Review
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Title: The King Follett Sermon: A Biography
Author: William V. Smith
Publisher: By Common Consent Press
Genre: Religious Non-Fiction/History
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: xii + 363
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781948218856
Price: USD $12.95
Reviewed by Sam Mitchell for the Association of Mormon Letters
If anything deserves to become a classic in modern Latter-day Saint historical studies, The King Follett Sermon: A Biography does. Tracing the earliest records of what is often considered the most famous discourse of Joseph Smith’s (hereafter JS), and certainly his best attested one, William V. Smith demonstrates the connections and intersections that the King Follett Sermon (hereafter KFS) had with several other important early Mormon doctrines, including Utah-era teachings on Adam-God and struggles to understand the dichotomy of “intelligence” and “spirit.” Above all, this work is a masterclass in close readings of a singular text, situating KFS in its original and received contexts.
King Follett Sermon consists of an introduction, four chapters, and several appendices (three of which are found online, as listed in the Table of Contents, at boap.org/LDS/KFS-Appendices). The “Introduction” (pp. 1–16) explains the scope of the project, as well as helpful definitions for various technical terms used in the book. Chapter One, “History and Prehistory: Early Mormonism—The 1830–1844 Textual Foundations of 1856” (pp, 17–99) describes KFS’s origins, including not only analyses of the sermon and its audits but also the theological foundations on which KFS is based. This chapter dissects each of the major themes of KFS, showing how they had appeared in JS’s thought and teachings prior to and following the April 7, 1844, sermon. Such themes include: a history of God’s own being; the status of the human soul in premortality; the notion of hell and final damnation; and child resurrection.
King Follett Sermon lives up to its secondary title—A Biography—as it traces the life of KFS through its various versions, noting the intersections of different copies and audits with one another and the ultimate impact that persons like Joseph F. Smith and B.H. Roberts had on KFS’s modern formation and reception. William V. Smith helpfully identifies and abbreviates each of these recensions, noted in Chapter One’s “1.6: King Follett Sermon Sources, Editions, Abbreviations, and Timeline” (pp. 83–97) and “1.7: Archetype, Text, and Intertextual Issues: An Imprint Stemma” (pp. 97–99). Smith notes that there are at least 23 recensions of KFS, including the original sermon delivered by JS.
Chapter Two, “Follett and the Ideological Landscape of Middle Mormonism, 1845–1890—Scribality, Re-Creation, and Polygamy” (pp. 101–146) discusses the reception, interpretations, and trajectory of KFS throughout the nineteenth century and in the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its intersections with the theological tenets of polygamy, Heavenly Mother, and Adam-God teachings are analyzed in particular. Chapter Three, “King Follett Collides with History, 1890–1926—Joseph F. Smith, B. H. Roberts, and Charles W. Penrose. Follett’s Third Textual Tradition. The 1912 Turn.” (pp. 147–225) pursues a similar emphasis on history and theology, noting especially the roles of Joseph F. Smith and B.H. Roberts on KFS’s doctrinal status in the Church. Appendix B, “Reference Material for Chapter 3” (301–334) includes a series of letters and writings that are among the primary sources for Chapter 3. The volume’s final chapter, “The Heritage of the 1909 Edition, 1926–1996 and the 1938 Turn—A Sermon of the Ages. An Epilogue of Mixed Meaning.” (pp. 227–267) observes the renewed acceptance of KFS in the Church, strengthened in part by Joseph Fielding Smith’s acceptance of KFS later in life (contra both his own earlier position, as well as that of his father, Joseph F. Smith, especially regarding the sermon’s doctrine of child resurrection).
In Appendix A, “A New Critical Text of the King Follett Sermon” (269–300), Smith offers “a version of the text of the Follett sermon set around the various independent witness texts, privileging the two first order aural audits of Bullock and Clayton … then the second order text of Woodruff … and the text of Willard Richards … with notes based on the more distant witnesses like Samuel Richards, George Laub, and others, as well as the final Grimshaw-generated pivot text that reflects the ‘common tradition'” (269). Though sometimes messy and a little hard to read (and understandably so, because it seeks to conglomerate these major sources into a single, coherent sermon), this “New Critical Text” is impressive, to say the least. It clearly shows both the similar and the different ways in which a single sermon can be received by various audiences.
I found myself fascinated by the rich ways in which KFS was informed by its surrounding context and how all of its major theological themes and ideas were fleshed out by JS both before and after April 7, 1844. KFS was not a novel discourse in the sense that it preached something new—no, as Smith points it, KFS was instead bringing together a variety of doctrines that JS had been teaching for some time.
Additionally, KFS’s connections to other distinctly Mormon teachings like spirit birth are explored and illuminated by Smith’s analysis. He traces not only JS’s thought but also its reception by other and later Church leaders. For instance, based on available data, JS taught that human “intelligences” were uncreated and were adopted by God in premortality out of His mercy. Later Church leaders would elaborate on a clothing of these intelligences in spiritual matter (i.e., “spirit birth”). Similarly, JS taught that those who had died as children on earth would be resurrected in child form, and would remain eternally so. Other Church leaders, especially Joseph F. Smith, would balk at this for a variety of reasons (many of which are explored by William V. Smith in his analysis) and would push back against JS’s original teachings, leading to something of a freeze on the utilization and usefulness of KFS in twentieth-century Latter-day Saint theology.
I was particularly surprised to learn from King Follett Sermon that an aspect of Latter-day Saint theology that I had always been taught—that human “intelligences” existed premortally, that they were birthed by a Heavenly Mother into spiritual bodies, and that those premortal spirits then dwelt with God in heaven—was a conglomeration and harmonization by B.H. Roberts of JS’s thought and latter Church leaders’ teachings. I had always realized that B.H. Roberts holds an important place in both Latter-day Saint history and thought, but I had never considered that something so familiar to me was so directly influenced by him.
King Follett Sermon is a rich book, one that in truth deserves many re-readings in order to absorb everything it has to offer. Not only should it be on the shelf of every student of Latter-day Saint theological history, but one also hopes it will offer a paradigm for future projects. Given the rich material that Smith has both incorporated into and uncovered from his study of KFS, one imagines that similar efforts could be made to any major (or even minor) sermon, talk, or speech given by Mormon personalities. King Follett Sermon offers a successful example of how one could engage in that kind of work—an endeavor that can only bring strengths to modern Latter-day Saint historical studies.