Polygamy

[Friendly Post-Mo]

So, just some thoughts.

Since leaving the LDS church, I've been quite surprised at the level of cognitive dissonance required by TBM's to accept the history of the church. It seems that, even when presented with clear evidence that some not-so-kosher things happened, they brush it aside as "anti-Mormon literature." I was a bit disappointed that none of the answers on the polygamy question attempted to own up to the church's history; I'm especially disappointed that the hairier claims (Emma Smith's anger toward Joseph's other wives) were thrown out without being disproven. And repeating over and over that something is wrong doesn't make it wrong. Just because the history doesn't fit in with one's idealized version of church history doesn't mean that it's a pack of lies or "fecal matter."

Blurg, maybe I'm just being bitter again. I would just really like to see an honest, open, and unsterilized discussion of Church history for once.

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/61917/

[Friendly Post-Mo]

Also, anyone who likes to read, mormonthink.com usually presents all sides very well. Here's their section on JS and his wives:

http://www.mormonthink.com/joseph-smith ... my.htm#sex

[mic0]

I can see why the writers didn't go into detail about the history - the question was ultimately, "Why is this stuff avoided by the Church?" That is hard enough to answer as it is. I personally don't think people should ignore the history.

And from my time writing I've learned that honest, open, unsterilized discussion can't happen on the Board. That is just because it is a part of BYU, and in order to stay functioning certain opinions will be presented. That said, theboardboard is a great place for those kinds of discussions!

[Rifka]

I think it's also avoided because it's not the part of the church we want people to focus on. Sure, the people in the church aren't perfect and some strange things happened early on, but that's not the essence of the Church. Just like you wouldn't walk up to a random stranger and spill all your personal weaknesses and struggles, the Church isn't going to present its' most dicey issues in Sacrament meeting or the Ensign. Those venues are designed to teach Church principles on a very general level, as described in D&C 89: "Given for a principle with a promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints." That doesn't mean it's bad to learn about the more gray areas of the church-- it's just important to understand the basics before jumping into the more intense stuff.

That said, I hear the book Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman does a good job of showing more of Joseph Smith's human, fallible side. I would imagine it would talk about his wives as well. I'd recommend it for a less sugar-coated view of the early church.

--Rifka

[mic0]

That doesn't mean it's bad to learn about the more gray areas of the church-- it's just important to understand the basics before jumping into the more intense stuff.

That said, I hear the book Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman does a good job of showing more of Joseph Smith's human, fallible side. I would imagine it would talk about his wives as well. I'd recommend it for a less sugar-coated view of the early church.

1. I read that book in high school and it helped me at the time to understand a lot of things about the beginning of the Church.

2. So, you said that its important to understand the basics first. I have heard that a lot, and think it is a totally valid point, but what gets me is that I've gone to church my whole life and we never talked about the gray areas. If they ever were mentioned it was only in passing, to say "well it's not a big deal anyway." I think I've only learned about it from my own study and discussion with family and friends, but never in church. To me, anyway, that is an issue. Has any one had different experiences with that?

[NerdGirl]

Thanks for the link, Friendly Post-Mo. It looks interesting and I'm looking forward to reading it once my thesis is turned in (if I don't go insane before then).

[Rifka]

That doesn't mean it's bad to learn about the more gray areas of the church-- it's just important to understand the basics before jumping into the more intense stuff.

That said, I hear the book Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman does a good job of showing more of Joseph Smith's human, fallible side. I would imagine it would talk about his wives as well. I'd recommend it for a less sugar-coated view of the early church.

1. I read that book in high school and it helped me at the time to understand a lot of things about the beginning of the Church.

2. So, you said that its important to understand the basics first. I have heard that a lot, and think it is a totally valid point, but what gets me is that I've gone to church my whole life and we never talked about the gray areas. If they ever were mentioned it was only in passing, to say "well it's not a big deal anyway." I think I've only learned about it from my own study and discussion with family and friends, but never in church. To me, anyway, that is an issue. Has any one had different experiences with that?

You have a point, Mico. I also would like to see more frank discussion of some of those gray areas. I think it would help a lot of members/former members who are struggling with certain issues or just don't understand them.

[wired]

I guess what I'd like to know from people who want these discussions is what they think the purpose of the Church as a whole is and what the purpose of our Sunday meetings are. I think what you determine those to be really influences when such discussions are warranted.

