The LDS hymn "Praise to the Man" (the original title was simply Joseph Smith) is a favorite thing to nitpick and criticize among Critics of the LDS Church. I often find those who are feverishly typing away judgmental tirades on the web against Joseph Smith, do not live lives that most of us would find very praiseworthy. Theodore Roosevelt put it this way in regards to the critics on the sidelines complaining about the men in the arena of life:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Joseph Smith may have often come up short, and failed in many ways, but who can deny that he strove valiantly toward the worthy cause of building up Zion? I think the song Praise to the Man, is a reasonable honoring of the masculine vitality of Joseph Smith and all he accomplished for the Latter-day Saints. I also see it as an honoring of men of valor and great deeds, as the song basically presents Joseph Smith's life to the tune of what Joseph Campbell called The Hero's Journey. So that Joseph's triumphs act as an archetype of what all men can aspire to on their own hero's journey.
Joseph Smith was no slouch. He was always in the area of life! At the age of 23 he dictated the entire 531 pages of The Book of Mormon in what scholars consider one of the greatest orations in history. He went on to organize a church in 1830 at the age of 24, which has grown into a major new religion. He went on to dictate over a 100 revelations that are uplifting and inspiring to many.
In Joseph Smith and His Papers: An Introduction, we read:
For one who had little schooling, Joseph Smith left an unusually extensive literary record. From 1828, when he began work on the Book of Mormon at age twenty-two, to 1844, when he was killed at age thirty-eight, Smith produced thousands of pages of revelations, translations, correspondence, declarations, discourses, journals, and histories. …
His rise from obscurity to prominence as the founder and first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not follow a conventional path. Though he was intelligent and strong willed, no ordinary talent can account for his success. His rise as church leader, city builder, and theologian rested on what he believed was a gift of revelation …
… The revelation [in D&C 76, described] a hereafter divided into three degrees of glory, more finely graded than the usual heaven-or-hell division and more in accord with the mixture of good and evil in actual life. The revelations thrilled believers. William W. Phelps , a New York newspaper editor converted a year after the church was organized, called the revelation on the three degrees of glory “the greatest news that was ever published to man.”[4] A meeting of Latter-day Saints making publication plans voted that the revelations “be prized by this Conference to be worth to the Church the riches of the whole Earth. speaking temporally.”[5] …
… Joseph Smith introduced readers into ancient worlds without injecting himself into the story. The Book of Mormon opens with the phrase “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father”; the book of Moses begins, “The words of God which he spake unto Moses at a time when Moses was caught up into an exceeding high Mountain”; and the book of Abraham starts, “In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my father, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence.”[7] Readers are transported to remote times and places as they are when reading Beowulf or Thucydides—or the Bible. In the book of Moses, the reader learns of Enoch, who conversed with God and built a city that was taken into heaven. In the book of Abraham, the father of nations learns astronomy by consulting a Urim and Thummim. However one accounts for these marvelous narratives, they exceed anything one would expect from a poorly educated rural visionary. They are one reason for Yale literary critic Harold Bloom’s comment that Smith was “an authentic religious genius” who “surpassed all Americans, before or since, in the possession and expression of what could be called the religion-making imagination.”[8] …
… In March 1830, Joseph Smith published the 584-page Book of Mormon, an unusual beginning for a life as a minister of the gospel. No other religious career in Smith’s time began this way. Others of his generation claimed visions, but none published a “translation” or wrote a parallel Bible. … Joseph Smith, instead of communicating with the world through sermons, made his entrance onto the religious stage with the translation of a large book of ancient records. Though not widely read himself, he instinctively sensed the increasing potency of print in disseminating religious knowledge. … [Critics] could not account for the extensive narrative tying the religious passages together.
