I’m excited to introduce Hans Mattsson. Hans will talk about his calling as the first Swedish Area Authority and growing up in the LDS Church.
Hans: Well, my name is Hans Mattsson, and I’m a Swedish citizen. I used to be holding a call as an Area Authority Seventy from 2000 and on to 2005. During this time, I met a lot of good, high-position members of the Church.
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Hans: [I wrote] a book called Truth Seeking. It gives the story about my life and how I experienced my family, the Church and why I have got some problems and why I left the Church, really, and that includes meeting with Marlin Jensen, and includes Swedish Rescue, it includes the New York Times and things like that. I just wanted to say, also, that Christina Hanke is the one who wrote most of it. But I talked to her, as they interviewed me a lot. It’s the way it worked.
GT: So, you’ve got that in multiple languages, I believe. So you’ve got an English and Swedish and what other languages?
Hans: Actually, people just contacted me and asked, “Can I translate it into German? Can I translate into Spanish? Can I make an audiobook of it?” So I said, “I don’t have any money for that project.” But they said, “No, no, no, you’ve done so much for so many people, and I just wanted to do something.” I said, “Well, just go ahead.” So I’ve been really blessed. I used to say to my wife, “That’s a blessing for tithing I used to pay. The windows of heaven opened. The only thing is, the money is not coming in, but the books are selling through Amazon.
GT: That’s right. I really appreciate you sending me a copy. As I said before the interview started, I can’t figure out where I placed it, but it’s an interesting book. So, of course, my current interview right now is with Dr. Matt Harris and Dr. Newell Bringhurst and we talk about the Swedish Rescue, which you had a major part of there. So, I definitely want to talk about that. As we go here, I think– some of my listeners, I think, are going to be very familiar with you. Others are not. Can you give us just kind of a thumbnail sketch of how you were in the Church and how you became a general authority and that sort of thing?
Hans: I was born and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden. In Swedish, we would say Goteborg. There, I have three brothers, and a very faithful father and mother. We were really, really faithful and really believed in everything of the Church. I served a mission for two years in the England Central Mission that later became the England, Birmingham Mission.
GT: And that’s how you learned English?
Hans: Yeah, I tried to practice there. You’re right, really. Then after my mission, I did my military service in Sweden. Actually, there I met my future wife. She was working in the kitchen serving the militaries. That’s a wonderful story. You can read all about in the book.
GT: Yes.
Hans: We had four wonderful children, no, five children. I’m so sorry. [We had] three boys and two girls. In the Church, I had callings as a branch president, Bishop, counselor to Bishop, counselor to a Stake President, High Councilman. I served as a Stake President. Then we moved to Stockholm. There I was called as a High Councilman, but also as the counselor to the mission president, because there are no stakes all over Sweden. So the northern part of Sweden is the districts. So that’s where I, as a counselor, had to take care of them. After a while, I was called to visit with one general authority up at the airport of Stockholm. There I received a letter from the First Presidency, calling me to be an Area Authority Seventy and belong to the Third Quorum of the Seventies. So, that’s 2000, in the early part of 2000, and then on the General Conference coming up the first Sunday in April, I was sustained as a Seventy and Elder Holland, and Marlin Jensen were the ones who set me apart.
Hans: From there, it’s just, “Go on.” I was nervous, happy, and delighted. Of course, in Sweden, I was the first Swedish Area Authority and that’s a humbling experience. I remember the first meeting, we had been taught by the Twelve and the First Presidency and Seventies every year at the Church Office Building, before the conference and when I looked around there–so, Brother Marriott, so some famous people, Elder Rasband. I was called as the same time as Elder Renlund. They’re both apostles now. We get together and I thought to myself, “What are you doing here?” You feel kind of humble. Kind of a voice from inside said, “Don’t blame yourself, blame God because He is calling you, so just do what, who you are and do the best.” So that’s what I felt. Of course, I have to travel in Europe, mostly, even part of the old eastern block areas like Hungary, Romania, those countries that used to belong to the Soviet Union from many years ago. Then, of course, [I travelled to] Germany, Austria, the Nordic countries. About two different milieus, so to speak, [I traveled to] the ones where the Church was organized and had Stakes. Of course, I went to the countries that didn’t know anything really, that were brand new, that had missionaries for branch presidents and so on. So it was kind of exciting.
