moses, Elias, and Elijah, and then spend quite a bit of time talking about that. But from a biographer’s angle, that’s just part of his life–one moment and then you move right to the next. I just appreciate that about how you’re able to write about his life.
John Turner
Yeah, I mean, I think that there are pros and cons to different approaches. I definitely wanted to write a not super long, and also a fast-paced biography. Because I think that’s just a key aspect of Joseph’s life, the amount of activity, the different elements of his activity. One crisis to the next at certain points in his life. It is remarkable that Joseph flees Kirtland at the beginning of 1837 after the community collapses or implodes there. A few months later, he is regrouping in Far West, and by the end of the year, he is in Liberty Jail in Missouri, and the Latter-day Saints are preparing to make an exodus out of Missouri. I mean, that’s an incredible year. You could, and people have, spent whole books chronicling that story in great detail and so by writing a fast-paced narrative biography, I’m necessarily leaving out some context and some detail, but I want readers to get a sense of the wild ride that Joseph Smith’s life was a lot of the time. There are a few bucolic moments, thinking about Joseph in Hiram, Ohio, when he’s working on his translation of the scriptures with the beautiful view of the countryside. But those sorts of idyllic stretches were pretty rare.
How Professor Turner Positions Himself as a Historian (17:00)
Nicholas Shrum:
Absolutely, so before we jump into more of the content of your book, I have one more question about how you kind of position yourself and sort the lens through which you analyze Joseph Smith’s life. On multiple occasions in the book, you mention that certain events, such as the First Vision, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and others, cannot be analyzed through historical inquiry. What do you mean by that? I think especially for Latter-day Saints, they may bristle at some of the conclusions in here. But how would you explain your position as a historian and a biographer to those kinds of questions?
John Turner
Great question. I actually take those two a little bit differently in a sense. The First Vision, in what became the canonical account of his life for Latter-day Saints, Joseph narrates that when he was 14 years of age, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision and told him, among other things, that none of the existing churches are true. So what do we make of that? Scholars and others have spent a lot of time arguing about whether that account of any of the various accounts of Joseph’s youthful vision can be trusted. I’ve actually found that a somewhat strange controversy, because we cannot prove through the tools available to the academic historian whether or not divine beings appeared to Joseph Smith. We can’t, really, penetrate to the marrow of anybody’s religious experience. I remember having a useful conversation with Spencer Fluhman, an historian at BYU and former director of the Maxwell Institute there. I think I’m basically borrowing the line from him, in a sense, that as historians we can analyze narratives of religious experience, but we can’t really analyze the experience itself. We’re just removed from it. I think, in terms of the First Vision, it’s credible that Joseph Smith sought, saw, and heard the Lord. I write that in the book. I don’t see any reason to doubt the core of his account. He grew up in a visionary household; his parents had visions and dreams of divine beings, and he had other relatives who had visions. So, why wouldn’t he follow that cultural pattern? That makes sense to me. In terms of the particulars of about what Joseph as a young man, what he saw, what he heard, we can’t really access that. And I don’t think we really need to try to sift out, pinpoint with any scholarly certainty, what the exact content of that vision was at the time. In terms of the golden plates and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, I actually think that’s a little bit different because we do have, for starters, we have a text that we can analyze. So that gives us a little bit of a different starting point. And in that sense, we’re not only trying to analyze Joseph’s interior experience, which we can’t really access, but we can take a look at the text he produced and, in a way, work ourselves backwards from there. And also look at the accounts that Joseph and others created about the golden plates, the translation process, and that entire story.
What Was Compelling about Joseph Smith to His Contemporaries? (21:40)
Nicholas Shrum
That’s really helpful, and I appreciate it because you’re working with the data and the evidence that you have. I think you’re consistent all the way through with those conclusions. There are some things, right, that, like you say, you cannot penetrate to one’s religious experience, and some might put that in terms of: there are some things that are left to faith. If people want to think about that, if they’re really concerned about the reality of something, that can be left in terms of faith. So you can take some people’s word for it, we can take his narrative, we can take his experience with the First Vision. But like you said with the gold plates, there's a different starting point and different types of evidence that historians have to work with. So, thank you for that. Getting into some of the meat of the book. You write on one page that “Joseph Smith made himself into a latter-day prophet.” I’m curious, as his biographer, in the most recent biography, what do you mean by that statement?
