Posted on 05/13/2008 9:09:09 AM PDT by colorcountry
Mormonism, like many Protestant churches, began as a restorationist movement, which is to say that it was dedicated to “restoring” everything in the Bible. Joseph Smith, Jr., Mormonism’s founding prophet, felt especially close to the Old Testament, so he believed his mission was to restore Old as well as New Testament traditions such as the authority of prophets, temple rituals, and the ancient Semitic custom of plural marriage.
According to Mosiah Hancock, whose father, Levi, reportedly performed a plural marriage for the Mormon prophet, the first of these unions occurred in Ohio in 1833 when Joseph married sixteen-year-old Fanny Alger. Smith’s next marriage, or “sealing” according to Mormon terminology, may have occurred in 1838 in Missouri, but the great majority of his thirty-three well documented marriages, give or take a few because formal records were not always kept, occurred in 1841-44 in Nauvoo, Illinois. There he combined restorationist biblical polygamy with the idea that one gained a higher status in the next life based on the quantity of wives and offspring in this life. This gave the religious rationale for large plural families in later Mormonism. Thus, polygamy—called “celestial” (meaning heavenly) or “patriarchal” marriage after the polygamous patriarchs of the Old Testament such as Abraham and Jacob—was accepted as necessary for “exaltation,” the highest salvation in the Mormon heaven. Present-day Mormons generally accept that eternal monogamous marriage is sufficient for exaltation but also still anticipate that there will be polygamy in heaven. Joseph Smith experimented with polyandry, as well, by marrying eleven women who were already civilly married to other men.
With very few exceptions, such as the practice of marrying older women in order to provide for them or to form an alliance in the next life, polygamy was oriented toward childbearing. For instance, Brigham Young had about fifty-six wives, many of whom maintained a platonic relationship with him; but he also had fifty-six children by nineteen of his connubial wives. His predecessor, Joseph Smith, never lived openly (“cohabitated”) with any of his plural wives, though some of them later confirmed that the union was sexual in nature. When Joseph Smith introduced polygamy as a religious necessity to his closest followers, some regarded it with Puritanical horror, while others accepted it and soon acquired large plural families of their own.
During Smith’s lifetime, polygamy in Nauvoo and elsewhere was kept secret because it was also illegal. However, after Smith’s death, during the Mormon exodus to Utah, and in frontier Utah, the era of “open” plural marriage began and Mormons experienced the nuts and bolts of daily life in large plural families.
The results were various. One finds many inspiring stories of women and men who struggled against great challenges to make the ancient Semitic custom work in modern America. On the other hand, there are stories of polygamous husbands giving greater attention and financial assistance to favored wives, while less favored wives had a difficult time surviving financially and emotionally. Even in the best of plural marriages, a woman had only limited access to her husband’s time, resources, and emotional attention. To compensate, plural wives often developed especially close relationships with their children to make up for often distant husbands. Despite such problems, polygamy was regarded almost as the most central, highest revelation to Joseph Smith and a necessary prerequisite for complete salvation. It was widely accepted as a divinely inspired concept by church members, male and female. However, plural marriage was more widely practiced among the elite than among the church’s rank and file, a good number of the latter remaining monogamous. One myth about Mormon polygamy was that only about 2 or 3 percent of the church membership ever practiced polygamy. Actually, something like 20 or 30 percent of Latter-day Saints engaged in the practice depending on the statistical strategy one employs.
The motives for practicing polygamy, while primarily religious, also allowed for parallel objectives. Sometimes two prominent Mormon leaders cemented a friendship by one giving another his daughter (polygamy allowing such dynastic alliances to a greater degree than in monogamy). Sometimes polygamist men married widows or unmarried women to provide for them economically. Sometimes a man and a prospective plural wife felt a strong spiritual or emotional attraction.
One lingering myth of polygamy was that it was practiced by lustful old men who forced helpless young women into harems, a stereotype that was much prized by anti-Mormon propagandists and Western dime novels of the era. While undoubtedly there were abusive husbands, and many older men did indeed unite with younger women (a tradition beginning with Joseph Smith’s marriage to the fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Whitney in Nauvoo), most Mormons practiced the principle out of idealism and viewed sexuality almost from a Puritanical perspective, although child-bearing was, in fact, actively encouraged. As has been well documented, many plural wives were very intelligent and capable women.
