Joseph Smith

Today marks the two hundredth birthday anniversary of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church). As noted in earlier posts, Mormonism has gained great recognition in recent years, due to its rapid growth and promise of spiritual stability. It could gain more recognition if Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney - not seeking a second term - plans to run for President of the United States in 2008 to become our first LDS Commander-in-Chief (a distinction his father George unsuccessfully sought).

Church president Gordon Hinckley has noted how Smith was able to get only five followers and print a mere five thousand copies of the Book of Mormon when he founded the church on April 6, 1830, and it has since become a church of twelve million members in over a hundred countries. Hinckley, of course, isn't about to note the irony of the church's evolution - that is, starting out with a couple of young Turks (Smith was in his twenties in 1830) who had radical ideas about Christianity and Jesus's principles, the LDS Church is now run by very old men (Hinckley is 95, seventeen years older than the Pope) dispensing a rigid and socially ultraconservative agenda among its faithful. For all of their acceptance of other cultures - indeed, other races - in their own ranks, the Mormons are still in great need of reform.