RELC 2215 Chapter article: Summary of Bushman’s “The Visionary World of John Smith”
25 Aug 2016
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Essentially, bushman wanted to capture the significance of the visionaries who came before joseph while showing what differentiated joseph from the visionaries before him to lead to the creation of the mormon church. In the essay, the concept of visionary culture is very crucial and bushman highlights this this by emphasizing the contributions of various visionaries; of course focused on joseph smith. Bushman demonstrates this with a series of different examples of visions that have value but were not the ultimate rise of mormonism. He later discusses though visionaries, such as stearns, were important, there are fundamental differences in smith"s visions that set him apart from the others. Bushman first begins by alluding to the importance of visionary culture to the rise of. As early as the early 1700"s and gaining popularity through the 1900"s visions played a very important role in the development of culture.
