All about the Mormons? Analysis of a South Park episode

All About the Mormons was an episode of South Park that aired on Comedy Central on November 19, 2003.  This episode is sometimes brought up by those antagonistic to the church, and at the same time, many Mormons think it is funny and appreciate the humor.  While there are many reactions to this episode, I'm going to respond to the question I am sometimes asked:  "How accurate is it?"

Plot

The plot of this episode is that a new family moves into South Park and that the young boy, Gary Harrison tries to become friends with Stan.  The family is very nice and we quickly learn that they are Mormons and they are eager to answer questions and share their beliefs.  The entire episode is really the story of Joseph Smith broken into four segments and the present-day story is just filling the gaps.

Overall, this is very accurate of how someone outside our church would perceive us:  We are generally nice people that like to get along with others, we place a lot of importance on families, and we are typically eager to answer questions people have for us.

As far as the doctrine and history go, they actually did a fairly decent job.  The only inaccuracies that they had can be explained with simple misunderstandings, or changing things to speed up the plot.  Well, and tell a few jokes too.  But let's go ahead and clear this up for those that want to know what the mistakes are.

Part 1 -- First Vision and Moroni

This part gives the setting and tone for the rest of the story-- Joseph Smith makes a lot of claims that people easily believe.  The truth is that besides his family, very few people believed him, especially in Palmyra, the upstate New York city where he lived.

But though simplified, what he says here is what we believe.  Joseph Smith became very concerned about which church was true.  When he read James 1:5, he felt the Spirit and realized that the only way to find out for himself was to pray.  So in the spring of 1820, when Joseph was 14 years old, he went into the woods behind his family's farm to pray.  In response, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him.  Christ told Joseph that none of the churches were true. (Joseph Smith History 1:5-20)

In September 1823, (three-and-a-half years later, when Joseph is 17)  Joseph prayed for forgiveness and for guidance when the angel Moroni appeared in his room.  Moroni told Joseph about the gold plates: that it was written by those that formerly lived on this continent, and that these people were given the fulness of the gospel by Jesus Christ.  The angel also explained that the Urim and Thummim were with the plates to allow them to be translated.  (Joseph Smith History 1:29-35)

So South Park only changed the story in some minor ways:  Joseph wasn't asking for "yum-yums and delicious goodies."  South Park also gave more detail in Moroni's description of the Book of Mormon:  Native Americans came from Jerusalem and were white.  They were eventually visited by Jesus Christ.  Then eventually killed by "the other tribe of Israel," whose skin turned red and became the Native Americans of today.

This is a fairly accurate description of the Book of Mormon, though a growing number of Mormons feel that the Book of Mormon descriptions of skin color was figurative, not literal.  And while Joseph likely saw the people of the Book of Mormon as Native Americans, there are many Mormons today that instead associate them with the Pre-classic Mayan civilization.

Part 2 -- Finding the plates

South Park shows Joseph Smith digging all around, then he finds a stone box.  He says, "Inside the stone box, I found the magical seer stones.  Under that, i found four gold plates written in strange writing."  Joseph goes and tells the crowd this, and also tells them that Moroni told him that he couldn't show the plates to anyone.

This too is close to reality, but there are some differences.  Joseph didn't have to dig all over, he said he knew the spot instantly when he was there.  The stone box was covered with a large flat rock, and he removed dirt from the edges and then levered it up.  Joseph did not consider the seer stones to be magical, but to be miraculous.  Four gold plates must be a misunderstanding by the authors-- there were many plates and they were bound together with three rings to make a book.  (see: What did the Gold Plates Look Like?)

South Park jokes that people believed Joseph Smith even though no one else saw the plates.  Actually, after the Book of Mormon was translated in 1829, the angel Moroni showed the plates to 3 others (Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer) and Joseph showed the plates to 8 others (members of the Whitmer and Smith families) before Moroni took the plates.  The testimonies of these witnesses are found in the front of every copy of the Book of Mormon published by the church.

Part 3 -- Translating the Plates

Here the story kind of goes off.  The South Park story says Joseph Smith was trying to get money from Martin Harris to publish the Book of Mormon, then gets him to help with the translation.  It portrays Martin in this and the next part as a gullible guy.

The reality is that Joseph asked Martin to be his scribe in translating the Book of Mormon.  Martin lived in Palmyra, but at this time Joseph was living with his wife in Harmony, Pennsylvania.  Martin Harris was skeptical of Joseph.  In early 1828, Joseph copied characters off the Book of Mormon plates and provided a translation for some of them.  Martin took this to Professor Charles Anthon, who told him the translation was correct, and wrote a certificate saying as much.  However, when he learned that Joseph received this book from an angel, he took back the certificate and ripped it up.  Martin got a second certificate from Dr. Mitchell saying the same thing as the first.  (Joseph Smith History 1:63-65)  Although Anthon has a conflicting story of the event, the point is that Martin came back convinced and was scribe for Joseph Smith from April to June in 1828.