Some of the prominent visitors to pioneer Utah, such as Richard Burton and Mark Twain, looked at polygamy with respectful curiosity or irreverent amusement. However, there were reformers in the eastern states who were shocked by its affront to Protestant and Victorian mores, generally overlooking the fact that biblical prophets and some earlier Protestants had practiced polygamy. In 1854 the first Republican party platform inveighed against the “twin relics of barbarism” —slavery and polygamy—and after Congress passed the Merrill anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed it into law. Believing that the revelations of God took precedence over laws of man, Mormons ignored it. Yet, the political pressure against polygamy increased throughout the century. Utah was still a territory and desperately seeking statehood so it could legalize polygamy; as it happened, polygamy was one of the central reasons Utah could not obtain statehood.
In 1882 Congress passed the Edmunds Act, which disfranchised Mormon polygamists and allowed them to be imprisoned on grounds of “unlawful cohabitation.” John Taylor, the church president at the time, remained defiant, vowing that Mormons would never forsake plural marriage. He went into hiding, as did many prominent polygamists at the time. Nevertheless, many Mormon men were arrested by federal marshals (much despised in Utah) and served terms in jail as “prisoners of conscience.”
In 1887 Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker bill which required the church to give up its property to the federal government, including its prized temples. But the Mormons continued their counter-cultural quest: the church’s second in command, presidential counselor George Q. Cannon, served a term in prison for cohabitation in 1888. One of his statements is typical of the sentiment shared by many in the church at the time: “To comply with the request of our enemies [and give up polygamy] would be to give up all hope of ever entering into the glory of God, the Father, and Jesus Christ, the son. So intently interwoven is this precious doctrine [polygamy] with the exaltation of men and women in the great hereafter that it cannot be given up without giving up at the same time all hope of immortal glory.”
Nevertheless, legal and political pressure inevitably mounted until church president Wilford Woodruff, faced with the loss of all church facilities and any political influence in Utah, produced in 1890 what was called a “Manifesto” in which he stated that Mormons would give up plural marriage. This, along with the church’s commitment to staying out of politics, allowed Utah to become a state in 1896.
The transition to monogamy was not easy because polygamy had played such a central role in Mormon doctrine and culture for so long. It was regarded as theologically necessary for complete salvation. Many church leaders therefore continued a sub rosa promotion of polygamy, inaugurating what has been called the post-Manifesto era. The Woodruff presidency, including George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith, sent Mormons to church colonies in Mexico to be married plurally. Among the apostles (members of the second-highest quorum of the church), those who married plurally after the Manifesto included John W. Taylor, Brigham Young Jr., Marriner W. Merril, Abraham Owen Woodruff, Matthias F. Cowley, Rudger Clawson, Abraham Hoagland Cannon, and George Teasdale. Many of these marriages were solemnized in Mexico by Anthony Ivins, who later became a member of the First Presidency. Other post-Manifesto marriages were solemnized in Canada, shipboard on the Pacific Ocean, and in Utah and neighboring states.
Word of these secret marriages leaked out and anti-polygamy activists were infuriated. Apostle Reed Smoot, himself a monogamist, was elected a U.S. senator in 1904, but the Senate refused to fully accept him until it had examined the sincerity of LDS allegiance to its public Manifesto. The hearings were a great embarrassment to the LDS church. As a result, Joseph F. Smith released a “Second Manifesto” in 1904, reiterating that the church had abandoned polygamy. Two apostles who had been prominent in post-Manifesto plural marriages, John Taylor and Matthias Cowley, were released from the Quorum of the Twelve and subsequently dismissed from the church—excommunicated in one case and disfellowshipped in the other. Since 1904, LDS members who practice polygamy have usually been excommunicated. Meanwhile, Mormons have become monogamous to a remarkable degree as they have sought to enter the mainstream of American culture.
