Narrative Revolutions in Nat Turner and Joseph Smith

Abstract

The early 1830s were banner years for preachers and prophets in America. Circuit riders and evangelists fanned out over the whole of the settled US, and church membership increased exponentially under the influence of itinerant clergy. An explosion of religious periodicals allowed newly formed and reinvigorated denominations to reach thousands of potential converts; by 1830, there were 605 different religious journals, and the American Bible Society was producing more than a million Bibles a year (Hatch 142, 141). The age saw a rise in a variety of eccentric religious activities, including speaking in tongues, divinely inspired “shaking” and dancing, spirit-possession, and faith healing. Numerous self-proclaimed prophets emerged, including William Miller, founder of the Adventists; “Count de Leon” Bernhard Müller, who claimed to be the Messiah; Robert Matthews, the prophet Matthias; Elijah Pierson, the prophet Elijah; and John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida community. And two particularly charismatic and divisive prophets emerged on the national scene: in April 1830, Joseph Smith, claiming to have miraculously discovered and translated the Book of Mormon, founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and in August 1831, the slave Nat Turner, citing visions from God, organized a bloody slave revolt, killing dozens of local families and setting off panicked reactions throughout the South.1

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