OK, everyone talks about how Abraham, Moses and Jacob were polygamists and how Solomon had so many wives, but why doesn’t anyone talk about the details — about how polygamy was an utter train-wreck for just about everyone who tried it.
Let us start with Abraham. He is married to Sarah. She gets impatient for a child. There was a surrogacy system that was acknowledged, but she did not want to settle for that and so insisted that Hagar also become Abraham’s wife.
First Hagar runs away to escape Sarah’s abuse and then, after an angel encourages her to return, things still don’t get better — they get worse.
Next thing you know, Sarah has thrown Hagar and the child out to die. Hagar’s only request of the power of heaven is that she not have to watch her son die. [Genesis 21]
Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba.
15When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. 16Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, shec began to sob.
It doesn’t get better with Moses (who has a major falling out with Miram and Aaron over his wife) and the conflicts with Jacob, his sons and his wives are legion. The favoritism leads to Joseph being sold into Egypt (after one of the brothers talks the others out of just killing him).
As for Solomon. His problems start with the Egyptians sacking Jerusalem (that part of his marriage to one of Pharaoh’s daughters often gets skipped) and finish with his apostasy from the worship of God in order to placate some of his many wives. Not exactly a role model.
It seems everyone wants to talk about polygamy in the Old Testament as “well, they had it, so it must be good” (just like slavery, or bond servants, or the prohibition on blended fabric, or …) rather than go over all the examples and how over, and over, and over again polygamy led to heart break, death, murder and disaster. Think about the examples of polygamy in the Old Testament. Is there even one example where everyone was happy and celebrated being a part of it?
Which is both the lesson you might want to take from the Old Testament’s examples of polygamy and probably why we don’t talk about it.
What do you think? Why don’t we have discussions about the details of how polygamy worked (or didn’t work) for women in the Old Testament?
For that matter, why don’t we discuss how for women in the 1800s, the ones who were the most positive about living in polygamy were those who were “married” but off to school or otherwise not actually living with anyone or involved in the relationship outside of being supported by it?
What do you think? What is your takeaway from polygamy in the Old Testament?
Wheat & Tares 
There is a prevailing attitude that polygamy is okay because it existed in the Old Testament. But there isn’t any place in the Old Testament where it states that God commanded or approved of it.
There are rules about taking your deceased brother’s widow into your household, but that seems to be more about responsibility as the primary objective — polygamy was a secondary in that.
Polygamy existed. It was part of the the culture back then. That doesn’t mean it was inspired.
I think we don’t discuss the details because how on earth could we and still say with a straight face that God commanded it?
That puts the regulations more like those on slavery where a slave had a right to run away and not be forced to return (strange how those who quoted the Bible to support slavery didn’t seem to focus on the verses that forbid discrimination against runaway slaves).
Those verses are far from an endorsement.
Outstanding post, Stephen. A careful review of polygamy in the Old Testament shows the terrible price women paid in polygamous relationships, including Sarah, Hannah, Rachel, Rebekah, and others. They were jealous and miserable. Hannah’s husband seemed clueless about her sorrow and Abraham gave Sarah power to rule over Hagar, which could have resulted in Hagar and Ishmael’s death without the intervention of an angel.
When God commanded one man to marry *one* woman, not *multiple* women, surely he knew that polygamy is not a happy or natural state. Women want to know that one man loves her with all of his heart–not just part of it. Children need an engaged father who loves them, and fathers cannot adequately nurture scores of children from polygamous relationships.
As the Church has been a bit more open about the polygamous and polyandrous relationships of Joseph Smith, I have seen a number of young adults leave the Church. Without an apology, others are skeptical about trusting Church leadership.
Polygamy was a terrible mistake. It broke Emma’s heart. Wives (other than the first wife) were left destitute when they husbands died, and many suffered in abject poverty while there husbands were alive. It did not increase the birth rate. Although a few of my ancestors were polygamous, I believe my foremothers could have found outstanding husbands who would have better loved them and their children. My grandfather was the son of a polygamous father and was left with terrible psychological wounds because of the poverty and neglect he experienced. We cannot understate the suffering of women and children who lived in polygamy.