John Turner
So this is what I have in mind. Oftentimes, speaking of matters of faith, there are often debates about whether Joseph was a fraud. Was he a true prophet? Questions like that. And for me, this is a non-Latter-day Saint account of Joseph Smith’s life. But I very much see him as presenting himself as a prophet, becoming a prophet, acting as a prophet. And for me, one of the key parts of this is the story of the Book of Momron. So the text predicts the eventual coming, or appearance, of a “choice seer,” who will be named Joseph after the biblical Joseph. And for me, when Joseph publishes the Book of Mormon, which he says he translated “by the gift and power of God,” I see him as fulfilling that prophecy and then presenting himself as that choice seer and prophet. And then as individuals come to accept the Book of Mormon as an ancient record and as a scripture alongside the Bible, they are accepting Joseph Smith as that choice seer and prophet. So that’s really what I have in mind with that statement.
Nicholas Shrum
Well, it’s a compelling statement, and it’s one that, again, your position as a historian is one that I feel like you’re able to make quite well throughout the book is that this is something that he believed, this is something that other people believed, and this actually, if I can ask you this question as a follow up. If other people saw him as a prophet, that might lead us to another question: what was compelling about Joseph Smith to others, what was attractive about having someone like Joseph Smith as a figure who positioned himself as a prophet in the nineteenth century?
John Turner
Well, quite a few things. One element that I emphasize repeatedly throughout the book is that Joseph addressed genuine and difficult theological anxieties in an authoritative prophetic manner. There are lots of different anxieties that I talk about in the book. So the question of, are any of the churches true? Or are all of them false? Well, Joseph and his family weren’t the only Americans who understood the religious pluralism of the early American republic as chaos and confusion. There are a lot of Americans who are searching for the “true church” of Christ, and don’t think that they can find it anywhere else. Joseph’s answer is bold, that this is the true church of Christ. I think that there are a few other key points in which Joseph provides compelling answers to rather widespread spiritual anxieties. Another instance is when he addresses the question of what happens to individuals who die outside the faith or outside of baptism. And his answer is that the living can participate in rituals that bring about the salvation of their departed loved ones. There are also a lot of Americans who are anxious about whether they will be with their loved ones for eternity. Joseph’s introduction of the sealing of men and women in marriage provides an answer to that. I think that’s one of the things that was very compelling about Joseph’s prophetic leadership. And I do think, to a certain extent, also, for Joseph Smith, the medium was the message, to quote Marshall McLuhan. The fact that Joseph produced the Book of Mormon and then dictated scores of revelations in the words of Jesus Christ was something that set him apart from other American religious leaders. Not that there weren’t other revelators and prophets, but Joseph had answers to people’s questions. Most Americans weren’t going to accept them, but for those men and women who did accept Joseph’s prophetic leadership, he was a remarkably compelling figure.
Nicholas Shrum
So, he’s compelling for the people who have questions and concerns, and anxieties that he is able to answer. But you also write about how he was compelling in other ways as a controversial figure. To get to this next question, you have a line following that of how he made himself into a latter-day prophet, that “Smiths abound in this story.” Can you say a little bit more about these various Smiths that you write about?
John Turner
Well, the reason for that paragraph that you’re pointing to is one thing that a biographer has to do. You have to think about how to refer to your subject: are you going to use the last name or the first name? In this particular case, the first name sounds rather familial; in a way, it is the language that faithful Latter-day Saints use to refer to Latter-day Saints. I mean, they might refer to him as the Prophet Joseph Smith or as Brother Joseph sometimes, but also just the affectionate “Joseph.” So it occurred to me that it might be a little bit odd for me as a scholar to refer to my subject as “Joseph,” but the reality is that there are so many Smiths in this story. In fact, there are a few “Joseph Smiths.” Even then, it is a little bit tricky. But it seemed correct to refer to him as Joseph, rather than Smith. I don’t know, it also simply felt right to me.
Nicholas Shrum
Thanks for clarifying that. I apologize. I had it in my notes and didn’t have the paragraph break. So that makes a lot more sense. I think that it is a good way of writing, it’s another compelling way: this is Joseph, it’s Joseph. And it really is about him, every page is about the figure Joseph Smith, Jr., whose dad was Joseph Smith, Sr., right?
John Turner
Right, and then he had a son, Joseph Smith III. So, actually, he sometimes referred to himself as Joseph Smith, Sr. by the end of his life.
