The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844

by John L. Brooke

Book Overview

Mormon religious belief has long been a mystery to outsiders, either dismissed as anomalous to the American religious tradition or extolled as the most genuine creation of the American imagination. The Refiner's Fire presents a new and comprehensive understanding of the roots of Mormon religion, whose theology promises the faithful that they will become gods through the restoration of ancient mysteries and regain the divine powers of Adam lost in...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521345456
• ISBN13: 9780521345453
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 444 Pages
• Weight: 1.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Fascinating Context for Joseph Smith's Claims--10 stars!

Note: I made some Mormon reader angry over my reviews of books written by Mormons out to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews. Your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks. Anyone interested in how Joseph Smith could have become a prophet should first read about the life of Joanna Southcott. Her story proves that believers will continue to believe regardless of contrary evidence; in fact, for the believer, the contrary evidence will be seen as the greatest evidence of all. The following is quoted from Brook's well-researched history (the first part a summary on the back cover). It's a real eye opener, and in many aspects, Southcott's claims are mockingly similar to those of Joseph Smith. Southcott's "sealings" will leap from the page for anyone familiar with Mormonism (also her testimonies). "Born in 1750 to a Devon farmer, and growing in a typical rural environment of the time, Joanna Southcott's life was changed in 1792 when she heard the `still, small voice' that would inform and guide her for the next two decades. Her claims that it was the word of God speaking through her were rejected by church leaders, yet her prophecies of the Second Coming and her `sealing' of believers against harm brought her tens of thousands of followers. Some of her writings, she was told by her inner voice, were to be kept secret and revealed only when requested by the twenty-four Church of England Bishops at a time of great danger--hence the existence of her famous Box." (A box of "sealed" prophecies!) "Central to Joanna's Southcott's writings is the fight between good and evil in the world, which, as in the Revelation of St. John, is to culminate in a terrible battle leading to a great victory for Christ of the Devil." "The whole nation looked on in 1814 when Joanna--at age of sixty--announced the forthcoming birth of `Shiloh,' which she saw as the second coming of Jesus. The pregnancy was affirmed by leading doctors, but Joanna died and no trace of Shiloh could be found." Her writing career began this way: She went out and bought "pens, ink and paper and made a start. Writing had never come easy to her. There had always been complaints about its illegibility, but she would not let that put her off" (p. 53). She wrote 65 books and pamphlets, including "A True Picture of the World." She even had an "Affidavit signed by the Seven Stars in 1802, confirming that they had found Joanna Southcott's powers of prophecy to be genuine" (p. 110). One of her followers was Robert Dowland. Dowland went to her meeting and, "Soon afterward he began to communicate with a spirit who confirmed his new faith in verse and, despite the fact that Dowland was barely literate, the words were dictated as fast as he could write them down" (p. 182): `Come, see Joanna, see the saint arise! Burst earthly prison, soar about the skies, To that bright world where joys immortal grow, And life's unfathom'd pleasures ever flow; There rob'd in white, sh

A Powerful Statement of the Origins of Mormonism

Although it is a rare experience, every decade or so a book is published in Mormon history that stretches the bounds of imagination and understanding, and recasts the field of study in a different context. Fawn Brodie's 1945 biography, "No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith," Leonard Arrington's 1958 "Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints," Robert Flanders's 1965 "Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi," Leonard Arrington's and Davis Bitton's 1979 "The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints," and D. Michael Quinn's 1987, "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View," are all in this category. They have become classics of Mormon studies, creatively reevaluating historical perceptions and affecting in a unique way the studies that followed. "The Refiner's Fire" may be in the same category."The Refiner's Fire" ranges broadly to place Joseph Smith and the rise of a new religious tradition squarely within a fresh context that incorporates many of the elements explored by students of Mormonism for the last four decades into a new historical synthesis. Brooke is concerned with Mormon origins, especially the elements that came together to make the Restoration movement such a powerful and compelling force in the 1830s and 1840s.In a narrative that is much more persuasive than most when approached with an inquiring mind, Brooke argues that Mormon doctrine and cosmology originated neither in Puritan New England nor as a result of the Second Great Awakening that took place largely on the American frontier of the early nineteenth century. Instead, he places the church's ideological roots in Europe in the period of the sixteenth century Reformation, where a core element of religious dissenters questioned traditional Christian concepts and found solace in the hermetic occult.The author contends that the connections between the occult and the sectarian ideal of restoration with Mormonism helped to forge an exceptionally attractive religious movement throughout the Western world. Integral to this was hermeticism, which claims that humanity could regain the lost and pure world of Adam through the development of a special relationship to God based on religious ritual and sacrifice. The belief in the occult, which had been exceptionally powerful in Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, had been manifested especially in non-Catholic religions, magic, witchcraft beliefs, Freemasonry, and a host of everyday activities that were accepted as part of the human experience. They ranged from a belief in the visitation of angels to the far more sinister casting of spells on enemies.Much of this acceptance of the supernatural as an everyday occurrence was lost in the rationality of the "Enlightenment" of the seventeenth century, and our present secular belief system is largely predicated on those ideas. It did not have to be that way, as this book makes clear. Joseph Smith challenged that rational system in funda

