I have never wandered even for a few months from church activity. I have held many positions in our basically lay-run church from scoutmaster to bishop, stake president, and patriarch. You could say that I was born Mormon and will likely die Mormon.
Richard Lyman Bushman — Latter-day Saint Scholars Testify
Bushman argues that religious activity in 1819–20 across nearby communities was sufficient to have impressed Smith even without a large revival in Palmyra village. He regards variation in retellings as compatible with changing emphases and ordinary slips, and cautions against treating incomplete records or net membership totals as a full measure of religious excitement.
Bushman proposes that Smith’s plural marriages sought an enduring network of wives, children, and extended family. He interprets the marriages within Smith’s aspiration to build eternal kinship.
Bushman argues that the eleven’s testimony and accounts of people who lifted and touched the plates show that the plates were a tactile reality to those around Smith. He rejects Vogel’s manufactured-tin explanation, and his cultural history examines how different audiences have understood the plates.