Hans Mattsson first began to question LDS Church history while serving as an area authority in the 3rd Quorum of Seventy. We’ll talk about some of the resources he used. Were they anti-Mormon? Were they Church approved?
Hans: We were on our way to a stake conference in Sweden. There were some questions, though, from some members. I said, “I will have Elder [L. Tom] Perry coming up on this conference. So if we can meet together with the stake president there, and we three, together, can find out.” Of course, that stake president [came] prepared. He had a huge lot of papers and asked questions about the Church’s early days that we didn’t know anything about. Then, Elder Perry said, “Listen. In my briefcase, I have a manuscript that will solve all the problems. [They] will show that they are all false, and we’re not only going to show them false, we’re going to prove them wrong. We’re going to go after them, and we’re going to nail them.” Of course, I didn’t know what that meant, to nail someone, but I was so happy that, “Wow! There is an answer. There is an answer to all those questions.” Of course, we went back to those members and leaders that were asking questions, and said, “Hey, listen, no problem. That will come out [in] the book that will answer all the questions, and we’re going to prove them as false and it’s just an anti-Mormon propaganda.” Well, after a few months, the questions are coming back to me. “Hey, have you seen the book? Have you read the book? Where is the book?”
Hans: So I called Frankfurt where Elder L. Tom Perry then was presiding from. Then I was told that you’re not supposed to ask questions like that to the apostles and that was it. Of course, that tricked me a lot. I wondered why is it that he’s telling things like that, and then he’s not giving us any ? So then I really, really thought myself, “I have to find out myself.” That’s when it started. I started to search on the internet and read lots of books and found out. Then I was released in 2005, after five years. They wanted me to stay for a few more years. But then I had a heart problem and I couldn’t make it physically or psychologically.
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GT: I think it was about this time that you started listening to John Dehlin’s Mormon Stories podcast. Is that right?
Hans: Yeah.
GT: Was that while you were still an [area] authority, or was that after 2005?
Hans: Afterwards, because I had this open heart surgery. After that, I have to be kind of still for awhile and, my friend, Christina Hanke, that I know as a youth in Gothenburg, also lived in Stockholm. The bishop called me to be a home teacher for her. I didn’t know that she already had found out things that I didn’t know about. So, she opened her heart and we, together, found more things. Christina found out by googling about Mormon Stories and introduced me to it.
GT: So Christina Hanke, she was your author or she’s the one that helped you write your book?
Hans: Yeah, she did.
Hans details how he came to question Church History. High profile church leaders flew to Sweden in 2010 to try to answer difficult church history questions to Swedish Latter-day Saints. How did the meeting go? Hans Mattsson gives his impressions of the meeting.
Hans: First of all, it was a secret meeting. No one should know about it.
GT: Oh, it wasn’t public.
Hans: No. We had the New Area Authority Seventy Ingvar Olsson and he was inviting those that the bishops would [recommend] to have at the meeting, to straighten us out. I called him because I know him quite well. I said, “Hey, listen. I can help you. Because I knew all the people that you should have there.” He said, “No, I’ll go through the bishops and stake president.” We were there in the evening, a Sunday evening after everything was closed in the church. We were about 20 struggling, seeking-truth people. At the same time, they had also called bishops and stake presidents and some high councilmen and PR people from the Church. We were about 40-45 people, and also the Area President, Elder Kopischke came up from Germany. So there was quite strong leadership there. Elder Jensen went out and welcomed him and helped him. I said, “I’m glad to see you again. I hope you can give us some good answers.” They said, “Oh, I’m glad you’re here, Elder Mattsson. I’m glad, and you can help me.” I said, “Well, I only wanted to know the truth.” So, we started there. So anyway, we were into the meeting and Elder Jensen says, after we introduce ourselves, and told why we were there and who we are, Elder Jensen started the meeting by [drawing] on the whiteboard, making a line from top to bottom, divided in two sides. [On one side] was Jesus, God, and the Church. Another [side] was Satan and the world. He gave a lot of scriptures that proved that if you’re not in the Church, you’re in the world and in the hands of Lucifer. So, it was a very, very tough way to start with them. We felt like we were not here to discuss if we are Satan’s people, or if we are God’s people. We just wanted to know the truth. But it was very black and white then. After that, Elder Turley went up and we were asked what kind of questions we had, and they wrote it down, I think about 12 questions down. [The questions were about] the hat and stone, polygamy, polyandry. Do we believe in polygamy still? I can’t remember all the questions, but today [these questions] are very common. So, we really tried to ask questions, or discuss them, with them.
