Further Reading for Mormonism
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith by Fawn M. Brodle
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen
America in its formative years had its fair share of new religions and pretty much all of them were led by absolute madmen and lunatics. It has an awful lot in common with Scientology. The further out of the colonies that the religions originated, the more outlandish they became. The mountain people of Appalachia were dancing around with handfuls of venomous snakes, for example. But none of these religions gained the social and political foothold quite like the Church of Latter Day Saints, aka The Mormons.
Formed by con man and grave robber, Joseph Smith, in Western New York, Smith built a following by assuring rubes that a holy emissary of God had delivered to him the holy book of Mormon on a series of golden plates that only he could read by placing them at the bottom of a hat and revealing their secrets with holy seer stone relics. For any other man to see them would cause that man to literally explode. Somehow, a lot of people in the early days of Mormonism didn’t bother to question this. Over time, the belief system came to take on a lot of the mystical symbolism and practice found in Hermetic magic and Freemasonry and the Book of Mormon, itself, served as a sort of Bible 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Over time, The Mormons would make a real hassle out of themselves, move out West, go to war with the United States government, move to Mexico where compounds of American-born Mormons regularly get into shooting wars with drug cartels, and influence American politics in a way that has been a real bummer for gay couples looking to get married and enjoy the benefits of that union extended to straight couples.
Episodes: 378 – 385
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