On the other hand, and partially as a result of the conflicting messages of church leaders during the post-Manifesto period, many Mormons felt the need to continue “the principle” even though they knew they would be excommunicated from the church as a result. They traced their authority lineage through what they describe as a secret transfer of authority effected by John Taylor in 1886. Most present-day polygamists view Mormon church presidents after Taylor as traitors to the true restored religion.
Presently there are an estimated 30,000-60,000 polygamist “fundamentalists” living in Utah and surrounding states. The two leading groups are the United Apostolic Brethren, located in a suburb of Salt Lake City, and residents of the twin border towns of Colorado City and Hildale (originally called Short Creek), straddling the Utah-Arizona border and known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The latter are the most conservative and separatist of all the major fundamentalist groups. In one of the ironies of history, the LDS church coordinated with political leaders for a police raid on Short Creek polygamists in 1953, during which mothers were separated from some 263 children and fathers sent to jail. This turned into a public relations debacle for the Utah and Arizona authorities.
Many fundamentalists continue to practice marital plurality for idealistic religious reasons. Nevertheless, in recent years the fundamentalist community has been plagued by power struggles that have sometimes ended in bitter disputes, financial losses, and violence, as well as accusations by teenage girls of having been pressured into abusive relationships with older men. A third group of Utah polygamists, the Kingston group, became widely known in 1998 when a fifteen-year-old girl accused her father of having forced her into marriage with her uncle as the uncle’s fifteenth wife; she stated that both her uncle and father had beaten her when she had tried to leave the relationship.
For many mainstream Mormons, practical polygamy has faded safely away into the pages of history. Nevertheless, the impact of polygamy lingers on. First, because there are so many statements in church literature in praise of polygamy—statements from Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, and Joseph F. Smith, among others—stating that polygamy is necessary for the highest salvation, many present-day Mormons expect to be polygamists in the next life even though they may be personally uncomfortable with the concept. Influential apostle Bruce R. McConkie, in his book Mormon Doctrine, looked forward to the time when “the holy practice” of polygamy would be practiced once again. Furthermore, if a faithful man’s wife dies and the man remarries in the temple, he is sealed to both women for eternity. Many contemporary Mormon widowers thus regard themselves as “eternal polygamists.”
FIP Ping.
I don’t have the fLDS ping list. Someone might want to ping them also.
Outstanding post! Thank you!
How long will it be before the “abuse button” is pushed?
I say about ten minutes.
Ping for your list
If a Mormon moves to a Muslim country where they allow up to four wives, can said Mormon also acquire three more? He would be fulfilling the eternal commandment, would he not?
Perhaps it will last that long.
As far as I know, they haven’t built a (Mc)Temple in any area where polygamy is legal. Perhaps that is a way of avoiding any sticky-wicket.
Another excellent (and somewhat longer) synopsis of polygamy with respect to Mormonism can be found HERE. I also encourage each reader to check out the links found on the bottom of the page. And you may want to learn about the present LDS practice of "Celestial Polygamy" described HERE".
Laws concerning polygamy in other countries:
Most Muslim authorities interpret the sayings of Muhammad as permitting a Muslim male to marry up to four wives, as long as he can treat them equally. Polygyny -- the marriage of one man and multiple women -- is still practiced in many predominately Muslim countries. However, polygynous marriages form a minority of all marriages.
Norway, Britain, and some other countries are making allowances for the practice of polygyny among their Muslim families, most of whom have immigrated to the West from North Africa and the Middle and Far East.
Along the same lines, I would like to know:
Now now, be careful, it is not fair to ask such questions...
You would have to clarify the LDS with a current practitioner of Mormonism, but when I was LDS, the belief was that a man could be sealed (married) to as many women in the Celestial Kingdom as he wanted.
Women were only allowed to be sealed for eternity to one man, period.
I understand that has recently been changed so that women can be sealed to another man as long as either her first sealing was cancelled, or her first husband was dead.
Talk about a Celestial sticky-wicket. Women will be sealed to multiple men who might in turn, be sealed to multiple women and all their children who will be sealed to multiple partners, in-laws, and their multiples. And Mormons say this all make “sense.”
So, who calls the woman out of the grave from beyond the veil?
And what happens if she gets called out more than once?
I certainly don’t know. When my mother asked her Bisho this same question, she was told not to worry, but that an all-knowing God would sort it out later.