Find out what else went on during the meeting, and how it ended. Were you aware of his story? What are your thoughts?
Wheat & Tares 
I’ve been aware of the outline of Mattson’s story — mostly from US national news sources. One of the things I’ve never understood is how it is possible to grow up a third generation Mormon and rise through the ranks of ecclesiastical callings as he did without ever knowing, even from D&C Section 132 alone, that JS was a polygamist. (I may have been well-primed not to be able grasp that: I’m a descendant of two Mormon polygamist apostles, had a grandparent proud of them, attended a ca. 1960 family reunion with ca. 5,000 descendants of one of them, etc. so I grew up with it being “common knowledge” and not just from Section 132.) Does Mattson explain, in interview or book, how that can happen?
I read about this back in 2013 when it hit the NY Times. My first thought was, Houston, we have a problem. Then I really sat and read what his problems were and there wasn’t anything new that I didn’t already know.
That’s when I changed my Sunday School teaching style to try and address some of this stuff in a way that wasn’t such a shock to the system.
This was a perfect example of how no to address a faith crisis:
1) You don’t promise a silver bullet solutions because there aren’t silver bullet solutions, what I consider to be a good answer to a question, others see as rubbish.
2) You don’t minimize the concern because what you feel isn’t a big a deal may be a huge deal to someone else.
3) You don’t try leave any impression that they may be a bad person because in reality they’re just trying to find the truth after they feel like they’ve been lied to.
Hiding information is never the answer. People will find it anyway, and they will resent any attempt to hide it from them.
The Church must do a better job of helping people come to terms with the fact that much of the history they were taught for their whole lives is not accurate. People are desperate for help, and it does not help to gloss over historical inaccuracies.
I’m always amused when down-voters don’t like an admission that someone doesn’t understand and don’t like asking a simple question.
It makes me wonder what they think they’re reacting to.
Mattsson is a very sincere person. Appreciate him sharing his story and journey.
I can’t stand this attitude prevalent among a select group of intellectual believers (most believers are completely in the dark about the troubling places of Mormon history) that people who leave the church over damaging information are naive. “Oh you didn’t know that?” Goes the saying. Well, the fact that Joseph Smith married over 30 women, some of them just months, just months I tell ya, from their 15th birthdays isn’t exactly broadcast over conference on a regular basis. If you piece at church-approved material about its history, which is what most believers do, it is highly unlikely that you’ll stumble on polygamy or any of the troubling matters of history. Even the essays, it is unlikely that most rank-and-file believers will take the trouble to make the number of clicks necessary to find them. And no, apologists haven’t given satisfactory explanations. They’ve given gaslighting and intellectually dishonest explanations that would never pass muster before a non-Mormon academic audience let alone a non-Mormon general audience. The fact that there are a fair number of intellectuals who supposedly “know” about all this troubling information and yet do not dare raise even mere questions about the historic legitimacy of church claims and authority is a testament to the powerful hold that toxic Mormon culture has over them. Mattsson and his wife are courageous people. Very bright as well. Far from naive. So many apologists have turned to becoming shills and cowards. Seek only to ingratiate themselves among the culture rather than seriously challenge the thick cloud of mythos that surrounds it.
Wondering,
“I may have been well-primed not to be able grasp that: I’m a descendant of two Mormon polygamist apostles….”
If you are “wondering” why you got downvotes, this comment seem pretty dismissive of those who aren’t descendants of polygamists and don’t have the knowledge you “smugly” have.
The polygamy revelations, especially polyandry, were not common knowledge to him and rather earth-shaking. He states this in the interview and in his book. He didn’t know about the stone in the hat. He didn’t know about DNA problems. This was not “common knowledge” to him, and I am a bit surprised you would think this would be common knowledge to Swedish members. These issues aren’t common knowledge to many in my Utah congregation. We don’t teach classes on the Gospel Topics essays, even though I have volunteered to teach them. Most of that common knowledge is hidden knowledge..
