Materializing Religion, Heidegger, and the Stability of Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones as Religious Objects

Abstract

This article examines the stability of religious objects by asking how Joseph Smith’s seer stones, from which he dug for buried treasure and produced the Book of Mormon, were materialized into religious objects. This analysis challenges the assumed stability of material objects by demonstrating that the seer stones could potentially lose their religious qualities and values once they were examined, displayed, or explained. This is framed by using Martin Heidegger’s practical descriptions “ready-to-hand” and “present-to-hand” to explain the unstable nature of religious objects and why public examination and explanation of religious objects can potentially strip them of their perceived sacredness.

Keywords::

• material religion
• Joseph Smith
• seer stones
• Ann Taves
• Martin Heidegger
• religious objects
• museum
• Mormon studies
• Latter-day Saints

Notes

1 The idea of “practice” is relevant here in its sense of reproduction of practices and the domination of practices. In Bourdieu’s theory of practice he states, “The mind is a metaphor of the world of objects which is itself but an endless circle of mutually reflecting metaphors.” He also went on to write, “The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need of words, and ask no more than complicitous silence.” (Bourdieu, 87-90 and 188) Appadurai argues, “art objects, assemblages, events, and performances vary only in the intensity of their interest in denying or celebrating the social trajectory to which all things are subject.” (Appadurai, 16)

2 This is almost like how David Morgan describes “imagetexts” in his example of the calligraphy praising Allah. He writes, “what one sees into a devotional reading, implying, perhaps, that the body of the saints is the Word of God as well as kind of visual presence, since the devout viewer of the image is also the reader of the text and worshipper of God.” (Morgan, 67).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Hubbard Mackay

Michael Hubbard MacKay is an associate professor in the Department of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. He is lead historian and editor of Documents, Volume 1 in Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers and the author or co-author of several books, including Prophetic Authority: Democratic Hierarchy and the Mormon Priesthood; Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones; and Sacred Space: Exploring the Birthplace of Mormonism. He is also the editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including Producing Ancient Scripture. [email protected]