New Light

Abstract

As the number of Mormon converts pushed toward two million in the 1960s, Presbyterian minister Wesley Walters was not able to keep them from becoming Latter-day Saints. But he forced all serious scholars of Mormon history to reconsider the reliability of Joseph Smith’s first vision story with his novel research method and findings. Walters made the case that historical evidence disproved any sizeable revival in Joseph Smith’s vicinity in 1820, and therefore that Smith made up his story later, situating it in the context of a well-documented 1824 revival. Walters’s argument was later criticized for its fallacies of irrelevant proof negative proof, but it caused consternation among Latter-day Saint scholars at the time.