I ask the Church to admit polygamy was a mistake, although I realize so far they refuse to apologize for anything. I also ask that they promise that the principal of plural or celestial marriage will not be reinstated if it becomes legal. If not, I believe the Church will see more members leave. They cannot expect us to apologize when we make mistakes and no do so when they do.
I think we don’t talk about polygamy in the Old Testamant for the same reason we don’t talk about much of anything in the Old Testament. Everyone did some pretty messed up things.
Perhaps polygamy in the OT speaks for itself, should we choose to listen. Like you Stephen, I find the record to be a cautionary tale, showing us that no good came of it in terms of family unity. How can the take away message be that this behaviour was something to emulate? Only Brigham Young.
I feel no necessity to justify his behaviour, which has resulted in the loss of my children’s testimony and the grief of so many more.
I often wonder if the children of polygamous marriages have had similar experiences to those recorded in the OT.
The Millenials in our house want nothing to do with polygamy. And they grieve for their church which can’t summon the resolve to contextualize and disavow it. They realize it may take a little time, but they won’t wait forever. Telling them, born in the 90’s and 00’s, that we have to keep Section 132 unchanged forever helps them take their first step away from the church.
My kids’ seminary and institute teachers – post polygamy essays – have done a rather terrible job of presenting this material, and nothing to validate the girls sitting there in the room. This aren’t the old days when girls went home and nursed their wounds, looked around at their accepting mothers, and stuck with the program. These kids read, talk, compare experiences and ideas and, more the most part, consciously reject what the church is telling them.
Sorry for typos.
I don’t believe polygamy was every a godly practice, but a man-made practice. I think it has always been wrong, even in the Old Testament. I think God allowed it, just as he allowed slavery, and it was and is wrong.
The elephant in the room: I expect that in many cases, it was plain old lechery and adultery justified by religious mumbo jumbo.
I sometimes wonder if anyone actually reads the text of the scriptures.
Time and time again the lessons we get from the scriptures seem to be 180 degrees from the story.
I like the thought that people see the cautionary tales and turn them into instruction manuals (which I got from someone else) when we read the scriptures.
Also:
“On another note–recently I’ve seen the OT stories as a repetition of how people screw up and God keeps giving us another chance. Over and over and over, the Israelites get it wrong. And over and over and over God gives them another chance. It’s made me less anxious about mistakes I make, less anxious about being perfect.”
Brilliant insight.
For comparison
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy_in_Christianity
Cathy, from William Clayton’s journal…
I always think of this when I hear someone trying to claim that Joseph wasn’t motivated by lust or greed. Funny how this never comes up in the lessons about how wonderful Joseph’s and Emma’s marriage was.
@Anon for this
I think this article by LDS historian Grant Palmer sums it up well and supports Stephen’s assertion.
http://www.mormonthink.com/grantpalmer/grant6.htm
I think we spend a lot of time kicking polygamy whenever we need an easy target on which to vent. We take the most brief instances and extrapolate them to fit our bias; that the horridness is all that polygamy is or ever could be. It’s like taking the interaction between Mary and Jesus at the wedding feast and assuming she was constantly trying to get Him to use His power, then further asserting that all mothers try to abuse their children’s power to reinforce the idea that children are better off being raised without mothers.
A bit of balance and the giving benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
@Frank
“We take the most brief instances”
What does this mean, exactly. Do you claim there’s a lack of documentation? Your example of Mary and Jesus isn’t even close to comparable.
Polygamy goes against human nature which is to be jealous and possessive. This may be the reason it was commanded to refine jealousy and possessiveness out of the saints over several generations of transition. Is Jesus jealous and possessive? Obviously not. Polygamy may have been a method to make us more like him.
@Howard
God countermanded the practice.
https://www.lds.org/topics/the-manifesto-and-the-end-of-plural-marriage?lang=eng
Indeed, we couldn’t live it. So what? That make God wrong? Or us?
@Howard
We couldn’t live it when it became illegal in the United States.
The thrust of the post and many of the comments seems to be it’s a disaster, it doesn’t work and some want to add it’s all about lust. Well it’s true that it doesn’t work because it goes against human nature which at it’s core is selfish, jealous and possessive. So maybe God used man’s lust to launch a method to refine humankind and maybe that explains why he keeps relaunching it.
