I believe the disconnect can damage young Latter-day Saints who learn later in life they have not been given the whole story on Church history. What are the benefits and drawbacks of your approach—and what would you say to a Church member whose faith has been jarred by the disconnect between what s/he learned about Joseph Smith in Sunday School and what s/he learned from reading your book? Covering up errors makes no sense in any case.” This is, obviously, not the approach of official, correlated Church history. What I can do is to look frankly at all sides of Joseph Smith, facing up to his mistakes and flaws. (1) By way of prefacing the book you write: “For a character as controversial as Smith, pure objectivity is impossible.
His straightforward style might be a little jarring to those used to sanitized Church history, but this book is and will be the benchmark biography of the founding prophet for a long time. He is, by Bushman’s portrait, a flawed man—one making many mistakes and subject to many weaknesses. But Joseph Smith, in this book, is not a majestic, triumphant, haloed, barely-mortal dispensation head. His reading of Joseph’s use of seer stones, of his troubled relationship with his financially unsuccessful father, of the Book of Mormon’s countercultural take on Native Americans, and of the changing place of women and blacks in unfolding LDS theology are gems. Bushman does an able, if not artful, job of telling the prophet’s story.
Rough Stone Rolling is the definitive biography of Joseph Smith for this generation. Richard Bushman was gracious enough to respond to twelve questions about Rough Stone Rolling.īut first, here’s my very brief review of RSR for the general reader:
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