The historical record shows that Joseph Smith did not implement or endorse any practices or policies which specifically prevented Church members with black African ancestry from fully participating in priesthood offices or temple worship. But in 1847, only three years after Joseph’s death, attitudes and teachings of some church leaders began to shift away from full inclusion of blacks, to partial exclusion—until only five years later, in 1852, President Brigham Young first publicly articulated a...
Jul 18, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast In the broader American culture in which Joseph Smith lived and led the growing Church of Jesus Christ, white attitudes and beliefs about the inferiority of black Africans dominated the scene. In this pre-Civil War context, exactly half of the states in the Union had legalized slavery and built their economies on it, while the other half did not. Yet fears were shared on both sides about what might happen to the country (and to the purity of the white race) if all slaves were set free and allowe...
Jul 11, 2023•48 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast There was a season in our Church’s history when members with black African ancestry were unevenly barred from both priesthood and temple privileges. This overtly discriminatory practice is one of the most challenging aspects of our history and, for many, is one of the most difficult to understand. How could something like this happen in a Church led by living prophets and apostles? It’s a fair question. And the truth is, the answer is impossible to really get at without understanding the prevail...
Jul 04, 2023•49 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast Did Joseph Smith have any regrets about plural marriage? Like, with full hindsight, if he could go back and change anything about the way he implemented plural marriage, what might he do differently? Also, more and more people are denying that Joseph Smith ever practiced polygamy or that he lied about doing so. Is there even a shred of truth to either of these claims? Did Joseph ever send men on missions and marry their wives while they were gone? Were there any women who denied Joseph’s proposa...
Jun 27, 2023•59 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast In 1852, only eight years after Joseph Smith’s death, Church leaders in Utah publicly announced to the astonished world what some had suspected—that Latter-day Saints did indeed practice the principle of plural marriage. But now that it was out there in the open, it could be openly challenged and attacked. And it was. Relentlessly. For decades. In today’s episode of Church History Matters we’ll walk you through the history of how plural marriage came to a rocky end under the draconian legislatio...
Jun 20, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast In June and July of 1843 tensions ran high in the marriage of Joseph and Emma Smith. After she had tried but failed to embrace the principle of plural marriage earlier that May, and after Hyrum Smith had tried but failed to convince her of the rightness of plural marriage even with a copy of Doctrine and Covenants 132 in hand, records indicate that Emma became for a time rebellious, bitter, resentful, and angry. In fact from July through September of 1843 Emma became confrontational to Joseph’s ...
Jun 13, 2023•43 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast As Joseph Smith quietly practiced plural marriage in Nauvoo in 1842 and 43, all was not well. Three people in particular complicated things for Joseph. The first was John C. Bennett, a highly gifted convert who’s meteoric rise to civic and church leadership in Nauvoo abruptly ended when he was exposed for his secret practice of “spiritual wifery,” which was nothing more or less than illicit serial adultery. Bennett’s defamatory opposition to Joseph after his excommunication was fierce and direct...
Jun 06, 2023•48 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast Did you know that Joseph Smith’s first attempt to obey the Lord’s command to him to practice plural marriage ended quite badly and ended up straining his relationships both with his first wife Emma and with his close friend Oliver Cowdery? And have you ever heard that Joseph was sealed to several women who already had living husbands? Was this a scandalous practice, or was something else going on? And have you heard that Joseph was also sealed to Helen Kimball, who was only 14 years old at the t...
May 30, 2023•59 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast Plural marriage—a form of religious polygamy (or polygyny to be technical)—is one of the most controversial and faith-challenging aspects of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was difficult when it was first introduced in the early Church and, although it was discontinued over 130 years ago, it is still a difficult issue for many both within and outside of the Church to reckon with. So why was it introduced into the Church in the first place? When did Joseph Smith...
May 23, 2023•42 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast The more carefully one studies the production process of the Book of Mormon, the more interesting the questions become. For example, since Joseph Smith never could read the original base language engraven on the plates, what did he mean when he said he “translated” the Book of Mormon? And was his translation best characterized as a “tight” translation, a “loose” translation, or something else entirely? And if the Book of Mormon was translated correctly the first time, why did Joseph Smith make c...
