Monday, May. 20, 1985
Challenging Mormonism's Roots
By Richard N. Ostling. Report ed by Christine Arrington/Salt Lake City
'It's an incredible crisis of faith for me," says Mormon Klaus Hansen, who teaches at Queen's University in Ontario. "It means our historical foundation becomes a nice story that has no connection to reality." To Denise Olsen, a law student and mother of three in Bountiful, Utah, "it's another evidence to me that things have gone awry in the church." A devout Mormon couple in Whittier, Calif., in a letter to friends explaining why they have left the church, say new revelations about the Mormons' founding prophet have destroyed their belief.
These reactions stem from the discovery and authentication of a puzzling 1830 letter that is a much discussed, contentious issue in Mormon circles. The 637-word document contains one of the earliest accounts of Joseph Smith's finding of the Book of Mormon, the scripture that has equal authority with the Bible for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (world membership: 5.4 million).
The official Church News of Salt Lake City published the letter last month. It was written by Martin Harris, a farmer who lived near Palmyra, N.Y. Harris was Smith's first convert outside the prophet's family. Addressed to a Canandaigua, N.Y., newspaper editor who later joined the sect, the document describes a version of the foundations of Mormonism that differs markedly from the official account written by Smith in 1838. The letter, discovered in 1983 | and donated to the church last month by a Utah businessman, depicts Smith as a man influenced by folk magic and occultism. This appears to contradict the official church position, which regards Mormonism as a uniquely pure restoration of Christianity. After the letter was described by Professors Dean Jessee and Ronald Walker of Brigham Young University at a historians' convention this month, scholars discussed it heatedly for hours. It is "a potentially explosive document," says Researcher Brent Metcalfe, who spent a year studying the letter.
The Mormons teach that God and Jesus Christ directly commissioned Smith to disseminate divine scriptures, inscribed on plates of gold that had been buried by ancient Israelites who had migrated to America. According to Smith's 1838 account of the momentous event, the angel Moroni showed him the site outside Palmyra where the plates were hidden. Harris is one of the Mormon Church's "Three Witnesses," who attest that they too saw the plates, so his truthfulness is also a matter of faith. The Harris letter, dated seven months after the publication of the Book of Mormon, recounts what he says are Smith's words about the scriptural discovery: "I . . . only just got it because of the enchantment," says Smith. "An old spirit," declares Smith, told him to "dig up the gold," but "when I take it up the next morning the spirit transfigured himself from a white salamander in the bottom of the hole & struck me 3 times." There is no reference to any angel from God. The Harris letter mentions Smith's involvement in "money digging," using his supposed special powers and a "seer stone" to find buried treasure. The letter also suggests that Smith used a magical stone to find the buried scriptures.
Coincidentally, money digging is the subject of a second controversial Mormon letter that surfaced last week. The missive, written by Smith in 1825, was released by Gordon Hinckley, acting president of the Latter-day Saints, who had previously denied church ownership of the document. This letter, addressed to a prospective treasure-seeking client, discusses the foiling of a "clever spirit" who guards the buried treasure. The church offered no explanation for withholding news of the earliest extant document written by Smith, and said its content "does not appear unusual in the context of the times."
As for the Harris letter, Hinckley views it only as "an interesting document." Even if it is genuine, he says, "the letter has nothing to do < with the authenticity of the church." Despite last week's tremors of concern, Mormons are likely to accept this interpretation.
Nonetheless, Jan Shipps, the leading non-Mormon historian of the Latter-day Saints and author of Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, is convinced that the Harris letter will have considerable and continuing impact. "It forces the church hierarchy and the Mormon in the street to confront the fact that the Mormon story as they believe it is not the way it was," says Shipps. "It proves that magic and occult practices were present at the outset of this important religious movement."