A solid piece of scholarly work

Most reviewers of this text misunderstand it. The FARMS reviews and others on this site are clearly driven by an agenda to cover up the historical development of this 19th century new religious movement. In fact, Brooke's text seeks to investigate the depth to which early LDS history is indebted to modern interpretations of ancient and Renaissance Hermeticism and magic. Brooke successfully argues that the three-tiered Heaven, "pre-Creation existence of eternal spirits," and latent divinity of Man are all derived from a popular 19th century American hermetic milleu fused with apocalyptic Christian mysticism. We must not forget that the Gospel of John itself is an esoteric religious text. The development of Western esoteric and occult thought owes much to the Gospel of John as well as Hermetic thought born of Egyptian, Christian, and Jewish elements. Brooke clearly shows that Smith was immersed in the treasure-divining culture of his time and place, as well as Masonic knowledge, visionary experiences, and other elements of a popular Hermetic framework. Contrary to some reviewers, Brooke displays an amazing knowledge of Mormon doctrine, faithfully backing up his assertions with credible citations of standard LDS theological sources.Brooke does not claim that LDS is an "occult" religion. What he claims is that American popular hermeticism fused with an apocalyptic interpretation and command of scripture created the early foundations of Mormonism. Contemporary LDS institutions like FARMS are, like many religions, concerned with erasing their origins to maintain legitimacy. But excommunicating scholars and misinterpreting solid pieces of scholarship (perhaps deliberately) will not stand the test of rigorous historical investigation. To those who would let FARMS decide what is legitimate LDS scholarship and what is not, hear this: Religious institutions, like political and social ones, have a vested interest in projecting a certain image. Currently, the Mormon church is trying insert itself into the mainstream of activist Protestantism. But teaching that God was once a man who walked the soil, that earth is (or will be) a level of heaven, and that angels are essentially "recycled" humans, is essentially a hermetic, historically occult doctrine-- and no amount of political whitewashing will change that. There is nothing disrespectful about the presence of occultism in Mormon history---Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have absorbed heavy doses of hermetic and kabbalistic thought, and all have survived quite well.Read this book. Read D. Michael Quinn as well. Read Bruce R. McConkie, Brian Copenhaver's "Hermetica," and the Gospel of John, and you will begin to be able to trace the religious development of Mormon ideas starting in antiquity.

Remarkable Book

I have used The Refiner's Fire in my American Social History class to great effect. The students were fascinated not only by the subject matter (which was wonderful in the way it presented almost unimaginable links of popular thought)but also by Brooke's method.

Excellent Scholarship

This book starts where most LDS "exposes" end. Accepting as documented the Masonic and occult links of the temple rites, and the occult practices of Joseph Smith, Brooke asks instead what was the psychology that drove Joseph Smith, and what was the psychology in pre-colonial, colonial, and early independent America that his words should fall on such receptive ears? How did it happen that hermeticism, already gone and past in Europe, should appear so resoundingly 200 years later across the Atlantic? It breaks through the rewritten history of early America as purely Christian, to show how earlier events such as the Salem witch trials were symptoms of a magical world view prevalent among major parts of the population. Brooke connects all this with post-Reformation hermeticism. And in so doing, he proposes the evolution of Joseph Smith and his religion in distinct phases. In many ways, the story is a 19th century donnybrook very similar to the modern one imagined by Umberto Eco in "Foucalt's Pendulum."