Mormons Make Great FBI Recruits

Mormonism is more strange than most. The leader who started it was literally a traveling treasure digger in 1820's New York. He conned people out of money by going to houses and telling them that they had treasure on their property and if they paid him, he would dig it up. He was never successful, but moved from town to town doing so. He often claimed that this treasure was left by Native Americans and ancient inhabitants. The law eventually caught up to him and he was even tried in court for these accusations and admitted to the con. Just a few years later, low and behold he found ancient scriptures made of gold buried in his backyard. These were written in an unknown language ("reformed egyption", I language that scientists now say never existed), that only he could read. He translated the book which eventually became the "Book of Mormon" today, which is the baseline for most of Mormonism.

He then gained a following by claiming to speak directly to God and writing these discourses in a book called "The Book of Commandments", which the modern church has now edited down to what they still use, known as "The Doctrine and Covenants", which they believe are direct words from God. This is where strange rules like not drinking coffee, tea, and alcohol come from, which modern Mormons follow today. Funny enough, the founder didn't prescribe to any of these rules himself, in fact he was drinking heavily on the night of his death.

The leader, Joseph Smith took his followers from state to state as the nation expanded, building a larger and larger following. He was kicked out of each state due to unruly practices in that they were starting to preform, like an attempted assassination on the Missouri Governor (he was shot 4 times in the upper chest and head and managed to survive), starting an illegal bank and printing his own currency, practicing polygamy (he was married to at least 38 women that we have record of, but probably many more), and much more.

The prophet, Joseph Smith died after a newspaper ran a story that unveiled his polygamy to the world. He got his militia together and burned the printing press down. This lead to his warrant and eventual arrest. While in jail he had arranged for his militia to break him out of prison. So when they heard a mob approaching the jail where he was kept, he actually told the jail guards that his militia was coming and they didn't want to die for this. So the guards stepped aside and let the mob approach the prison, only to find that the mob was filled with angry people from town that had read about this story or who were upset with the many other things Joseph Smith had done. They approached in protest. Joseph Smith had smuggled a gun into the prison in a trenchcoat, she he started firing at them through a door, and a firefight broke out as a result, leaving Joseph Smith dead.

After Joseph Smith, comes Brigham Young who took all the Mormons to modern-day Utah to start a fresh life. From there, a whole other fascinating story begins. Including things like "Blood Atonement" (killing people to absolve them of their sins), more polygamy, The Utah War (armed Mormons fought off several bands of US Military), the Mountain Meadows Massacre (120 immigrants were killed in cold blood that were passing through Utah heading to California), and so many more that I can't get into here.

It is quite a fascinating history if you are curious. This isn't even getting into Doctrine. Much of which is a spiritual spin off Stone Masons rituals, the basis that Jesus visited the modern-day-USA after he died on the Cross in Jerusalem, a whole group of ancient Americans who traveled over from Jerusalem in 600BC, and so much more.

Its definitely different than your standard religion.

Yes Mormonism was started by a conman, yes it's utter bullshit, no it's not any weirder than the canonical Abrahamic religions.

There's a dude who parted the sea with his magic snake stick. Actually happened. People believe it.

Burning bush, speaking with the voice of the creator of existence, 100% true. Really, does that sound less ridiculous than Joseph's magic golden tablets?

How about Jesus?

Died and came back to life.

Healed the sick.

Replicated food and drink. Walked on water, and turned it into wine when he felt like showing off.

Less ridiculous?

Not in any way.

There's a decent amount of nuance missing in your story, and I would (truly) love a source if you have one for this as I've not heard evidence before (just speculation):

> So when they heard a mob approaching the jail where he was kept, he actually told the jail guards that his militia was coming and they didn't want to die for this.

But let's stipulate all that for the sake of discussion. Does that really sound more strange than Moses' magic tricks, or the "magicians" all through the Old Testament, or even the very idea that God himself came down as a person to be brutally killed in order to save human souls who simply believe on him, and if they don't believe then he will torture them for all eternity in a burning pit of fire? Frankly the Mormon founding seems a whole lot less strange to me.

It's likely not that different, the events you cite are just more recent and so we have greater insight into them. There was probably plenty of con artistry and substance abuse on the ground floor of other major religions, but after thousands of years most of the evidence we retain about these founders was recorded by them or their acolytes.

At least by Wikipedia's chosen sources [0], the attempted assassination of Gov. Boggs was linked, via circumstantial evidence, to Joseph's bodyguard, Porter Rockwell (who, even within the "Mormon" Church, is considered a somewhat controversial figure), but the culprit's true identity isn't exactly a settled question.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith#cite_note-156

They're all weird, it's just that the weirder parts get rounded off over time or turned into divine magic.

Religions are a bug in the human pattern-matching firmware, of course they're going to be weird. There is something distinctly LLM-like about them. It's like when you see a midjourney image that's evocative of a concept but not quite matching physical reality. Religion has a lot of the 'made by an AI' fingerprints in it. I suspect an AGI could do quite a good job at crafting one that would be very useful for keeping the human population docile.

It comes from a letter written by Thomas Halman or Holman, Jr, one of the guards, to a George Weston on 30 July 1844 (about a month later). The letter is in the Special Collections of the Newberry Library in Chicago. I have been unable to find a digitized copy of this letter anywhere online, with the only quotation from it being that when Halman was concerned about the approaching mob, Joseph said "Don't trouble yourself ... they have come to rescue me." Nothing else of the letter seems to be easily available, and most of the references to it are erroneously citing the wrong book by Dr. D. Michael Quinn with the wrong date (it comes from his "Origins of Power" book, page 141).

So, it seems reasonable to accept the source as it is a first-hand account written within a short time frame of the event. However, all we have currently (until someone decides to digitize the letter) is these few words from it.

(Link to a 1966 bibliography that lists the letter's existence and location in the Newberry Library: https://www.siue.edu/lovejoy-library/tas/Kimball_Sources.pdf page 20)

Edit: I was incorrect with my assumption that the author of the letter was one of the guards. I've been unable to determine the names of the guards at Carthage that day, so the letter does not represent a first-hand account, as I thought, but instead represents what was being commonly relayed by local residents of Carthage at the time. I found a larger quotation in an article from the 1995 JWHA journal (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sv9HIDgATUM7tPxlbd-UcX7uvIV... page 26). It seems the author of the letter is trying to simply relay all of the known information about the attack and murder of the Smiths.

Nice, thank you!