Good morning, America, how are you? When I don’t have a particular topic or event or book to post about, I need to go trolling for a post. So my “LDS Church” search in Google News brought up this short book review at Religion News Service by long-time Bloggernacler Emily Jensen: “Can the LDS talk honestly about polygamy? A new book could help.” The book is a 134-page work titled “Let’s Talk About Polygamy,” by LDS historian Brittany Chapman Nash, who worked at the Church History Department for ten years. It is published by Deseret Book, and sure enough it shows up for sale with a descriptive blurb at the DB site.
Between the review and the blurb, you can get a pretty good idea of what the book covers. The blurb says the book offers “a candid and engaging history of polygamy in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through the voices of those who practiced it.” So expect more than a few journal entries from 19th-century LDS women who were in such marriages. Jensen’s review states, “The book relates the history of the practice in the early church and its messy untethering process at the dawn of the 20th century.” So the reader gets a pretty good summary of the history of polygamy within the Church, and since the author is a historian I’m guessing that is a fairly accurate and objective history.
But I haven’t read the book so I can’t really add anything to the linked review and blurb. If any reader has purchased and read the book, here is your chance to shine in the comments. Instead, I’ll just throw out the more general query: Has anyone actually had or seen a discussion about polygamy at church? As Jensen noted in her review, “far too many members still believe that polygamy is an unspeakable word or maintain that Smith never practiced it.” That’s because for a few decades polygamy basically *was* an unspeakable word at church. And because Correlation did such a good job excising polygamy from the LDS curriculum, many who came of age under Correlation were simply not aware that Joseph and many of his close associates in Nauvoo practiced polygamy. For Joseph, not just an extra wife or two, like dozens and dozens.
Such a discussion at Church might have happened in adult Sunday School, possibly when covering D&C 132. But the manuals tend to carefully guide the D&C 132 lesson toward a discussion of eternal marriage and eternal families while largely or entirely avoiding the polygamy elephant in the room. Or your discussion might have happened in priesthood or Relief Society meetings — and I’m guessing you would get wildly different discussions in those two different settings. Myself, I honestly don’t recall any particular discussion of polygamy in Sunday classes over the years. It really was something that just wasn’t talked about.
Perhaps this book from Deseret Book will be a way for anyone tasked with that topic in a lesson to approach the subject in a way that works for most class members. Reading the book seems like a good investment of 268 minutes of your life (estimated at two minutes per page times 134 pages). If you bring your copy of the book to church on Sunday the book itself might even trigger that long-awaited discussion.
My own feeling is that the average member either knows nothing about polygamy or is familiar only with misinformation put out by the Church or as reflected in Mormon folklore that circulates through families and stories. I’ll bet not one in a hundred LDS who are aware Joseph practiced polygamy understand that Joseph never once publicly acknowledged the practice. Joseph’s polygamy was secret polygamy. It wasn’t until the announcement at General Conference out in Utah, in 1852, that it became public polygamy. Until 1890, when it became secret polygamy again, until around 1910, when the Church finally started disciplining those LDS who continued to publicly practice it, then it became prohibited polygamy. I’m sure (fingers crossed) the new book covers all this.
So your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on one or all of the following:
- Have you by any chance purchased and read a copy of the book? Please share your observations.
- Do you recall any discussion of polygamy (sticklers call it plural marriage) in church? What class was it in?
- Any discussion in a youth class? What do we tell the kids these days?
- Have the Gospel Topics Essays that cover polygamy (three long ones and a short summary essay) been used in any of those discussions at church?
Wheat & Tares 
Quick addition: And good morning to readers in Australia, Canada, England, Europe, and anywhere else where people read LDS blogs. W&T strives to be a global blog with a global audience.
