Movers And Makers Or Religions Essay, Research Paper

No religion in existence today or in the days past has come into existence at the blink of an eye. All religions have had creators, portrayers, and distributors that have started the certain religious movement, lived by that movement, and spread that movement across the land. Three spectacular examples of makers and shapers of religion are the Buddha, Joseph Smith, and Confucius. While Buddha began and spread Buddhism, and Joseph Smith created Mormonism and spreads it arms, Confucius spread and supported an ideal of a world in which war and hatred and misery would be replaced by peace, good will, and happiness, (Creel 29) later known as Confucianism.

The first of these makers and movers of religion examined is the Buddha himself. However, the biography and life of the Buddha is only in concern to his humanistic embodiment while on this Earth. As Foucher explains in The Life of the Buddha, whoever the living being is whose biography is to be recorded, he can only be seized upon at a transitory moment of his multiple existences (14). At this moment in his transmigration of souls, Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama in the sixth century B.C. in what is now modern Nepal. His father, Suddhodana, was the ruler of the Sakya people and so Siddhartha most likely grew up living the extravagant life of a young prince.

According to custom, he married at the young age of sixteen to a girl named Yasodhara. His father had ordered that he live a life of total seclusion, but one day Siddhartha ventured out into the world and was confronted with the reality of the inevitable suffering of life. The next day, at the age of twenty-nine, he left his kingdom and newborn son to lead an ascetic life and determine a way to relieve universal suffering. For six years, Siddhartha submitted himself to rigorous ascetic practices, studying and following different methods of meditation with various religious teachers. But he was never fully satisfied. One day, however, he was offered a bowl of rice from a young girl and he accepted it. In that moment, he realized that physical austerities were not the means to achieve liberation. From then on, he encouraged people to follow a path of balance rather than extremism. He called this The Middle Way. That night Siddhartha sat under the Bodhi tree, and meditated until dawn. He purified his mind of all defilements and attained enlightenment at the age of thirty-five, thus earning the title Buddha, or “Enlightened One.”

For the remainder of his eighty years, the Buddha preached the dharma to all peoples, in and around India, in an effort to help other sentient beings reach enlightenment. In reference to Buddha s moving of the Buddhism religion, Carrithers explains in The Buddha, in the very long run Buddhism was strikingly successful: it became a world religion which until recently reigned over the Far East and mainland South-East Asia (79). The impact of the Buddha on the world through his new found idea and thoughts of the Buddhism religion is best described by Foucher when he states, The Sage of the Sakyas (Buddha) was, above all, the initiator of a religion that achieved world-wide renown (243).

Around the same time as the existence of Buddhism, a man of humble status (Creel 25), Confucius (born Kong Qiu, styled Zhong Ni) was born in the village of Zou in the country of Lu in 551 B.C., a poor descendant of a deposed noble family. As a child, he held make-believe temple rituals; as a young adult, he quickly earned a reputation for fairness, politeness and love of learning, and he was reputed to be quite tall. He traveled extensively and studied at the imperial capital, Zhou, where he is said to have met and spoke with Lao Zi, the founder of Daoism. Upon his return to Lu, he gained renown as a teacher, but when he was 35, Duke Zhao of Lu led his country to war, was routed and fled to the neighboring country of Qi; in the disorder so great that the necessity for a remedy was widely recognized (Creel 211) following the battle, Confucius followed. Duke Zhao frequently came to him for advice, but upon counsel of one of his ministers, he decided against granting land to Confucius and gradually stopped seeking his counsel. When other nobles began plotting against Confucius’ position, Duke Zhao refused to intervene, and Confucius returned to Lu. But conditions there were no better than before, and Confucius retired from public life to concentrate on teaching and studying. After a failure of communicating his beliefs to the people through politics, Confucius turned towards teaching the masses, and the masses responded:

Since the Master was liberal in his educational policy and by no means snobbish in his attitude towards students, all types of eager-eyed, wide-mouthed young men were admitted to the portals of his lecture hall (Wu-Chi 124).

