I am Ryan McKnight. I'm Kara Santa Maria. I am Christopher Smith. Hi, I'm Andrew Torres. This is

Naked Mormonism. The Serial Mormon History podcast. Welcome to Naked Mormonism, the Serial Mormon History Podcast.

I'm your host, Bryce Mike Conagle.

I'm a history communicator, and I really appreciate you taking some time to give this podcast a listen.

This podcast is a chronological history of Joseph Smith and early Mormonism. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

today boasts a membership of over 16 million people and is the wealthiest and most politically

powerful religion in America.

The religion started by Joseph Smith, originally called the Church of Christ, eventually became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It has over 400 child sects as of the early 21st century.

Mormonism, for many, is more than just a religion, but an identity.

Mormons pride themselves as being a peculiar people. A peculiar people obviously carry a peculiar

history, and the focus of this podcast is to demystify and to secularize the history of Mormonism. I've done my best to make the

chronology of early Mormonism interesting and accessible, even to those with absolutely no

background or personal attachment to the religion, the culture, or its history. Believe it or

not, Mormon history is interesting enough that even those who've

never been a member of the church can find it just as fascinating as those who believe the supernatural

claims made by the various leaders of the various Mormon sects. My hope is that regardless of your

personal beliefs, you find the field of Mormon history fascinating

and the characters within it compelling, flawed, and most importantly, human.

At the end of today's episode, I'll give you a brief introduction to myself, as well as

kind of a directory, a table of contents for the backlog of the podcast.

So with that introduction out of the way, let's begin with the history of early Mormonism

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