Church president Joseph F. Smith helped raise the First Vision to its modern status as a pillar of church theology. Largely through Joseph F. Smith's influence, Smith's 1838 account of the First Vision became part of the canon of the church in 1880 when the faith canonized Smith's early history as part of the Pearl of Great Price. After plural marriage ended at the turn of the 20th century, Joseph F. Smith heavily promoted the First Vision, and it soon replaced polygamy in the minds of adherents as the main defining element of Mormonism and the source of the faith's perception of persecution by outsiders. From 1905 to 1912, the story of the First Vision began to be incorporated into church histories, missionary tracts, and Sunday school lesson manuals. As a result, belief in the First Vision is now considered fundamental to the faith, second in importance only to belief in the divinity of Jesus.