“Mormonism, it must be remembered, began with one family, the family of Joseph Smith, Sr., and Lucy Mack Smith of Vermont and New York.”  -Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pg.3

“…three of the six original witnesses were Smith’s, just as previously three of the eight witnesses to the golden plates were family members.”

“Young Joseph Smith’s culture was predominately family culture. So far as the record shows, he had little schooling until he was past twenty.”

“Nor is there a record of church attendance until religious excitement stirred the neighborhood in his early teens. As a boy Joseph was entirely under the influence of his family and a small circle of acquaintances in the villages of Palmyra and Manchester, New York.” -Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pg. 4

What was the Smith family culture?

Joseph Smith, Sr.

Joseph Smith Sr. had an “ingrained aversion to evangelical religion” and “hovered in the margins of the church.” Instead he embraced witchcraft and the powers of darkness. He did not belong to, or attend a church. He did own occult objects. He cast spells, invoked demons, and encouraged his children to do likewise.

“Lucy’s only explicit reservation about her husband was his diffidence about religion. After his brief flirtation with Universalism in 1797, Joseph, Sr. hovered on the margins of the church.” -Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pg. 36

“While she was searching for direction, Lucy attended Methodist meetings in Tunbridge, and Joseph(Sr.) obligingly accompanied her. The news of this activity angered Joseph’s father and brother Jess, who pressed Joseph to stop. Lucy reported that one day Asael came to the door “and threw Tom Paine’s Age of Reason into the house and angrily bade him read it until he believed it.” -Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pg. 38

“What he could not embrace was the institutional religion of his time.” -Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pg. 39

“Martin Harris, Orrin Porter Rockwell, Josiah Stowell participated in money-digging and the witch craft that went hand in hand with the practice. Joseph Smith, Jr., his father, Alvah Beaman, were rodsman-i.e., someone who uses a divining rod to find things”-Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, pg.39

“His parents admonished Joseph to be rigorously obedient to the messenger’s instructions, just as exact compliance with prescribed rituals was required for successful money digging.” -Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling, pg.54

“Joseph Smith Sr. was not fully adequate. He was a gentle, disappointed man with an inclination to compensate for his failures with magic and drink.”  -Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling, pg.54

 “Joseph (Jr.) requested the priviledge of looking into the stone, which he did by putting his face into a hat where the stone was. It proved to be not the right stone for him, but he could see some things, and among them, he saw the stone, where it was, in which he wished to see.” Interview with Joseph Smith Sr. Historical Magazine 7, May 1870, 305-306

In magic and drink Joseph Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps.

Lucy Mack Smith

Lucy taught her children. She could not tell the difference between the Spirit of God and the powers of darkness. She ignored or was ignorant of God’s total rebuke of witchcraft and divination.

“Yet her husbands ingrained aversion to evangelical religion and the churches confirmed her own skepticism and alienation. She hovered on the edge of respectable religion, attracted and repelled at the same time.” Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, pg. 39

“Lucy Mack Smith practiced “palmistry, card-divination, and tea leaf reading as late as 1880’s.” -Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, pg. 294-295

“For people of a magical frame of mind, Moroni sounded like one of the spirits who stood guard over treasure in the tales of treasure seeking.85 The similarities may even have made the extraordinary story more credible in the Smith family. Lucy recognized the crossover in prefacing her narrative of the plates with the caution against thinking

“That we stopt our labors and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrae drawing Magic circles or soothsaying to the neglect of all kinds of business we never during our lives suffered one important interest to swallow up every other obligation but whilst we worked with our hands we endeavored to remember the service of & welfare of our souls.”

Lucy’s point was that the Smith’s were not lazy-they had not stopped their labor to practice magic- but she showed her knowledge of formulas and rituals and associated them with “the welfare of their souls. Magic and religion melded in the Smith family culture.”- Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling, pg.51