Presentation by the author at F.A.I.R https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upyJMSahBxE&t=2418s
There actually is a V ERY STRONG case that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Clay, thanks for the link. I’ll take a look later when I have some time. It’s always fun to hear an author talk about their book.
cachemagic, in the technical sense you are correct. The common law (and, I’m fairly sure, any applicable state law circa 1840) viewed any purported marriage by an already married person as void ab initio. In other words, the law simply refused to recognize any additional marriage as valid, so technically there were no plural marriages. But if Joseph’s and everyone else’s relationships weren’t marriages, what were they? Federal law ended up characterizing LDS plural marriages in Utah as “cohabitation” and took legal action against them as such. The LDS Church, of course, viewed plural marriages as valid and views the “cohabitation” term as simply another Gentile slur against a divinely sanctioned practice.
It’s hard to reconcile Fanny Alger as a “polygamous” wife with the sealing keys coming later. The church makes an effort in the essays, by referencing Mary Lightner’s account of Joseph Smith being threatened by an “angel with a drawn sword” that places the first angel encounter in 1834. But it is unrelated to Alger. It seems to me Joseph used the 1834 date for Mary’s benefit, because Mary was already married when she was approached by Joseph in 1842. In fact she was married in 1835. So 1834 was the last year she was unmarried. I speculate the reasoning is if the angel told Joseph to marry Mary in 1834, when she was unmarried, maybe that made it easier for her to accept being married to Joseph after she was already married to Adam Lightner.
Cachemagic. There are people who claim JS didn’t practice polygamy, but they have to ignore the testimony of multiple former wives and others who provide first person testimony that JS practiced/taught otherwise. That’s nothing close a strong case.
As an early-morning seminary teacher, I dreaded teaching D&C 132 when it came up a couple years ago and am also dreading it this November. However, I did cover plural marriage in its historical context and looked at the Gospel Topics essays and tried to share some insights from my polygamous ancestry. Here’s how the seminary manual approaches it, if you’re curious, it does delve into some of the historical questions, experiences, and issues: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-and-church-history-seminary-teacher-manual-2014/section-6/lesson-140-doctrine-and-covenants-132-1-2-34-66?lang=eng
I could be wrong but I think many of the first-person accounts of Joseph Smith polygamy came decades later when the LDS church was in the middle of a lawsuit determining property ownership of the temple lot. Also, there are ZERO confirmed children from any of Joseph Smith’s marriages other than Emma. Combine those facts with the shady origins of D&C 132 and I think it’s entirely possible that our what we think of as polygamy today is anything like what Joseph Smith practiced in reality. Another thing I’ve never understood is why we equate sealing with marriage? I don’t think we understand these terms the same as the early saints.
I haven’t read the aforementioned book, but if it’s being sold at DB I’m naturally suspicious. Official Church approaches to explaining polygamy are to handwave it with faith-promoting spin, such as “they needed to take care of the widows” or “things were just different back then” and then dismiss any further discussion. I’m done with apologists attempts to justify polygamy, which often contain lots of moral relativism and mental gymnastics. I’ve come to the conclusion that polygamy is wrong and always has been from day one, which is the explanation that makes the most sense to me and I think is the most charitable to the early Church leaders who preached it and practiced it (makes them fallible humans). I once suggested as much in a comment in Sunday School and everyone looked at me like I had a third eye. Orthodox Church members are too willing to defend an indefensible practice like polygamy because they don’t want to knock JS and BY off their spotless correlated pedestals. That, and there are many men in the Church who are privately looking forward to the possibility of taking additional wives in the hereafter (the teacher of that Sunday School lesson made oblique references to the conversations he and his wife have had about welcoming more women into his eternal harem; she was not present, but most of the women in the room were visibly uncomfortable).
Carol Lynn Pearson’s “The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy” is an excellent book on the subject, though, as it deals honestly with the messy history of the practice while following the author’s journey of coming to terms the motivations of her own polygamous ancestors. Her conclusion is that in order for the Church to more fully heal and move on from polygamy, it needs to proactively eliminate all remaining vestiges, including the policy that allows a widower to be sealed to more than one wife at once (in the manner of RMN and DHO), and possibly an amendment to D&C 132.