To be frank, the extent of Joseph’s polygamy (and especially polyandry) was not common knowledge to me until I read Rough Stone Rolling about 12 years ago. So yes, you come off a big smug in your first comment and I’m sure that is what people are reacting to. I think some of us get so involved in Church history, we forget what is common knowledge to us isn’t all that common, and are unfortunately dismissive of those for whom it is earth-shattering. I hope you get a little more empathy for those not so smart as you.
I was just editing a future interview with Dr. Casey Griffiths. One of my episodes is going to be titled, “What Scholars can learn from lay people.” Casey has a background in history and tremendous enthusiasm for Church history. He has served as a bishop, which was a very humbling experience. He said in his own family, his wife and oldest daughter are very intelligent, but he has an autistic son and a 2 year old. He said rather than spend time talking about the exegisis of a certain scripture, some of his FHE lessons are “And that’s why it is important to be kind to everyone.” Scholars need to learn to translate their expertise to a general audience, and that is why he values historians like David McCullough and Ken Burns who make history interesteing and accessible to a lay audience. It is an important skill that many scholars lack.
John W. I fear you may have read an attitude into my admission and question that is not at all my attitude. I agree with you about the Mattssons. I don’t know about the apologists; I suspect there are multiple approaches among them and that what you describe is probably all too prevalent. Not being an apologist, I have no defense of polygamy or JS’ behaviors that didn’t even comply with Section 132, let alone his manipulations, threats, and grandiose promises trying to get people (of any age or marital status) to enter into a polygamous relationship with him. I think the threatening angel story was at best a figment of his imagination and quite possibly an outright fabrication — a lie. I think Section 132 was concocted after the fact in an effort to persuade Emma to go along with what had already been done.
What I don’t understand is how to read Section 132 without concluding that JS was a polygamist. I mentioned my family background only as a possible explanation as to why I haven’t yet grasped how to read Section 132 without coming to that conclusion. Maybe most members don’t read it. I don’t know about that. Maybe some get “promoted” to stake president and area or general authority without ever reading it. Maybe they have read it differently than I. Maybe I haven’t succeeded in reading it free of the background I had from other sources.
No criticism of the Mattsons is implied by any of this — only the question whether his interview or book addresses it. I’d like to understand, but will probably not spend my time on the book without some hint that it may help me understand. Tirades about an imagined attitude don’t do it, however, common such an attitude might be among others.
Rick B. I put “common knowledge” in quotation marks because it was in fact NOT common knowledge except within families like mine. There is no smugness here at all. But I am clearly not very good at making myself clear — at least in a short comment/question or to this audience. Maybe my response to John W. clarifies. Maybe it’s another failure.
John’s point is why my first point was the one I started with:
1) You don’t promise a silver bullet solutions because there aren’t silver bullet solutions, what I consider to be a good answer to a question, others see as rubbish.
John and I have probably read the same Fair Mormon responses and while I’m not 100% happy about the answers, I’ve come to terms with it but John hasn’t reached the same conclusions. That shouldn’t be minimized, ignored, nor judged.
And to John’s point about not knowing about this stuff, he’s right, in the early 2000’s this wasn’t front and center like I feel like it has been in the last 5 years. So no, we should expect people to know about this stuff.
So for clarification, my comment isn’t a tsk tsk, you should have known. My comment was that these things need to be talked about and discussed so you don’t feel like someone is hiding things from you. I’m stressing that while I knew about it, I’m in the minority.
Some of the comments above remind me of a question I am always asking myself: “what do they know?” And by “they”, I mean the GAs and Q15. I really wonder how many of them know about the controversial history that drives so many of us away. I assume you could place them in the following groups:
1. have never read non-correlated material and honestly don’t know
2. have read some non-correlated material but are dismissive of any non-official narrative
3. have read a great deal of material and have some fairly significant doubts
4. have read it all and know it’s not true but are not willing to confront reality
My guess is it’s 75%, 15%, 5%, 5%. But of course I have no idea
Joshua,
I am not trying to attack you but these categories simply show your bias that the brethren are either ignorant, stupid, or lying. That isn’t fair. A few other categories I can think of would be helpful in your grouping to make it more neutral.