Well when the government threatened to seize the church’s assets God called for a pause.
Frank, please provide one example in the old testament that shows a positive polygamy story.
That would only make sense if women were the only jealous, and possessive ones.
A god that sees value in a system, that at it’s core, devalues and abuses women, is not a god worth worshipping.
Howard, that is an interesting analysis.
Cathy –I’m not a big fan of Grant Palmer. He is better referred to as an often inaccurate anti-Mormon propaganda purveyor than an historian.
@Stephen
“often inaccurate…”
Nonetheless, he’s a professional historian specializing in LDS history. It’s not unusual for folks to denigrate a historian who reports history they find unpleasant.
All wrote That would only make sense if women were the only jealous, and possessive ones.
I get your point but I disagree. Joseph lived polygyny before he revealed it to the saints, then he also began living polyandry. So did he die before revealing polyandry as a commandment? And btw polygamy simply means many spouses, it can mean polygyny and polyandry.
So why would God (if he did) command both polygyny and polyandry? One reason would be to refine both men and women out of their selfishness. Another might be to create network marriage with might also shed some light on the purpose of Law of Adoption sealings.
mh – please provide one example in the old testament that shows a positive marriage story.
The women are possessions, shown to have to use some sort of cunning to sneak what they want. Do we really think that this is the way the entirety of these marriages were?
The difference in in your approach. To you, polygamy is always bad, so the stories in the OT affirm your belief. Marriage is good, so the stories in the OT are exceptional incidents.
@Frank
If polygamy is exceptional in the OT, are there many *more* OT stories promoting monogamy?
Cathy – I’ll make the last sentence clearer:
Marriage is good, so the stories of marriage in the OT are exceptional incidents.
I would be more impressed if Joseph Smith had actually allowed Emma to take on more husbands. All he did was marry other men’s wives. he never lead by example in refining his own selfishness, and jealousy.
Alo,
I tend to agree with you, but is the evidence that God did not command polygamy of evidence that Joseph was a fallible red blooded male?
@Cathy –but we are agreed that I don’t see in Grant Palmer a support that I would rely on.
http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/a-response-to-grant-palmers-sexual-allegations-against-joseph-smith-and-the-beginnings-of-polygamy-in-nauvoo/
This is my concern (and an honest question). Polygamy wasn’t just a Joseph Smith Brigham Young thing. The first six prophets of the Church lived it: Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith. How can God be with the Church and the priesthood authority be valid if the first six prophets were dirty old men? Since I accept the Church as true, then I figure, at least at that time, the principle was commanded by God. I accept that God works with imperfect people, but serial adultery is a little too imperfect for me to believe he was leading the Church and at the same time condemning the practice they were engaged in.
According to KLC under the thread “Gospel Topics Essays A Collective Shrug”, Jospeh’s polygamy was common knowledge “as common as the air we breathed” for prior generations. We don’t have good conversations today because everyone understood it in prior generations (suggested by KLC).
I still don’t buy that assertion that everyone just knew how polygamy worked and it was talked about all the time in the church, and it is only a recent thing that we have stopped talking and understanding it.
I don’t think we every really understood it, even while they were trying to restore the OT practice in today’s culture and ignore the impact to women. It was faith in an idea to link families, but the faith was lacking the knowledge of it. It was faith that couldn’t be sustained because eventually truth was revealed that we can’t and shouldn’t practice it.
There were lots of things in the Old Testament we don’t understand. God lets us take stabs at it as we work out our faith.
I don’t think prior generations had the time or resources to question things like we do today. So we are just bringing to light how we little we really do understand it, when that lack of understanding always existed since polygamy was restored. Joseph didn’t understand it and that is why he took it to the Lord in prayer, to try to learn.
Rather than try to make sense of it so it doesn’t seem like Joseph Smith was weird or got it wrong, I think we move forward and agree polygamy is terrible for marriage, is a barbaric practice, and there was revelation (OD) that confirms we do not practice it anymore.
We’ve progressed beyond OT specific practices. We should let go of the idea that things done thousands of years ago have to make sense and that all things that God allows must be universal or the same forever.
