Today’s Salt Lake Tribune features a Peggy Fletcher Stack article on the capstone of this year’s celebration of Joseph Smith’s 200th birthday: a Joseph Smith Commemorative Broadcast on Friday, December 23 (6:00 pm MST), which will originate from the Conference Center and feature a coordinating broadcast from Joseph Smith’s birthplace in Sharon, Vermont. President Hinckley will speak from Vermont.

The broadcast will also mark 100 years since President Joseph F. Smith (back row, third from the right, in the photograph above) led a group of Latter-day Saints to dedicate a 38 1/2-foot high monument to Joseph Smith in December 1905. (The article features some 1905 photographs of the monument. Other photographs can be viewed here.)

Stack writes:

It was a moment of triumph and tenderness for the Mormon leaders who gathered there to remember and pay homage to their beloved leader, even as their church was being investigated, ridiculed and attacked by a congressional committee in Washington, D.C. Joseph F. Smith faced grueling questions about the church’s involvement in polygamy, its temple ceremonies and loyalty to the United States before the Congress would allow a Utah senator to be seated.

Kathleen Flake’s The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot: Mormon Apostle argues that President Smith faced a crisis during the Smoot hearings. He “had to replace his people’s faith in one revelation [i.e., plural marriage] without undermining their confidence in all revelation, as well as the revelator, namely, Joseph Smith and himself as Smith’s prophetic successor” (p. 110). He chose to recast the focus of the church to Joseph Smith’s First Vision. Through his dedicatory prayer, President Smith identified the elements of Joseph Smith’s mission that would be carried into the next century: a restored foundation of apostles and prophets with Christ as the chief cornerstone, a base of continuing revelation upon which the church was built, and “an assertion of Joseph Smith’s revelatory power and divine authority bestowed to those that follow” (p. 115).

The 1905 dedication attracted national press. The Washington Post, for instance, carried a report from South Royalton, Vermont, that “[a] party of fifty Mormons arrived here to-day from Utah, Ohio, and New York, to be present to-morrow at the dedication of a monument erected to the memory of Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith, on the site of a farm house in Sharon, where he was born 100 years ago. President Joseph F. Smith and his second counsellor, Anthon H. Lund, accompanied by apostles, bishops, and representatives of the many branches of the Smith family came in a special car from Salt Lake City, and anothey [sic] party of Mormons came from New York” ( “Mormons in Vermont Town,” The Washington Post, Dec. 23, 1905, p. 11).

The following day the Post ran an story on the dedication ceremony. The article described the monument as made of “dark granite, highly polished” and stated that at slightly more than fifty feet tall, “it is said to be the largest polished granite monument in the country” ( “Memorial to Joseph Smith,” The Washington Post, Dec. 24, 1905, p. 5).

Writing in the February 1906 issue of the Improvement Era, Susa Young Gates described the moment of the monument’s unveiling: “[Edith Smith's] slender hand drew the rope which bound the Stars and Stripes about the polished base. A shout at once arose, and men reverently lifted their hats, while women wept with joy and gratitude that such a man had lived, had died, and now had been remembered.”

In its Christmas 1905 message, the First Presidency wrote:

The unveiling of the monument to the Prophet Joseph Smith, at Sharon, Windsor county, Vermont, on December 23—the one hundredth anniversary of his birth—is a cause of great congratulation to all who, believe in his divine mission. Slander, false witness and the shafts of malice are arrayed against the Church and its authorities, as may be expected until Satan is bound and falsehood is conquered by divine truth. It is our duty to bear such things with patience, and not permit ourselves to be aroused to anger or retaliation. We should stand up for the right, and as far as possible ignore the wrong-doers. The knowledge that God is with us, and that his work will prevail, should buoy us up under every difficulty and every trial, having the conviction that the Lord will cause even “the wrath of man to praise him.” The very efforts of the enemies of his Church to hedge up its way will be overruled by him to accelerate its advancement.

Of course President Hinckley’s journey to Sharon this week has its own ritual significance. As Stack notes, things have obviously changed since the dark days of 1905. “Since that dedication, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has flourished. It has more than 12 million members in more than 100 countries, temples across the globe, one of the largest full-time missionary corps, and a presence in national religious debates – to say nothing about a world-class genealogy library.”

It will be interesting to see how President Hinckley chooses to commemorate and memorialize the events of the last 100 years.