Two nineteenth-century men, Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith, each launched restoration movements in the United States, pejoratively called Campbellites and Mormonites. In post-revolutionary America, characterized by the Second Great Awakening and disestablishment, they vied for seekers and dissatisfied mainstream Christians, which led to conflict in northeastern Ohio. Both were searching for the primordial beginning of Christianity: Campbell looking back to the Christian church described in the New Testament epistles, and Smith looking even further back to the time of Adam and Eve as the first Christians. Campbell took a rational approach to reading the Bible, emphasizing the New Testament and began by advocating reform among the Baptists. Smith took a revelatory approach to reading the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and adding new scriptures. Campbell was most focused on restoring to the church ordinances and practices of the apostolic church that had been neglected¿whereas Smith was restoring ancient doctrines, practices, ordinances, and covenants to a church that had ceased to exist shortly after the time of the Apostles.

Using clues from numerous archives, privately held records, museum collections, and even the soil where early members planted corn and homes, the author reconstructs the cultural experiences by which Kirtland's Latter-day Saints made sense of the revelations Joseph Smith pronounced.

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In the nineteenth century, it was a common belief that Native Americans were the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Ethan Smith wrote on this topic, and in so doing, challenged the dismissal of the Indigenous Americans by European settlers. Smith used biblical scripture, similarities in the Hebrew and Native American languages and their name for God, and other points of evidence to prove the connection between Israel and the First Nations. From there he showed how the reunited Hebrew tribes would be restored to Zion before the end of the world. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Smith's book is that it is said to have influenced the Book of Mormon, which was published about seven years after later. As a child, Smith moved away from religion after his parents died but found his way back before he turned 20 and worked in the ministry until his death. Smith wrote several books while serving in the ministry in which he explored prophecies and baptism, among other subjects. But this book remains one of the most controversial of all his publications.

"Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints looked forward to apocalyptic events that would unseat corrupt governments across the globe but would particularly decimate the tyrannical government of the United States. Mormons turned to prophecies of divine deliverance by way of plagues, natural disasters, foreign invasions, American Indian raids, slave uprisings, or civil war unleashed on American cities and American people ... Blythe examines apocalypticism across the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints particularly as it would take shape in localized and personalized forms in the writings and visions of ordinary Latter-day Saints outside of the Church's leadership"--

"Over ten years in the making, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement offers for the first time a sweeping historical and theological treatment of this complex, vibrant global communion. Written by more than 300 contributors, this major reference work contains over 700 original articles covering all of the significant individuals, events, places, and theological tenets that have shaped the Movement. Much more than simply a historical dictionary, this volume also constitutes an interpretive work reflecting historical consensus among Stone-Campbell scholars, even as it attempts to present a fair, representative picture of the rich heritage that is the Stone-Campbell Movement."--BOOK JACKET.