In my blog series titled Holy Joe, I started with Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. The following are several pieces of evidence demonstrating more evidence of Smith's acting like a televangelist faith healer like Benny Hinn. This from the historical record, provided by a respected historian.
Joseph Smith as Charismatic Utopianist Earning A Living as Doomsday Preacher
The following is taken from the ebook Charisma under Pressure: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1831–1839 by Dan Vogel. These excerpts are from Location: 408, 412, 422, 432, 460, 507, 572, 926, 946, 991, 1610, 1700, 1815, 1826-1837:
Smith possessed another quality that drew followers to him, a trait that goes hand-in-hand with charisma—narcissism. Who better to display unshakeable self-confidence and voice their opinions with absolute certainty than a narcissist? ...
... According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), those who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder display the following traits: “a grandiose sense of self-importance”; “requires excessive admiration”; “a sense of entitlement”; “a lack of empathy”; tends to be exploitative, manipulative, and arrogant.[79] Personally, I am skeptical of any specific diagnosis. Not only is it speculative, but it is also unnecessary. It is possible to have narcissistic traits without having the disorder. The distinction may be only a matter of degree.[80] What interests me is how Smith’s narcissism may have contributed to his charisma and made him appealing to others as a leader. ...
... I believe there can be no better example of how Smith was “preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love,”[81] than his vision of a utopian Zion, where the “pure in heart” shall dwell.[82] ...
Just a side note here, it is interesting that a lot of charismatic Christian cult leaders have been utopianists. See these articles:
... This [narcissism] may have been a lifelong character trait [in Joseph Smith] as Samantha Payne, who attended school with Smith in Manchester, New York, recalled that even then he had a reputation as a “braggadocio.”[85] ...
The narcissist’s grandiosity masks an underlying vulnerability in self-esteem, which, according to the DSM-V, makes them “very sensitive to ‘injury’ from criticism or defeat. … They may react with disdain, rage, or defiant counterattack. … Though overweening ambition and confidence may lead to high achievement, performance may be disrupted because of intolerance of criticism or defeat.”[92] One of Smith’s close friends, Benjamin F. Johnson, said that although Smith could be “Social and Eaven Convivial at times He would alow no arogance or undue liberties—and criticisms Even by his associates was Rarely acceptable & Contradiction would Rouse in him the Lion at once.” Continuing, Johnson recalled, “For by no one of his Fellows would he be Superseeded, or disputed, and in the Early days at Kirtland & Elsewhare ware [more] than once for their Impudence helped from the Congregation by his foot.”[93]
What is it about the followers that attract them to the narcissistic charismatic leader? Recent studies show that many people are attracted to the narcissist’s projection of grandiose self-confidence, power, enthusiasm, and lack of self-doubt, at least initially.[94] In the 1970s Austrian-American psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut and others began studying narcissism and found that a symbiosis existed between charismatic leaders and followers, that both were attempting to alleviate deep-seated feelings of inadequacy—the leader by attracting adulation for his false persona and the followers by attempting to draw strength from an idealized powerful figure.[95] This relationship was not unlike what Sigmund Freud called transference. ...
... [Smith’s initial] mission [was the] building [of] a utopian New Jerusalem in the American wilderness. Smith began his career just as it seemed to some in America that their nation had turned away from God and was ripe for destruction. ...
To those who could not accept the outcome of the 1828 election and believed America was on the high road to destruction, Smith held out the option of establishing a western theocracy as a refuge for God’s children. This was a radical and revolutionary plan, to be sure, but charismatic leadership tends to be such a force. As Weber observed: “The bearer of charisma enjoys loyalty and authority by virtue of a mission believed to be embodied in him: this mission has not necessarily and not always been revolutionary, but in its most charismatic forms, it has inverted all value hierarchies and overthrown custom, law and tradition.”[115]
Smith’s New Jerusalem was intended to fill the entire earth, eventually. In June 1833, a month before the Mormons were driven out of Jackson County, Smith and church leaders in Ohio sent Bishop Edward Partridge and other officials in Missouri a master plan for the city of Zion to be built in Independence, which included a one-square-mile grid, and declared: “Where this square is thus laid off and and supplied lay off another in the same way and so fill up the world in these last days and let every man live in the City for this is the City of Zion.”[116] Smith’s vision could not be any bigger, or any more impractical. From the start, Smith was on a collision course with reality.