The Book of Mormon is an elaborate, thousand-year history of a civilization that flourished and then collapsed more than fourteen hundred years before Joseph Smith published the book. In its ambitious scope, the Book of Mormon most resembles the Bible. The first hostile reports immediately called it the “Gold Bible,” partly because of the echoes of King James English in the prose. The text begins with the flight of two Israelite families from Jerusalem in about 600 BC and ends with the destruction of their civilization in about AD 421. The text is divided into “books” named for prophets, similar to the prophetic books of the Bible, and tells stories of God’s intervention in human affairs. In a reprise of the New Testament, Christ appears to these people after his resurrection and teaches the Christian gospel. Although many New England writers of Smith’s generation tried to produce scripture-like writing, the literary historian Lawrence Buell has pointed out that none succeeded in completing more than a few fragments of inspired poetry. “The new Bible did not get written,” he says, “unless one counts The Book of Mormon.”[17]
Though like the Bible in many respects, the Book of Mormon is not a copy. It introduces scores of distinctive characters and tells dozens of original stories about the struggle to establish a righteous society. The account, which takes place largely in the Western Hemisphere, where the migrating families arrive by ship, re-creates an economy, a culture, a political system, a military, and a church. The complexity of the story and the scene makes it difficult to sustain the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon merely imitates the Bible or that, as [Alexander] Campbell argued, the uneducated Joseph Smith pulled together snatches of theological and political controversy to patch the book together. Considering that Smith dictated the bulk of the book in less than three months, it is perhaps the most notable example of untutored genius in all of American history.
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The Quora website points out the following regarding Joseph Smith:
- His visionary leadership of a community of believers motivated thousands to gather from various countries in Europe and North America to strive to “build Zion” - where the people are “of one mind and one heart, with no poor among them.” Calling it a cult in no way diminishes the rarity of this kind of achievement in human history.
- He led believers to make extraordinary sacrifices in order to create two temples, in Kirtland, Ohio and again in Nauvoo, Illinois — both of which were among the most extraordinary buildings every built on the American frontier.
- He created a theology and tapestry of doctrine that is so extraordinarily rich in breadth and depth that it informs the daily lives of millions of believers ...
- He conceived a pattern for organizing cities that became a successful blueprint used by Brigham Young in colonizing dozens of cities in the West, including some of the earliest successful settlements in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, and Arizona.
- He founded a city in Illinois that rapidly grew to become one of the largest on the American frontier, rivaling Chicago in size for a few years at the end of Joseph’s 38-year lifespan.
- ... let me point you to the writings of Josiah Quincy III, who was a U.S. Congressman, Mayor of Boston, and Harvard University President. ... It is doubtful that a more credible witness to the achievements of Joseph Smith can be found, and I quote from his remarks after meeting Joseph Smith and spending considerable time with him:
The man who established a religion in this age of free debate, who was and is today accepted by hundreds of thousands as a direct emissary from the Most High—such a rare human being is not to be disposed of by pelting his memory with unsavory epithets.
Fanatic, impostor, charlatan, he may have been; but these hard names furnish no solution to the problem he presents to us. Fanatics and impostors are living and dying every day, and their memory is buried with them; but the wonderful influence which this founder of a religion exerted and still exerts throws him into relief before us, not as a rogue to be criminated, but as a phenomenon to be explained.
The most vital questions Americans are asking each other today have to do with this man and what he has left us. A generation other than mine must deal with these questions. Burning questions they are, which must give a prominent place in the history of the country to that sturdy self-asserter whom I visited at Nauvoo.
Joseph Smith, claiming to be an inspired teacher, faced adversity such as few men have been called to meet, enjoyed a brief season of prosperity such as few men have ever attained, and finally, forty-three days after I saw him, went cheerfully to a martyr's death. When he surrendered his person to Governor Ford, in order to prevent the shedding of blood, the Prophet had a presentiment of what was before him. "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter," he is reported to have said; "but I am as calm as a summer's morning. I have a conscience void of offense, and shall die innocent." ...
... Ten closely written pages of my journal describe my impressions of Nauvoo, and of its Prophet, mayor, general and judge [To read is full of what Ford said of Smith, see here. Here are some excerpts:]
He was a hearty, athletic fellow, with blue eyes standing prominently ...
... capacity and resource were natural to his stalwart person ...
[He] seemed best endowed with that kingly faculty which directs as by intrinsic right ...
... the impression of rugged power that was given by the man ...
... The other objections of his antagonist [a Methodist minister] were parried with a similar adroitness ... Clearly the worthy minister was no match for the head of the Mormon Church ...