Any honest discussion about polygamy in the early Church would have to include the following points to be credible:
1. Joseph Smith never publicly admitted to the practice
2. Joseph Smith lied to his official wife Emma about the practice
3. Joseph Smith was sealed to other women before he was sealed to Emma
4. some of JS’s wives were 14 and 15
5. some of JS’s wives were already married
6. some of JS’s wives’ husbands were sent on missions
7. some of JS’s wives were working in the Smith home as maids / caretakers
8. some of JS’s wives and their families were promised salvation if they said yes
9. at least one set of JS’s wives were sisters (and they had a sham wedding for Emma’s benefit AFTER they were already sealed to JS)
10. the BOM contradicts D&C 132 on polygamy
11. JS violated some of the prescribed rules for polygamy: woman must be a virgin; first wife must choose additional wives, etc.
12. The Church’s first manifesto (1890) was ignored by Church leadership at the highest levels so a second “I mean it this time” manifesto was required in 1905
OK, I’ll quite now
I don’t think it’s an accident that D&C 132 is on the Come Follow Me schedule for a week where we don’t meet in Sunday School (it’s set for the second week of November by the way). In fact, the way the curriculum slavishly follows the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, very little of Church history ends getting covered as a significant majority of the book was written between 1830 and 1833. Unless you go out of your way to discuss the history that occurs in between the chapters (and which is often only tangentially related to the stuff in the chapters), you end up leapfrogging along with the D&C in the timeline starting in 1833, breezing through the rest of the 1830s and 1840s quite quickly. So much of what we find controversial explodes in the Nauvoo period which produced only a very few sections, especially given how much and how quickly Mormon theology during that time.
Fanny Alger, whom Dave C referenced above, is a good example of all this. No one is certain when Joseph and Fanny’s marriage ceremony was performed (and some dispute that it ever was), though everything I can find on the matter places it sometime between 1833 and 1835, before the sealing power was said to be restored by Elijah in 1836. If you look at the sections of the D&C written between 1833 and 1835, none of them have anything to do with plural marriage so bringing up Fanny and the circumstances of the first polygamous marriage (if it was indeed such) as an organic expansion of the discussion isn’t really in the cards (if I’m missing something in those sections, please correct me). It takes some courage to go off on a polygamy tangent, but such discussions are badly needed in conventional Latter-day Saint spaces like Sunday School.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Dave C., it’s tough to fit Ms. Alger into any comfortable LDS polygamy narrative.
anitacwells, that seminary manual lesson … is something. It’s good they are addressing the issue in a fairly straightforward manner, but the facts recounted are rather selective and the justifications given are somewhat questionable. I wonder how many kids come away satisfied versus troubled by that lesson?
josh h, that list is the problem — no LDS discussion wants to include those items, so it ends up being a misleading discussion. And so few active LDS are aware of the unwelcome facts that their understanding of JS polygamy is deeply flawed and, consequently, their reaction to any honest discussion of JS polygamy is misguided. Maybe, just maybe, this new book will be helpful in filling in some polygamy blanks for the average member.
Josh H.
Yeah, that is pretty much my list as well and I think Nash’s book hit them all, not in great detail for some of them, but for a short book, got them all in. I was (obviously) impressed.
In church I have seen discussions of polygamy at least twice in seminary in the 90s. In both cases the teachers spread the lies that polygamy was for caring for the widows and that very few people practiced it.
My family was a different story. I was familiar with polygamy from a very young age. Polygamy is everywhere in my family history, and my great grandfather had a post manifesto poly marriage. It was a frequent topic of conversation when the family got together.