Communal living provided Joseph Smith with a comfortable living as religious seer and revelator of God's will, but such communal living also proved problematic in capitalist America, which we see from these excerpts from Vogel's book:
... Smith did not want to accept Copley’s offer. At this time, he needed to stay near his new converts and deal with problems associated with religious excesses and communal living. After all, that is why he moved to Ohio. Instead, the revelation directed the church to provide for Smith’s and Rigdon’s housing needs: “It is meet that my servant Joseph should have a house built in which to live & translate & again it is meet that my Servant Sidney should have a comfortable Room to live in.”[17] ...
Once the consecration of property was made [in the communal utopian LDS system or the United Order as voluntary consecration of property], there was no retrieving one’s former holdings should there be a loss of faith—“Behold thou shalt conscrate all thy properties that which thou hast unto me with a covena[n]t and Deed which cannot be broken & they Shall be laid before the Bishop of my church … & it shall come to pass that the Bishop of my church after that he has received the properties of my church that it cannot be taken from you.”[26]
... McLellin distinguished between everyone owning everything in a cooperative—which seemed to him mandated by the New Testament and Book of Mormon—and the bishop owning everything and distributing the property and money according to what he determined was everyone’s need ...
... [In the LDS scripture] Moses 7:2 [an expansion of Genesis 5:22–24] ... [it] mentions that “Enoch walked with God: and he was not: for God took him.” Smith expanded the account in Genesis to include Enoch’s founding of a city named Zion, which was so powerful that it was feared by the armies of the nations. Like some of Rigdon’s followers in Ohio, Enoch’s Zion was a utopian communal organization ...
The purpose of reviewing these prophecies was to motivate Smith’s followers about their mission to establish the New Jerusalem as a means of escaping the “great tribulation” of the last days—“Not many years hence ye Shall hear of wars in your own lands wherefore I the Lord have said gether ye out from the Eastern lands [and] assemble ye yourselves together.”[64] ...
... the institution [Smith] was attempting to organize .... would include the founding of a New Jerusalem theocracy. ...
In time, states Weber, charisma must be “routinized” or institutionalized; that is, less reliant on the personality of the leader, who must constantly prove he possesses such authority, and more dependent on the authority derived from legal ordination and office within an institution that increasingly defines authority in legal-rational terms.[96] ...
In dealing with charismatic challengers like Cowdery, Page, and Hubble, [Smith] drew on his charisma either to declare the supremacy of his revelations or to denounce their revelations as Satan-inspired. In this instance, because the threats were ongoing, he relegated church discipline to other officers. Thus the revelation stated: “Unto the Bishop of the Church & unto such as God shall appoint & ordain to watch over the Church & to be the Elders unto the Church are to have it given unto [them] to decern all those gifts lest there shall be any among you prophecying & yet not be of God.”[98]
So far we can see that in the early 1830s, its clear to me from reading Vogel's book (and other histories of Smith), that Joseph Smith was seeking to produce a utopian socialist-like community, which made him similar to the narcissistic cult leader Jim Jones. This drive by Smith to create a utopian Zion was spurred on by the urgency in the deluded belief that it was the end of days which many people thought in Joseph's day. We can't know if Smith literally believed it was the end of days or not, for as I covered in Holy Joe (Part 1) Smith often promoted religious ideas in order to motivate his followers when he himself did not believe on those ideas. For example, he used the terrifying idea of a permanent Hell in the Book of Mormon to "work upon the hearts of the children of men" (D&C 19:7), while he himself did not believe in a permanent Hell (see D&C 19).