Confucius pupils were called Confucians and the ideas and methods taught at his school were called Confucianism. At age 50, he was approached by the Baron of Qi to help defend against a rebellion, but he declined. He was later made a city magistrate by the new Duke of Lu, and under his administration the city flourished; he was promoted several times, eventually becoming Grand Secretary of Justice and, at age 56, Chief Minister of Lu. Neighboring countries began to worry that Lu would become too powerful, and they sent messengers with gifts and dancers to distract the duke during a sacrifice holiday. When the duke abandoned his duties to receive the messengers, Confucius resigned and left the country.

Confucius spent the next five years wandering China with his disciples, finding that his presence at royal courts was rarely tolerated for long before nobles would begin plotting to drive him out or have him killed. He was arrested once and jailed for five days, and at 62 he was pursued, along with his disciples, into the countryside by a band of soldiers sent by jealous nobles, until he was able to send a messenger to the sympathetic king of a nearby country, who sent his own soldiers to rescue them. Once again, Confucius was to be given land but was denied it upon counsel of another high minister. After further wanderings, he eventually returned to Lu at age 67. Although he was welcomed there and chose to remain, he was not offered public office again, nor did he seek it. Instead he spent the rest of his years teaching and, finally, writing. He died at 72. Years after his death, one of the Han emperors gave official recognition to Confucianism (Creel 222). After Confucius death and after the official recognition of Confucianism, the philosophies and mannerisms he taught took off among the people. As Creel describes in Confucius and the Chinese Way, Confucianism owed its ultimate success to the fact that it was favored by the common people, who over a period of many years almost forced it upon their rulers (222). Not only did the ideals of Confucianism come easily to many people, they had a living example, in the form of Confucius, on which they could see these very ideals being lived.

The most modern of the three makers and movers of religion looked at is Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith s celebrated life began in 1827 in Sharon, Vermont. His father, also named Joseph, and his mother, Lucy, had started their marriage auspiciously with Lucy’s ample dowry of one thousand dollars. But the dowry was quickly spent and the farm was overgrown with weeds. Joseph’s father moved his family to a farm near Palmyra, New York, in the western part of the state. There he fared little better than in Vermont. The Smith family often went hungry during the winter months. As soon as they were able to work, the Smith children had to help support their family. Consequently, Joseph obtained little schooling.

In 1825, Joseph and his father ventured to the eastern part of New York State on a treasure hunt in a last ditch attempt to make money for the family. The site of the hoped-for treasure was the Susquehanna Valley near Damascus, New York, just north of the Pennsylvania border. The search for treasure ended, and Joseph’s father returned to his home in Palmyra, but Joseph stayed on in the Susquehanna Valley. He had fallen in love with Emma Hale, the daughter of Isaac Hale, in whose house Joseph and his father had boarded during the treasure hunt. Emma, who was one year older than Joseph, was a beautiful and self-contained schoolteacher who kept herself aloof from Joseph. Despite Emma’s coolness, Joseph took a job as a farmhand just over the border in New York State, within walking distance of the Hale house in Pennsylvania. In his spare time he attended school to improve his skill in reading and writing, very likely so that he would seem a worthier suitor to a schoolteacher. When Joseph asked her father for Emma’s hand in marriage, he was brusquely refused. In January 1827, when Joseph was twenty-one, he succeeded in persuading Emma to elope with him. After getting married in New York State, they went to live with Joseph’s parents in Palmyra.

In the fall of 1827, Joseph and Emma returned to her parents’ home in Pennsylvania to pick up her belongings. There was an emotional meeting between Isaac Hale and his son-in-law, in which Isaac accused Joseph of having stolen his daughter. Amid tears, Joseph asked his father-in-law for forgiveness. Joseph promised to lead a more honest and responsible life (later to be embodied in Mormonism), and to be a worthy husband to Emma. Isaac seemed reassured by Joseph’s contrition, and offered to give the young couple a small house on his property. Joseph and Emma moved into the small house, and Isaac expected that Joseph would help with the work on his farm. Instead, Joseph kept himself occupied with some mysterious indoor activity.