How Professor Turner Used the Joseph Smith Papers Project (31:30)
Nicholas Shrum
Oh, there you go! Maybe this was a question I should have asked you a little bit earlier, but you rely quite a bit on the Joseph Smith Papers Document Editing Project throughout the biography. I’m curious if you could comment on if there were any new or significant insights that you wer enable to gather from those resources, espcially since the the biographers that you mentioned before–Fawn Brodie, Richard Bushman–they didn’t have access to, or, it just wasn’t as readily available in the way the Joseph Smith papers are now available to researchers.
John Turner
Sure, so I’ve just spent a lot of money on the Joseph Smith papers, I’ve used my muscles lugging them around, what are there, 25, 27 volumes? Some of them are massive in terms of expense and weight, and I just love them. So, one thing I would say–I use them extensively. They’re a tremendous resource. For many decades, they will be the essential starting point for any researcher interested, not just in Joseph Smith, but in the history of the church through 1844. In terms of the value, it’s not so much the documents, though it is very helpful to have them all on one website and in those printed volumes. Richard Bushman, I think, had access to almost everything that I had access to. What I think is most helpful about the Joseph Smith papers is the annotations and the scholarly apparatus that surrounds those documents. So even if one simply wants the basic biographical data on, not just Joseph’s closet associates, but almost anyone, even tangentially connected to the early history of the church, it’s such a useful resource. And then the documents are all expertly annotated. I’ll give you an example. Joseph Smith was the subject of myriad lawsuits; there are all sorts of legal cases. And the Joseph Smith papers website has just expert, detailed introductions on each of those cases with calendars of the relevant documents. That makes the task of any researcher that much easier. I can’t tell you have grateful I am for the Joseph Smith papers project. This would have had to have been a longer project for me without the JSP. And it would have been impossible for me to write a biography on such a sure evidentiary foundation.
How Professor Turner Addressed Controversial Topics (35:00)
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah, often I’ll hear people say, the Joseph Smith papers is such an expansive, well-done project, I just don’t know how, especially people that aren’t in academia, I don’t know quite how to use it. And I think that your book actually provides an interesting way to appreciate that project. If people have questions about a particular passage in your book or if they want to see a little more of how you came to your conclusion, it's all there and available. So hopefully people can use these in tandem. Because they obviously feed each other. Kind of going back to when I misinterpreted your line about multiple Smiths, you do write “Smith remains an object of curiosity and controversy for many non-Mormons.” Just like any biography of Joseph Smith, you enter a minefield of debates, things related to polygamy, you already mentioned the Book of Mormon translation and the First Vision, but also his financial decision, his interactions with and participation in violence, translation of things like and the production of the Book of Abraham, and more. I’m curious if you would comment on how these controversial topics fit into the overall trajectory of Joseph’s life. Detractors may highlight these particularly and only, the more apologetic or faithful sources may sidestep these completely. How do you see them fitting into the trajectory?
John Turner
Well, Joseph Smith didn’t do a lot of non-controversial things. My approach to all of these things is that I tried very hard in this biography to not pull any punches, not act as if these were fraught topics, and these are fraught topics for a lot of active Latter-day Saints. They’re also fraught topics for anti-Mormons, maybe some ex-Mormons. For me, they’re not fraught topics, so I didn’t feel like I needed to approach them with any different sort of treatment. I simply felt that when it came to these and other subjects, to first of all tell the story as best I could, and whenever appropriate, give my best judgment. I didn’t feel as if I had to pass moral judgment on Joseph Smith at every step of his life. At the same time, I think readers expect a biographer to weigh in on certain key things. And so when I saw Joseph Smith acting creatively or charitably, or in some other unusually positive way, I did want to make it clear that I saw an action or behavior in that light. And conversely, when I saw Joseph Smith acting callously towards individuals at times, I also wanted to make that clear. Otherwise, I think you’re sort of just laying out the facts without any interpretation or any guide for readers. So I already mentioned, roughly, how I approach the First Vision and the Book of Mormon translation. On subjects like polygamy, I mean, it is a really important part of Joseph’s activity during the last several years of his life. It’s reasonably well-documented. One challenge with plural marriage is that all of the individuals involved are so fascinating, that is was a bit of a challenge not to have it overwhelm the narrative in the last six or seven chapters of the book. For instance, every time Joseph sealed to a plural wife, I tried to give, in many cases at least, a brief introduction to that woman. That was difficult because we are talking about thirty people, or so. And there wasn’t quite space to do that. I also thought it was important, both to explain how polygamy fit into Joseph’s developing theology, but also to give space to the fact, and I think it is a fact, that Joseph’s treatment of his first wife, Emma, with respect to polygamy, was quite poor. And there were, in my opinion, not quite sure about the right adjective, there were some of the ways that he approached women as prospective plural wives, I feel that he often did so in a way that put a lot of theological pressure on them, in ways that I do criticize. So that’s an example. It’s also not an easy subject; that particular subject is not easy to write about, because while there are a lot of sources about Joseph’s polygamy, those sources generally don’t take us inside Joseph Smith’s mind. So he doesn’t explain, we don’t have records that help us do a good job of understanding what Joseph was thinking and what he was experiencing in terms of polygamy.