As an adult, I recall a gospel doctrine lesson where the teacher was very spiritually-emotional about the story of when Joseph Smith told Heber Kimball to take a second wife without disclosing to his first wife Vilate. Anyway , the Kimball hesitated but eventually agreed, but then Joseph said it was an Abrahamic test, and he didn’t have to actually do it. This was given as an example of following the prophet. The teacher extolled the virtues of passing the Abrahamic test, gushing about following the prophet. There was no mention in the manual or the class that Joseph later took their daughter, Helen Mar Kimball, to wife when she was, ahem, a few months shy of fifteen years old.
For a discussion of what a discussion of polygamy might look like in primary, I refer you, with all kinds of trigger warnings, to Ziff’s post on zelophehods daughters.
https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2020/08/03/dc-132-for-kids/
To josh h’s list, I would add a discussion of what happened with Book of Commandments/D&C 101:4.
The seminary lesson referenced earlier is appalling. In the discussion of 132:39, 41–43 is this note about the use of the word “destroyed” which is specifically tied to a wife who commits adultery violating her covenants (this word is not used when a man commits adultery though):
“(Note that the word destroyed in verse 41 indicates that those who violate their sacred covenants will be separated from God and from His covenant people [compare Acts 3:22–23; 1 Nephi 22:20].)”
While the the manual relates “destroyed” in verse 41 with covenant breaking what exactly does it mean in verse 64? Keep in mind Joseph Smith NEVER informed Emma of his extra “marriages” BEFORE entering into them:
“64 And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law.”
This isn’t covenant breaking on the part of Emma. It’s Joseph Smith threatening Emma with her salvation if she doesn’t approve of his adultery.
I don’t really know what happened in Nauvoo. But I am not at all certain that Joseph’s sealings were really marriages as we understand that word (marriage) today, or even as that word was used in the 1880s.
@Dave C, thanks for pointing out that there is only a case against JS practicing polygamy if we ignore the testimony of women. Which we do all the time, but that doesn’t mean we should.
I definitely can’t handle church whatever date this is taught. The lessons I’ve heard in church on polygamy (1) never acknowledge JS practices, (2) justify it, (3) treat the D&C section as though it’s just about eternal marriage (not true), and(4) tell us that we all need to gain a testimony of polygamy. Gross gross gross gross gross.
I second the recommendation of Ghost of Eternal polygamy, although if you’re looking for a description of the abuse of polygamy historically it’s not there. The book is much more about how our practice continues to hurt us today.
For a look at how polygamy impacted participants in early church history you need Year of Polygamy or In Sacred Loneliness.
@ji you’re right there’s a lot we don’t know – but again your comment is only true if we ignore women. Several women give us quite a bit of detail.
Don’t ignore women.
The most important discussion of polygamy I remember at church was when I was a 17 year old seminary student. It was the D&C / church history year. I said I didn’t see any way that polygamy was from God. The teacher said I couldn’t be Mormon if I didn’t believe in polygamy, and that was that. I never went back to early morning seminary. She had been testifying with tears in her eyes about how charitable she would be in sharing her husband with these other poor souls who were unable to get a husband, and he would (also charitably, but not because he wanted to *wink*) do his eternal sexual duty to them when necessary, and they (the women) would all work together in some sort of heavenly baby farm / eternal day care situation fulfilling the measure of their creation. It still pisses me off. Why is heaven for women and men so radically different? Why do men get glory and women get to worship them and serve them? That’s not any kingdom I’m interested in.
Josh’s list is a pretty great list of all the problems.
