Larry C. Porter: Joseph Smith said that the very respective parties got together for a large revival in 1820. He specifically mentioned the Methodists, the Baptists, and the Presbyterians.1 We know that one of those camp meetings was held down the old Vienna Road.2
Craig J. Ostler: Somewhere along this road before the spring of 1820, and for some time afterwards, many of the people from the surrounding areas gathered to listen to Methodist preachers in the spirit of religious revival. The Prophet Joseph Smith wrote that “sometime in the second year after our removal to Manchester there wasn’t a place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion”(Joseph Smith-History 1:5). From his research of these revivals Dr. Milton Backman explained that these meetings were usually held on the edge of a grove of trees in a small clearing in the midst of a forest.3
Steven C. Harper: In the late 1960’s a Presbyterian minister by the name of Wesley Walters wrote an influential article and he argues in that article that the first vision could not really have happened the way Joseph had said it did because there is no evidence he said of an unusual excitement on the subject of religion.4 Reverend Walters got Latter Day Saint scholars interested in examining evidence for themselves and professor Backman went to work and scoured the libraries and the archives and made an overwhelming case that we have a shocking revival setting.5
Milton V. Backman Jr.: There are so many records that substantiate the fact that at the time of the first vision there was tremendous religious excitement. The first vision actually took place at a time when we had the world’s greatest revival, it is called the great awakening, and between 1800 and about the time of the Civil War church membership increased from about eight to twenty-three percent; and thousands of people were asking the question “which church should I join?”6 That never happened in the history of the world. Joseph became aware of many, many people joining churches throughout the area where he lived; the Methodists, the Presbyterian, the Baptists, and others were traveling throughout the area teaching them their particular beliefs. In fact at that time the Methodists held one of their annual meetings at Phelps, which is a township next to Manchester not far from the Smith home, during the summer of 1819. About a hundred Methodist ministers gathered at Phelps and they conducted revivals, and at that time many people were going over to Phelps to witness these remarkable spiritual experiences.7 One occasion, I was at Phelps doing research reading their newspapers when one of the directors invited my wife and I to her home for lunch. So we went to her home, had a nice lunch, and then while I was in her home I saw a picture and it had a grove, and in the picture it had where Joseph got religion. I asked the lady “what does this mean? Here you have a picture in your home of a grove where Joseph got religion.” She said, “That’s my backyard. Tradition says that Joseph Smith came here, attended these revivals, then became all excited and went back to the Palmyra area and claimed to have had a vision.” So Joseph Smith’s original excitement about religion occurred here and maybe other areas in upstate New York.
Craig J. Ostler: After traveling many miles along dusty or water logged roads the settlers would low-key their wagons and pitch their tents on the outskirts of the encampment. Farmer’s markets and grog or liquor shops often sprang up near the campgrounds thereby providing some farmers with unusual economic opportunities. The meetings frequently continued for several days and sometimes one session would last nearly all day and into the night. Ministers would rotate their preaching assignments so that one minister would immediately be followed by another, and at times two or three ministers would preach simultaneously in different parts of the campground.8 Years later the prophet Joseph Smith told a group in Nauvoo that at one of the revival meetings “his mother, brother, and sisters got religion. He wanted to get religion too, he wanted to feel and shout like the rest but could feel nothing.9
Steven C. Harper: I believe that a big part of his struggle was that he liked the way Methodism sounded the doctrine sounded good but every time he tried to verify it, every time he tried to get the spirit of God and so on he didn’t feel it, “I wanted to feel and shout like the rest, but I could feel nothing.”10 That tells us a lot about him, he is authentic spiritually he would have been tempted, all of us would have been tempted, to go along with the wave of spirituality or emotion or whatever it was that was sweeping the neighborhood. He wants what the Methodists have to offer, which is salvation through the atonement of Christ to people who are believing of their own free will, he likes that very much but he never can get the testimony of it.
Craig J. Ostler: Vienna road represents everything that is associated with these religious revivals and this fervor to seek out religion that sweeps across western New York. And it is not just for Joseph, there must have been many others that were involved in the revivals that has influence upon them that they go to the revivals, they hear the various preachers, and they too come away wondering which church they should join. I would imagine that like Joseph Smith it sends them to their Bibles, that this revivalist fervor that is there causes them to want to look in their own Bibles for answers. There are opportunities, I think, for further research that we could find what did the revivals in New York do, not only toward the first vision in the Sacred Grove for Joseph, but for many, many others. More specifically, William Smith records that there was a joint revival in the area of Palmyra, which, from what we understand, most likely was along Vienna Road, if not represented by Vienna Road, surely.11 At that revival the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Methodists all had joined together to bring people to Christ, but also to have them churched. This is not just about conversion to Christ, it is also to get people to associate with Churches.
After this joint revival in the area, William Smith indicates that Reverend Stockton, who is the minister for the Presbyterian Church, stepped forth and proposed that all of those who had gotten religion in the Palmyra area become Presbyterian. That might sound a little funny except for this, the Presbyterians were the only ones who had a church building in the village of Palmyra and so he says, if they are going to be churched, which is our purpose, then they have got to be Presbyterians. The Joseph Smith Sr. family didn’t all join the Presbyterian Church partially because father Smith didn’t like reverend Stockton. He is not the only one that did not like the idea of everyone becoming Presbyterian in Palmyra. George Lane, at least William Smith identifies reverend Lane and we assume that is George Lane, who is very involved with the Methodist revival, he was very prominent in these revivals and, George lane, according to William Smith, gave a sermon based on James chapter one verse five, “If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God…,” in response to the question “which church should I join?”12 That means that Vienna Road represents these revivals that have a great influence on Joseph in leading him to the Sacred Grove itself; and William indicates that Joseph went home, pulled out the family Bible, opened it to the page where James 1:5 was recorded, pondered it over and over; and he draws the connection for Joseph directly from the revival to George Lane (and) to the bible passage in James that then leads him out into the Grove and the experience he has that we call the First Vision.
1 Joseph Smith–History 1:5.
2 Milton V. Backman,Jr., Joseph Smith’s The First Vision: Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, Inc.,1971, 1980), 80-81.
3 Ibid, 71-72.
4 Rev. Wesley P. Walters, “New Light on Mormon Origins From the Palmyra Revival,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 4, no. 1 (Spring 1969), 227-249.
5 For a more detailed examination of Steven Harper’s research in this area see, Steven C. Harper, “Evaluating Three Arguments Against Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, Volume 2 (2012), 17-33. http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/evaluating-three-arguments-against-joseph-smiths-first-vision/
6 Milton V. Backman, Jr., American Religions and the Rise of Mormonism, (Salt Lake City, 1965), 283.
7 Milton V. Backman,Jr., Joseph Smith’s The First Vision: Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts, 2nd ed, 81.
8 Ibid, 71-72.
9 http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/alexander-neibaur-journal-24-may-1844-extract?p=1&highlight=get%20religion; spelling and punctuation standardized.
10 Ibid. Spelling and punctuation standardized.
11 William Smith, Deseret evening news, (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]), 20 Jan. 1894. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045555/1894-01-20/ed-1/seq-11/.
12 William Smith, Deseret evening news, (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]), 20 Jan. 1894. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045555/1894-01-20/ed-1/seq-11/.
