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On March 9, 1844, fifty-five-year-old King Follett perished from injuries suffered in a well-digging accident. Joseph Smith delivered an address on Sunday, March 10, 1844, the day Follett was buried. That sermon is sometimes labeled as a funeral sermon for Follett. In spite of that, Louisa Tanner Follett—King’s wife of twenty-eight years—requested that Smith preach another sermon on Follett’s behalf. That sermon, delivered on April 7, 1844, later became known as the “King Follett sermon” and is widely recognized as the single most famous, controversial, and important of all Smith’s orations, and perhaps as the most important Mormon speech of all time. Famed literary critic Harold Bloom refers to it as “one of the truly remarkable sermons ever preached in America.”1
The immediate context of the April 7 King Follett sermon was a conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The conference promised to be a dramatic one, as dissenters planned to bring public charges against Smith over various issues, including polygamy.2 But Smith short-circuited that plan by declaring in the opening moments on April 5 that the conference would hear no such cases. Smith then complained of illness during the first two days of meetings and did not preach until the afternoon of the third day—April 7, 1844—when he finally fulfilled the wish of widow Louisa. According to eyewitness accounts, Smith preached at full voice in windswept open air for around two and a half hours starting around three fifteen in the afternoon on an outdoor, wooden platform pulpit to a crowd estimated at between ten thousand and twenty thousand people.3
Smith’s preaching was directed at Louisa Follett and others in the audience who mourned the loss of family and friends, yet Smith’s extemporaneous remarks were not a eulogy, and they cannot be said to be unrehearsed. He had stated all his rhetorical points before in various settings.4 Instead of a eulogy, he offered a kind of cosmological overview of the purpose of life, summarizing some of his often-repeated preaching from the period of 1839 to 1844.
In the early 1830s, Mormon sermons were considered ephemeral oral events not meant to be recorded. In a rhetorical sense, the resulting sparse reporting may have contributed to preventing Smith’s opponents from easily validating claims about what he might have said. But the need for order and consistency in the growing Church required an increasingly careful documentary record of Joseph Smith’s teachings.5 These records consisted largely of content audits (reports of a sermon through paraphrase) and, later, aural audits (attempts to capture the preacher’s words verbatim).6
For the Follett sermon specifically, two official clerks, Thomas Bullock and William Clayton, had been appointed to keep longhand notes of the conference. Both were experienced notetakers. Smith’s private secretary and historian, Willard Richards, kept brief notes. Wilford Woodruff kept notes from the audience and then later elaborated upon and enlarged them from memory. Others kept notes as well. Bullock later combined his own conference minutes with those of Clayton for the version that appears in the Times and Seasons in September 1844. As a result, there is no one text to identify as the “base text” for the sermon. Instead, there is a “pivot text,” a fusion of several sources formed by clerks in 1856 as a kind of intertextual palimpsest. Smith even generated some intertextuality unconsciously, foregrounding texts of other speeches he had given and texts he had read or heard within the extemporaneous milieu, particularly his Book of Abraham, published in 1842.7 Additionally, the sermon was reported to have been over two hours in length, but even a dictation-speed reading of the longest aural audit does not approach two hours. A careful comparison of the reports shows that neither clerk could keep up—all of which illustrates one of the difficulties with the phrase Joseph Smith said. Yet, for the Follett sermon in particular, surviving texts show that the main points were captured with remarkable fidelity. For the next two centuries, the sermon continued to be redacted, edited, interpreted, annotated, reprinted, rejected, and reborn through at least twenty-five different manuscript versions influenced by several human actors and historical impulses. Thus, the legacy of the King Follett sermon and its reception deserve attention as part of its rhetorical biography.
The Follett sermon reverberated throughout history largely due to its radical theological claims. The sermon basically approaches five main points: the nature of man, the nature of God, the resurrection, the nature of hell, and baptism as a pivotal rite (necessitating proxy baptism for the unevangelized dead). All these points have largely disappeared from sponsored Latter-day Saint discourse in their original forms. Still, three claims of the sermon had important (and evolving) rhetorical effects: (1) Smith’s argument that God was once, in effect, a human being on some world and had saved that world as Jesus did this one;8 (2) Smith’s assertion that the human soul has no beginning and no end but exists eternally and coequally with God; and (3) Smith’s claim that children who die will be resurrected exactly as they were when they died and “will never grow” but reign “on thrones of glory” without “one cubit added to their stature.”