5. have read a great deal of material and are dismissive of non-official narratives.
6. have read a great deal of material and are understand the complexities but continue to believe
7. have read it all but still trust the prophetic mantle
8. have read it all and acknowledge both the good and bad of church history.
“are not willing to confront reality” simply shows your bias, and is a poor and unlikely explanation, IMO. Granted there could be a few that fit that category, but the majority of GA’s who study history are more likely in categories 5 and 6, IMO.
well Rick, we can agree to disagree. You have more thumbs up than I do so maybe the readers agree with you.
I happen to think that most GAs and Q15 are very smart individuals and that part of being smart is being informed. Yet, they all seem to be loyal to the Church without reservation. And the only way I can make sense of that is to believe that either confirmation bias or cognitive dissonance dominates their thinking. But of course, just my opinion.
There is still some stuff the leaders haven’t come clean on. For example, what is a Second Anointing? How is it performed? Is it a guaranteed path to the Celestial Kingdom? Who gets it? Who knows what’s still locked up in the safe and in private ceremonies. The closer we look, the weirder the story. Whether it’s history, ordinances, or attitude toward science. How can you blame anyone for having questions?
Wondering and Andy,
I actually wasn’t reacting to your comments and hadn’t read them before making mine. I was simply reacting to a common theme that I have heard expressed by many intellectual believers participant on social media.
I remember teaching an American Civilization class at UVU in 2016 where I had a student in her 40s who I made friends with. The textbook we read touched briefly on Mormonism and noted that Joseph Smith introduced and practiced polygamy. After the class, I had lunch with this former student/friend where she noted that she was offended by the textbook mentioning a falsehood that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy and how it was Brigham Young who introduced it because of all the widows whose husbands had been died because of persecution and crossing the plains. I sighed and gently corrected her and referred her to the church essays for more information. I really think that even in this age of instant information that most believers simply don’t know. There is simply too much to read, too many views, too much going on that they just prefer to carry on in the life that they feel comfortable in and used to. If they hear an issue come up, they often don’t look into it but simply point to how there are intellectual believers with PhDs who believe and who have written at length in response to some issue and the fact that they have done this is good enough for them. For so many believers in the Mormon corridor, leaving the church would overturn their lives and cause tremendous emotional pain. They don’t want to even consider it.
On the apologists, this has long been a curious case that has fascinated me. How can such highly trained, educated people say such outrageous tone-deaf things? And then Trump happened. And I saw just how much confirmation bias, groupthink, backlashism can warp not just an individual mind, but millions of them. So much so that you can groups of incredibly bright people do the bidding of people and organizations making the most fantastic of claims. All it takes is for a young person to publish an article or just be on record somehow of defending the church and they spend the rest of their careers defending their decision to take that position often sparing no acts of unbelievable mental contortionism to defend that reputation. It is almost as if publication itself, particular of extreme ideas, impairs individuals’ abilities to be objective. They reach a point where they don’t care at all what outside critics have to say, and in fact relish in making them mad and hearing their loud disagreements. What they care about, and all they care about, is how a small circle of inside colleagues will react if they say something out of line.
Nice interview and a fascinating story, Rick B.
The leadership deserves some credit for trying a Swedish Rescue, but they didn’t prepare very well and they didn’t have much of a plan. I think senior leaders get used to dealing with questioners in a rather dismissive fashion, in one-on-one meetings. And they get used to walking into a meeting and just winging it. If they had done their homework on the issues and prepared a better presentation, it could have been more successful. They didn’t really have a game plan. I’ve heard the audio of at least some of the presentation (where Turley took a bunch of questions from the group, wrote them on the board, then sort of floundered from there). Just not well executed.
I think the whole episode reminds us that members outside the US and Canada don’t have access to a lot of the books and publications that the rest of us do. Correlated lessons and talks, plus the scriptures, are about all they get. I wonder, for example, whether Rough Stone Rolling or The Angel and the Beehive or Patrick Mason’s Planted or Teryl Givens’ Crucible of Doubt are available in Swedish or French or German or Dutch. The Church has a big translation department, but they do scriptures and LDS magazines and maybe a few books by LDS Presidents, past and present. But they don’t obviously don’t translate any of the scholarly books that so many of us have read and learned from.
