"The Friends" near Seneca Lake were another "weirdo group". People were just plain ignorant but apparently liked the "grouping" concept even if it meant giving up everything in the name of Faith".
Both Smith and Jemima Wilkinson were cons. Wilkinson's group soon died out....very soon. Brigham Young went on to proliferate Smith's "dreams".
People were just plain ignorant and still are. But, their religion is their business.
Pssst...Islam is NOT a religion.
“Both Smith and Jemima Wilkinson were cons. Wilkinson’s group soon died out....very soon. Brigham Young went on to proliferate Smith’s “dreams”.”
At the time of his death, Joseph Smith’s power and reputation were in sharp decline. The reason for his stay in the Carthage jail, where he was killed by a mob, was his destruction of a printing press. The press was owned by William Law, one of his apostles and sidekicks, who became disaffected and started to write about Joseph’s extracurricular activities with the ladies.
The mob killing at Carthage cemented Joseph as a martyr and an icon for the movement, which Brigham Young exploited for his benefit. If Joseph had been able to live on, he would have become a brief paragraph in the history books, a horny con man who ended up living out his days in shame and obscurity.
(Yeah, just try telling that to the 52,000 Lds missionaries...and their hundreds of thousands of parents...Note that this line spouted by you when uttered by others doesn't ever seem to apply to the proselytizers out & about in the world...why not?)