Joseph Smith

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Mormon Millionaire Planning Massive Utopia in Vermont

David Hall's vision is the same as one Joseph Smith had in 1833

(Newser) - “Lots of things he did were stupid, but in my view, he was a sage or a seer and didn’t even understand what came to him.” So says wealthy Mormon David Hall about Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church. Bloomberg has a fascinating deep dive...

Mormon Church Reveals Its 'Seer Stone'

Church says it was used to translate sacred text

(Newser) - To most people, it just looks like a smooth, egg-sized rock, but it was part of the founding of the Mormon church and photos of it have now been published for the first time. The images of the "seer stone" that Mormons believe founder Joseph Smith used to translate...

Mormon Church Admits Founder Had Up to 40 Wives

Joseph Smith took his additional wives reluctantly, per a church essay

(Newser) - The Mormon church's big revelations didn't stop with its sacred undergarments : In an online essay titled "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo," the church for the first time declares that founder Joseph Smith was a polygamist, with a footnote stating that "careful estimates" put his...

Archaeologists Seek Home of Mormon Founder's Father

Illinois dig unearths 10K years of history

(Newser) - Archaeologists in Nauvoo, Ill., are searching for a key site in the history of America's biggest homegrown religion. Over the last few years, some 10,000 items—including buttons, window glass, and bits of pottery—have been found by a team trying to find the former home of the...

Park Romney: Mormonism Is a Fraud

Mitt's cousin, former high priest, has left their religion

(Newser) - Not all Romneys are as enamored of Mormonism as Mitt. Take Park Romney, Mitt's cousin. He used to be a Mormon high priest, but finally left the religion. "I became convinced that it's a fraud," he tells the BBC . He doubts many aspects of the religion,...

Glenn Beck's Mormonism Is the Apocalyptic Kind

Ties to radical mid-century LDS thought could sully Romney 2012

(Newser) - Most of the media has been understandably wary of tying Glenn Beck’s Mormonism to his jeremiad against President Obama and the enemies of freedom, Adam Reilly writes. And yet, Beck is a clear inheritor of a particular strain of mid-century Mormon political ideology that espoused virulent anti-communism and the...

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