Our Whole Strength

In the information age, growing awareness of Joseph Smith’s first vision accounts and the findings of the New Mormon History disrupted the collective Mormon memory of Smith’s vision. Of the saints who learned of the newly selected and related knowledge, many dismissed or disregarded it. But many experienced dissonance that led to deeper investigation. Some successfully incorporated new knowledge and consolidated a more complex but still orthodox memory. For others, however, a high degree of unresolved dissonance eroded their faith. They could no longer believe that Joseph Smith experienced a vision, but because it had become the seminal event underpinning their faith, they could agree with Gordon B. Hinckley that it either occurred or it did not, and if it did not, the faith was a fraud.