Note as well that Joseph Smith dictated a revelation, D&C 60, with verse 2 stating, “But with some I am not well pleased, for they will not open their mouths, but they hide the talent which I have given unto them, because of the fear of man. Wo unto such, for mine anger is kindled against them.” Note the use of the fear of God's wrath to motivate his missionaries to preach the Mormon gospel. D&C 60, verse 14-15 then states, "And after thou hast come up unto the land of Zion, and hast proclaimed my word, thou shalt speedily return, proclaiming my word among the congregations of the wicked, not in haste, neither in wrath nor with strife. And shake off the dust of thy feet against those who receive thee not, not in their presence, lest thou provoke them, but in secret; and wash thy feet, as a testimony against them in the day of judgment." Note here, how Smith provides an outlet for their hurt or frustration being rejected as preachers with a revenge ritual where those who reject them will get what's coming to them in the final judgment.
We do know that by 1844 Smith clearly did not believe in an immanent Second Coming, which I cover in my blog post here. So it is possible that Joseph Smith did not believe in a soon Second Coming but used this belief in the 1830s to motivate his followers to form Zion, which Zion did believe in as a utopianist. Yet it is also possible, that in the early 1830s Joseph Smith literally believed in his calling to form Zion before the Second Coming of Christ and that he thought of himself as special enough, superior enough in his spiritual gifts, to be God’s chosen vessel to lead the formation of the New Jerusalem (Zion) on earth before the Second Coming.
Joseph Smith and Benny Hinn
Now we come to behavior that mirrors faith healers like Benny Hinn. This is from Vogel's book at Locations: 2166, 2186, 2194, 2233, 2328, 3880:
Faith Healing
On the evening of March 29 twenty-nine-year-old Warner Doty, a zealous Mormon missionary, died after being blessed by Joseph Smith. According to the Painesville Telegraph, “So fully did he believe in the divinity of Smith, that he had been made to have full faith that he should live a thousand years—this he confessed to a near relative some four weeks before his decease.” When he was suddenly attacked with a typhoid-like illness, “no persuasion could induce the young man to have a physician called, so strong was he impressed with the supernatural powers of Smith.” Smith at first refused to give him a blessing, saying on the way to Doty’s house that “he received a command not to go to Doty’s and ‘cast his pearl before swine.’” However, two days later Smith blessed Doty, promised he would get well, and advised against calling a physician. When Doty’s condition worsened and death appeared imminent, Doty’s relatives sent for a Dr. Brainard, who “pronounced his disease past remedy, and told the mormon doctors that their superstitions had probably been the means of the young man’s death.” ...
The Book of Mormon concluded with an exhortation to its readers to “deny not the gifts of God,” including tongues, prophecy, and healing.[18] A July 1830 revelation [see D&C 24:13] instructed Cowdery to “require not Miracles except I shall command you except casting [out] Devils healing the sick … & these things ye shall not do except it be required of you by them who desire it.”[19] ...
Painesville Telegraph reported in December 1830 that “these newly commissioned [LDS] disciples have totally failed thus far in their attempts to heal.”[21] ...
Smith appeared to heal Elsa’s rheumatic arm. From reading the Book of Mormon, Elsa became convinced that Smith could heal her.[33] ...
When the doctor came to Emma’s bedside, “he bled her” and then delivered the twins.[53] Whitney said that afterward he saw the doctor on his way home, and that in conversation he “laughed heartily about Jo’s revelation that the Mormons should not employ physicians.” The doctor apparently was familiar with the law of the church dictated by Smith the previous February, which directed that the sick were to “be nourished in all tenderness with herbs and mild food & that not of the world & the Elders of the church two or more Shall be called & shall pray for and lay their hands upon them in my name & if they die they shall die unto me.”[54]
... [in early September 1831] Eventually the elders succeeded in bringing many back into the fold, aided by the performance of faith healings.
