![]() ![]() ![]() South Park, Broadway, and Mitt Romney have kept him in the mix. ![]() Still, a New York Times survey a decade ago found that a solid half of Americans knew that Joseph Smith was a “Mormon,” pretty good name recognition for a prophet with a forgettable name. Indeed, putting historians aside, non-Mormon Americans have pegged Smith as a charlatan, scoundrel, and heretic. Bushman’s fellow historians and scholars of religion couldn’t see in him any “prophetic qualities or even flashes of genius.” What could they see? A “phenomenon … an outlier or a horrible example.” What about the other 99.98% of human beings? “No one outside of the Mormons is taking Joseph Smith seriously,” lamented Richard Bushman in the wake of his landmark biography. Oseph Smith may not be a name that matters to you, but he matters a great deal to the sixteen million claimed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ![]()
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