... [He] had long been familiar with perils. For fourteen years he was surrounded by vindictive enemies, who lost no opportunity to harass him. He was in danger even when we saw him at the summit of his prosperity ...
... If these letters go little way toward interpreting the man, they suggest that any hasty interpretation of him is inadequate...
... We then went on to talk of politics. Smith recognized the curse and iniquity of slavery ... We who can look back upon the terrible cost of the fratricidal war which put an end to slavery, now say that such a solution of the difficulty would have been worthy a Christian statesman. But if the retired scholar was in advance of his time when he advocated this disposition of the public property in 1855, what shall I say of the political and religious leader [Joseph Smith] who had committed himself, in print, as well as in conversation, to the same course in 1844? ...
... Who can wonder that the chair of the National Executive had its place among the visions of this self-reliant man? He had already traversed the roughest part of the way to that coveted position. Born in the lowest ranks of poverty, without book-learning and with the homeliest of all human names, he had made himself at the age of thirty-nine a power upon earth. Of the multitudinous family of Smith, from Adam down (Adam of the "Wealth of Nations," I mean), none had so won human hearts and shaped human lives as this Joseph. His influence, whether for good or for evil, is potent to-day, and the end is not yet.
I have endeavored to give the details of my visit to the Mormon Prophet with absolute accuracy. If the reader does not know just what to make of Joseph Smith, I cannot help him out of the difficulty. I myself stand helpless before the puzzle.
[End of quote by U.S. Congressman, Josiah Quincy III]
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The Quora website goes on to quote a talk, Joseph Smith: By Elder Tad R. Callister, which states regarding the accomplishments of Joseph Smith:
Had 2 temples built
1st American Religion
First factory line
A candidate for the presidency of the United States
First to recommend a national bank
First to have suggested the annexation of Texas, Mexico, and Canada to the United States.
He founded the city of Nauvoo
He served as one of Nauvoo's mayors, judges, and aldermen.
He commanded its armed militia, the Nauvoo Legion, that at its peak was a force of about 3,000 men.
... He revealed the additional ordinances of latter-day temples that open the doors to exaltation and godhood.
The gospel is preached in the spirit world/paradise and especially spirit prison to those who have died without an opportunity to hear it. Not only is this doctrine scripturally correct, but it appeals to every fair-minded individual.
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Consider the The New York Sun (September 1843):
This Joe Smith must be set down as an extraordinary character, a prophet-hero, as Carlyle might call him. He is one of the great men of this age, and in future history will rank with those, who, in one way or other, have stamped their impress strongly on society.
Nothing can be more plebian, in seeming, than this Joe Smith. Little of dignity is there in his cognomen; but few in this age have done such deeds, and performed such apparent miracles. It is no small thing, in the blaze of this nineteenth century, <to give to Man a New Revelation; found a new religion; establish new forms of worship,> to build a city, with new laws, institutions, and orders of architecture; to establish ecclesiastical civil, and military jurisdiction; found colleges; send out missionaries, and make proselytes in two hemispheres: yet all this has been done by Joe Smith, and that against every sort of opposition, ridicule, and persecution. This sect has its martyrs also, and the spirit in which they were imprisoned and murdered, in Missouri, does not appear to have differed much from that which has attended religious persecutions in all ages of the world.
That Joe Smith, the founder of the Mormons, is a man of great talent— a deep thinker, and eloquent speaker; an able writer, and a man of great mental power, no one can doubt who has watched his career.
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For more on Joseph Smith's antifragility, see the study manual Teachings of President of the Church: Joseph Smith (2011), Chapter 19: Stand Fast through the Storms of Life.
Given the above listings of his major accomplishments within a relatively brief period of time; who can deny the masculine power and noble endeavors of Joseph Smith, which even non-Mormons like U.S. Congressman, Josiah Quincy III, recognized. In this context, I think the hymn Praise to the Man is a very reasonable song as an homage to the accomplishments of Joseph Smith; while simultaneously showing reverence for Healthy Masculinity in all of its virtue, fecundity and power; that implants, builds, forms, and orders our worlds in yin-yang balance with Healthy Femininity.