As to those members who don’t know about JS’s “polygamy” (I’m with Oliver Cowdery in that it was really just adultery by another name, codified in D&C 132), I guess I’m not sure how much that matters or why the distinction is important when everyone knows BY and others did it. Actually, I should correct that. There were sister missionaries from Asia assigned to the the Visitor Center who literally did not know that polygamy was in the Mormon past. The materials they were given to answer questions had completely eliminated polygamy. I blogged about this a while back. Crazy. https://bycommonconsent.com/2015/12/08/whats-missing-from-the-historic-beehive-house-tours-history/
As a father of three beautiful daughters, I don’t believe that Polygamy was ever, or will ever – be of God. In fact, I consider it to be one of the most damaging “cancer’s” which is threaded throughout the entire history of the organization. I believe it to be a selfish, brutish, filthy thing to have done; whether 200 years ago – or by the “so called” Leaders of today – some of whom are practicing Eternal Polygamy as we speak. The thought of a loving God putting this practice in place – let alone advocating for it – makes reason stare.
As to the question of discussing it in Church, Sunday School etc., I’ve started to firmly, respectfully, publicly express my feelings on the matter. Sure, it makes some people squirm, but I think it’s long overdue for “the Church” to squirm on this…..and several other matters.
Re. how it is taught –
A few years ago my kids were in the same Institute class at a state school in Utah. A girl shared how she had struggled with polygamy and finally decided that she would would live it if asked to. The instructor said, “Yes, understanding the doctrine is key.”
What?!? He told a whole class of 20-somethings that polygamy is okay. It’s all that jazz about “when commanded” and we’re currently in a “no” era. I can’t accept the church hanging this over women’s heads instead of just saying, It’s over. Never happening again.
That was my kids’ last Institute class, followed not too long later by their last sacrament meetings.
But the church has decided that polygamy is a hill to fight on, and maintains at all costs (droves of young members leaving) the fiction that the God of this universe couldn’t accomplish His work without it.
I have enjoyed the post and the comments.
Trying to come to grips with polygamy makes my head hurt. If you twist my arm, I can maybe accept that the Lord wanted Mormons to engage in polygamy, but I think it got very mixed up with adulterous desires cloaked in religion. People who try to justify polygamy tie themselves into knots of contradictory statements. Maybe the Lord just wanted to try His people. I don’t know. And there is that isolated verse in the Book of Jacob that some try to use to justify polygamy. I am not a fan.
In the meantime, I remain grateful for Richard Bushman‘s, “Rough Stone Rolling,” which quotes Joseph Smith’s statement that he never claimed to be a good man, just one called by God. I think we need to come to grips with the fact that people called of God can blow it big time, amid all the good things they do.
BTW, I have a friend who is Rudger Clawson’s grandson via a polygamous marriage Clawson entered into in Mexico in 1917–13 years after the Second Manifesto. I have seen people climb the wall in panic when he tells them of his family history.
There is also a document sometimes called the Third Manifesto, written, I think, in 1930. In it, Church leaders instructed leaders to vigorously go after members still engaging in polygamy. It took several decades for the Church to stop polygamy.
Talking about polygamy in Church is like having to deal with a gross diaper in public—it makes people queasy.
David and Josh. I note neither if you deals with thread elephant in the room. Where are Joseph’s children from his plural wives? He was fertile ( Emma was pregnant with David in June 1844) . The bulk of his wives ? Bore multiple children to subsequrny husbands.I Joseph had sexual relationship with his 35 wives where are the children? Only one wife Emily Partidge ever said she had intercourse with Joseph and she said 40 years after the event that it happened exactly once.. Brigham Y had 27 wives and 56 children from them. The contemporaneous evidence and the scientific evidence that what Joseph was doing was being sealed to women not having sex with them. Thus his constant denials of not pratcing polygamy are almost certainly true.. Howl if you will but you have to answer the question where ar3 the children
I taught a RS lesson a few years back that included a story about a LDS female historical figure. I was open about the fact that she was married to and had a relationship with JS. I was super careful how I talked about her and the relationship, using primary resources and making it clear that it was okay to be uncomfortable with the topic of polygamy. It was the most popular RS lesson I’ve ever taught and every once in a while someone still brings it up. However, speaking openly about JS having other wives completely freaked out a couple of the older ladies and I got called into the Bishop’s office and released from the calling. It caught me a bit by surprise because every single thing I said was straight from LDS. org or the Joseph Smith Papers Project. It was just too taboo for them though.
