Item Detail
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26056
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1
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0
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English
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Joseph F. Smith's Encouragement of His Brother, Patriarch John Smith
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Joseph F. Smith : Reflections on the Man and His Times
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Provo, UT
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Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book
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133-158
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A good argument could be made that no General Authority in the history of the Church has served as long in a presiding position and is yet as almost entirely forgotten as John Smith. He was the Church's Presiding Patriarch for fifty-six years; he gave over twenty thousand patriarchal blessings; he was sustained in general conference as a prophet, seer, and revelator; and yet, in some recent histories, it is occasionally difficult to even find John's name listed among Hyrum Smith's children. There is also a sense that part of John Smith's anonymity reflects, as a handful of historians have recently suggested, a legacy of ambivalence and even discomfort about the Presiding Patriarch's proper place in the Church's hierarchy in general, and John Smith's role in that office in particular. This paper seeks to address both that anonymity and that ambivalence. [From the text]