Presbyterian minister; revival researcher
Wesley P. Walters
1 topic · 1 dated event · 1 source
Their part in each topic
The First Vision
Presbyterian minister; revival researcher
Walters searched Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist records for the 1820 revival Joseph Smith described and could not find it, then found the Reverend George Lane's own account of a Palmyra revival that began in 1824. His 1967 study forced a generation of Latter-day Saint scholarship into the archives after him.
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Walters searches for the revival and does not find it
Working through Methodist Magazine year by year, Walters found abundant revival reports but nothing in Palmyra for 1819, 1820 or 1821 — then found the Reverend George Lane's account of a Palmyra revival in the March 1825 issue. His study appeared in 1967 and was argued out in a 1969 Dialogue roundtable with Latter-day Saint historians replying.
Sources in their own name
Source records in the database whose author line names this person. Each links to the topic that uses it.
"New Light on Mormon Origins from the Palmyra Revival," Dialogue 4, no. 1 (roundtable)
Wesley P. Walters
The documentary case that no revival of the size Joseph Smith described occurred in Palmyra in 1819–21, and that the Presbytery reported 'no remarkable revival of religion within our bounds.'
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