ReTx:
Your Bishop’s concern about a few of the older ladies freaking out over well-attested, Church-approved sources acknowledging JS’ polygamy, serves as an all-too-typical example of leaders being more concerned with some members’ distaste for facts, more than a desire to keep other people IN the Church, BY dealing with inconvenient facts.
Appreciated your anecdote, and sorry that you were treated poorly.
Taiwan Missionary – I agree that there are inconvenient facts we have to grapple with.
The way I see it, there are two sets of them.
The first is what went on in the past. The second is current teachings about polygamy, i.e., telling girls that it’s acceptable, and that faithful LDS women live it when asked.
Yes, the facts of polygamy past have to be out on the table. The shocked will need to absorb and process them. People who are interested can study it as an artifact.
But polygamy future needs to fizzle and disappear. Just because we don’t stand up and scream or cry in Gospel Doctrine or Young Women’s doesn’t mean that the teachings don’t hurt us. We have to come to grips with this, and stop taking the lazy way out, the well-we’re-not-practicing-it-now-so-don’t-worry-about-it approach.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
It appears that polygamy is still, in 2021, such a hot button issue in the Church that you can’t bring it up in a lesson without offending someone. Well, at least if you attempt to teach facts. Mormons, it seems, are easily offended by facts. About polygamy, they want non-facts or no facts.
Rockwell said, “In church I have seen discussions of polygamy at least twice in seminary in the 90s. In both cases the teachers spread the lies that polygamy was for caring for the widows and that very few people practiced it.” That’s one way to avoid offending people: teach non-facts.
Dave C’s comments on how “destroyed” is misrepresented in the manual: another example of teaching non-facts.
Elisa to ji: “… but again your comment is only true if we ignore women.” Yes, woman-facts are particularly troubling for some Mormons. Which leads, I suppose, to patriarchal non-facts, a step beyond simple non-facts.
Angela C said, “The teacher said I couldn’t be Mormon if I didn’t believe in polygamy.” Another non-fact. As if the TR interview starts, “”Do you believe in God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and polygamy?”
Ruth said, about her kids’ Institute teacher, “He told a whole class of 20-somethings that polygamy is okay.” Another patriarchal non-fact, because only patriarchal thinkers think polygamy is okay. Patriarchal non-facts are particularly effective at pushing LDS youth out of the Church.
Taiwan Missionary said, “BTW, I have a friend who is Rudger Clawson’s grandson via a polygamous marriage Clawson entered into in Mexico in 1917–13 years after the Second Manifesto. I have seen people climb the wall in panic when he tells them of his family history.” Another example of Mormons offended by facts about polygamy. Non-facts are welcomed; facts incite harsh reactions.
Bellamy said, “… what Joseph was doing was being sealed to women not having sex with them.” An example of walking back the non-fact goalposts as forced to by inconvenient facts. Joseph was never married to other women. Then: Well he was “married” (sealed) to them, but they didn’t have sex. Then: Well okay they were married, they had sex, but no children. These walked back justifications are all versions of, “Polygamy is okay if X.” The problem (inconvenient fact) is that most LDS in 2021, particularly women, feel strongly that polygamy is simply not okay, period. The fact is that polygamy is ethically unacceptable to the vast majority of people, even LDS people in 2021. Those pushing “Mormon Polygamy is okay if X” simply make the Church less and less appealing to everyone else.
ReTx said, “However, speaking openly about JS having other wives completely freaked out a couple of the older ladies and I got called into the Bishop’s office and released from the calling.” You violated the unwritten rule of teaching only non-facts about JS polygamy.
Many thanks for everyone’s comments. Very enlightening.
A few random thoughts:
Add to josh h’s list that JS was married to a mother/daughter pair, Sylvia Sessions Lyons, and Patty Bartlett Sessions.