The first two claims played a critical role during Middle Mormonism (1845–1890), when Brigham Young and others revised Follett theology to form a kind of metaphysics for polygamy, while the third created camps of supporters and rejectors.9 A step toward that remodeled teaching of claim 2 was published in Mormon poetess Eliza R. Snow’s 1845 poem, “My Father in Heaven,” which hinted that the Gods propagated/made spirits/souls by copulation in heaven: Divine women birthed spirits instead of adopting already existing souls. In 1855, the Deseret News noted that Snow’s retitled poem as the hymn “O My Father” was a Brigham Young favorite.10 The logic of sexuality in heaven had little relationship to Smith’s teaching in Nauvoo, Illinois. Still, the revision of that teaching seemed inevitable, as Snow, Young, William Phelps, Orson Pratt, and others would sketch a very material afterlife, with sex as a metaphysical justification of polygamy.11 Thus, Middle Mormonism exchanged Follett’s self-existent human souls for a logic of procreated/gestated spirits to help root the theology of polygamy and provide reasons for communal coherence in the fraught pioneer isolation of early Utah. The final 1856 redactions of the sermon obliquely reflected this picture of heaven.12
The contradiction between the notion of souls born in heaven and souls with no beginning was not lost on internal critics of the Follett sermon, and even late nineteenth-century non-Mormon sources noted the issue.13 Despite B. H. Roberts’s best efforts at reconciliation (he published his annotated version of the 1856 text in 1909 in the main church periodical),14 Church President Joseph F. Smith, a nephew of Joseph Smith, and his First Presidency largely succeeded in expunging any reference to the sermon from continuing church publications. Joseph F., in particular, led a crusade against claim 3 while one of his counselors denounced claim 2. Joseph F.’s opinion perhaps grew partly out of his own personal loss; by the end of his life, thirteen children had preceded him in death. Smith and his counselors in the First Presidency essentially anathematized the sermon. In 1911, they halted the distribution of the King Follett sermon via Church periodicals and excised it entirely from the landmark six-volume History of the Church. The result was the near complete absence of the sermon in official works for nearly three decades.15
The sermon was revived when Joseph F. Smith’s son and namesake, Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, overruled his father’s 1912 ban on Follett by republishing Roberts’s 1909 version in the 1938 Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Meanwhile, the contrary parent-derived soul theology (Roberts’s contemporary Apostle James Talmage’s term) was just as serviceable after the end of polygamy, this time partly due to the rise of biological studies from Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin. Church leaders again needed the Middle Mormonism teaching that human souls inherited the potential to become gods through divine sexual transmission of spiritual genes, as it were.16
In short, Joseph Smith’s King Follett sermon turned extant nineteenth-century teachings on their collective heads, wrecked Christian anthropology as a bulwark of divine separatism, befuddled his own most loyal followers, erected—by broad Christian standards—a truly heretical theogony (God has a genealogy), and largely failed to be completely owned by any of the churches that emerged from his prophetic legacy. Almost all other branches of Smith’s original founding church eventually rejected the sermon as inauthentic or in error even though textual sources demonstrate that neither of these claims are viable. Follett survived, in part, because the notion of a progressive God who came to be God in some distant past helped to rationalize a heaven built around polygamy (the Saints were treading the paths of the gods). The paradox of God as the adoptive Father of uncreated, necessarily forever-existing, indivisible minds/souls/spirits versus souls/spirits born to Mothers in Heaven persists in Latter-day Saint thought.17 Thus, at least in part, Follett continues to be an important anchor of belief in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an oration whose legacy affirms its eloquence.
A New Critical Text of the King Follett Sermon
The apparatus below18 is as follows. Text in italics is found in only one source text. Text in [brackets] shows alternate text from two or more aural audits. Text in {braces} and bold headings are the author’s additions and are not found in any source text.
The History of God
I now call the attention of the congregation while I address you on the subject contemplated in the fore part of the conference. As the wind blows very hard, it will be [hardly possible/impossible] to make you all hear unless {there is} profound attention.
It is of the greatest importance and the most solemn of any that could occupy our attention, and that is the subject of the dead on the decease of our brother Follett, who was crushed to death in a well. I have been requested to speak by his friends and relatives, and inasmuch as there are a great many in this congregation who live in this city as well as elsewhere who have lost friends, I shall speak on this subject in general and offer my ideas as far as I have ability and as far as I shall be inspired by the Holy [Spirit/Ghost] to dwell on this subject. I want your prayers and faith, the [inspiration/instruction] of Almighty God, the gift of the Holy Ghost, [that I may set forth truth/to say] things that [are true/can easily be comprehended] and [will/shall] carry the testimony to your hearts; pray that [he/the L{ord}] may strengthen my lungs, [stay/control] the wind, and let the pray of the saints to heaven appear that it may enter into the ear of the L{or}d of Sabaoth for the fervent effectual prayer of the righteous man avail much—and I verily believe that your prayers shall be heard. I will speak in order to hold out.
