The Joseph (F.) Smith Story

Abstract

Following the death of Lorenzo Snow in 1901, Joseph F. Smith was next in the line of prophetic successors. Joseph F. became the prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in autumn. He ramped up efforts to commemorate Joseph Smith’s birthday and especially to rehearse his first vision. In the turn-of-the-century crisis that threatened to undermine Mormonism, Joseph F. Smith’s selection, relation, and repetition of the story of his uncle’s first vision helped the saints navigate their way to a new narrative, one in which plural marriage could be relinquished without eroding the saints’ faith in revelations received by their prophets past or present.