The Salt Lake Tribune, reported on the gospel topics essays as the church published them on lds dot org, with a link. After Race and the Priesthood came out, one online commenter said that they threw Brigham Young under the bus. When the first Plural Marriage essay was published, the same commenter observed that they threw God under the bus.
Probably the highest ranking living descendent of Joseph Smith Sr. Is Elder M. Russell Ballard. Will they be able to distance the church from polygamy after he has passed on?
Bellamy: There were contemporary charges that John C Bennett whose (officially anyway) rogue attempts at “spiritual wifery” are so notorious used his ability to induce abortion (using medicine, not surgery) as a method to seduce women, assuring them that they wouldn’t be embarrassed by an unwanted pregnancy. He and JS had a major falling out because Bennett was so indiscrete about the polygamy Joseph wanted kept secret. But that’s the thing about secret polygamy: there are a lot of conflicting reports. I guess choose your wingmen well.
According to an interview with William Law in the Salt Lake Tribune decades later (1887), he claimed: “Yes. There was some talk about Joseph getting no issue from all the women he had intercourse with. Dr. Foster spoke to me about the fact. But I don’t remember what was told about abortion. If I heard things of the kind, I didn’t believe in them at that time. Joseph was very free in his talk about his women. He told me one day of a certain girl and remarked, that she had given him more pleasure than any girl he had ever enjoyed. I told him it was horrible to talk like this.”
Conversely, Sarah Pratt stated that Joseph mostly had intercourse with married women to avoid paternity claims.** Sarah Pratt was a critic of JS, as well as a self-described apostate, and she also claimed Bennett provided medical abortions at Joseph’s request. We do know he “married” (without actually marrying) women who were already married. In her words (to his son Joseph Smith III): “Your father had mostly intercourse with married women, and as to single ones, Dr. Bennett was always on hand, when anything happened.”
Now, you can dismiss out of hand everything an apostate and critic of polygamy ever said, or you can (like me) wonder what really happened and realize that criticism and praise can be true, a lie, or something in between. But at least these are statements from contemporaries of his.
There is also a statement by Eliza Snow in which she states (and I can’t find the source right now, so if someone else can, please do) to another person that if you think JS wasn’t having sex with any of these women, then you don’t know him as well as you think you did.
**For a man obsessed with King David, it’s not surprising to imagine he learned the most important lesson from someone wishing to follow in his footsteps.
I’m not a fan, but Brian Hales’ site, josephsmithspolygamy, has this account by Angus Cannon when remembering his conversation with Joseph Smith III:
“He [Joseph Smith III] said, ‘I am informed that Eliza Snow was a virgin at the time of her death.’ In turn I said, ‘Brother Heber C. Kimball … asked her the question if she was not a virgin although married to Joseph Smith and afterwards Brigham Young, when she replied…,’I thought you knew Joseph Smith better than that.’ ‘ “
If I was a spin doctor for the Church, I would say that polygamy (and polyandry) was a failed social experiment, and delete or heavily edit D&C 132. The longer Church officials let this issue fester, the worse for the Church. It will be a continuing headache for young members, particularly as they learn the gruesome facts.
Roger, that’s likely what the Church will do at some point. That’s its MO. Better yet, they could disavow/repeal D&C 132 with an explanation. But I’m not holding my breath.
Too late for my kids.
I actually thought the seminary lesson was really good and I’m grateful for the link, but I hated it and it is deeply upsetting. I’m not all that sure that the facts argue with it though, and it’s that I find so distressing.
I taught D+C seminary the year we married, and realised from a proper close reading of 132, scripture, that there was no wriggle room for the likes of me. Fortunately I was a convert and bought into something that could contextualise polygamy, just, at the time. My kids have no way of doing the same, so it becomes the break in the road, or even the open door.
I think this may break the church. It breaks my heart.
A lifeline for the church is that a fair number of devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints avoid troubling information. They will not learn the gruesome facts.