I think one could read D&C 132 and come away thinking that Joseph Smith authorized spiritual polygamy / sealings, but not realize that he practiced it or that the way he practiced it was as coercive and misleading as it was. That’s what I had thought for many years – that Joseph Smith may have been sealed to other women, but it was just a spiritual marriage. I had no idea about the pre-Section 132 polygamy, Fanny Alger & other relationships that were likely sexual, the coercion, the age of the girls, etc. etc. etc.
So no, I don’t think it’s reasonable to blame people for not realizing the extent and nature of polygamy. And good grief, I read Emma Hale Smith: Mormon Enigma 20 years ago and just dismissed some of the unsavory bits as “anti-Mormon” literature; I think for a lot of people it was seeing this information in Rough Stone Rolling & the Essays that led them to realize that it was not “anti-Mormon history” – it was just “history.” We are so conditioned in what sources to believe and what narratives are legitimate that it can take a LOT to remove the blinders.
Thanks, Elisa. I just didn’t, maybe still don’t see, how to understand verses 59-65 about justifying Joseph [59-60, cf. 65 on Abraham’s taking Hagar to wife — clearly not just “spiritual”]], adultery accusations in the context of plural marriage [61-62], the connection between plural marriage and “exaltation” [63], or coercion [64 (threats of destruction); see also 54].
I’m certainly not blaming anyone “for not realizing the extent and nature of polygamy”. That’s a much broader thing than not seeing Joseph as a sexual polygamist threatening non-compliant spouses with destruction in the verses I cited. But there is no blame in that either. I just haven’t discovered any other reasonable way to understand those verses. I suspect they have been largely ignored or glossed over because of lack of independent knowledge of the polygamy history in many cases and because they have been ignored or glossed over so thoroughly so long in church curriculum materials. And, of course, this year’s Come, Follow Me manual ignores those verses entirely in its comments on plural marriage (Nov 8-14). At least the additional resources cited in the introduction tell us “Numerous articles about the people, artifacts, geography, and events of Church history can be found at ChurchofJesusChrist.org/study/history/topics.” I’m guessing that additional resource will be little used, if at all. On the one hand that manual is intended essentially for all age groups, everywhere. On the other, its omissions leave some with the impression that the problem verses are to be ignored and not even read. It’s a bit harder to dismiss those canonized verses as anti-Mormon literature than to dismiss “unsavory bits” of “Mormon Enigma”. But I think people have been trained to ignore them or not even read them. Still, there could be some way to read them that I haven’t seen.
I wonder what I’d do with Section 132 if I were still teaching SS Gospel Doctrine. I suppose I’d call attention to the topics essays, ignore the problem verses in class, and invite further discussion outside class. It’s always a difficult balancing act, dependent in part on the make up of the particular group. Then again, I could take the same approach I have done to the Abraham and Isaac sacrifice story, i.e., refuse to teach that lesson at all rather than introduce alternatives to the standard narrative and analysis. Gosh, the Baalam and his Ass story is so much easier to deal with!
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@Wondering, I agree that when you read section 132 carefully you realize how crazy it is and there are some very troubling verses. I just don’t know how many people read it very carefully because there’s a lot of boring stuff in it and we certainly don’t focus on those verses in class and it’s easy to gloss over in reading. And I think as humans we tend to believe what we want to believe and see only what we expect to see.
I think the proof is in the pudding – the huge number of people, including those who go to all their meetings and read their scriptures, who did not believe that Joseph Smith even practiced polygamy at all until the Church essays came out demonstrates that many people didn’t understand section 132 in the way that you do. We could speculate about *why* that’s the case but I don’t think we can dispute that *is* the case.
I was released from my calling and permanently blacklisted in my ward (someone said I was “stealth disfellowshipped” and I think that’s apt) for telling 11 year olds that Joseph Smith had more than one wife. Didn’t speculate on his sex life, didn’t mention that he was marrying children or other men’s wives, just that he was practicing polygamy and for that I have been persona non grata for going on three years. Everyone is supposed to KNOW Smith was a polygamist, but no one is supposed to SAY it or teach it, so yeah, I’m siding with Mattson on this one.