Coerced Compliance to Obey the United Order in the 1830s:
The wikipedia article on the LDS United Order (April, 2025) states:
The Latter Day Saint United Order was more family- and property-oriented than the utopian experiments at Brook Farm and the Oneida Community. Membership in the United Order was voluntary, although during a period in the 1830s, it was a requirement of continued church membership.[citation needed] Participants would deed (consecrate) all their property to the United Order, which would in turn deed back an "inheritance" (or "stewardship") which allowed members to control the property; private property was not eradicated but was rather a fundamental principle of this system.[3] At the end of each year, any excess that the family produced from their stewardship was voluntarily given back to the Order. The Order in each community was operated by the local bishop.
Also see the article The Order of Enoch (United Order).
The following are excerpts from Vogel's book at Locations 2429, 2440, 2849:
On May 20 Smith dictated a revelation that commanded Partridge to organize the Colesville branch at Thompson into an economic cooperative. Compliance was mandatory, for the revelation commanded obedience to the law of consecration and threatened “otherwise they will be cut off.”[75]
... As the revelation commanded: “Let my Servent Edward receive the properties of this People … & let my Servent Edward receive the money as it shall be laid before him according to the covenant.”[78] Knight confirmed that he and others from New York “were Cald upon to Consecrate our properties.”[79] ...
Copley struggled with the law of consecration. “Brother Copley would not Consecrate his property,” Knight remembered, “therefore he was Cut of[f] from the Church.”[46]
Priesthood as missional sainthood:
Loc 2722:
One purpose of the gathering and bestowal of additional authority was to energize the missionary force Smith was about to send out.
More alleged faith healings and alleged exorcisms and Smith's growing political power:
Locations 2762-67, 3388:
Whitmer wrote that “Joseph the Seer … commanded the devil in the name of Christ and he departed to our Joy and comfort.”[22] ...
According to Booth, Smith was unable to heal Murdock’s hand as well as the leg of another elder who had come to the meeting with a crutch.[24] These events went unreported in the surviving accounts of those who remained believers in Smith’s prophetic calling. ...
The promise of Jesus’s return depended on how fast the elders could perform their missions, and their missions were not only to make converts but to funnel them into Smith’s Zion—a program that would no doubt increase Smith’s political power.
Smith rejected the more rational and sober position of the Campbellites who believed that God ended the "spiritual gifts" in modern times:
Loc 3095:
Rigdon introduced the Mormon prophet to the Reverend Walter Scott, one of the leading ministers in the Campbellite movement. The two men soon clashed over the subject of spiritual gifts existing in the latter-day church. In his official history, Smith recalled: “Before the close of our interview, he manifested one of the bitterest spirits against the doctrine of the New Testament, (‘that these signs shall follow them that believe,’ as recorded in the 16th chapter of the gospel, according to St. Mark,) that I ever witnessed among men.”[2] Of course, Mark 16:17—“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”—was oft-quoted by the believers in charismatic Christianity, and it was a passage Smith had placed in Moroni’s mouth in the Book of Mormon (Mormon 9:24) ...
This excerpt above from Vogel's book is important because today New Testament scholars point out that this section of Mark is not found in the original manuscripts of Mark. It turns out this verse was added in to the end of Mark years later by someone other than the author of Mark. This is why many Christians do not interpret this passage literally nor take it seriously. This is important, because many gullible Christians throughout the centuries and up to today, have taken this verse literally and as a result many have died of snake bites from snake venom poisoning them. The fact that Smith canonized this forged verse in Mormon 9:24, is problematic to say the least. This puts Smith in the same camp of not just ridiculous faith healing televangelists like Benny Hinn but also in the same camp of dangerous snake handling crazy type Christians who die from handling venomous snakes.
Learning all of this it definitely changes my perception of Smith. For while he definitely became a more a humanistic type Christian by 1840, most of the Scriptures he produced were of the crazy and dangerous "faith healing" and Hell-threatening variety. So that the attempt of more humanistic Mormons to focus more in the humanistic rationalist elements of LDS Scripture becomes problematic: given the persistent and consistent charismatic supernaturalism (end-times delusion, demonophia, and exorcisms) in Smith's Scriptures. Thus, Joseph Smith was less humanist philosopher and actually more of a doomsday, hellfire and brimstone, faith healer type preacher.
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