Nicholas Shrum
But you do such a good job of triangulating on those events and individuals to make a reasonable conclusion, or to at least state what we know. I appreciate how you track these events that are difficult for Latter-day Saints to talk about or to fit into how they personally might feel about those things. I appreciate how you just kind of state, “he made some bad decisions.” And then other decisions that you might feel more neutrally about or you don’t need to pass moral judgment, you can say he did it in a certain way. One of the ways you talk about it is that he “enjoyed living dangerously.” I believe you use the term “reckless” a few times. And I think you’re right, and I think we gain something, an understanding and even an appreciation of Joseph as a person, as a human being, by putting words to how he made those decisions.
John Turner
Yeah, and I think particularly during the Nauvoo period, Joseph’s actions became increasingly reckless. I think in part because he’s been traumatized by his own experiences and those of his people in Missouri. He’s living under tremendous pressure during those last several years of his life: increased political pressure, legal harrassmen, I think would be fair to term it, internal dissent, and it’s so striking to me that amid that danger, he acts in ways that are incatious and reckless, I mean there are a lot of provocative things. Other things are accusing him of sort of building an ecclesiastical army through the Nauvoo legion, well, he’s out there in his splendid uniform with thousands of troops marching around. I mean, this is not someone who keeps his head down. Plural marriage explodes into public controversy, so you’d think Joseph, again, would maybe put the brakes on it for a while. Nope! Right in the midst of all those public storms, he is sealed to additional plural wives. And Joseph says he is comfortable swimming in deep water; he is used to danger. I don’t only portray this as recklessness, I think Joseph loved adventure, he was comfortable with risk, I think you can see this from everything from treasure hunting to harrowing journeys with the golden plates to marching it Missouri in 1834 to plural marriage. And I think those aspects of his personality, which sometimes led him into trouble but oftentimes are really attractive, I think those sometimes get lost in treatments of Joseph Smith that, for understandable reasons, take him very seriously as a religious leaders, but perhaps sucked some of the fun and excitement out of his life.
Professor Turner’s Favorite Moments from Joseph Smith’s Life (46:20)
Nicholas Shrum
Before we move on to some of the concluding questions that I have for you, I’d love, if you have one or a couple, what were some of your favorite episodes to write about? What was the most fun to write about?
John Turner
Sure. Well, there are quite a few. One I would mention is in the summer of 1843, which is actually at the same time that Joseph and Emma’s relationship reaches a height of conflict over polygamy, Joseph is essentially kidnapped by lawmen who are seeking to extradite him to Missouri. And his captors stop with him at a hotel in Dixon, Illinois. Joseph has friends who are aware of what’s transpiring, and they’re seeking to get him legal help. I think his lawyer goes to the hotel and bangs on the door where Joseph is being held prisoner, and Joseph’s captors threaten to shoot him. And he is very animated, and he essentially rips open his shirt, shows them his chest, and just yells, “Go ahead and shoot me.” You know, just, this is quite an individual. And I don’t know, maybe he looks a little bit like Jesus in one of Arnold Friberg’s Book of Mormon paintings, with the open bosom. So that’s one image of Joseph Smith that I think is not typically the way people think about Joseph Smith, but I really enjoy it. A second favorite part for me is a very well-known sequence of events. I would have loved to go back in time and be in Kirtland during the first several months of 1836, when Joseph did all sorts of what I would call ritual leadership, leading up to the dedication of the Kirtland Temple and the Solemn Assembly. You know there’s bathing, there’s anointing with oil, there’s the washing of feet. There are all sorts of charismata, you know, spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, and visions. It’s one peak moment in his spiritual leadership, and I think that that sequence of events is just so striking and says a lot about his ability to part the veil between earth and heaven for so many of his followers in remarkable ways.
