How Joseph Smith’s Preaching Remained in Evidence

Joseph Smith’s preaching largely disappeared after it was spoken. His preaching was extempore with very few exceptions and among the earliest Latter-day Saints, preaching was considered to be of ephemeral value—good for the moment but not for preservation. Partly at least this attitude reflected the position that the direct voice of God in the form of written revelations was available when needed. These revelations dictated by Smith were preserved, if not in their first form, at least when put to print. These revelations in the first few years of Mormonism were held in permanent esteem by the Saints, in contrast to the aural events of Sunday sermons. Since those sermons were almost never composed in writing beforehand, they usually left no mark for later generations. This value system began to change by the middle 1830s when Smith’s teachings from the pulpit began to be written, at least in short summaries. But those notes rarely made it to print form with wide distribution. The wheel of value had turned by the 1840s, when Smith’s preaching was reported and printed with increasing frequency. In important ways, his preaching became the voice of God, not for the moment, but for preserved regulation and indoctrination.[1]

It was not until a decade after Joseph Smith’s death that attempts were made to recover his sermons. The methodology varied but generally, the tactics were based on several rules.

1. If only one source was in hand, edits were performed to smooth text and make it appear that expressions were logical and more or less true to the available source, quoting in full any suggested scriptural sources for example.
2. Sermon expressions should not contradict current teachings. If they did, or if they distracted from current emphasis, the editorial pen was wielded and modifications were made or complete sermons were omitted.
3. If more than one source existed, official reports (if any) and reports of high church authority figures should take precedence. The methodology was usually to interleave these sources to form as long a form as possible even if the result was repetitive.

Some sermons had more robust source material than others but with widely varying characters. Some were clear attempts to generate longhand verbatim accounts (called aural audits). These were not verbatim reports by any means, but if several exist it is possible to generate a text where some sentences or phrases or words have a high probability of corresponding to the archetype (the original words). Classifying surviving audits has a number of aspects. One may ask, was the audit composed on the spot (first order)? Was the audit, if composed during the event, an attempt to repeat the words of the archetype (aural audit) or did it only attempt to convey various thoughts without strict attention to actual spoken words (content audit). Was the audit composed by the auditor from his/her first order text but editing the result for various reasons (second order content audit) such as expanding brief notes to much longer text (technically this would include shorthand transcriptions but that issue does not arise with Smith’s sermons)?

One would think that higher order audits are less desirable than first order, and aural audits are more desirable than content audits. Unfortunately, the boundaries here are not always sharp. An aural audit is rarely pure, that is, it may involve quick summations at some points, for example. A second order audit may be more helpful in understanding the cultural work being attempted by the speaker. Intent, a naturally fuzzy concept, is fraught, even if left as an intuitive concept. Joseph Smith occasionally scraped a first order audit by a secretary in favor of editing the content himself after the fact. At times he threw out the effort and started from scratch, then still was not satisfied. Those were rare events however.

After an acceptable version was generated, it almost always became a part of the in progress “History of Joseph Smith” or as it has been commonly known, the manuscript history of the church–the history that includes the canonical versions of the origin stories we are all familiar with (though they were edited later on). Early parts of the history was created under Joseph Smith’s eye, but most was done by clerks and secretaries or church historians in Utah (mid 1850s).

Next time, more details on sermon construction.

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[1] For a more detailed version, see William V. Smith, “Joseph Smith’s Sermons and the Early Mormon Documentary Record,” in Foundational Texts of Mormonism, eds., Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, Sharalyn D. Howcroft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 190–230.