SOURCE: A prologue to Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, University of Illinois Press, 1985, pp. 1-23.

In the excerpt below, Shipps provides a comprehensive, chronological background of Joseph Smith's life prior to the publication of the Book of Mormon. Shipps maintains that examining the religious, psychic, social, and economical impact of the "Burnt-Over District" on the Smith family best contextualizes Mormonism's foundational claims and elucidates the integral relationship between magic and religious seership in Smith's early life.

Historical chronologies of Mormonism ordinarily open by identifying Joseph Smith as the Mormon prophet and describing the three foundational events that get the LDS story under way. Such accounts first cite Smith's reports of visions of heavenly beings manifested to him in the 1820s when he still lived with his parents on a farm in Palmyra, New York. Then they go on to tell about the coming forth of...