One day Isaac decided to investigate what was going on in the small house, and paid a visit to his son- in-law. Isaac found Joseph sitting at a table with a hat over his face, uttering long Biblical phrases. Emma sat behind a curtain; hidden from Joseph, while she wrote down the words Joseph was speaking. On the tabletop in front of Joseph sat some square object concealed by a cloth. Alarmed, Isaac demanded an explanation of this strange activity. The explanation that Joseph and Emma gave him only alarmed Isaac more. They told Isaac that Joseph had seen a vision of an angel back in Palmyra. The angel had led Joseph to a place Joseph called Cumorah, a hill near Palmyra. There, digging in the spot the angel indicated, Joseph had found a set of golden plates comprising a holy book, called the Book of Mormon. With the gold plates were two stones, with which Joseph could decipher the ancient symbols on the gold plates. Joseph told Isaac that the gold plates were right in front of them on the table, in a box covered by a cloth. It was not necessary for Joseph to see the plates in order to decipher them. When Isaac asked to see the golden plates, Joseph refused permission. So far as Isaac could tell, no change had occurred in Joseph since his treasure-hunting days. Isaac failed to notice that, although Joseph’s occult techniques had not changed, the purpose of Joseph’s life had taken a new direction.

As described by Joseph, the gold plates he had found at Cumorah were worth millions of dollars; yet Joseph valued only the message engraved on them. Isaac felt certain that there were no gold plates, and that Joseph was plotting some elaborate fraud. But Emma remained loyal to her husband, dutifully taking down Joseph’s dictation, hour after hour, day after day. During his work of translation, Joseph received some financial support from a few acquaintances that believed in the importance of his task. One man mortgaged his farm, demonstrating Joseph s daunting effect on others even at an early stage, to support Joseph. The man’s wife, who considered Joseph’s scriptures a hoax, was so incensed that she left her husband. Emma worked as Joseph’s first scribe, followed by two more. This laborious process continued intermittently for several months, with several different scribes assisting the Prophet (Gibbons 50). Finally, in 1830, the work of translation was completed. Joseph was now twenty-four years old, and had spent two and a half years translating the Book of Mormon. He had dictated a total of 275,000 words.

Joseph later announced that he had returned the plates to the angel who had first led him to them. The angel took them off to eternity. The manuscript of the translation then went to a printer in Palmyra. On March 25, 1830, the Book of Mormon went on sale in the bookstore in Palmyra. A week later the book was reviewed in the newspapers of Rochester, New York, under the headlines: “Blasphemy!” Leaders of established churches were, in general, shocked by the emendations of the Bible that were contained in the Book or Mormon. But the Mormon narratives, which tied together their religious and patriotic sentiments, fascinated many people living in western New York State. Utilizing the popular theory that the Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, the Book of Mormon incorporated the history of the western hemisphere within Biblical history.

Before and during Joseph’s time, western New York State had seethed with religious ferment. Fantastic religious sects had arisen and briefly flowered there. Seasoned evangelists tended to avoid western New York State because they considered it “burnt over territory.” Its inhabitants had participated in so many revivals that they had become jaded with religious ecstasy. They were weary of agonizing guilt and had lost faith in the healing power of Christ’s sacrifice. Western New York was ripe for a new religious message, and for many that message was contained in the Book of Mormon. Several days after the publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph organized his first congregation of the Mormon Church. Among the converts who were baptized by total immersion in Lake Seneca were his parents and brothers.

Despite setbacks, the church grew and spread. Mormonism had distinct advantages over conventional churches; it had its own unique scriptures and its own living prophet, who had brought its sacred writings down from Cumorah Mount, as Moses had brought the Ten Commandments down from Sinai. Joseph, whose powers as a writer had increased as he translated the Book of Mormon, now grew as a speaker. Unlike the evangelists with whom he was competing for souls, he did not terrify his audiences with vivid pictures of hellfire; in fact, Joseph’s sermons were punctuated with humor. His audiences laughed more than they quaked. Joseph s since of humor and sincerity were exemplified in Adam-ondi-Ahman when he formed his followers into two lines and help a mock battle. A follower in Adam-ondi-Ahman stated, The weapons were snowballs. We set to with a will full of glee and fun (Andrus 86). He held out for his converts not the dangers of hell but the likely prospect of eternal bliss. Heaven was not hard to attain. Ordinary sinners like blasphemers and adulterers would not go to hell, but would gain immortality through the atoning sacrifice of the Savior (Andrus 88). It was true that frequent sinners would not go to the luxurious and carefree abode of the saintly who will gain eternal life because of the discipline required to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Andrus 88), but the heaven of sinners would be comfortable enough.

