Posted on 08/10/2011 8:07:41 AM PDT by greyfoxx39
That's not technically true, although it's easy to believe because the LDS church continues to make similar statements.
At the very least if you're going to comment on the end of polygamy in the LDS church you should do some research. Perhaps read Michael D. Quinn's LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890 - 1904, here as printed in Dialogue, a Journal of Mormon Thought and written while he was a Professor of History at BYU. Although this paper resulted in Dr. Quinn's excommunication (under the doctrine made famous by Apostle Boyd K. Packer as "faithful history" or "faith-promoting history"), its truth was later admitted by LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks and countless other LDS and non-LDS historians, including Todd Compton.
1911 is probably a better date to use as the year that the LDS church officially banned new polygamy.
Some notes:
First, the 1890 Manifesto (and the Second Manifesto, in 1904) applied to new polygamous marriages and did not affect existing polygamous marriages. Even though those marriages were illegal under the laws that permitted Utah to become a state, it makes sense. If a man had four (or forty) wives, I'd say it wasn't humane to force him to abandon all but one of his families.
As LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks wrote:
"It is also clear that polygamy did not end suddenly with the 1890 Manifesto. Polygamous relationships sealed before that revelation was announced continued for a generation. The performance of polygamous marriages also continued for a time outside the United States, where the application of the Manifesto was uncertain for a season. It appears that polygamous marriages also continued for about a decade in some other areas among leaders and members who took license for the ambiguities and pressures created by this high-level collision between resented laws and reverenced doctrines."
Dallin H. Oaks, Gospel Teachings About Lying.
So mainstream LDS polygamous marriages performed before the Manifesto continued to exist as polygamous marriages into the 1940's and 1950's.
Second, somewhere between 200 and 2,000 polygamous marriages were performed after the 1890 Manifesto (the 200 figure is an early figure; new researchers continue to find additional marriage records and the figure now seems to be above 2,000). The First Presidency performed marriages in Mexico (even though polygamy was illegal in Mexico) and onboard U.S.-flagged ocean vessels (although the U.S. Constitution and statutory law had already extended the jurisdiction of federal law, and therefore all anti-polygamy laws, to any persons and activities aboard U.S. vessels traveling on the high seas). Two Apostles personally performed post-Manifesto marriages and nearly every member of the First Presidency sanctioned or participated in a post-Manifesto polygamous marriage. At least one Apostle entered into a polygamous marriage post-Manifesto.
You can look it up. I'll be happy to find and post multiple sources, including LDS historian-sources, in return for a donation to the Boy Scouts of America.
As Todd Compton, LDS polygamy researcher (and LDS member, and recent winner of the Best Mormon Book Award for In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith) stated in 2007 about post-Manifesto marriages:
Giving up polygamy was not easy for the Saints, and church leaders (including the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve) secretly authorized further plural marriages until the first decade of the twentieth century. Mitt Romney's ancestors were especially prominent in this "Post-Manifesto" era of Mormon polygamy, as many post-Manifesto plural marriages were solemnized in Mexico. Two common misconceptions about Mexican post-Manifesto polygamy are that polygamy was legal in Mexico, and that the Manifesto did not apply outside the United State. In actuality, polygamy was illegal in Mexico, and church leaders had agreed to discontinue polygamy throughout the world, not just in the United States. President Woodruff stated that the prohibition on plural marriages applied to Mormons "everywhere and in every nation and country."
News of post-Manifesto plural marriages inevitably leaked out, and when Reed Smoot was voted into the Senate in 1904, he was not allowed to sit without hearings examining the LDS church's commitment to stopping polygamy entirely. These hearings were a considerable embarrassment to church leaders. Under great pressure, Joseph F. Smith released what is known as the "Second Manifesto" in 1904.
Because of the embarrassing revelations of "new polygamy" in the Reed Smoot hearings (1904-06), LDS church leaders ceased authorizing new plural marriages. President Joseph F. Smith issued a "second manifesto." That's when the LDS church said it would excommunicate members for entering into or solemnizing polygamous marriages. Again, there was no penalty expressed for continuing in a pre-Manifesto polygamous marriage. The Second Manifesto has never been canonized by the LDS Church.
Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley were vocal in their objection to the Second Manifesto and were removed from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1906, and Smith was excommunicated for his continued opposition in 1911.
1911.
That's when the LDS Church really began to enforce the Second Manifesto. The 1890 Manifesto was not enforced. It was more of a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" deal.
This post has nothing to do with LDS theology. It has to do with history. The LDS Church no longer permits polygamy, but to say that the church ended polygamy with the 1890 Manifesto is at best simplistic and at worst a lie.
However, most people who say that polygamy ended with the 1890 Manifesto have been taught faith-promoting history all their lives and have no idea about the difficult history of abandoning something so integral to the LDS Church. Most have probably never heard of Reed Smoot and know nothing of the 1904 Second Manifesto.
Again, the LDS Church no longer permits polygamy despite the fact that Doctrines and Covenants 132 is still on the books.