In Mormon history we have women who defended polygamy and those who hated it. Even some who hated it defended it. I feel like making a blanket statement that polygamy was completely uninspired does a disservice to those men *and* women who earnestly prayed and felt this was something God wanted them to do. I know of at least one story where a bishop asked a young couple to take on a young widow as a plural wife, and it was the *wife* who spoke up first and said they’d do it. I’ve heard that there were women who felt inspired to become plural wives with a spiritual reassurance that this was not something they’d have to endure in the afterlife. I’d love to find the source material for that.
That being said, I find the idea of polygamy morally repugnant. It is a relic of cultures where women were considered property, including the culture depicted in the Old Testament. Once King David’s son raped ten of David’s concubines publicly, they were put away as if widowed because they’d been defiled. They weren’t people, they were soiled property.
Some of the justifications early Mormon pioneers gave for it are jaw dropping. One account I read said it helped women overcome Eve’s curse of her desire to her husband (the cause of jealousy and possessiveness) – ideally you would become indifferent so you didn’t care if your husband had feelings for or had sex with other women. At that point, we might as well become like the Oneida community where sexual partners are assigned by church leaders and pairing off is strictly prohibited. The village raises the children because attachments to specific parents or sexual partners is carnal and selfish. I’ve seen statements by Brigham Young about polygamy that make me sick to my stomach (literally). Based on the accounts of my own ancestors, for some women it was a living hell. One ancestor said it felt like her husband died the day he took that second wife. Other women seem to have found it tolerable. I’ve come to grips with the fact that I will never feel okay about polygamy, and I’m grateful it is denounced in the Book of Mormon and identified as a source of pain for women and children. If God ever commanded it, then the onus is on Him to make it up to His daughters who suffered under that system.
“We don’t have good conversations today because everyone understood it in prior generations (suggested by KLC).”
If you will recall Heber I was commenting on a specific statement you made. You asserted that if we could ask our grandparents about JS polygamy they would claim ignorance of it just like you do. I know that is not the case, because, as I said, it was common knowledge 50 or 75 or 100 years ago, and then I listed some reasons why it was common knowledge, the scriptures didn’t exclude Joseph, and our history with the RLDS church that made us vigorously defend JS’s polygamy to counter RLDS claims he never practiced it.
I never made any conjecture about why it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge today nor about why we don’t have good conversations about it today. I never refuted that it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge today since I can’t deny that a good portion of younger members seem genuinely in the dark about it. I did express some amazement about how it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge today.
Although I do have an opinion on why we don’t have good conversations today about JS polygamy. After our exchange I thought a lot about why we have a generation of members so in the dark about it that they are blindsided when they find out about it.
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s Emma was still persona non grata in church discourse and teaching. She had stayed behind and eventually aligned with the RLDS and the pioneers and their children and their children, the parents of my generation, really never forgave her for that. She didn’t really exist except in the few mentions of her in the D&C.
But over the last 30 years we have rehabilitated Emma, she has been welcomed back into our church. We’ve created paintings and statues of her, her image has become part of our story again. But over that same time we have put increasing emphasis on family, family, family. And in a church that worships family we have created our ideal ur marriage, Joseph and Emma. We don’t know any of Brigham’s wives by name, none are really familiar to us, so Brigham polygamy is disturbing and even repugnant but impersonal. But we do know Emma by name, and now we’re supposed to like her, so Joseph’s polygamy is an assault on the image we have created of her and of them over the last 30 years.
I see it as a sin of omission on the part of the institution. I don’t think any council of leaders formally sat down and drafted some nefarious plan to deceive members about JS and polygamy, I just think it didn’t fit our new narrative so we didn’t talk about it. And so new generations grew up never hearing about it but hearing about Joseph and Emma and their ideal marriage. And over time that narrative gained so much traction and momentum that talking about his polygamy became ever more problematic. And what do humans do with problematic things? Usually we ignore them until something gives. Something is giving now.
@Howerd
I’m not sure if it’s my reading comprehension, or your grammar (I mean that kindly) but I’m having a hard time understanding your question.
I think you are saying. If polygamy was not a commandment from God, then that means Smith was fallible?
Considering that I do not believe that Smith was a prophet at all, then this is not really a question for me. My answer is; of course he was just a man. He was trying to make money, and get away with his desire for many sexual partners.