For many people, Joseph was a welcome relief from the itinerant fire-and-brimstone evangelists. The membership of the Mormon Church was significantly increased in 1831, when a preacher in another denomination in Kirtland, Ohio, converted and took his entire congregation with him into the Mormons. The church in Kirtland grew so rapidly that it became the largest center of Mormons in the country. Joseph and his elders moved the headquarters of the new national church to Kirtland, from where Joseph exerted a tight control over his rapidly expanding movement. Eventually a temple was built in Kirtland, an architectural gem, which was the grandest building in the west. The Mormons’ prosperity was consistent with Joseph’s theology: the Kingdom of God, he taught, was to prevail not only in heaven but on earth, too.

Joseph began to plan for an earthly paradise for Mormons that would be far removed from people of other faiths. The Mormon’s new home, with its ideal society, would be called Zion. At first Joseph placed his hope for Zion in Missouri. Although Joseph himself remained in Ohio during the middle 1830’s, other Mormons settled in Independence, Missouri, then a frontier town. As soon as the Mormons were settled and had begun to thrive in Independence, however, gentiles began to harass them and drove them out of town. A new Mormon settlement outside of Independence was also harried, forcing a flight to a completely new settlement in Missouri, which the Mormons named Far West. Joseph, still maintaining his headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio, began referring to Far West as Zion.

When the gentiles attacked Far West, Joseph decided that the Mormons had taken enough punishment. He organized a company of armed Mormons in Ohio and marched at their head to defend their beleaguered brethren in Missouri. By the time the small Mormon fighting force arrived in Missouri, however, the gentiles had called out the Missouri state militia and were waiting to do battle. Despite Joseph’s surrender, he was charged with treason for appearing in Missouri in command of an armed force, and was also charged with plotting the murder of a Missouri gentile killed in a skirmish with Mormons. While Joseph was in jail awaiting trial, gentiles attacked Far West and drove the Mormons east toward the Mississippi River. Fifteen thousand Mormons crossed the Mississippi into Illinois in 1839. There, politicians of both the Whig and Democratic persuasions, who hoped the Mormons would vote their way in the next elections, most unexpectedly welcomed them. Joseph got out of his Missouri jail by bribing the sheriff with a jug of whiskey and eight hundred dollars; he then joined the last straggling Mormon refugees from Missouri in their retreat to Illinois. He was thirty-three years old.

Outwardly, Joseph’s troubles seemed to be over, but appearances were deceiving.

Despite his titles, gaudy uniforms, and vaulting political ambitions, Joseph was standing on a very shaky foundation. His position was weakest within his own church. All his life, Joseph had a tendency to quarrel with his closest friends, who then became his bitter enemies. Along with breaks in his relationships with ecclesiastical colleagues, a rift grew between Joseph and his wife, Emma. Although Emma continued to live with Joseph and bear him children, a problem arose between them in the 1830’s and it was never resolved.

That problem was Joseph’s pursuit of other women. Ever since Joseph had founded the Mormon Church, his status as a prophet had brought him the adoration of his followers, including many attractive women. There is evidence that Joseph started to think about making plural marriage a moral practice within his church as early as 1831, one year after the church was founded (Gibbons 320). He knew, however, how shocking such a practice would be not only to many Mormons, but to the gentiles also. He intended to postpone the announcement of the new practice until people were more ready to accept it. Meanwhile, he let a few trusted colleagues know God had sanctioned plural marriage in a special revelation to Joseph. God, said Joseph, was no more opposed to polygamy in 1831 than He had been in the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who all had large harems. Meanwhile, although Joseph had not announced God’s sanction of plural marriage to the entire church, Joseph himself was practicing it. He proposed what he called “celestial” marriage to a number of women, some of who were already legally married to other men. Joseph considered celestial marriages to be on a higher plane than earthly marriages, lasting forever, and taking precedence over mundane marriages. When Joseph mentioned his revelation about plural marriages to Emma, she was beside herself with rage. She was not going to bless her husband’s practice of polygamy. He might have God’s permission to sleep with other women, but he would never get her permission. She begged him to renounce the new doctrine. In 1844 a major schism occurred among the Mormons of Nauvoo, which resulted directly from Joseph’s proposals of marriage to the wives of several leaders of the church. The husbands who felt wronged by their prophet challenged Joseph’s leadership of the church, bought a printing press, and issued a dissident Mormon newspaper with editorials attacking Joseph’s policies.