“They are such good people, very quiet and keep to themselves,”
Yeh, real quiet thats the ticket. Maybe they don’t want anybody to know what they are up to. Like Polygamy.
We have a bunch of illegal Pacos next door. Quiet as church mice. Nice SA 13 gang tats too. But quiet. Very quiet.
Banned?
I'll bet that NOWHERE in this 'Official Declaration #1' can a BAN be found.
To Whom It May Concern:
Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages are still being solemnized and that forty or more such marriages have been contracted in Utah since last June or during the past year, also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuance of the practice of polygamy—
I, therefore, as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice, and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have during that period been solemnized in our Temples or in any other place in the Territory.
One case has been reported, in which the parties allege that the marriage was performed in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake City, in the Spring of 1889, but I have not been able to learn who performed the ceremony; whatever was done in this matter was without my knowledge. In consequence of this alleged occurrence the Endowment House was, by my instructions, taken down without delay.
Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.
There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy; and when any Elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.
WILFORD WOODRUFF
President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
President Lorenzo Snow offered the following:
“I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing, and which is dated September 24th, 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.”
The vote to sustain the foregoing motion was unanimous.
Salt Lake City, Utah, October 6, 1890.
|
Hebrews 11:35-40
35. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37. They were stoned ; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- 38. the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. |
~ Wilford Woodruff, 4th LDS President
You ask because...?
Yeah. I'm frankly tired of the Media myth -- the media misunderstanding on polygamy -- as force-fed to them by the deceitful PR department of the Mormon Church.
As you mention, Scoutmaster, individual grassroots who've been force-fed "faith-promoting history" have largely been "simplistic" -- to think that all polygamous living arrangements suddenly vanished in 1890 with the wave of a Woodruff hand.
But the Mormon Church can't get off so easy. They know polygamy continued. B. Carmon Hardy in his book, Solemn Covenant, documents 262 additional plural marriage unions that came into "fruition" between 1890-1910. None of these would have been official had the Mormon church not arranged for a proper authority to solemnize the act. I reviewed that list and concluded that the last of these plural unions died out around the early 1960s.
So officially mainstream Mormon polygamy continued through less than 50 years ago. And Hardy's book was published in the early 1990s...so as Scoutmaster says, researchers over the past 20 years have continued to document hundreds -- if not thousands -- of additional plural unions. It may be, as Scoutmaster says, in excess of 2,000 that were performed through 1910.
ALL: Therefore, whenever you see a Mormon official use the "1890" year, know that he is speaking with forked tongue.
Scoutmaster also cited Lds "apostle" Dallin H. Oaks wrote as claiming "The performance of polygamous marriages also continued for a time outside the United States, where the application of the Manifesto was uncertain for a season." If Mormon officials were "uncertain" about applying the Manifesto, it was only so they could be deceitful about it...as Godzilla mentioned.
The fact is that most of those "performances" were U.S. couples going to Mexico for the solemnization and "honeymoon." IOW, they didn't reside in Mexico. Notice Oaks deceitfully doesn't provide more disclosure on these kind of details.
Ah, yes. The bride-to-be. I hope he likes his multiple husbands, etc.
Only 13? Gonna have to go some to match Brigham Young's 27.
“Smith thought he was above the law anyway.”
Oh, I know, but Colorfornian was just listing all the things we could charge him with if we held a mock trial nowadays. That’s why I was lamenting that he lived before the Mann act was passed.
Dang, did I really just lament that a federal law was NOT in effect? I must be going senile early, I’m only in my 30’s!
Uh... Screen Name?
In conclusion let us summarize this grand key, these “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet”, for our salvation depends on them.
1. The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.
2. The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works.
3. The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.
4. The prophet will never lead the church astray.
5. The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
6. The prophet does not have to say “Thus Saith the Lord,” to give us scripture.
7. The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.
8. The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
9. The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.
10. The prophet may advise on civic matters.
11. The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.
12. The prophet will not necessarily be popular with the world or the worldly.
13. The prophet and his counselors make up the First Presidency—the highest quorum in the Church.
14. The prophet and the presidency—the living prophet and the First Presidency—follow them and be blessed—reject them and suffer.
I testify that these fourteen fundamentals in following the living prophet are true. If we want to know how well we stand with the Lord then let us ask ourselves how well we stand with His mortal captain—how close do our lives harmonize with the Lord’s anointed—the living Prophet—President of the Church, and with the Quorum of the First Presidency.
Ezra Taft Benson
(Address given Tuesday, February 26, 1980 at Brigham Young University)
No longer!
The TRUTH has been told to FR Mormons.
If they CONTINUE spouting the 1890 thing; then they must know that others, who know the facts too, will consider them to be LIARs.
Friends...
Romans...
Cows...
Dang!!
I got 33 here!
I don't like this. Toss the scummer in general population & let him be a bride!
What goes around, comes around.
Time for him to know how it feels.
He should be “Dahmered.”\
- - - - -
Jeffery Dahmer became a christian in prison, and was a model prisoner. As much as I would like Jeffs to find God while in prison, I am not expecting it.
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