And I must agree with that - although I don’t think polygamy OR marriage will have any part in eternity.
Both you and Jesus...
Mat 22:30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
And, CC is right, he is an "authority" on this topic even if we take issues with some of his conclusions and minor critiques of Fawn Brodie.
Also, Compton provided a link to a fundamentalist advocacy group [clink on the link "fundamentalist" in the thread].
This fundamentalist group...
...provides population estimates on the different polygamous groups (10,000 fLDS/ United Effort Plan; 7500 Apostolic United Brethren; 1,500 The Priesthood Work; 1500 Kingstons in Davis Co.; 600 in Missouri; 200 that separated from the Kingstons; 400 separated from the fLDS in Bountiful, BC, Canada; 200 in Manti as the True & Living Church of Saints of the Latter Days); plus 15,000 independent fundamentalist Mormons.
...Plus they point out that Utah has prosecuted individuals for bigamy--and that lack of a second or more marriage license has not been a detourant to prosecution for that crime.
...If you visit the fundamentalist link off of the thread, please also note that about 60% of the reasons polygamous women give for entering into polygamy are spiritual reasons. [They break them down as about one-third, but if you look closely, you'll see it's higher...In fact, since three of the 15 reasons are things also true of monogamy, a full 9 of the 12 reasons (75%) women enter into polygamy are spiritually based...And folks try to tell us they are not "Mormon?"]
You are correct on every bulleted question sir. Questions that require no answers. I’ll never forget that old horn dog James Dee Harmston in high school. He figured out how to make it all sound legal with the little teenage girls wanting to get into his 501 Levi’s.
Then his manhood required a revelation to continue his approach when forming his little church in Manti. Poor first wife Elaine went along with the approach. Possibly she likes the girls too.
All: Please cut & save at least the final paragraph of the thread (above). This is the "gem" of this post.
The fact that you have a Mormon, Mr. Compton, highlighting the reality that some/many Mormons think of themselves as "eternal polygamists" & that an LDS apostle (McConkie) called polygamy a "holy practice" in 1966 & that McConkie says it will be ushered back in the millennium prior to Christ's return...it's hard to keep polygamy at arm's length with short succinct facts like these.
The polygamous sects did not have a cordial relationship with the LDS church in SLC. Some polygamists threatened to kill the LDS President. In the end, polygamy became its own religion. That’s why FLDS members can use tobacco, alcohol and caffeine. They are MINO.
Actually the first edition of Mormon Doctrine was out much earlier with all the damning proclamations by brother Bruce. I carried it while on a mission from 1960-63 and remember the glee of missionaries in reading all the-anti black, anti-Catholic and all other damnable positions held at that time.
Of course new revelations by the apologists have corrected that misinterpretation by Bruce the expert.
One of the main reasons that FLDS do not look upon the Word of Wisdom as a commandment is because the FLDS split from the LDS Church around 1930. At that time, it was considered only (and I quote from the D & C scripture)1 A Word OF Wisdom, for the benefit of the council of high priests, assembled in Kirtland, and the church, and also the saints in Zion— 2 To be sent greeting; not by commandment or constraint, but by revelation and the word of wisdom, showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints in the last days—
The "prophesy" that the Word of Wisdom was a commandment to the LDS came after the split.
FLDS still consider the Word of Wisdom to be a valid teaching, and a wise course to follow, they simply don't believe it is a "commanment" the way that mainstream Mormonism later choose to believe.
It is so simple. Joseph Smith is more than just the founder of the Mormon Faith, it is his “visions” that the entire structure of their doctrine is built on. It is how they get around the little inconvenient facts in the bible as it pertains to such things as Polygamy as well as other ideas at the core of true, historic Christianity.
So if in their hearts polygamy is wrong, what does it say about the rest of what their founder said, saw, etc...
A very interesting catch 22, no wonder the "faithful" dodge such issues so nimbly....
Interesting post colorcountry. Please ping me when you post articles like this. I am a former LDS also. Want to have fun with LDS missionaries, ask them why Jos. Smith didn’t have the LDS practice the (seventh day) Sabbath day as LDS scriptures clearly describe it as such.
