Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844)

Easily one of the most controversial figures from the first half of the nineteenth century, it is difficult to imagine how one man, persuaded that he was a prophet of God, could start a religion—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (officially the LDS but commonly referred to as the Mormon church)—practically single-handedly, that would one day grow to over fourteen million worldwide followers. Not bad for a man with limited education, a fairly short ministry, and a penchant for violence. A controversial figure in his own right, his polygamy (no longer practiced by most modern Mormons) and insistence that he was a prophet sent to restore the church from the apostacy it had, according to God, fallen into, often put him at odds with his non-Mormon neighbors—an enmity which frequently resulted in violence and ultimately ended in his own unwanted martyrdom at the hands of his less enlightened fellow citizens during a shootout in an Illinois prison in 1844. Of course, his lieutenant, Brigham Young, is better known as the man who, in the aftermath of Smith’sdeath, led the few hundred Mormons that remained on an arduous trek to present day Utah and largely establishing the church we know today, but it was Smith who laid the foundation by writing (or, more accurately, “translating”) the Book of Mormon from golden plates given to him by the angel Moroni. He also penned several other “inspired” texts that were to serve as the basis of Mormonism, making him  the driving force behind the fledgling denomination. Clearly, without his literary bent, the LDS church would have had little basis upon which to build after his death, making him in many ways as important to western Protestantism as Luther (see number 7 below) was to Roman Catholicism. As such, he is venerated by Mormons around the world and is today considered its chief prophet whose status is only likely to expand as the church continues to grow at an exponential rate.