Lucifer's Lantern

 This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a historical excerpt and some brief context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding.  -The full series can be found  here - The article titled “Fanaticism” was published on February 11, 1831, in the United States Gazette , a Philadelphia paper with national circulation. It reprints material from the Painesville Gazette , reflecting local reports from northeastern Ohio rather than direct investigation by the Gazette itself. The author is unnamed, consistent with early-19th-century newspaper practice, and the tone reflects mainstream Protestant skepticism toward emerging religious movements. The piece focuses on Kirtland and nearby areas in Geauga and Cuyahoga counties at a very early stage in Mormon development, less than a year after the Book of Mormon’s publica...

  This article appeared in 1904, during the height of national scrutiny surrounding the LDS Church and the U.S. Senate investigation into whether Apostle Reed Smoot should be seated as a senator. At the center of that inquiry were questions the public had debated for decades but rarely heard addressed in sworn testimony.  What actually happened inside the Endowment House ?  What oaths were required?  Do the oaths conflict with civic loyalty, democratic norms, and basic transparency? The reporting below relies on testimony given under oath to the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections and presents the claims exactly as they were reported to a national audience. This was not written as theology or internal instruction. It was written as political journalism, aimed at informing a non-Mormon public that largely had no access to temple ceremonies and relied on secondhand descriptions. THE WASHINGTON TIMES DECEMBER 14, 1904 MORMONS TAKING OATHS OF ENDOWMENT HOUS...

 This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a historical excerpt and some brief context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding.  -The full series can be found here - In 1831 Alexander Campbell published An Analysis of the Book of Mormon , one of the earliest full-length critiques of Joseph Smith’s new scripture. The piece first appeared as a review in Campbell’s periodical The Millennial Harbinger and was republished the following year, in 1832, as a standalone pamphlet for wider circulation. Campbell was a prominent religious leader and editor, and he approached the Book of Mormon as a text that needed to be tested, line by line, against the Bible it claimed to supplement. Unlike satirical responses such as Abner Cole’s Book of Pukei , Campbell did not parody Mormonism. He treated it as a serious theologica...

This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a historical excerpt and some quick context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding. Part 1 can be read here In 1830 a man by the name of Abner Cole published a criticism of Joseph Smith called the Book of Pukei in the Palmyra Reflector, published under the name "Obadiah Dogberry Esquire".   Cole had access to Grandin’s print shop and saw early pages of the Book of Mormon before the public did. His reaction took the form of a mock scripture that rewrote Joseph Smith’s story into a  joke. That choice wasn’t random. He was simply recounting the events surrounding Joseph smith in a pseudobiblical style, Cole shows us that he likely recognized the Book of Mormon as part of that same genre. Events Parodied in The Book of Pukei     1. Angel Moroni – Cole rewr...

This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a real historical excerpt and some quick context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding. For this first article, we are going to look at one of the first known in-depth public criticisms of the Book of Mormon, which appeared before the book itself was publicly available.  On February 20, 1830, Cornelius Camden Blatchley, a New York physician and writer known for his skeptical views on organized religion, published an article titled “Caution Against the Golden Bible” in the New-York Telescope . Written only weeks before the Book of Mormon’s official release in March of that year. Most of his arguments are still being used to this day. The Complaints Presented by Blatchley He specifies reading the Title page as well as   pages 353–368 of the original Book of Morm...