Did Joseph Smith Speak in Tongues? - John Turner Pt. 12 | Ep. 2053

Did Joseph Smith Speak in Tongues? What the Historical Record Reveals

When members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints think of spiritual gifts, glossolalia, speaking in tongues, often comes to mind as a charismatic practice associated with other Christian traditions. Yet few Latter-day Saints know whether Joseph Smith, the church's founder, engaged in this practice himself. The question matters because it illuminates both the early Mormon experience and how foundational religious narratives develop over time. Understanding what we know, and don't know, about Joseph Smith's spiritual practices requires examining both contemporary accounts and the gaps in the historical record.

According to recent scholarship discussed on the Mormon Stories podcast by historian John Turner, the evidence surrounding Joseph Smith and glossolalia is surprisingly thin and fragmented. Turner, author of influential works on Mormon history including Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet and The Mormon Jesus, has spent years examining primary documents from the earliest decades of the Latter-day Saint movement. His analysis reveals a pattern worth examining carefully: explicit documentation of Joseph Smith speaking in tongues appears sparse in contemporary records, yet later accounts suggest the practice may have occurred more frequently than we might expect.

The Problem of Limited Contemporary Evidence

The central challenge historians face when investigating Joseph Smith's spiritual practices is straightforward: documentation from the 1820s and 1830s is fragmentary. Unlike modern churches with extensive record-keeping, the early Mormon movement left behind incomplete journals, scattered letters, and reminiscences written years or decades after the events they describe.

Turner emphasizes that when searching for evidence of Joseph Smith speaking in tongues, one encounters a curious silence in the contemporary record. Official church documents from the Ohio and Missouri periods rarely mention glossolalia explicitly. What documentation does exist tends to emerge later, in retrospective accounts recorded in the 1860s and beyond, when such practices had either become institutionalized, discouraged, or reinterpreted through subsequent theological lenses.