Before I enter fully into [this/the] investigation of [this/the] subject that is lying before us, I wish to pave the way—make a few preliminaries—bring up the subject from the beginning in order that you may understand the subject when I come to it. I do not calculate to please your ears with superfluity of words, oratory with much learning, but I calculate to edify you by [the/with] simple truths of heaven.
First place, I wish to go back to the beginning of creation, then {there?} the starting point, in order to {be} fully acquainted with purposes/it is necessary to know the mind purposes decrees and ordination of the great Elohim that sits in the h{eavens}. For us to take up beginning at the creation, it is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning. If we start right, it is very easy for us to go right all the time, but if we start wrong it is hard matter to get right. There are very few beings in the world who understand rightly the character of God and do not comprehend their own character. They [do not/cannot] comprehend [the beginning nor the end/any thing that is past or that which is to come], neither their own relation to God, and com{prehend} but little more than the brute beast. [It does/comp{rehends?}] the same thing—eat, drink, sleep, arise, and not any more—and what the designs of Jehovah what better than the beast it does the same thing—eat drink—sleep and comprehends present and knows [nothing more and how are we to do it/as much as we unless we are able to com{prehend}] by no other way than the inspiration of Almighty God. I want to go back to the beginning and so [lift/get] your minds into a more [lofty sphere/a more exalted standing] than the human [being/mind] generally understands. I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman, and child to answer the question in their own heart: What kind of being is God? Ask yourselves.
I ag{ain}repeat the question, What kind of a being is God? Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen him? Heard him? Communed with him? Here is the question that will peradventure [from this time henceforth/while you live] occupy your attention.
The apostle says this is eternal life to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. If any man enquire what kind of a being is God [if he will search diligently his own heart/cast his mind to know if the declaration of the apostle be true he will realize] that unless he knows God, he has not eternal life. There can be eternal life on no other principle. My first object {is} to comprehend and explain God, and I comprehend them to your hearts so that the spirit seal it upon you hearts. Let every man and woman henceforth [put his hand on his/shut their] mouth, sit in silence, and never say anything against the man of God, [and/again but] if I [do not do it/fail], [it becomes my duty to renounce all my/I have no right to] pretensions to revelation, inspiration, if [all are/I should do so] pretensions to God [they will all/should I not] be as bad [off as I am/as all] the rest of the world. They will all say I ought to be damned. There is not a man or woman would not breath out an anathema on my head if they knew I was a false prophet, and some would feel authorized to take away my life.
If any man is authorized to take away my life [who say{s}/because] I am a false teacher [so I should have the same right to all/then upon the same principle am I authorized to take the life of every] false teacher, and where would be the end of blood and who would not be the sufferer? And there is no law in the heart of God that would allow anyone to interfere with the rights of man. Every man has the right to be a false prophet as well as a true prophet, but no man is authorized to take away life in consequence of their religion. All laws and government ought to tolerate {religion?} whether right or wrong. If I show verily that I have the truth of God and show that ninety-nine of one hundred are false [prophets/teachers] while they pretend to hold the keys of God and go to killing them because &c, it would deluge the whole world [with/in] blood.
I want you all to know God to be familiar with him, and if I can get you to know {him}, I can bring you to him. All persecution against me will cease and let you know that I am his servant, for I speak [as one having/in] authority and not as a s{cribe?}. What kind of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and eyes, all ye ends of the earth and hear, and I am going to prove it to you [with/by] the Bible, and I am going [to tell you the designs of God to the human race/and the relation the human family sustains with God] and why he interferes with the affairs of man.
1st, God himself who sits enthroned in yonder heavens is a man like unto one of yourselves. This is the great secret. If the veil was rent today and [that/the great god] who holds this world in its orbit, its sphere, or the planets and upholds all things by his power—if you were to see him to day you would see him in all the person image, very form of a man, for Adam was [created in the very fashion of God/formed in fashion and image like unto him]. Adam received instruction, walked, talked and conversed as one man talks and communes with another. In order to [speak for/understand the subject of the de{a}d], the consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friend, it is necessary [they should/to] understand the character and being of God, for I am going to tell you what sort of a being of God {and} how God came to be God.
