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

John L. Brooke (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521345456 | ISBN-13: 978-0521345453 | Publication Date: October 28, 1994

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 the fall from Paradise. Professor Brooke contends that the origins of Mormonism lie in the fusion of radical religion with occult ideas, and organizes his book around the two problems of demonstrating the survival of these ideas into the nineteenth century and explaining how they were manifested in Mormon doctrine. In the concluding chapter, the author provides an outline of how Mormonism since the 1850s gradually moved toward traditional Protestant Christianity. As well as religion, the book explores magic, witchcraft, alchemy, Freemasonry, counterfeiting, and state-formation. John L. Brooke is professor of history at Tufts University and the acclaimed author of The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861 (CUP, 1989), which has won, among other prizes, the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Award for Intellectual History and the National Historical Society Book Prize for American History.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"John Brooke takes a controversial romp over the field of previous Mormon scholarship. When he has done, he has managed to raise the intellectual pedigree of Joseph Smith by establishing his close kinship with European hermeticists and the subversive sectarians of the Radical Reformation. It is a fascinating argument that traces the influence of ideas through complicated social networks of neighbors and kin. The people 'prepared' for Mormonism are a surprising lot." R. Laurence Moore, Cornell University

"The Refiner's Fire explores the complex and always intriguing world of early Mormon theological and ritual evolution with remarkable learning, fairness, and daring--an exciting, sophisticated account sure to generate both controversy and a renewed appreciation of early Mormon spiritual creativity." John Butler, Yale University

"This is not just a revealing history of the backgrund of the first Mormons and early Mormonism but a larger history of early American culture that will do almost as much for readers who are interested in the cultural context in which this new American religion developed as it will do for those who simply want to learn more about Mormon beginnings." Jan Shipps, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

"His book is a model of the historian's enterprise....[Brooke] blends the passion of the detective and the dispassion of the good judge as he describes the background and context of Mormonism." Martin E. Marty, Commonwealth

"An insightful contribution to the controversy surrounding the origins of Mormonism." College & Research Libraries News

"Excellent....This study not only sets Mormon religious history into a frontier occult milieu but offers important understanding of the beliefs and practices of Americans outside the individual and institutional carriers commonly the focus of previous occult histories." The Reader's Review

"The Refiner's Fire is a wonderful book, thoroughly researched and rich in interpretive detail." Curtis Johnson, The Journal of American History

"The Refiner's Fire is an important and daring work for which Brooke has received the Bancroft Prize in American history....Combining intellectual and demographic history with rare skill, Brooke sheds great light on transatlantic subcultures that have not been labeled "occult" (read "hidden") for nothing." Religious Studies Review

Book Description

Presenting a new and comprehensive understanding of the roots of Mormon religion, this study contends that the origins of Mormonism lie in the fusion of radical religion with occult ideas. It demonstrates the survival of these ideas and explains how they were manifested in Mormon doctrine.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 443 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (October 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521345456
• ISBN-13: 978-0521345453
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid piece of scholarly work, November 13, 2000

By 

Christopher W. Chase "Christopher W. Chase" (East Lansing, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Paperback)

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.

42 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Statement of the Origins of Mormonism, April 11, 2004

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Paperback)

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 fundamental ways when he contended that God was not "knowable" through reason, but only through the supernatural. His "First Vision" was central to that challenge--as was his translation of the Book of Mormon--and his continued reliance on nonrational knowledge thereafter incorporated a fundamental occult tradition into the movement he founded. Brooke brings together an analysis of Mormonism's occult origins in folk magic with its later expression in unique theological ideals.

"The Refiner's Fire" is an important study that will not be comfortable reading for some within the Latter-day Saint tradition. But it should be read, even though its celebration of a radical, supernatural, nonrational, religious tradition of European hermetic purity and danger will be discomforting to those who wish the modern Latter-day Saint church to be a mainstream religious institution. Joseph Smith's assertions more than 170 years ago about angelic visitations, prophetic ministry, Zionic community-building, and a restoration of the gospel in its ancient purity was a unique and powerful message in the emergent United States. "The Refiner's Fire" helps to explain some of that power, for Smith's efforts hit at the center of humanity's desire to know something that is ultimately unknowable through secular rationality.

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-Researched and Original, July 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Paperback)

The Refiner's fire is well researched and original. Mr. Brooke's analysis of Mormon cosmology is challenging and thought provoking. However, this book is not perfect. The (historical) links to hermeticism are sometimes a bit tenuous. But the forms are there. On the whole this book is well worth the read. It's good to read a book that doesn't support traditional conceptions of Mormon origins and at the same time is not anti-Mormon.

If you don't believe me. . . maybe this appeal to authority :) will help. The Refiner's Fire has received several awards: The Bancroft Prize in American History - Columbia University, the Book Prize of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, and the New England Historical Association's Annual Book Award - Am. Hist. Assn.