I understand many here will disagree with me here, that’s okay, and I mean no disrespect.
Frank – Adam and Eve–positive marriage story. Genesis.
Your turn.
Alo,
Yes sorry the typos made #33 unreadable.
It should have said something like:
I tend to agree with you, but is this evidence that God did not command polygamy or evidence that Joseph was a fallible red blooded male? Or maybe he just didn’t live long enough to roll out the rest of the plan?
MH – you’ve set an extremely low bar.
We have a help created so Adam won’t be alone. The first time she makes a decision on her own she’s blamed as defective by her husband, cursed, and placed absolutely beneath him. The only other mention she gets is when proclaiming happily she has a son. (and then another)
All of 34 verses if you’re generous in counting and nothing like a good marriage in the entire thing. Anything beyond that is your extrapolation and imagination of what you hope was the reality.
If a single sharing of fruit is your basis for proclaiming it a positive marriage story, you’ve set a very, very low bar indeed.
When OT polygamy comes up in lessons, the take home for the girls in the room is: Because you live in a restoration religion, this is a possibility for you. Are you better than Sarah, Hagar, Leah and Rachel? No. So accept it.
I think it’s a terrible message we send.
So interesting that you bring up William Clayton and the Moon sisters because they were the final straw for me.
From a BCC series about Section 132, an excerpt from Clayton’s 1843 diary:
“Prest.J. told me he had lately had a new item of law revealed to him in relation to myself. He said the Lord had revealed to him that a man could only take 2 of a family except by express revelation and as I had said I intended to take Lydia he made this known for my benefit. to have more than two in a family was apt to cause wrangles and trouble. He finally asked if I would not give L[ydia] to him I said I would so far as I had any thing to do in it. He requested me to talk to her.”
So he was entitled to all the wives he could get, unless one of them was the third sister he preferred to have for himself. What amazingly detailed revelations.
Maybe you aren’t referring to the Moon sisters, but this is an incident from William Clayton’s experience with Joseph.
Mary Ann — the things you mention affect my perspective:
“In Mormon history we have women who defended polygamy and those who hated it. Even some who hated it defended it. I feel like making a blanket statement that polygamy was completely uninspired does a disservice to those men *and* women who earnestly prayed and felt this was something God wanted them to do. I know of at least one story where a bishop asked a young couple to take on a young widow as a plural wife, and it was the *wife* who spoke up first and said they’d do it. I’ve heard that there were women who felt inspired to become plural wives with a spiritual reassurance that this was not something they’d have to endure in the afterlife. I’d love to find the source material for that.”
But for those accounts…
Frank, I’d like to see you hop a low bar on your polygamy story. I’m not denigrating monogamy after all. I want to hear the good polygamy stories of the Old Testament that you promised back in comment 16.
As for Adam and Eve, sure they had their problems, but Eve is celebrated in the LDS Church for the foresight to disobey and bring about man. That’s a trial of faith, not evidence of a bad marriage.
http://www.wheatandtares.org/19262/someone-should-have-told-me-polygamy/
For my earlier comments.
I think things may have more nuance sometimes than we want to deal with and implications that everyone wants to ignore.
But I think we need to start studying things with depth rather than just surface narratives.
Without polygamy there would be no covenant nation of Israel. The Twelve Tribes come from different mothers married to Jacob (Rachael, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah), and God blessed the children and by extension the marriages. Were these ideal marriages in modern terms? Hardly, considering they still are presented more as property and baby makers. Adam and Eve are the ideal marriage in the OT, but what we know about their lives together can only be imagined. Certainly they had an imperfect family since one son murdered another. To be truthful, I can’t think of any OT family that could be idealized. Even Moses and Aaron were sometimes at odds with each other.
I do find it interesting that one can lose faith in Joseph Smith because of polygamy, but never hear about people losing faith because the three pillars of the Abrahamic religion were all (disastrous apparently) polygamous. For those cynical who think instead of react, the lesson should be from the OT that polygamy may not be sanctioned by God (even if the prophets think it is), but He doesn’t care enough to find better leaders. It just amazes me that people lose faith in modern prophets because of actions that were considered normal for prophets in the Bible. Yes, even some attitudes in the New Testament. Abraham and Paul can be “misogynists,” but how dare a modern prophet not conform with current social or political ethics. That is a bridge too far.
