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This
South Park episode has Joseph Smith as an adult walking
through his hometown with his neighbors discussing that
he saw and talked with God and Jesus.
One neighbor complains to Joseph Smith that he told his
wife Smith’s story and she didn’t believe him.
In response, Joseph Smith tells the neighbor’s wife
that he was in the woods praying to know if he should be
Protestant or a Catholic, when God and Jesus appeared to
him and told him to start his own church because “none
of the others had it right.”
Suddenly the wife believes the story because, as she asks,
“why would somebody make that up?”
This
depiction of the Joseph Smith’s religious beginnings
isn't exactly how it happened.
To begin
with, there are no contemporary accounts of Joseph
Smith seeing God and Jesus. Depending on which
account you read, Joseph Smith claimed to have had this
vision anywhere between 1820 and 1824. However, Joseph Smith
did not write the story about the vision until 1832 –
many years after he had left his hometown of Palmyra.
In the
original version written by Joseph Smith in 1832, he describes
a significantly different story than depicted by South Park.
Joseph
Smith originally wrote in his diary that the vision occurred
in 1822 and that he knew all of the churches were false
before he prayed. In answer to his prayer, he writes he
only saw Jesus (not God the father) and that Jesus forgave
him of his sins. There is no mention of Joseph Smith
being called a prophet or Jesus telling him to organize
a church. (Read
Smith's original full account here)
Much
later in 1835, Joseph Smith published another version of
his vision story, this time saying it took place in 1823.
In this account, Joseph Smith said he went to pray because
he wondered “if a Supreme Being did exist” and
was answered by an angelic messenger that forgave him his
sins. (Read
this account in full here)
Probably
the best known account of Joseph Smith’s vision was
written by James Mulholland in 1838. Today, this is known
as the church's “official version” of the story.
Unpublished until 1842, Mulholland’s first-person
narrative of Joseph Smith’s vision is now canonized
in Mormon scripture as the “Joseph Smith History.”
In
this "official" version of the story, Joseph Smith
in 1820 goes into the woods to pray and ask God which church
to join because he isn’t sure which one is true. In
response to the prayer, God the Father and Jesus Christ
appear and tell him not to join any church because “they
were all wrong.” Jesus then tells Smith “that
all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that
those professors were all corrupt.” Even in this popular
version of the story, Joseph Smith is not called a prophet
or told to organize a church. These parts of Joseph Smith’s
story did not happen until much later.
The
First Vision segment of South Park is entertaining, but
it does not represent the truth about the various versions
of Smith’s story that he produced over the years.
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