[SMP]

Joseph's relationship with Fanny Alger is definitely bothersome. Anyone, who is not being apologetic, who reads that story, I'm sure, would come to the conclusion that he most likely had an affair, and then claimed to be married after the fact in order to justify the act.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but I think it takes quite a bit of faith in Joseph's prophetic calling to believe his claim.

By the way, all of my information regarding Fanny Alger comes from RSR, not from anti-Mormon literature. (I imagine some members of the church might consider RSR to be anti-mormon. I know people who refused to read because they thought it would hurt their testimony.)

[Friendly Post-Mo]

It seemed like Hypatia tried to show how those things didn't matter now that the Church runs very differently than how it ran back in the days of Joseph Smith but since believing Joseph Smith is a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God are key pinnacles to ones testimony, having a firm understanding of the restoration seems to be necessary. I decided to leave the church long before I started learning about some of the questionable activities of the early church but one reason I won't go back is that I don't see how Joseph Smith could possibly be a prophet. I question if the Church authorities have a similar disbelief about Joseph Smith's divine appointment which is why they sweep the truth under the rug and present him as a near deity (just go see the JS movie on temple square...holy cow. That was about as historically accurate as The Patriot.).

Can one go to church, feel good, and have a testimony of Heavenly Father. Of course! Most TBM's do. But when presented with facts which might suggest Joseph Smith is not a prophet, do you put your doubts on your theological shelf (hence the cognitive dissonance I mentioned in my first post) or do you try to understand it? It seems the vast majority would rather ignore evidence than try to understand. It's understandable; if you believe the church is perfect and build your entire reality around the church's current teachings, threats to that reality are terrifying! I know! I was once there!

So, I'm not trying to convert anyone to atheism but I would like to hear the discussion I never heard - what was going on in Joseph Smith's head and can we agree that he wasn't at all perfect? Can we acknowledge Joseph Smith's adultery and fraud (treasure seeking) without destroying the basic tenants of the LDS faith? If not, does the LDS church have a leg to stand on?

[SMP]

I totally agree with you, FPM. Full disclosure here, I am sort of what you might call a New Order Mormon (NOM). I am not completely a non-believer, but I am not one of the True Blue Mormons (TBM) who know with every fiber of their being that the church is true. So if you are looking for someone who is a firm believer who has come been able to deal with the troubling aspects of church history, I can't help you there.

I guess my way of dealing with it all is that I don't accept much of the propaganda put out by the church. I accept that the church is an imperfect institution with imperfect leaders, and that the church is influenced by society a lot more than most members are willing to accept. Yet, I still believe that God (if he exists) could lead this church in more subtle ways than we expect. And he can even bring about the establishment of this church through a very imperfect person such as Joseph Smith. I God worked through Joseph Smith because of his great righteousness. I don't know why God would choose JS for this calling.

My reason for staying with the church, beyond the typical NOM reasons of family and friends, etc, is that I still see great value in what the church teaches, and what it helps people become. And I would really like to believe that what it teaches is true.

[Friendly Post-Mo]

SMP! That's so cool that you are NOM! I did the NOM thing for a while and it got me thinking about how society chooses its moral code. I am planning on writing a book questioning the necessity of religion in today's world. I feel like the NOM's especially show how religion is good despite theological imperfections. Anyway, you should PM me because I'm really interested in NOM's that do it out of choice and not family pressure.

[Craig Jessop]

You know, I know my fair share about Mormon history and it took a while for me to come to grips with the whole whitewashing thing. I couldn't stand (and still can't, by the way) Sunday School or Institute. It just seemed so... sugary. But I've come to grips with it.

Why? Because I figure that there is no point in having a discussion about Mountain Meadows with somebody who can't (seminary kids) or won't (my elders quorum) try to understand the cultural backdrop to the incident. I won't go into it here unless somebody asks, but the whole MMM problem is a lot more complex than it is presented by either the non-Mormons or faithful TBMs. (That being said, I'm a TBM just a more... open minded one. I don't run from scary ideas, I investigate them).

