The American Spectator

Joseph Smith appeared out of the fundamentalist Christian Evangelical fervor of early 19th Century America, and created a quintessentially American religion. One of his contributions was the suggestion to purchase the freedom of slaves with the proceeds of public land sales. This idea was re-iterated a couple of decades later by none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another concept promulgated was the belief that the American founding documents were written by men whom God raised up for the very purpose of the American founding. No religion holds the American founding documents in greater esteem than Mormonism. The religion has all but canonized those founding documents. The only person I know who claims the same religious veneration of those documents is Nat Hentoff, who states that his only religion is the U.S. Constitution.

An indication of how reverential Mormons are to the U.S. founding documents is the fact that they officially abandoned their core principle of polygamy, an integral part of their concept of Eternal Progression (with of course, they affirm, Divine approbation), in order for Utah to become a State.

p>A very good recent biography of Joseph Smith is Rough Stone Rolling by Richard L. Bushman, a noted American historian at Harvard and himself a Mormon. Every American should read it. Neither Jeff Flake nor Harry Reid should be chagrined about the religion they follow. They only show themselves to be American patriots by espousing that religion. I would also suggest Vardis Fisher’s book, Children of God , a good novelization of Mormon history, and Wallace Stegner’s Mormon Country , for anyone who wants to get a flavor of the Mormon experience. br> — Kent J. Lyon /p> p> FABULOUS FABRIZIO br> Re: Lisa Fabrizio’s