Looks like the discussion has ended and I’m late to the party, but I’m going to drop my story here anyway.
When I was younger, I went through the typical female LDS angst about polygamy being unfair and disturbing. I rejected the pat answers (it was just caring for widows) and despised the whole idea. Still, I believed the gospel and managed to shelve a lot of my deepest concerns. And honestly, as the years passed and I remained single, I started to wonder if being a second wife (to a widower or divorced man) was my only chance for marriage. I wasn’t excited about that, but if that was my only option for happiness and the celestial kingdom, I’d do it.
So I was very relieved that when I finally got married, it was to a man who also had never been married. I was a first wife! We were sealed in the temple and immediately started our family.
[skipping several years]
I hated being married. I started thinking that I would be happy/relieved to be in a polygamous marriage, because I could tolerate marriage if my husband was only around once every six weeks or so. I intensely disliked sex, so much so that I was secretly relieved to find out husband was using porn because then I could avoid sex entirely. I loved my kids, but didn’t want more. He was not abusive, and I would have been fine with his porn use (yay no sex with me!!) if he wasn’t otherwise so difficult to live with (lazy, entitled slob). I filed for divorce.
A few years post-divorce, I found the term ‘asexual’ and found myself. I have zero sex drive. Sex is uncomfortable and awkward and unpleasant. I knew I wasn’t ever tempted to break the law of chastity, but I thought that was because I was so faithful. After all, I wasn’t sexually attracted to women either. At this point in my life, I’m in search of a polycule. I don’t want to have sex, so being in a poly or open relationship would work fine for me.
Looking back on my early life angst about polygamy, it was all based on the idea that my self-worth and happiness depended on having one man expect me to meet all his sexual and relationship needs, and then being successful in that role. I don’t want that anymore.
The difference between polygamy and a polycule (in my opinion) is the religious patriarchy in polygamy, i.e., one man impregnates more than one woman, and the women don’t have sexual/romantic relationships with each other. In a polycule, there aren’t the rigid gender roles and rigid expectations about who benefits and who is in the less favored position. It can be any mix of genders.
I dunno. I’m not interested in the celestial kingdom anymore. But purely as a hypothetical, if I did end up in a polygamous relationship, I’d be fine as long as the husband didn’t think he got to boss me around and I didn’t have to be pregnant or spend a lot of time taking care of babies. Mostly I would be relieved if he loved/wanted my sister-wives more.
Polygamy would work fine for women who want a baby but don’t really like their husbands.
Visiting a ward today and a young woman shared a Girls Camp experience where they were asked to ponder “Why I Stay.” The indoctrination starts early, folks…
I attended a Sunday School class while visiting my parent’s ward once (1-4 years ago?) in New Zealand. The Sunday School teacher had prepared a lesson that was mainly about polygamy in the history of the church. She shared information that was accurate, directed people to recent but poorly publicised church publications, websites, etc that taught about it, and read excerpts from the gospel topics essays.
My favourite part of the lesson was near the start, when she asked “What factual things might we feel uncomfortable about polygamy in the church?”. People knew more than you might have guessed for such an infrequently discussed topic. People brought up the age of Joseph Smith’s brides, polyandry, coercion, how it is practiced today, etc. Later, the lesson included some ways some people make peace with this topic (that weren’t really defensive), but wonderfully, the teacher first acknowledged that there are fine reasons to feel uncomfortable about lds polygamy.
Weirdly, it was a lesson that I felt the spirit in; Not testifying of the principle of plural marriage, but rather, it was about the honesty of the discussion, and care for people’s feelings about it now.
Asexual, thanks very much for sharing your experience. I don’t know enough people whose lives have deviated from a perceived norm (no, I don’t actually think there is a norm) and I feel like I’ve been given greater insight when someone like yourself offers a peek under the hood. I’m happy to know that you’ve found peace.