Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious and political leader and the founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. Publishing the Book of Mormon at the age of 24, Smith attracted tens of thousands of followers by the time of his death fourteen years later.
The religious movement he founded is followed by millions of global adherents and several churches, the largest of which is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s.
Collectively, these churches have almost 18 million nominal members, including over 17 million belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), 250,000 in Community of Christ, and several other denominations with memberships generally ranging in the thousands of members. The predominant theology of the churches in the movement is Mormonism, which sees itself as restoring again on Earth the early Christian church; their members are most commonly known as Mormons. An additional doctrine of the church allows for prophets to receive and publish modern-day revelations.
A visionary, defined broadly, is one who can envision the future. For some groups, visioning can involve the supernatural.
Though visionaries may face accusations of hallucinating,people may succeed in reaching a visionary state via meditation,lucid dreams, daydreams, or art. One example of a visionary is Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century artist and Catholic saint. Other visionaries in religion include St Bernadette (1844-1879) and Joseph Smith (1805-1844), said to have had visions of and to have communed with the Blessed Virgin and the Angel Moroni, respectively. There is also the case of the Targum Jonathan, which was produced in antiquity and served as the targum to the Nevi'im. It described the significance of the turban or a diadem to indicate a capability on the part of Jewish priests to become agents of visionary experience.
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the Second Great Awakening. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several groups following different leaders; the majority followed Brigham Young, while smaller groups followed Sidney Rigdon and James Strang. Many who did not follow Young eventually merged into the Community of Christ, led by Smith’s son, Joseph Smith III. The term Mormon typically refers to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the largest branch, which followed Brigham Young. People who identify as Mormons may also be independently religious, secular, and non-practicing or belong to other denominations.
Since 2018, the LDS Church has expressed the desire that its followers be referred to as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or just members, if the identity of the church is made clear previously in the context, as the term Mormon can be considered offensive by the community.
The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.
The book is one of the earliest and most well-known unique writings of the Latter Day Saint movement. The denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement typically regard the text primarily as scripture (sometimes as one of four standard works) and secondarily as a record of God's dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas. Most Latter Day Saints view the book as a record of actual history, though perspectives vary by denomination: some emphasize its spiritual inspiration rather than literal history, while others—particularly the LDS Church—regard it as both literal history and the central "keystone" of their faith. Independent archaeological, historical, and scientific communities have discovered little evidence to support the existence of the civilizations described therein. Characteristics of the language and content point toward a nineteenth-century origin of the Book of Mormon. Various academics and apologetic organizations connected to the Latter Day Saint movement nevertheless argue that the book is an authentic account of the pre–Columbian exchange world.
Mormonism is the theology and religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of the Latter Day Saint movement, although since 2018 there has been a push from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to distance itself from this label.
A prominent feature of Mormon theology is the Book of Mormon, a 19th-century text which describes itself as a chronicle of early Indigenous peoples of the Americas and their dealings with God. Mormon theology includes mainstream Christian beliefs with modifications stemming from belief in revelations to Smith and other religious leaders. This includes the use of and belief in the Bible and other religious texts, including the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Mormonism includes significant doctrines of eternal marriage, eternal progression, baptism for the dead, sexual purity, health, fasting, Sabbath observance, and formerly, plural marriage.
Independence is a city mostly in and one of two county seats of Jackson County, Missouri, United States. It is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area. In 2020, it had a total population of 123,011, making it the fifth-most populous city in Missouri. A small part of the city extends into Clay County.
Independence is known as the "Queen City of the Trails" because it was a point of departure for the California, Oregon, and Santa Fe Trails. It is the hometown of U.S. President Harry S. Truman, with the Truman Presidential Library and Museum, and the gravesites of Truman and First Lady Bess Truman. The city is sacred to the Latter Day Saint movement, as the home of Joseph Smith's 1831 Temple Lot, and the headquarters of several Mormon denominations.
The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), also known as Latter-day Saints, who migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the Midwest to the Salt Lake Valley in what is today the U.S. state of Utah. At the time of the planning of the exodus in 1846, the territory comprising present-day Utah was part of the Republic of Mexico, with which the U.S. soon went to war over a border dispute left unresolved after the annexation of Texas. The Salt Lake Valley became American territory as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war.
The journey was taken by about 70,000 people, beginning with advance parties sent out by church leaders in March 1846 after the 1844 death of the church's leader Joseph Smith made it clear that the group could not remain in Nauvoo, Illinois—which the church had recently purchased, improved, renamed, and developed, because of the Missouri Mormon War, setting off the Illinois Mormon War. The well-organized wagon train migration began in earnest in April 1847, and the period (including the flight from Missouri in 1838 to Nauvoo), known as the Mormon Exodus is, by convention among social scientists, traditionally assumed to have ended with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. Not everyone could afford to transport a family by railroad, and the transcontinental railroad network only serviced limited main routes, so wagon train migrations to the Far West continued sporadically until the 20th century.
In orthodox Mormonism, the term God generally refers to the biblical God the Father, whom Latter Day Saints also refer to as Elohim or Heavenly Father, while the term Godhead refers to a council of three distinct divine persons consisting of God the Father, Jesus (his firstborn Son, whom Latter-day Saints refer to as Jehovah), and the Holy Ghost. However, in Latter Day Saint theology the term "God" may also refer to, in some contexts, the Godhead as a whole or to each member individually.
Latter-day Saints believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three distinct beings, that the Father and Jesus have perfected, glorified, physical bodies, and that the Holy Ghost is a spirit without a physical body. Latter-day Saints also believe that there are other gods and goddesses outside the Godhead, such as a Heavenly Mother—who is married to God the Father—and that faithful Latter-day Saints may attain godhood in the afterlife. The term Heavenly Parents is used to refer collectively to the divine partnership of Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. Joseph Smith taught that God was once a man on another planet before being exalted to Godhood.
Community of Christ, known legally and from 1872 to 2001 as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), is an American-based international church, and is the second-largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement. The church reports approximately 250,000 members in 1,100 congregations in 59 countries. The church traces its origins to Joseph Smith's establishment of the Church of Christ on April 6, 1830. His eldest son, Joseph Smith III, formally accepted leadership of the church on April 6, 1860, in the aftermath of the 1844 death of Joseph Smith.
Community of Christ is a Restorationist faith expression. Still, various practices and beliefs are congruent with mainline Protestant Christianity. While it generally rejects the term Mormon to describe its members, the church abides by a number of theological distinctions unusual outside Mormonism, including but not limited to: ongoing prophetic leadership, a priesthood polity, the use of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants as scripture, belief in the cause of Zion, the building of temples, and an interpretation of the Word of Wisdom. In many respects, the church differs from the larger Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and most other Latter Day Saint denominations in its religious liberalism, belief in a more traditional conception of the trinity (as opposed to a godhead of three separate and distinct beings), and rejection of exaltation and the plan of salvation. Salvation is considered a personal matter and not subject to dogma, but salvation by grace alone is emphasized. The church considers itself to be non-creedal and accepts people with a wide range of beliefs. Church teachings emphasize that "all are called" as "persons of worth" to "share the peace of Christ".