The current “Come Follow Me” materials for D&C 132 do mention plural marriage in a fairly upfront manner. But this was definitely not the case for previous D&C manuals. In most cases, there were explicit instructions to essentially ignore plural marriage when discussing D&C 132, unless some pesky students forced the issue (google: doctrine and covenants and church history gospel doctrine teachers manual, and look at chapter 31). This extended even to university-level materials. For example, google { doctrine and covenants student manual religion 324 325 } and go to the chapter on D&C 132 (Marriage: An Eternal Covenant), p327-334. In those eight pages, find the number of references to plural marriage. Spoiler alert: almost nothing. It is completely possible to read that chapter and not really understand Joseph Smith’s involvement with polygamy. And again, this was a *university-level course*. There was much less for regular Gospel Doctrine classes. Fortunately for the Church, most of those manuals have been retired or extensively revised, so that it is difficult to show just how much the topic was ignored 10, 15, or 20 years ago. It is not at all unreasonable that a faithful member in 1995-2015 could have studied diligently the Church-produced materials for D&C 132, and have remained essentially ignorant of what was going on in Nauvoo (and earlier). Any suggestion to the contrary is gaslighting.
Here’s where I didn’t hear the full story of JS’s polygamy:
– Primary, Sunday School, priesthood meeting (ever)
– Four years of early morning seminary
– MTC (4 weeks)
– BYU stake missionary prep course taught by Edward Kimball, son of the then current church president
– Four years of BYU religion classes
– General Conference
And I asked – a lot of times.
The most common response was that they were almost all post-mortem sealings. Yes – he was sealed to Eliza Snow, but it was just a spiritual thing.
I think the kindest view of why this was the case at the local level, is that they were are brought up in the same system I was and were just passing along what they had been told.
I really can’t give the general authorities a pass – because there were plenty of people in the great and spacious Church Office Building that knew better. The curriculum goes through a process and the facts (truth?) were scrubbed out.
When the GT essays on polygamy came out, I was mortified that I had taught so many people (especially my own children) the whitewashed story.
I learned about JS polygamy in both Sunday School and Seminary. I’m 54 so this would have been in the 80’s. I’m not sure if lesson plans changed after that. I am surprised when people say they didn’t know about it. I was a 12-year-old crushed by polygamy: I read DC 132 over and over and over looking for some solace.
All of these comments about people not knowing that JS practiced polygamy (practice makes perfect!) reminded me of this post I did in 2015, about the fact that the tour guides at the Lion House in SLC didn’t know BRIGHAM YOUNG practiced polygamy (!). Definitely worth a read to see what the heck happened there. I’m not sure whether it’s been rectified or not, but what a botched idea that was! https://bycommonconsent.com/2015/12/08/whats-missing-from-the-historic-beehive-house-tours-history/
The “Swedish rescue”. From what? The truth?
@Angela C that’s wild! I toured a BY house as a teen and they definitely discussed his polygamy.
I just started reading In Sacred Loneliness and realized it was published in 1997. 1997! At that time, I was *definitely* defending Joseph Smith against accusations of polygamy. “Oh, that’s something Brigham Young did because they needed to take care of all the pioneer women and widows … Joseph Smith did not. It came after his death.” Facepalm.
I knew people’s experience of Mormonism and its teaching in Church varied widely, but this discussion has helped me realize that the variance is even wider than I had realized. I have never, to my memory, heard anyone but members of the then Reorganized CoJCoLDS (now Community of Christ) claiming that JS was not a polygamist, though I did recognize that Church curriculum materials and lessons were ignoring it. It’s pretty clear to me now that a great many members believed that and may well have heard it at Church from others.
As to curriculum, that long series of PH/RS manuals on Teachings of the Presidents was by silence and ellipses deceptive on many more scores than polygamy. If only it had been regularly stressed that those were teachings selected and modified according to what the committee now wanted people to focus on, while ignoring history, context and sometimes the actual language of their teachings.
Sometimes I think we’d be well served by a great deal more obvious humility in Church teaching. Maybe even some explicit teaching in Church of what seems to have been rare even at home — that we have a great many people trying to learn and teach truth, but that ALL make mistakes. I would want to go even further and actively teach that there have been, and probably still are, times when some purposely do not teach the whole truth — whether out of possible parental-like care or deceptiveness.