Joseph ordered his followers to destroy the printing press of his opponents. After the press was wrecked, the governor of Illinois charged Joseph with violating the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and ordered his arrest. The state militia marched to Nauvoo and took Joseph into custody. The militia conducted Joseph to the jail in Carthage, Illinois, and locked him up with other loyal Mormon leaders in a cell on the second floor. The militia was stationed outside the jail to guard it. On the second day of Joseph’s imprisonment, other militiamen, who had been dismissed by the governor, marched into Carthage. Their faces were painted to conceal their identities. They were obviously about to commit some mayhem. When the disguised militiamen approached the jail, the guards on duty did nothing to impede their progress. As they mounted the steps of the jail, the vigilantes fired several shots. Joseph, who had a six-shooter, opened fire on the first vigilantes to reach the second floor. He wounded several of the attackers: then his pistol was emptied.

As the vigilantes came on unopposed, Joseph realized the futility of trying to parry the guns of the killers, and, dropping his pistol to the floor, he tried to jump out another window (Gibbons 347). As he straddled the windowsill, vigilantes inside the jail shot him from behind. At the same time their comrades on the ground below shot him. Calling out, “Oh, my God!” Joseph fell to the ground. He was still alive when he hit the earth. Vigilantes standing over him put several more shots into him, ending his life at age thirty-eight.

However, the effort of the vigilantes and the gentiles came too late as Joseph Smith had already started the engine of the Mormon machine and had already impacted the lives of thousands then, and thousand more to come. As Gibbons describes in Joseph Smith, Martyr, Prophet of God concerning the acts of the vigilantes:

But without realizing it and without ever having intended to do it, they left much more. They left two martyrs crowns that they had helped to forge with their senseless brutality. In their temporary bloody victory lay their greatest defeat, for the men whom they had murdered, having sealed their testimonies with their blood, became in death even more powerful instruments for advancing the principles they had taught in life. (Gibbons 347)

Joseph Smith started the Mormon faith through a direct relation with God and he successfully moved and motivated the religion because the name of Joseph Smith and his power with God aroused everybody either for good or for bad (Andrus 60). The Mormon religion was so influential and still is so influential because of the powerful, life-long effect it exerts upon both members and former members (Gibbons 292). By this, Gibbons explains:

To the member, it is a way of life that occupies the center stage of his thoughts and actions. While to the former member, the apostate, or the excommunicate, the Church has a different focus, it ordinarily is no less influential in his life. In fact, if anything, most apostates are more obsessive in their attitudes toward the Church than are members. (293)

Buddha founded and moved Buddhism through the acknowledgement of transmigration of souls and the idea of mental, in place of physical, posterity to achieve liberation. Confucius founded a way of peace, thought, and consideration and moved it by being a living example of this Confucianism. Joseph Smith founded a religion admirable to those skeptical of past religions and in search of a living prophet and direct source of scripture. These fathers of religion were ultimately able to spread their beliefs because of a willingness to conform amongst the believers. Though they had different and various methods and reasons for founding their specified religion and making it available to the people, Buddha, Confucius, and Joseph Smith alike are held in the eyes of many people as three of the greatest influences on the world today.

Works Cited

Andrus, Hyrum L. and Helen Mae Andrus. They Knew the Prophet. Salt Lake City,

Utah: Bookcraft Inc., 1974.

Carrithers, Michael. The Buddha. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Creel, H.G. Confucius and the Chinese Way. New York, New York: Harper and Row,

1949.

Foucher, A. The Life of the Buddha. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1963.

Gibbons, Francis M. Joseph Smith Martyr Prophet of God. Salt Lake City, Utah:

Deseret Book Company, 1977.

Wu-Chi, Liu. Confucius, His Life and Time. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,

1955.

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