May 16, 2023•51 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast Aside from the text of the Book of Mormon itself and a personal witness from God’s Spirit, what is the best evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon? Different people might answer this question in different ways, but in today’s episode of Church History Matters Casey and Scott propose that the very best external evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is the collective testimony of the Three and Eight Witnesses. Their experiences appear to have been premeditated, anticipat...
May 09, 2023•52 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast What would you say if somebody told you that a 23 year old farm boy dictated to a scribe a sacred text of 531 pages while looking down at stones placed in the bottom of his hat? And what would you think if they then told you that this book was dictated and written in one pass—from beginning to end—in approximately 60 days without any punctuation and with little to no revising? And what if they then showed you countless examples of how this book contains a high degree of literary and semitic comp...
May 02, 2023•53 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast If we had video footage of the translation process of the Book of Mormon, what would we see? What would we actually watch Joseph Smith “do” during a translation session? Now of course we don’t have video footage, but we do have perhaps the next best thing—multiple eyewitness accounts of those who saw the process up close first hand. And what they said they saw was a decidedly non-secular, non-academic, one-of-a-kind translation method involving a young 22 and 23 year old Joseph looking at seer s...
Apr 25, 2023•52 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast After four years of waiting, learning, and personal refinement, 21 year old Joseph Smith was finally entrusted by the angel Moroni with the ancient record that for centuries had lain in waiting in a stone box embedded in a hill near his home. Recalling this time years later, Joseph said that almost as soon as he had received the plates “the most strenuous exertions were used to get them from me. Every stratagem that could be invented was resorted to for that purpose. The persecution became more ...
Apr 18, 2023•49 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast About three and a half years after his “first vision,” Joseph Smith experienced his “second vision.” It occurred on the evening of the 21st of September 1823 in Palmyra, New York, when Joseph was only seventeen years old. In this vision he met a stunning angelic messenger named Moroni who delivered an even more stunning message: that the preparatory work for the second coming of the Messiah was soon to commence, and that the fulness of the Gospel was soon to be preached in power to all nations t...
Apr 11, 2023•48 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast The more carefully one studies Joseph Smith’s First Vision and the context of his world at that time, the more interesting the questions become. For example, if Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ in a vision, does that mean he didn’t actually see them in reality? And what are we to make of the fact that other people around the time of Joseph Smith’s vision also claimed to have had visions of God (many of whom were Methodists)? And how might the form of these Methodist conversion na...
Apr 04, 2023•53 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast Thousands of people heard Joseph Smith’s testimony first hand. Some of those testimonies included him telling about his First Vision experience. Some of those people who heard his witness wrote down the details of what they heard. Luckily, a few of those handwritten accounts have survived until today and some of them contain even more details about Joseph’s vision which add to our understanding of what happened in 1820 in the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York. In today's episode we explore three...
Mar 28, 2023•47 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Did you know that the first time the story of Joseph Smith’s First Vision was ever printed was in a pamphlet written by apostle Orson Pratt and published in Scotland while Pratt was on a mission there in 1840? Intriguingly, Pratt's language from this pamphlet was used by Joseph Smith himself two years later, in 1842, when writing the story of his First Vision for a non-Latter-day Saint newspaper editor named John Wentworth. Pratt’s pamphlet also heavily influenced another insightful telling of J...
Mar 21, 2023•45 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast In 1835, Joseph Smith shared his second recorded account of his First Vision with an eccentric visitor to Kirtland, Ohio who claimed to be a Jewish minister. How did this fact that Joseph believed he was speaking with a Jewish man shape and influence the details he chose to share and the language he used to tell about his experience? Also, three years later in 1838, after moving to Far West, Missouri in the aftermath of sever persecution in Ohio, Joseph began to record his official history with ...
Mar 14, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Joseph Smith’s First Vision is foundational to our narrative of the Restoration today, but it was not always so from the Church’s beginning. So how did the First Vision go from what began as a very personal experience of Joseph’s, to growing in institutional significance for the whole Church as it has today? Also, given that there are unique differences in Joseph Smith’s 4 separate accounts of his First Vision, what role does our personal “hermeneutic” play in how we make sense of these? And wha...
Mar 08, 2023•53 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast 
