Jonathan Z. Smith writes that ‘As a characteristic of the human sciences in general, the little prefix re- is perhaps the most important signal we can deploy’ (Relating religion, Chicago 2004, 362). In the subtitle to this volume, the little prefix signals a complicated intention – to look again at the work and legacy of Joseph Smith, Jr, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The appraisals under review are narratives of American religious history which charged Smith with charlatanism or struggled to articulate his ‘significance and legacy’ (p. 6). The intention then, is two-fold – to provide an alternative to studies hung up on the question of Smith's sincerity, and to acknowledge his ‘prominent role in American history and religious thought’ (p. 7). Though both admirable, these goals turn out to be at cross-purposes. In attempting to ‘bypass’ the distracting and unanswerable question of Smith's sincerity, to correct previous accounts which made Mormonism his wholesale fabrication, many of these essays have declined directly to examine his unique contributions, assigning him a passive role in his own prophetic career.

In his essay for this volume, Richard Bushman asserts that Joseph Smith is ‘nearly absent’ from the revelations and translations he published, and was ‘invisible’ in the first decade of Latter-day Saint proselytising (pp. 99, 101). This ‘prophetic passivity’ (p. 101) is not discussed as a rhetorical strategy but as a textual fact: by virtue of being mostly unmentioned in them, Bushman finds Smith to be actually absent from readers' experience of the Book of Mormon and the other texts which he dictated, explained and distributed. This positing of Smith's absence from the elements of his own career is emblematic not just of Bushman's essay but of much of this collection. It is a problematic approach, because to assert Smith's passivity is to elide his personal creativity and rhetorical skill – the characteristics of Smith as a person which made him so effective a prophet.

There are successful ‘reappraisals’ here. James B. Allen's on states' rights is a model for historical approaches, situating Smith with respect to an important political issue of his day. Allen shows Smith as a political actor, expressing opinions and interests in conversation with John C. Calhoun. Closer to the subject of religion, Catherine Albanese examines Smith as an innovator rather than as a conduit for revelation, an author whose textual productions achieved an important ‘metaphysical synthesis’ (p. 71). Klaus J. Hansen delves into the effect of Smith's experiences on his prophetic career, though mostly in the form of rhetorical questions. He ends by quoting Yeats, in a laudable display of ambivalence regarding the relationship of Smith the prophet to Smith the man: ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’ (p. 45).

When Smith's religious productions are directly addressed, though, Bushman's approach looms large. As applied by various contributors here, it gives rise to a Smith for whom ‘[a] divine voice emerged from … silence’ (p. 61), who ‘saw himself in a biblical context’ (p. 163) and ‘found’ affinities between his experiences and scriptural prophecy (p. 111). This Smith is not capable of being more than a passive recipient of a divine call. This approach does not dissolve or avoid the question of Smith's sincerity – it answers the question by making assumptions about Smith's interiority, the very element of discussion which makes the question unanswerable.

This model is not merely a function of the tired insider/outsider question in Mormon studies: both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars have demonstrated themselves capable of treating religious topics with academic distance. Psychological explanations for Smith's behaviour – such as that employed by Douglas Davies in his essay for this collection – presume Smith's passivity in much the same manner as those assuming his divine inspiration. That said, part of the issue with this collection is its juxtaposition of a variety of methodologies, some of them more proper to constructive theology than anything else. In what is supposed to be a literary comparison of Smith and Herman Melville, Richard Dilworth Rust asserts that Smith, ‘thinking as deeply [as Melville] but also calling on revelation, had answers to many of the very questions Melville posed’ (p. 48).

In her essay, Laurie Maffly-Kipp addresses the question of Smith's sincerity directly, opening with an incisive, clear-eyed look at scholars' preoccupation with the issue. In the end, however, the suggestions she offers for historians to get around the question – shifting the chronological and geographical focus of Mormon history from Smith's career, investigating the stories of the movement's ‘ordinary believers’ rather than those of its leaders – involve looking away from Smith himself. The image she uses to close the essay is resonant in ways she may not intend. Maffly-Kipp recounts a missionary's story from the 1840s of Tahitian natives coming to stare fixedly at a picture of Smith, and proposes that the ‘geographical variety’ suggested by the behaviour of such faraway converts ‘can inform accounts of the LDS Church from its beginnings’ (p. 187). That is certainly true. In the context of a ‘reappraisal’ of Smith himself, however, this redirection of scholarly attention suggests that while our subjects may stare directly at the Prophet, we may not.

Knowledge of Smith's personal regard for his public pronouncements simply is not at the scholar's disposal. What are available are those public pronouncements, and it is possible to look at these without asking the sincerity question. Joseph Smith spoke and acted in the interest of his prophetic reputation. He formed the circumstances within his control and responded to others forced upon him with the intention of aiding that reputation, because whatever he believed about himself, his actions demonstrate that he wanted to be believed by others – whether because he aspired to personal gain or because he believed that the salvation of others depended upon his prophetic success. To say so does not make him a liar, or a cheat, or a fraud; it makes him an historical actor, an author, a rhetorician – a person.