BTW, Compton’s “In Sacred Loneliness” was awarded the Best Book Award by both the John Whitmer Historical Association and the Mormon History Association. He had some valuable observations:
“It is one of the great ironies of Mormon history that Smith, who set the polygamous movement in motion, never experienced it in practical terms. He was content to marry the teenage women who lived in his home and then let them depart when Emma objected. And he was content to let his polyandrous wives live with their first husbands, so he never bore the responsibility of providing for them, financially or emotionally, on a day-to-day basis. He never witnessed the toll practical polygamy would take on an Eliza Partridge…”
“To nineteenth-century leaders the principle was not just an optional revelation – they viewed it as the most important revelation in Joseph Smith’s life, which is what he undoubtedly taught them. If they accepted him as an infallible prophet, and if they wanted full exaltation, they had no recourse but to marry many plural wives. Their devotion to Joseph the seer outweighed their experience of polygamy’s impracticality and tragic consequences for women, which many men probably did not even recognize.
But it is worth noting that the women who suffered so much under polygamy gave it their unqualified support in public rallies and wrote impassioned defenses of it. They too were devoted to the idea that their church was led by practically infallible, authoritative prophets, especially Joseph Smith.”
“It is useless to judge nineteenth-century Mormons by late twentieth-century standards. Both men and women were given an impossible task and failed at it. All we can do today is sympathize with them in their tragedies and marvel at their heroism as they suffered.”
― Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith
Unfortunately, much of the Church and a good number of its leaders are still stuck on “practically infallible, authoritative prophets, especially Joseph Smith” and that despite their own occasional statements to the contrary. I tend to think, however, sympathizing with 19th century Mormons is really not “all we can do today.” I think he meant that only in contrast to judging 10th century Mormons and not as a prescription for what could be done about the “practically infallible, authoritative prophets” belief.
Well! “10th century” is an amusing typo for “19th century.” I guess its a matter of great-apostacy doctrine that there were no 10th century Mormons. 🙂
“the women who suffered so much under polygamy gave it their unqualified support in public rallies and wrote impassioned defenses of it.” Well, Stockholm Syndrome was alive and well!
“in this age of instant information that most believers simply don’t know.”
Well, instant claims anyway! On any topic; one or two sources may be fairly accurate but the majority seem to be simply wrong. Even on such a banal thing as various kinds of automobile repair.
What you can get in an instant is an opinion. Ten thousand opinions. Then you decide which, if any, is (1) relevant and (2) important. Go from there.
“Well, instant claims anyway! On any topic; one or two sources may be fairly accurate but the majority seem to be simply wrong”
Way to take my claim out of context. Here is the context. An acquaintance of mine tells me that the claim that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy was wrong. I surmised from that interaction that “even in this age of instant information that most believers simply don’t know.” You cherry-picked my comment, ignored the context, and committed a red herring fallacy by making the issue about how so much information is inaccurate (a point which is entirely irrelevant to the one I’m making). On the topic of Joseph Smith practicing polygamy or not, that is a basic fact. It is not a matter of opinion. It isn’t up to you to decide whether he practiced polygamy or not. You either acknowledge plain fact in this case or you don’t (and there is zero, and I’m mean zero, dispute among the researchers of church history that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, and those who say he didn’t are either ignorant about history or in extreme delusional denial). However, even though people can quickly search the answer to the question of whether JS practiced polygamy or not, and get a straightforward confirmation of basic fact, many simply don’t do that. This challenges the assertion that believers are now more knowledgeable because so much is available online. My response is not necessarily and not as much as many intellectual believers want us to believe. Believers are mostly still in the dark because of information overload, lack of interest in looking into history, and because they just don’t have time and just go through the motions.
One of the historians working on the Joseph Smith papers told me it seemed that JS was using sealing to form the personal group of people outside of his biological family, that he wanted to associate with eternally. The women sealed to him came with families attached to them. Say I have a a friend I’m close with and wish they would be with me eternally but they are not my own family. How would I attach them to me ?
Seal myself to the one in their family that I could, I guess??
We really don’t understand sealings other than a way to claim certain blessings. There are billions of people eternally–I’ve heard sealings are how we find the ones we know. But I’m sure somehow I’ll be able to see my friends eternally when I want without my having to be sealed to their husbands or to them as their child!haha