Polygamy is a touchy subject, but Bushman argues that Joseph went about it the wrong way to contend that he was only trying to satisfy his libido. He talked to relatives who proposed marriage for him, and he didn't attempt to create a harem in any sense of the word; furtive, undocumented, nighttime visits to his wives hardly count as a sign of unrestrained hormones, especially in Nauvoo where Joseph was at his most powerful (and arrogant). I doubt he would have hidden the doctrine as well as he did if it were really his intent to establish for himself a seraglio; he could have simply announced it and moved on. Anyway, many of his brides were older women or married women, a byproduct of what Terryl Givens contends was Joseph's innate need to be connected to others. Givens argues that Joseph didn't talk about becoming gods in the Bruce Almighty sense, but rather that Joseph's vision was a celestial society so interconnected in the bonds of love it almost hurt. I believe that this is an accurate representation of Joseph's urge to establish a society of plural families. Why else would he have wed Helen Mar Kimball at fourteen? I believe it was to bind himself into Heber C.'s family eternally, a sort of dynastic marriage. There is a diary floating around in which Helen tries to convince her parents to let her go cavort with some other girls with some young men -- if their marriage had been consummated, I doubt that she would have tried to go out on the town with boys her age.

As for polygamy, I completely disagreed with Gimpy's suggestion to e-mail the Church History faculty at BYU. I don't think that somebody upset by having history hidden from them would be naive enough to believe that somebody on the Church's payroll would give them the straight truth. I would have at least referred them to Grant Underwood in the History Department -- he's a respected scholar of Mormonism, yet completely faithful to the Church, and relatively conservative. I might also have had the person e-mail me to put them in contact with other Mormon scholars. I would have referred them to mormonscholarstestify.org. FAIR is a decent source, but its articles feel like they're pleading and proving rather than simply explaining. In short, I would have pointed the question asker to a source that would have presented the facts fairly and let the person judge for himself rather than sent them to a source that has an obvious (if, in my opinion, ultimately noble) agenda.

[Whistler]

I'm not much into history, but I read the mormonthink page Friendly Post-Mo linked. I'm a little sad that Joseph Smith felt that he had to lie to others about his intents with plural marriage. I don't really think that was necessary.

[SMP]

I know of some believing Mormons who, after learning more about JS, decide that they don't like him as a person. Some members may have a problem with this, but there is no reason someone can't have a testimony if Joseph's calling yet not like him as a person, just as someone can support and sustain someone they don't like as a bishop.

My main qualm is that the church seems to want to portray Joseph as a saint. He was not a saint, and never claimed to be. But that does not mean he wasn't a prophet.

[Dr. Smeed]

I'm not much into history, but I read the mormonthink page Friendly Post-Mo linked. I'm a little sad that Joseph Smith felt that he had to lie to others about his intents with plural marriage. I don't really think that was necessary.

Yeah, prophets have never had to lie before. Prophets have never sinned before, prophets don't ever have to repent...

I'm not convinced that cognitive dissonance is a bad thing. It's certainly better than blatant unrighteousness or losing faith based on shortsightedness and thinking one has more answers than others. That, to me, is arrogance.

[Whistler]

I'm not saying that all other prophets were perfect, but it's unusual for the information I can access about a given prophet to be so large. Sure, Moses had problems with self-confidence and public speaking, but that doesn't seem as annoying somehow.

Why would a prophet "have to" lie about something? I guess God does withhold knowledge from us, but somehow that seems different.

[Dragon Lady]

We also don't have tons of records written about Moses. It's possible that if we lived less than 200 years after Moses, we may know more about his weaknesses.

[Craig Jessop]

Why would a prophet "have to" lie about something? I guess God does withhold knowledge from us, but somehow that seems different.

A perfect example is Joseph F. Smith in the Smoot Hearings. They asked what his title was. Answer? "President of the Church." They asked him if there were any other names that might be applied to him by members of the Church. Answer? "No." They asked him if he were a prophet. Answer? "Well I suppose so." He went on to lie about post-Manifesto plural marriages and various other things.

Did the lies serve a purpose? Of course they did, they protected the Church. But they were still lies. I think the Brethren are coming to terms with the fact that any half-truth they may tell isn't very well protected in the Internet age; there have been some changes in recent years, and I am confident more are coming.

[NerdGirl]

Or Abraham telling the Egyptians that Sarah was his sister and not his wife (although technically she was his sister, so it was half-true).