KLC, I would agree with sins of ommissions, both from the insitution but also members who didn’t study and ask the questions to understand things not more faith promoting or uplifting, and therefore not have an understanding of things.
As it comes to light, and we realize Emma should be recognized, and women should never be subordinate…then the light shows polygamy is as misogynistic as the priesthood ban was racist.
Prior generations may be products of their culture and environment, coupled with trust in authority, but polygamy doesn’t stand the light of day any more than racial policies did or communal possessions (law of consecration).
They tried some things in hopes it would be better. It wasn’t. We learn and move forward. The longer we hide the mistakes, the longer it takes to be forgiven. Sins of ommission can be slower to recognize and correct sometimes.
“Without polygamy there would be no covenant nation of Israel.”
And without premarital sex there would be no me! I say a resounding, “So what???” The covenant is with the people, not the method of reproduction.
@Stephen
Individuals are free to make judgement calls about the reliability of sources. After reading Mr. Palmer’s biography on wiki, my judgement is that he’s both extremely knowledgeable about Mormon history and also a very honorable man. Based on that I’d say his accounts are reliable, apologetic responses notwithstanding.
If nothing else, Mr. Palmer has the guts to sign his work and own the consequences. In his case, he had the integrity to resign from the LDS church when they tried to bully him into a retraction (I’d have made the same choice in a blink). Mr. Palmer certainly seems a lot more credible than the anonymous author(s) of the LDS church’s official essay on polygamy–which has its share of critics:
http://www.mormonthink.com/essays-plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo.htm
Bottom line: There’s a ton of information out there. Most people are intelligent enough to decide what’s credible and what’s not. As they say, “the truth will out”.
@Jettboy
In my view, the whole OT discussion is a big fat red herring. The fact is that Joseph Smith & co. would have said *anything* to compel underage girls and married women to sleep with them. Polygamy, spiritual bride, flaming sword… whatever got the job done. The other fact is that when the U.S. government threatened to seize the LDS church’s assets, the LDS church suddenly repudiated polygamy and has continued to do so to the present. The whole business is about lechery and expediency, not theology.
@Stephen
I read the entire article you linked. First, neither of the authors is a professional historian. Mr. Palmer is a professional historian and educator. There’s a huge difference between even a gifted amateur and a professional with a lifetime of experience.
As to the linked material itself: Yes, it tries to dissect and respond to Mr. Palmer’s work. The authors succeed in picking apart Mr. Palmer’s work, but that doesn’t invalidate the thrust of what he has to say. It’s mostly “he said she said”, nitpicking, and armchair quarterbacking. I don’t see that these two writers have, by any stretch, completely invalidated what Mr. Palmer wrote, and on the whole, I trust a professional historian over a couple of apologists, even if they’ve written books and essays on the topic.
Love this comment.
Can the church take as much time coming to grips with the misogynism of polygamy as it did to acknowledge the racism of the ban? My guess is no. I don’t see my own children investing themselves in the church much beyond the next ten years or so unless a clear statement is made.
MH, I said nothing about good polygamy stories. I was simply stating that taking only the Old Testament there isn’t even a good marriage, just your bias on what you’ll accept. Adam & Eve has -nothing- of a good marriage based on only the OT, just as there is nothing of good polygamy based only on the OT.
I have seen good marriages and bad marriages, as duos, polygynous, polyandrous, and in many other configurations of people and genders. It wouldn’t hurt to let go of some bias for what is possible for consenting adults, even when what we use as scripture has only poor stories. They are the product of an abusive patriarchal society, not an expose on how ever marriage should work.
Cathy, he isn’t exactly a professional historian. He didn’t finish his doctorate and is an amateur. Not that there are not a lot of talented amateurs, many of whom are better than professionals.
However, I do get that he fits your pre-conceived conclusions very well, and validates you, which does have value in a discussion. Just not the value I was looking for.
He worked as a real estate developer after teaching institute classes for most of his career. From 88 to 01 he was a chaplain (a field I’m working on a post about).
