Oh How Lovely Was the Meeting

Camp-Meeting, that is — the one Joseph attended near Palmyra on a beautiful spring weekend in 1820. At least that's how D. Michael Quinn recounts the story in an article just posted at the Dialogue website, Joseph Smith's Experience of a Methodist Camp-Meeting in 1820. That title sounds rather pedestrian ... except for the fact that for close to forty years many historians have relied on the work of minister-researcher Wesley P. Walters to conclude that there was no such camp-meeting or revival near Joseph Smith's home in 1820. At the very least, Quinn's new paper will force a careful reassessment of Walters' work on this critical point.

Walters' work is readily accessible as chapter 2 of Inventing Mormonism, a book that was published in 1994 with H. Michael Marquardt as co-author (Walters having passed away in 1990). That chapter, entitled "The Palmyra Revival," states at page 32:

Contemporary evidence thus requires an 1824-25 date for the revival Smith describes in his 1838-39 official history. Certainly memory at times conflates events, and perhaps Smith in retrospect blended in his mind events from 1820 with a revival occurring four years later. But the problems caused by the dating discrepancy are fundamental ones.

As a result, LDS historians have been rather tentative in affirming the 1820 date for Joseph's First Vision. For example, Bushman writes, "Around 1820, the visions began, first of the Father and the Son ..." (Rough Stone Rolling, p. 35). In a later footnote, he adds, "Walters ... stirred a debate on the timing of the revivals. For the argument that revivals in 1824 were the background for Joseph's first vision, see Marquardt and Walters, Inventing Mormonism, 15-41. The rebuttal is in Backman, First Vision, 53-111." In another footnote, he gives additional detail:

The year of the First Vision is a matter of dispute. In his first written account, Joseph said he made his inquiry "in the 16th year of my age," which would be 1821. In 1838, he said it was the spring of 1820. William Smith gives Joseph's age as "about seventeen," placing the vision in 1823.

(fn 34 to chapter 2, citations omitted.) Plainly, the research Walters published casting serious doubt about any revival happening at or near Palmyra in 1820 has been given some weight by LDS historians -- and accepted as the final word on the question by most of those critical of Joseph Smith's canonized 1838-39 account.

Enter the new Quinn paper. He cites a variety of new sources showing that there was, in fact, such a revival in Palmyra in 1820, termed a "camp-meeting" in the sources of the day, and rehabilitates earlier research by Milton V. Backman to that effect. After reading the new paper, there is really very little doubt on that key point. Quinn goes so far as to nail down the start date to one of two weekends in late June 1820. He even quotes lyrics from revival hymns calculated to have a deep impact on young, inquisitive minds — hymns that would almost certainly have been sung by those at the camp-meeting in Palmyra.

But don't take my word for it. Go download the paper and enjoy 46 pages of newly-minted history. And 43 pages of footnotes.

Comments

[David J]

Dangit Dave, I hate it when you go and do this to me (us)! I used to like the idea that the "canonized" version of the First Vision had the wrong date on it, and that 1823 or 1824 made much more sense because A) Joseph would have been a bit older and more mature, thereby adding credibility to his claims of receiving visions, and B) less time between the event in the grove and the beginning of his ministry allows less room for him to re-think what happened in the grove. Alas, leave it to Quinn to dig up this latest. Gotta love him for that.

So, after skimming through this new article, I guess I'm back to the 1820 date (dangit!).

Dave, this is cool. Keep it coming.

[Doc]

I never understood what the whole hullabaloo was over the date anyway. Goes to show that the absence of evidence can't really be taken as evidence of absence. I know historians really want to be able to piece together the past and get excited when they think they have found a new revision, but how perfectly can we really create the past if we were not there? Sometimes even if we were. HIstory is a worthy study. We can certainly learn from the mistakes of the past, but I never understood what was to be gained about the assumed date of the revival being different from the 1838 account. And the point is ...

It seems like a lot of work for some pretty small minutia.

[J. Stapley]

Doc, I disagree. Walters, especially, used the discrepancy to (successfully in many circles) discredit Joseph's theophany. Quinn opens it right up to show that Walters was disingenuous at best with his evidence and outflanks the conservative scholars. I find it really quite significant.

[Doc]

J.,

Certainly I agree this shows Walters was disingenuous. Happily this is a good thing, and the fact that it was Michael Quinn who discovered it certainly bolsters its credibility in academic circles. I just wonder which circles did this argument stand for so long as convincing.

I would think a "neutral" party might have realized the argument did not "prove" anything when it was first made. I don't understand why this was ever considered "proof" in the first place.

Admittedly, I am not extremely well read on the this, but it seems to me that Walters argued that because the major revival he referred to was in 1823-24 that therefore everything Joseph said had to be a low down dirty lie. I don't understand that logic. I guess it works if you are predisposed to believe everything Joseph said was a lie, but academically and objectively it really does not seem to me to prove anything one way or the other.

[Bradley Ross]

Reading between the lines of Quinn's article, I seemed to sense some hostility toward Bushman's work. (Hostility is too strong a word, but I can't think of a softer one just now.) The quotes Quinn chose to use from Bushman seem calculated to make him look inept. The Bushman quotes Dave selected above cast him in a much more favorable light.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Quinn's writing. Is it normal to cite authorship of a book with quotes? Bushman "with"
Woodworth (see notes 199 and 217). Does Quinn think Bushman cheated Jed Woodworth by not listing him as a full co-author? Maybe the "with" is a normal practice that I just hadn't noticed before.

[Dave]

Bradley, Bushman actually went out of his way to give Woodworth credit for his research and editing assistance. I think Quinn was doing the same thing, expressly acknowledging Woodworth's role in doing the research and footnotes.