I'm reading up on the Taiping Rebellion and it turns out that the guy who showed Hong Xiuquan Christianity was an American missionary named Edwin Stevens. Stevens spent a bit of time before becoming a missionary as a schoolteacher in the small Finger Lakes town of Aurora, New York in 1829. This puts him directly across Cayuga Lake from Joseph Smith literally while he was supposedly divining the Book of Mormon in the town of Fayette. Is this just a coincidence, or was was something weird going on in that part of the US at this time? Were there some socio-economic conditions that made that region unique? Did these two motherfuckers know each other? What is going on here?
>>18133360That's a weird coincidence but it would only mean something in Edwin Stevens was an eccentric character in hiw own right. Which he seemed to be not. Just some missionary.
>>18133360https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district
>>18133462Thank you.