We [suppose/have imagined] that God was God from all eternity. I will refute [the/that] idea. Truth is the touchstone. These are incomprehensible {things?}. To some they are the simple and first principles of [the gospel/truth] to know for a certainty the character of God that we may converse with him {the} same as [a/one] man with another, and God himself, the father of us all, was once [as one of/like] us [was/dwelt] on an [earth/planet] [as Jesus was in the flesh/same as Jesus Christ himself].
I wish [I had the trump of an Archangel/I was in a suitable place to tell it/If I have the privilege], I could tell the story in such a manner [as/that pers{ecution} should] cease forever. Said Jesus mark it Br. Rigdon. What did Jesus [say/said] as the Father hath power in himself to do even so hath the Son power to do what{?} why what the Father did, that answer is obvious in a manner to lay down his body and take it up again. Jesus, what are you going to do—to lay down my life as my father did that I might take it up again? If you don’t believe it, you don’t believe the Bible. The scripture says, and I defy all hell [all learning and wisdom and records of hell together/all the records and wisdom and all the combined powers of earth and hell] to refute it. Here then is Eternal life to know the only wise and true God. You have got to learn how to be a God yourself in order to save yourself [and/to] be a K{ing} and God [Priest to God/priests and kings] as all Gods have done by going from a small [capacity/degree] to another from [grace to grace/ exaltation to ex{altation}] until the resurrection of] of the dead, till they are able to dwell in everlasting burnings in everlasting power, till they are able to sit in glory as doth those who sit enthroned as they who have gone before, [and/I want you to know] while in the last days while certain individuals are proclaim{ing} his name, that he is not trifling with [us/you or me].
I want you to know the first principles [of this law/of consolation] how consoling to the mourner—when they are called to part with a wife, father, mother, father, dear relative husband, child, friend—to know that although earthly tabernacles shall be dissolved, their very being will rise [to/and] dwell in everlasting burnings in immortal glory to sorrow die nor suffer any more, and not only that, to contemplate the saying they shall be heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. What is it{?} to inherit the same glory powers and exaltation as those who are gone before? What did Jesus do{?} Why I do the things I saw the Father do [before/when] worlds came rolling into existence.
{Quotes John 5} I saw the Father work out his kingdom with fear and trembling, and I must/can do the same, and when I get my kingdom, I will [give/ present] my kingdom to the Father, and it will exalt his glory so that he obtains Kingdom rolling upon Kingdom so that Jesus [treads/steps] in his tracks [as he had gone/to inherit what God did] before. It is plain beyond comprehension, and you thus learn this is some of of the first principles of the gospel about which so much hath been {said?}. [You have got to find the beginning of this history and go on till you have learned the last/when you climb a ladder you must begin at the bottom run{g} until you learn the last principle of the gospel] [will be a great while before you learn the last/for it is a great thing to learn salvation] [after/ beyond] the grave. It is not all to be comprehended in this world.
I suppose that I am not allowed to go into an investigation [but what is contained/of any thing that is not] in the Bible, and I think is so many learned and wise men who would put me to death for treason I shall turn commentator today.
I will go to the first Hebrew word in the Bible, make a comment on the very first sentence of the history of creation: In the beginning Barosheit. Want to analyze the word—Be—in, by through, and everything else. Rosh—the head. When the inspired man wrote it, he did not put the Ba there but the first part to it a man, a Jew without any authority thought it too bad to begin to talk about the head of any man. It read in the first—The head on of the Gods brought forth the Gods is the true meaning of the word—rosheet signifies to bring forth the Elohim. If you do not believe it, you do not believe the learned man of God—no man can tell you any more than I do, thus the Hed God brought forth the Gods in the grand council [will simplify it in/I want to bring it to] the English language. Oh ye lawyers ye Doctors [who/that] have persecuted me, I want you know that the Holy Ghost knows something as well as you do—the Head God called together the Gods and set in Grand Council. The Grand Counsellors set in yonder heavens and contemplated the creation of the world’s that was created at that time.
[. . .]
Now I ask all the learned doctors who hear me whether the learned men who are preaching salvation say that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. They account it blasphemy to contradict the idea. They [will call/ think] you a fool—You ask them why they say “Don’t the Bible say he created the world?,” and they infer that it must be out of nothing. And the reason is that they are unlearned, and I know more than the world, and if the Holy Ghost in me comprehends more than all the world, I will associate myself with it. The word create came from the word Barau—it means to organize, same as [you/ man] would [organize/use to build] a ship—hence we infer that God himself had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter which is element and in which dwells all the glory—element had an existence from the time he had. The pure pure principles of element are principles that [nothing can destroy. They never have an ending; they coexist eternally/never can be destroyed—they may be organized—and reorganized—but not destroyed.]