There are different stories as to the method of translating, and possibly Joseph used more than one.  (Joseph himself only said that the Book of Mormon was translated "by the gift and power of God.")  In any case, just the seer stones were placed in the hat.  The plates were either hidden with a curtain, wrapped in a cloth, or hiding outside the room during the translation.  The seer stones were placed in the hat to block out the light, and there Joseph would see their glow for and the words would appear in English.

Another story of Martin's skepticism was that he once found a stone similar to Joseph's seer stone.  He switched them out and Joseph wasn't able to translate.  Martin took this as evidence that Joseph wasn't just memorizing and repeating lines to him.

As far as the publishing of the Book of Mormon, after it was translated Joseph was seeking different ways of financing it.  He put a lot of hope in selling the copyright, but there were no interested buyers.  By this time, Martin Harris had already seen the plates of the Book of Mormon.  Martin ended up mortgaging part of his farm for the remaining $3,000 to publish the Book of Mormon.  When the book didn't sell very well, he sold that part of the farm to pay off the mortgage.

Part 4 -- The lost 116 pages.

Prior to this last part, Stan expresses his doubts, saying that "the Book of Mormon says a lot of strange stuff, like that Adam and Eve lived in Jackson County Missouri."  This is a Mormon belief, however this is not found in the Book of Mormon.  This instead stems from the Doctrine and Covenants, a book of scripture containing revelations to Joseph Smith.

The Harrisons introduce this last section saying that it is the part that "proves that he [Joseph] was for real."  I don't know of any Mormon that thinks this proves he was a true prophet.  A real Mormon is more likely to bring up Professor Anthon.  But it's important for the plot of South Park that Mormons are supposed to be gullible and dumb.

South Park describes how Martin takes the manuscript home to show to his wife.  Lucy Harris is portrayed as the only sane person.  She hides the pages and says, "if Joseph Smith is translating off gold plates, then he'll be able to do it again.  But if Joseph is making it all up, then the new translations will be different from these."  Martin goes back to Joseph ready to re-translate, but Joseph tells him that God is mad at Joseph for letting him take the pages.  "He is so mad, that He will never let me translate from the plate of Lehi again.  He said we must now translate from the plate of Nephi.  So it will be the same basic story, but written a little differently."

Stan of course is livid, saying that the story doesn't prove it, but instead "proves he did make it all up!"  That there is nothing to back up their beliefs, but that "All you've got is some stories about [Joseph Smith] who read plates nobody ever saw out of a hat and then couldn't do it again when the translations were hidden!"

As I said before, we wouldn't really use this story as evidence for Joseph Smith.  But also, we wouldn't tell the story that way, either.

In the summer of 1828, Joseph had translated 116 manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon.  Lucy was pretty upset with Harris, and he thought that if she could see the manuscript, that would make her happy.  The Lord told Joseph "no" twice, but on the third time, Joseph was given permission as long as Martin only showed his wife and a few other named individuals.  Instead, Martin showed everyone that wanted to see them, and soon after the manuscript disappeared.

Joseph lost the ability to translate, and Moroni took back the plates.  Joseph later received a revelation that wicked men had taken the manuscript and that if Joseph were to translate the exact words, then the wicked men would change the manuscript in order to show that Joseph was a false prophet.  The Book of Mormon describes two histories that were kept:  A large one that focused more on the political history, and a smaller one that focused on the spiritual history.  The "Book of Lehi" that was lost was the first part of the political history.  Joseph Smith was commanded not to translate this again, but that this smaller spiritual history covered the same time period as the part that was lost.

Every Mormon knows this story, but we're more likely to use it to show the great wisdom and mercy of God, rather than evidence for Joseph Smith.  The skeptic would say it was awfully convenient for there to be two tellings of the same story.  But if this really was Lucy's plan, and if Joseph really was foiled as South Park suggests, then why didn't Lucy publish the 116 pages as evidence that Joseph couldn't translate?  Instead it appears the pages actually were lost.

Meanwhile, Martin Harris was no longer to be Joseph's scribe.  When Joseph was able to translate again in April 1829, it was instead Oliver Cowdery who was Joseph's scribe.

And that's how it happened.

***

Overall, I think South Park did a good job.  There are a lot of errors, and they changed the ending, but I don't think they were being malicious.  They also portrayed us as extremely gullible people, probably because they can't figure out why we would believe so strongly in the things we do.  'Course, their other episodes have it that Mormons are the ones that go to heaven.  Though, probably for no other reason than they think it's funny.

But as far as the doctrine in the episode goes, that's the way It sounds exactly like how someone would describe us and our beliefs if they were outside the church, but very familiar with what we believe.  They were obviously trying to make fun of us so a lot was exaggerated/changed for effect, but they also appeared to try to use what we actually believe, rather than a caricature of what we believe, and I can respect that.