I have a list of folks who are interested in Mormonism and the claims of Mormonism. Would you like to be added to my list?
I remember being asked “Do you observe the Word of Wisdom?”.
That question made it very easy to answer yes while I was smoking, drinking and yes, drinking a fine cup of coffee. Even while serving a mission, the same question and answer remained true. Don’t know if that is how asked now.
Genesis II,24 is singular.
 All truth passes through three stages:First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident. -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
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 All error passes through three stages:First, it is formulated; Second, it is cynically inserted; and Third, it is rejected as bogus. -- Elsie the Great (2008)
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With credits to Keith Ward, creator of Elsie the Borden Cow.
If you learned to read with Dick & Jane, thrilled by the magnificent horse illustrations in the "Black Stallion", remember Elsie the Cow, fell in love with the playful Texaco Dalmatian Pups, or know Elmer, the trademark on Elmer's Glue, then you know of Keith Ward's work.
Ward a renowned impressionist, was the gifted illustrator who painted those enduring images on the American consciousness. Like Norman Rockwell, Keith Ward is part of our "Americana"; illustrating for so many magazines and advertisements, such as "Boy's Life", "Outdoor Life", Phillips 66, Bordon Dairy Co., U.S. Steel (and many others). For more than 50 years Keith Ward has been part of our lives.
Now noted for his impressionistic "easel" paintings of landscapes and portraits, Ward thinks illustration is a good background for the fine artist. "[Illustration] teaches you how to paint in a number of different styles and how to paint different subjects," he noted. Ward's work has indeed covered a great deal of subjects - from paintings of seascapes to still lifes, landscapes to Western motifs.
His latter works were more concerned with the appearance of light on objects then with detail. His mastery of structure and color relationships, his quick and vivid perception of the essence of his subject matter are the touchstones of his success. His own comment about his work, however is simple: "I have fun. There is that inner spark of excitement with each painting. I cannot imagine myself as being bored!"
Ward died in Florida on March 23, 2000.
Nothing soothes the conscience like the drug of Revelation.
Please excuse my frank talk, however his revelation is summed up in the statement by Mae West: “Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”
No conscience needed if a commandment comes with such profound revelation.
Yes, late 50s. But LDS make a big deal that this version was not run by the general authorities pre-publishing. Marion G. Romney evaluated the first edition & found numerous "errors," which were "corrected" in the '66 edition.
But just think of who looked at or assisted in this book's revision...kind of like of a "Who's Who of Mormonism in the '60s": Harold B. Lee, Marion G. Romney, David O. McKay (approved the book providing McConkie would allow a mentor from the First presidency), and Spencer W. Kimball (the mentor McKay assigned to McConkie). About half of half dozen or so LDS "prophets" from the past half-century.
BTTT
D&C 132 has not been deleted.......
Thanks for your reply.
So if I am a Mormon woman, who is married, in the temple to my first husband who then dies and I choose to remarry, in order to marry #2 in the temple would I have to renounce #1?
Good point. But whereas some (or most) would duck & weave & not be forward...McConkie tended to be rather forthright in what he believed.
(That is correct...unless you died...then a proxy on your behalf you have you sealed to all the husbands you were married to...effectively introducing you to the "Polyandrous Kolobian Club.")
A little TOO forthright IIRC on some issues.
Yea, my cousin Harold B.(the other Binger)Lee was a nice man. He seemed less full of himself than most. Never talked to him regarding the religion as the time we had that last family reunion where he was present I was long gone from the faith.
Back then we really could not come out of the non believer closet.
We were in the San Francisco Bay area for thirty five years. Are you from that region?
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of "catch 22's" in mormonism......
Oh there are land mines everywhere, but this one is a whopper, and it is very much in public view right now...
Yes, thanks colorcountry.
Mormons are caught in a web of their "own" spinning.....
You have been added. It is called the FIP list.
I am also keeping track of people who have stated that they are ex-mormon members of FreeRepublic. You bring the number up to twelve (that I know of)
LOL...stolen!
There are certain rumors...
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/pet/elsie.html
Wouldn’t touch that thing with a ten foot pole. Looks like JS.
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