I have another subject to dwell on and it is impossible for me to say much but to touch upon them—for time will not permit me to say all [so I must come to/It is associated with the subject in question.] The resurrection of the dead. The soul—the mind of man, the immortal spirit [Doctors of Divinity/all men] say God created it in the beginning. The very idea lessens man in my [idea/estimation.] I don’t believe the doctrine, hear it all ye ends of the world for I know better God has told me, so I am going to tell of things more noble [If you don’t believe it, it won’t make the truth without effect/Make a man appear a fool before he gets through,] if he don’t believe it. We say that God himself was a self-existent God, who told you so? It’s correct enough but how did it get into your heads—who told you that man did not exist [in like manner/upon the same principle] (refers to the bible) [how doest it read in the/Don’t say so in the old] Hebrew—God made man out of the earth and put into [it Adam’s/him his] spirit and so became a living [spirit/body]?
The mind of man—the mind of man, the intelligent part is as immortal, as coequal, with God himself. I know that my testimony is true hence [while/when] I talk to these mourners what have they lost—They are only separated from their bodies for a short [period/season], but their spirits existed coequal with God, and they now exist in a place where they converse [as much/same] as we do on the earth. Does not this give you satisfaction? I want to reason more on the Spirit of Man, for I am dwelling [on the body of man on the subject of the dead/on the immutability of the spirit of man.]
Is it logic to say that a spirit is immortal and yet have a beginning{?} because if a spirit have a beginning it will have an end—good logic—illustrated by his ring, if man had a beginning he must have an end. It does not have a beginning or end,
I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man, the immortal spirit, because it has no beginning or end. Suppose you cut it in two, but as the Lord lives there would be an end. All the fools learned and wise men from the beginning of creation [who say/that comes and tells] that man had a beginning proves that he must have an end, and if that doctrine is true, then the doctrine of annihilation [would be/is] true.
But if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the house top that God never had power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself. Intelligence exists upon a self-existent principle. It is a spirit from age to age, and there is no creation about it—the first principles of man are self exist{ent} with God—All minds and spirits God ever sent into [the/this] world are susceptible of enlargement.
That God himself finds himself in the midst of spirit{s} and [glory] because he was greater saw proper to institute laws [for those who were in less intelligence/to instruct the weaker intelligences] [that they might have one glory upon another in all that knowledge power and glory and so took in hand to save the world of spirits/whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself]. You say honey is sweet, and so do I. I can also taste the [principle/spirit] of eternal life. [I know it is good and/This is good doctrine, it tastes good] when I tell you these words of eternal life that were given to me by [inspiration of the Holy Spirit/the revelations of Jesus Christ], and I know you believe it. You are bound to receive it as sweet, and I rejoice more and more.
[. . .]
There has also been remarks made concerning all men being redeemed from Hell but those who [Sin against the Holy Ghost cannot be forgiven in this world or in the world to come but they shall die the 2nd death—/commit the unpardonable sin are doomed to Gnaolom {Eternity} with out end], but as they concoct scenes of bloodshed in this world so they shall rise to that resurrection which is as the lake of fire and brimstone—some shall rise to the [everlasting burning of God/God dwells in everlasting burnings], and some shall rise to the damnation of their own filthiness—same as the lake of fire and brimstone—I have intended my remarks to all—to all rich and poor, bond and free, great and small. I have no enmity against any man. I love you all—I am their best friend, and if persons miss their mark it is their own fault—if I reprove a man and he hate me, he is a fool—for I love all men, especially these my brethren and sisters—I rejoice in hearing the test{imony} of my aged friend—[You never knew my heart. No man knows my history—I can not do it. I shall never undertake—/You don’t know me—you never will. I don’t blame you for not believing my history.] [If I had not experienced what I have, I should not have known it myself—/Had I not experienced it, I could not believe it myself] I never did harm any man since I have been born in the world—my voice is always for peace—I cannot lie down until my work is finished—I never think evil nor think any thing to the harm of my fellow man—and when I am called at the trump and weighed in the balance, you will know me then—I add no more. God bless you. {A}men—The choir sung an hymn at ½ p 5.
