Joseph Smith

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Which Protestant denomination was Joseph Smith before he started the LDS group?
 
According to Mormon sources, Smith’s family disagreed on which Protestant denomination was the “true” Church of Christ and, when it was time for Joseph to be baptized, he himself felt a great deal of confusion as to where his baptism should place.

This actually ties in with the official story of Smith’s initial “theophany,” and these factors ultimately inspired him to found his own church, one “free” of the doctrinal confusion which Smith was apparently so scandalized by.
 
adamhovey1988 said:
He was interested in Methodism for some time, but I am not sure he was ever formally Methodist (whatever that consists of)
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An old Mormon told me many years ago that Joseph Smith’s father said that Joseph had a mental problem since he was a very young child. It is in a book but I don’t remember the name of the book.God Bless, Memaw
 
As far as I know, the Smith family was essentially Protestant but not tied to any particular denomination. It is also well established that the Smiths were practitioners of religious folk magic. They were particularly avid supernatural treasure seekers (a theme that is reflected in how the Book of Mormon is said to have been re-discovered and translated).
 
ltwin said:
As far as I know, the Smith family was essentially Protestant but not tied to any particular denomination. It is also well established that the Smiths were practitioners of religious folk magic. They were particularly avid supernatural treasure seekers (a theme that is reflected in how the Book of Mormon is said to have been re-discovered and translated).
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That explains a lot. God Bless, Memaw
 
As you might know, Joseph Smith was born and raised in the midst of the Second Great Awakening (and in NY the ‘burned over’ district), where it was especially robust). There was a vigorous fervor of revivalist preaching, mostly from itinerant preachers. Denominations didn’t matter so much as the message, although I believe most of the people involved came out of the Methodist and Baptist traditions.

People were also fascinated by the supernatural then. It was the perfect time and place for Joseph Smith to thrive.

So please acknowledge the context. Don’t assume the 21st century religious landscape.
 
ComplineSanFran said:
As you might know, Joseph Smith was born and raised in the midst of the Second Great Awakening (and in NY the ‘burned over’ district), where it was especially robust). There was a vigorous fervor of revivalist preaching, mostly from itinerant preachers. Denominations didn’t matter so much as the message, although I believe most of the people involved came out of the Methodist and Baptist traditions.

People were also fascinated by the supernatural then. It was the perfect time and place for Joseph Smith to thrive.

So please acknowledge the context. Don’t assume the 21st century religious landscape.
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Yes, that was an interesting time.

It seems Joseph Smith’s timeline is a bit off:

utlm.org/onlinebooks/mclaims1.htm
 
Wannabe_Monk_16 said:
Which Protestant denomination was Joseph Smith before he started the LDS group?
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Methodist is probably the one that he came closest to any sort of formal belonging with, but he was also influenced pretty heavily by Congregationaists and by the general grouping of restorationists. There was a whole lot going on in upstate New York during the Second Great Awakening, and while he was a child, his family was caught up with the whole thing in general but didn’t settle all of them down on any one thing, and no particular church was chosen on his behalf. In the end, he rejected all of them.
 
ltwin said:
It is also well established that the Smiths were practitioners of religious folk magic. They were particularly avid supernatural treasure seekers (a theme that is reflected in how the Book of Mormon is said to have been re-discovered and translated).
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“religious folk magic” that phrase seems oxymoronic. Can you please explain?
 
Wannabe_Monk_16 said:
“religious folk magic” that phrase seems oxymoronic. Can you please explain?
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In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, John Bowker characterized “folk religion” as either “religion which occurs in small, local communities which does not adhere to the norms of large systems” or “the appropriation of religious beliefs and practices at a popular level.”

From this Wiki article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_religion
 
Wannabe_Monk_16 said:
Which Protestant denomination was Joseph Smith before he started the LDS group?
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His family were frontier American Christians, with a Bible in their home that would have been read as a family, regularly. I’ve never read anything that indicates the Smith family attended a formal church.

They also believed in American frontier folk magic. The Joseph Smiths Sr. and Jr. offered services to divine location of water for wells, and buried treasure. They paid attention to celestial signs, for when actions were provident or not. Smith carried a talisman in the form of a coin, his entire adult life. He believed in scrying with stones, and that is the recorded method he used to translate his claim to a buried treasure of golden plates that were guarded by a spirit, he called an angel.

As already mentioned the NY area where they lived was part of the burned over district, so called because of the heavy traffic of itinerant preachers and tent revivals. They lived along the newly constructed marvel…the Erie Canal. Which brought in people from all over, easily travelled, and a highway for the tent rivals.

Mormon history is that as a teen Joseph Jr. attended more than one of these revivals which prompted his praying as to which one he should join. In a private vision he was told to join none. But, he did join the Methodists, signing his name to their roles. That religious interest was short lived.

In the burnt over district he listened to Restorationist preachers who followed Alexander Campbell. Sydney Rigdon who was a Baptist minister turned Campbell Restortionist eventually joined up with Joseph Jr. Early teachings in Mormonism held more to a Baptist theology with Campbell Restorationism and Smith’s own stories of divine favor about himself, mixed in. Over time Smith’s teachings changed, as he added in things that interested him. Egyptian artifacts, Masonic rites, American folklore, Swedenborg stories, etc…and his own imagination and interpretation of scripture. Going so far as to rewrite the Bible to match his religious ideas, now known as Joseph Smith Translation.
 
Wannabe_Monk_16 said:
“religious folk magic” that phrase seems oxymoronic. Can you please explain?
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It’s religion heavily infused with superstition and magical beliefs. As has been mentioned, for the Smiths, this took the form of believing that they could find buried treasure through supernatural means such as seer stones.This belief actually makes it into the Book of Mormon. In LDS scripture, the “Urim and Thumim” (which are supposedly the same Urim and Thummim recorded in the Old Testament) are imagined to be and function as 19th-century seer stones.
 
Protestantism has always an incorrect theology. Based on the law of God.
 
Protestantism should be known for the reason that theology of it is absolutely and morally incorrect at all terms of the divine and cosmic infallibility of moral law.
 
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