Why People Should Be Interested in Mormon History (49:43)
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah, that already starts to kind of perhaps bleed into another one of my concluding questions for you which is why should people–scholars, non scholars–that aren’t necessarily interested in Mormon history read this book?
John Turner
Well, I think they should get interested in Mormon history. I mean, if they don’t think they’re interested in Mormon history, I think they should read the book because I think they’ll find it totally fascinating. It wouldn’t necessarily be what they would expect. I mean, I think if you’re interested, if you have any interest in the history of American religion, Joseph Smith and the early Latter-day Saint movement are illuminating I think for the way they help us understand some of the fault lines in American religion more broadly between those who accepted robust supernatural claims and those who thought such things smacked of either Catholicism or superstition. You know that’s one obvious fault line. I think if people are interested in the political history of Jacksonian, Antebellum America, the Mormon story, again, is really illuminating, whether one is interested in vigilantism, whether one is interested in sort of the political fault lines of the early 1840s. I mean the fact that a governor issues an exterminating order against the members of a church, well that’s something one may want to wrap one’s head around– how that came to be the case. But I also think, if one has never really plunged into the story of the Latter-day Saints up to the year 1844, I can’t imagine that one would not find it humanly compelling on many levels.
How Professor Turner Thought About “Religion” (52:20)
Nicholas Shrum
Absolutely, yeah, I trust that when people read this, they will find things that are compelling. My last question for you as we conclude: I always ask guests on the podcast, because this is a religious studies podcast, and because you have a joint appointment in religious studies at George Mason Univesrity, wondering if you can comment on how this particular project either challenged or confirmed or added nuance to how you approach the study of religion, generally.
John Turner
So it’s a great question. Well, I could sidestep it by trying to claim that I’m just a mere historian, but I will mention one thing, one lesson about religion that I took away from this project. One thing that has struck me about Joseph Smith is that a lot of people want to know: was Joseph Smith sincere? Such an interest question. I was struck by an essay that Laurie Maffly-Kipp, very familiar to you and your listeners, an essay that she wrote quite a few years ago for Sunstone on this question of sincerity. And I think she argued that historians and Americans more generally, apply different standards to religious figures than they do to, say, entrepreneurs and politicians. We want to assess their morality, we want to assess their sincerity. I was also influenced by a more recent book by Charles McCrary, a recent Florida State PhD, his book is titled Sincerely Held. And he traces the history of religious sincerity in the United States as a concept, so it’s important legally sometimes whether or not one can portray a religious belief as sincerely held. You if it is sincerely held maybe it deserves some religious protection. One of the things that Charlie points out in that book, of course, is that sincerity is not an empirical thing. There’s nothing we can really measure. Now, I’m not saying that we can’t get a sense of whether someone’s generally truthful or deceptive, but we can’t really assess the sincerity of an individual in any sort of empirical sense. And I tried to keep that in mind while writing about Joseph–that my task as a scholar of religion was not to try to assess Joseph’s sincerity at any given moment of his life. I think that is a shaky thing for a scholar of religion to try to do.
What’s Next for Professor Turner? (56:06)
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah, while I was reading your book, throughout I was struck by how it comes across as, of course, critical and there are good and important moments to be critical, but it is also compassionate, right, there are moments of understanding, but also just curiosity and I think that is a great place that you situate yourself. The last question I have for you is what is next for you, now that you’ve written the most recent and up-to-date biography of the prophet Joseph Smith?
John Turner
Do I have to do anything else? Isn’t this good enough?
Nicholas Shrum
I think you’re good.
John Turner
I’m actually not sure, I’m kicking around a few possible book projects, but you know, I admire those people who are already halfway through a next project when they finish a book, because you know, it takes a long time for a book to go from a manuscript into a printed or electronic or audiobook. And some people, like I said, they’re already half way through the next one. But I’m not, I haven’t started writing anything else, kicking around some ideas, catching my breath, trying to put my feet up, things like that.
Outro (57:25)
Nicholas Shrum
Well deserved! Again, thank you Professor Turner for being on the podcast. Listeners, again, this is Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet published with Yale Univesrity Press in June of 2025. Thank so much John, for being on Scholars & Saints!
John Tuner
Thanks, Nicholas, that was a lot of fun.
Nicholas Shrum
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversation soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stewart for production editing and to Ben Arrington for providing music for this episode. To hear more, visit mormonguitar.com. Thank you for listening.