Excerpted from Latter-day Eloquence: Two Centuries of Mormon Oratory edited by Richard Benjamin Crosby and Isaac James Richards, to be published June 2, 2026, by University of Illinois Press. Copyright © 2026 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
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William V. Smith is an emeritus professor at Brigham Young University. He has authored several books and book chapters on Mormon history and preaching, including The King Follett Sermon: A Biography (BCC Press, 2023). His current interest is in antebellum American sermons.
Illustrations from Chirologia; Or the Natural Language of the Hand (1644) by John Bulwer.
Hand gestures have long been used to great effect by public speakers to convey or emphasize meaning. In certain cultures, specific hand meanings hold well-known meanings.
Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (Simon and Schuster, 1992), 95.
Conferences in the early days of the Church were often devoted to such regulations of church government or disciplinary cases.
Wilford Woodruff journal, April 7, 1844, MS 1352, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, UT (hereafter, CHL); Historian’s Office general Church minutes, 1839–1877, CR 100 318, box I, folder 19, CHL; Joseph Smith diary, April 7, 1844, MS 155, box 1, folder 8, CHL.
See Jordan T. Watkins and Christopher James Blythe, “Christology and Theosis in the Revelations and Teaching of Joseph Smith,” in How and What You Worship: Christology and Praxis in the Revelations of Joseph Smith, ed. Rachel Cope, Carter Charles, and Jordan T. Watkins (BYU Religious Studies Center, 2020), 123‒56.
William Victor Smith, “Joseph Smith’s Sermons and the Early Mormon Documentary Record,” in Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources, ed. Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Meredith Marie Neuman, Jeremiah’s Scribes: Creating Sermon Literature in Puritan New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), chap. 2.
See Times and Seasons 3, no. 9; no. 10; no. 14 (1842): 703–6; 719–22; 783–84.
Church president Gordon B. Hinckley noted that, in his mind, the church no longer taught that idea. For example, see Don Lattin, “Musings of the Main Mormon,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1997. Still, Hinckley characterized the sermon as a “doctrinal document.” “Nauvoo’s Holy Temple,” Ensign (September 1994): 59–62.
William V. Smith, “A Brief Influence Biography of Joseph Smith’s July 12, 1843, Revelation on Marriage (Doctrine and Covenants 132),” in Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, ed. Cheryl L. Bruno (Signature Books, 2024), 590–638. For an example of a supporter, see Joseph E. Taylor, “The Resurrection,” in vol. 1 of Collected Discourses Delivered by President Wilford Woodruff, His Two Counselors, The Twelve Apostles, and Others, 1886–1889, ed. Brian H. Stuy, vol. 1 (B.H.S. Publishing, 1987), 1:138–140.
Deseret News, June 20, 1855, 120.
Jonathan A. Stapley, “Brigham Young’s Garden Theology,” Journal of Mormon History 47, no. 1 (2021): 68–86; William V. Smith, The King Follett Sermon: A Biography (BCC Press, 2023), 115–22.
For a complete source-redaction criticism of Grimshaw’s text, see Smith, The King Follett Sermon, appendix C, pericope 14; in the same volume, see also appendices D and E at https://boaporg.wordpress.com/2024/11/30/the-king-follett-sermon-a-biography-the-appendices/.
For an example, see John McClintock and James Strong, eds., Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (Harper & Brother, 1894), 637.
Roberts developed a reconciliation of Utah and Nauvoo and wrote of it by 1895 and thereafter. See Smith, The King Follett Sermon, 172–79.
See Smith, chap. 3.
See Smith, chap. 3.
That persistence exists largely because of Roberts’s teaching that the soul’s preexistence has two stages: Eternal souls were born into “spirit bodies” via Heavenly Mother(s) in perfect analogy to the standard narrative of Utah polygamy. Roberts’s reconciliation of Utah with Nauvoo gained only partial acceptance by other church leaders, but his idea continues in church thought and was particularly popular among LDS educators. See, for example, Sterling W. McMurrin, The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion (University of Utah Press, 1977); Truman G. Madsen, Eternal Man (Deseret Book, 1966).
William V. Smith, “A New Critical Text of the King Follett Sermon,” in The King Follett Sermon: A Biography (BCC Press, 2023): 271–300. To preserve the original readings, the text in this anthology received the most minimal of editing for readability. For a more transparent critical text, see appendix F of Smith, The King Follett Sermon: A Biography at https://josephsmithsermons.org/KFS-Appendices-BCCP/Appendix-F/ Appendix-F-KFS-Critical-Text.pdf.
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