Richard Bushman’s Three-Stage Model

When posting something attributed to someone like this please include a link to the source. Is this something Bushman said in a recent presentation? Something in a book? On a podcast? Using the quote feature is also helpful.

Here’s a secondary quotation via Stephen Harper to Bushman saying the closer you get to original sources, the stronger JS becomes.

https://youtu.be/wPJBOooxSeE

Bushman also said that the closer you get to original sources, the stronger Joseph Smith becomes.

That’s certainly one outcome. For me, reading Rough Stone Rolling had the effect of humanizing Joseph Smith. So much of the official church narratives have the aim of mythologizing him, so it was refreshing to see a Smith that was more grounded in reality.

My lasting impression of Smith after reading RSR was that he was a lot like a little kid with a vivid imagination that was trying to build a clubhouse but then got in way over his head.

1. Everything about the Church is hunky dory.

2. Encounter troubling warts about the Church.

3. Stay long enough to study longer, Church’s position is strengthened again.

I think that this is an interpretation of what RB said when he talked about the “stronger Joseph Smith becomes.”

If there is a source where RB presents this 3 stage model then please cite.

RB is a historian and I believe that he is able to compartmentalize his professional historical work from his faith. I also believe that RB is able to see his faith through an anthropologist lens and recognize value even if it might not be tied to some eternal and unchanging truth.

I also think that RB does feel that attacks against JS and the church sometimes make very simplistic connections in an attempt to discredit. The truth is somewhere in the middle. JS is not as saintly as the church wants him to be nor as devilish as the detractors want him to be. JS is a fascinating and larger than life character that refuses to fit neatly into our boxes. I suppose, in a way, that does make him “stronger.” Strong as in potent? … an acquired taste perhaps?

1. Everything about the Church is hunky dory.

2. Encounter troubling warts about the Church.

3. Stay long enough to study longer, Church’s position is strengthened again.

I think that this is an interpretation of what RB said when he talked about the “stronger Joseph Smith becomes.”

If there is a source where RB presents this 3 stage model then please cite.

This is also what I’m looking for. As stated above, I do respect Bushman and I have read other stuff he has written. I’d love to meet him and chat. At the same time I don’t think it’s fair to put words in his mouth (or anyone else’s). If he outright said those three things, great – but I need to see it (no, I’m not from Missouri). If not, your interpretation is fine but it needs to be cited as your interpretation (preferably with why/how you interpret it that way). if it’s someone else’s interpretation of something, it should be cited that way (Elder so-and-so says….).

As a side point here, I think most of us here are usually in more of a TL;DR mode most of the time. I admit that I usually don’t read long posts and don’t reply to them (if I have replied to a long post it means I did have time and the will to read it). That said, I’m usually not in the mode of listening to a 40 minute podcast or Youtube video to find the a reference to something posted. For me, “here’s a link to where so-and-so said such-and-such” without a direct quote (or at least a reference to where in the link it’s found) is fairly useless because I’m probably not going to go on the hunt.

I thought it was universally known.

I don’t think we can assume anything is “universally known,” especially here (we tend not to “know” much here ).

Richard Bushman has talked about faith crisis with remarkable insight and clarity on what those in FC experience. This is an oldie but goodie (not to be confused with goodly, but it could be goodly) and is a favorite of mine: https://dan-christiansen.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html” class=”bbcode_url”>https://dan-christiansen.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

I don’t think this talk poo-poos your number three, but I don’t think it fully supports it either.

At this point, these questioners go off in various directions. Some give up on the Church entirely. They find another religion or, more likely these days, abandon religion altogether. Without their familiar Mormon God, they are not sure there is any God at all. They become atheist or agnostic. Some feel the restrictions they grew up with no longer apply. The strength has been drained out of tithing, the Word of Wisdom, and chastity. They partly welcome the new freedom of their agnostic condition. Now they can do anything they please without fear of breaking the old Mormon rules. The results may not be happy for them or their families.

Others piece together a morality and a spiritual attitude that stops them from declining morally, but they are not in an easy place. When they go to church, , they are not comfortable. Sunday School classes and Sacrament meeting talks about Joseph Smith and the early church no longer ring true. How can these people believe these “fairy tales,” the inquirers ask. Those who have absorbed doses of negative material live in two minds: their old church mind which now seems naive and credulous, and their new enlightened mind with its forbidden knowledge learned on the Internet and from critical books.

A bit later in the talk Bushman says:

Those are the words of someone who has lost belief in many of the fundamentals and is working out a new relationship to the Church. Other shaken individuals recover their belief in the basic principles and events but are never quite the same as before. Their knowledge, although no longer toxic, gives them a new perspective. They tend to be more philosophic and less dogmatic about all the stories they once enjoyed. Here are some of the characteristics of people who have passed through this ordeal but managed to revive most of their old beliefs.

1. They often say they learned the Prophet was human. They don’t expect him to be a model of perfect deportment as they once thought. He may have taken a glass of wine from time to time, or scolded his associates, or even have made business errors. They see his virtues and believe in his revelations but don’t expect perfection.

2. They also don’t believe he was led by revelation in every detail. They see him as learning gradually to be a prophet and having to feel his way at times like most Church members. In between the revelations, he was left to himself to work out the methods of complying with the Lord’s commandments. Sometimes he had to experiment until he found the right way.

3. These newly revived Latter-day Saints also develop a more philosophical attitude toward history. They come to see (like professional historians) that facts can have many interpretations. Negative facts are not necessarily as damning as they appear at first sight. Put in another context along side other facts, they do not necessarily destroy Joseph Smith’s reputation.

4. Revived Latter-day Saints focus on the good things they derive from their faith–the community of believers, the comforts of the Holy Spirit, the orientation toward the large questions of life, contact with God, moral discipline, and many others. They don’t want to abandon these good things. Starting from that point of desired belief, they are willing to give Joseph Smith and the doctrine a favorable hearing. They may not be absolutely certain about every item, but they are inclined to see the good and the true in the Church.

(I think most of us who have “Stay[ed]LDS” can relate to this last quote.)

Bushman also said that the closer you get to original sources, the stronger Joseph Smith becomes.

That’s certainly one outcome. For me, reading Rough Stone Rolling had the effect of humanizing Joseph Smith. So much of the official church narratives have the aim of mythologizing him, so it was refreshing to see a Smith that was more grounded in reality.

My lasting impression of Smith after reading RSR was that he was a lot like a little kid with a vivid imagination that was trying to build a clubhouse but then got in way over his head.

I had even more original sources in mind when I read that quote.

For example, for afar, Joseph Smith looks like a sex maniac. Read the accounts of his wives, and it appears less so.

I first learned of Joseph Smith’s polygamy as a teenager when I read it in a book in the local library called The Mormon Experience. I thought it was an anti-Mormon book so I didn’t keep reading. Then one day, I saw the ward librarian with the book, and when I asked her about it, she said it was actually commissioned by the Church.

Anyway, I knew of JS’s faults before reading RSR, but it still had an impact reading about the gorey details. On the other hand, I had read a lot of apologetic material about the Book of Mormon, ancient studies, etc. and learning more about JS’s origins made it seem even more implausible that he made it all up.

For all its details on other subjects, RSR treats the subject of polygamy very lightly.

Like I said earlier, it’s one path/outcome, not the path/outcome. It almost feels as though the argument being put forward is that if one were to study things more then they’d reach a specific conclusion.