That said, no doubt he agrees with you and you find his conclusions compelling and the places where he is clearly wrong merely nitpicking.
That is the way people often react, on both sides of any discussion.
But your being part of his fandom doesn’t really engage the original post which was on the Old Testament and the lessons to be gained from reading it.
Frank Pellett — that is an interesting point, that there are few stories of happy marriages in the Old Testament. Ruth (on her second marriage). Not too many others.
@Stephen
Palmer got his MA in American history, was initially hired to teach history, then spent 34 years in the CES. That makes him a professional historian. You don’t need a PhD to be a professional historian.
Regarding your last paragraph in the above post: As I state below, it’s my opinion that OT polygamy has nothing to do with the LDS church, except insofar as Mormons used it to justify their actions.
@Stephen
You might want to take it down a notch. Being nasty and condescending toward me isn’t helping your case.
Even discounting “scripture” due to its problematic provenance, I think that the practice of polygamy in ancient times was solely due to the culture of the times. Powerful men took many wives. Some were to cement alliances with rival tribes. The so-called ancient prophets lived in that culture and followed the practice when they became rich and powerful enough.
Rather than theorizing that Joseph Smith was a lecher, my theory is that he concluded that as a “prophet of God” one of the ways he should behave was to take many wives as they had done… “philosophies of men mingled with scripture.”
It is self-evident if one studies all that was written and said by Brigham Young and his fellow leaders in Utah about the practice, that they believed polygamy was solely to increase one’s progeny and his power and kingdom (“a higher throne”) in the hereafter. How that can ever be construed as righteous is beyond me. And then there is all the damage to marriage relationships in this life…
@fbisti
Now that is a very well-reasoned position. I can buy that.
Stephen R Marsh – What an interesting choice! It’s much more a story of courting and familial duty than marriage, though. Ruth marries, has a son, and that’s it. It does, however, also give us this interesting tidbit -for- polygamy:
“. . . The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel: . . .” (Ruth 4:11)
Still a deeply patriarchal society, probably only pointing to how well they bore children to their husband, but praise nonetheless.
It will be interesting to hear their judgments on us in our marriages;
“You let your wife work for someone else? Has she no pride in your family and lands?”
@Howard
Fair question. I think that because of the claims of the church, that JS’s authority and prophetic gifts were passed on to his predecessors, then it seems to me that it is evidence that he was just a man.
I don’t think he should have needed to live longer to roll out his plan, when God should have just used his new mouth piece to finish what JS started.
Cathy:
You are right, when you went:
“Nonetheless, he’s a professional historian specializing in LDS history. It’s not unusual for folks to denigrate a historian who reports history they find unpleasant.”
I really should not have replied in kind.
Frank — you make a great point about how cultures change.
Maybe too late.. I agree with about 80% of the comments above. (Doesn’t matter which ones.)
“We couldn’t live it when it became illegal in the United States.”
Define “we.”
We being those who excluded all of the others who did live it? So that is sort of a logical flaw. Because thousands could and did live it.
We distort the Old Testament and then we ignore the events that happened to our relatives in our own back yard.
One example where polygamy wasn’t a disaster in the Old Testament has been called for. (crickets) I wish for one comment useful in answering this question:
What is our responsibility towards the 30-50,000 people living in the intermountain west who consider themselves Mormons and who continue to practice polygamy as they perceive to have been taught by Joseph Smith?
Or more precisely how to we either modify plural marriage into something that is acceptable to our contemporary understanding of what is pleasing to God. Or if that is not possible how do we eliminate it as much as possilbe. We have ignored it for a long time and that isn’t working so well.
We own this problem. We accept Joseph Smith as our founder and prophet, to the point that some have half-justifiably argued we worship him as much as Christ. We for the most part love the Prophet Joseph Smith. We have a responsibility to clean up some of the bigger messes he made of things.
Until we are willing to bear this responsibility Isa ywe have no business talking about it any more.
The average layperson in the church is willing to talk about polygamy. The leadership is not. I would like to see a certain D & C section removed as canon. I would like the church to quit teaching polygamy as something that will happen someday in the future or in the hereafter. I would like the church to come out and state polygamy was a mistake.
I’m not holding my breath.