“it seems reasonable to say that the issue for many disaffected Latter-day Saints has more to do with feeling betrayed or lied to by the Church on this issue due to the Church’s downplaying of polygamy than with being upset about the actual historical fact that Joseph Smith had more than one wife.”
“these sources all point to the fact that Joseph instituted polygamy and the church acknowledging it. I doubt that much disaffection is due to Joseph actually being a polygamist, but finding out he lied, hid most of it from Emma, used coercion on young girls, etc”
“In reading the comments after several of the prolific news stories the past couple of days, it is clear many members still don’t believe polygamy was a practice of Joseph Smith. Many Mormons were defensive in comments and said the article(s) were lies.”
“I think when some people say “I didn’t know about Joseph Smith’s polygamy” they mean “I didn’t know that JS had more than one wife,” but most of them mean “I didn’t know the gory details regarding ages, numbers, coercion, polyandry, public denial, and Emma’s lack of knowledge.” And as far as I know, none of these “gory details” has been mentioned in any official church publication until last month. And while they were mentioned in unofficial venues, there has also been a soft community norm against reading and/or believing those things. Which is to say that I am extremely sympathetic to people who either didn’t know the details or who had been told that they were just anti-Mormon lies. And thus the newsroom piece claiming that “well-read” members knew all of this makes me pretty rage-y, especially given the number of non-English speaking saints, who may have had no access to these things in their own language.”
“Deseret books along with correlation play a big part as to why so many know so little of the details. Mix in a bit of leaders saying, “don’t read the lies you get outside the church/deseret books” and can anybody be surprised that at least those outside of Utah don’t (or didn’t) know the details?”
“Why are we not even mentioning Elder Andersen’s recent GC talk, “don’t believe everything you read on the internet about Joseph” speech that helped most of my TBM associates not even care about the essays when they came out. There is still a strong cultural orthodoxy that distrusts anything not put out by the church. I find it disingenuous to claim if you don’t know the details it’s because you aren’t well-read.”
“I agree with Julie that many or most Mormons are unaware of the details of the implementation of polygamy and that these details haven’t been found in official church sources until these essays. In fact, authors who published on this topic and specifically discussed these details were often hounded out of the church either by local leaders or fellow members who found these facts so disturbing that the person relating them must be lying to try to destroy the church, or even by general authorities, many of whom probably also did not know many of these details and thus thought they must be an effort to tarnish the church. Now these same facts are available on the church’s own website, so we members can no longer (or should no longer) ostracize those who assert them.”
“The Joseph Smith manual skipped polygamy and had a lesson on good marriage built around a collection of letters to Emma from Joseph and talked about how much they loved each other and had a great marriage. None of his other wives was mentioned. As a teacher at the time, this was a incredibly difficult lesson for me to teach. I tried to add letters from Emma to Joseph from Mormon Enigma (likewise, love letters) and was pulled aside by the RS President afterwards as this book was seen as anathema.”
“I don’t know of a single video or piece of art that depicts or discusses polygamy. In other words, the references to polygamy outlined in this post are far outweighed by church materials that don’t mention polygamy.”
"According to the Family Proclamation, “God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife,” How does the Church justify the fact that the plural marriages were not legal? This practice also defies the Twelfth Article of Faith: “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”
"I am 40 years old and raised in the church. I have been told repeatedly, and as recently as 6 months ago, that rumors of Joseph Smith’s polygamy “were just anti-Mormon lies.”
“I’m 41, raised in the church and I just found out about JS’s other wives 2 or 3 years ago. I learned that BY was a polygamist as a young adult when visiting the Beehive House in Salt Lake City. I got into a disagreement with an ex-mormon friend over whether or not JS was a polygamist; I vehemently denied it while she told me basically the same facts the essays contain. I believed they were just lies.”
“Count me among those RS teachers faced with the impossible task of teaching this stinker of a lesson strongly implying that the marriage between Joseph and Emma was a straightforward faithful, monogamous love story of equals with no hint of storms beyond the unwarranted persecution for his beliefs: Chapter 20: A Heart Full of Love and Faith: The Prophet’s Letters to His Family. The manual (as outlined in Blair’s essay) specifically forbade teachers from discussing polygamy in the Joseph Smith lessons, not that I wanted to anyway. I just refused to teach this lesson… I don’t know whether the correlation committee members who wrote that lesson were being deliberately deceitful or if they really believed and hoped that was an accurate depiction.”
“the Church made a point of not only downplaying his polygamy in official church manuals (where the majority of rank-and-file members get their church history from, let’s be honest), but also discouraging members from going to “outside sources” to get any sort of information about church-related topics. When correlation is specifically designed to withhold major information about the nature and depth of Joseph’s polygamy, and is also designed to discourage members from going elsewhere to learn about Joseph’s polygamy, and also designed to discourage teachers from delving too far into the subject, you have a clear pattern of the church deliberately keeping its members ignorant about it.”
The following is one long post, too good to copy just an excerpt:
https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-and-church-history-student-study-guide/the-church-in-nauvoo-illinois/doctrine-and-covenants-135-martyrs-for-the-truth?lang=eng
“the Prophet taught and prepared the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to lead the Church. He felt impressed that his time was short. Meanwhile, some who left the Church could not leave the Church alone. In early June 1844, some former Church members and enemies of the work printed a newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor, that published lies about the Prophet and other Church leaders. This added fuel to a fire that was already burning among anti-Mormons in the area who were king for ways to remove the Saints from western Illinois.”
https://www.lds.org/manual/church-history-in-the-fulness-of-times-student-manual/chapter-twenty-two-the-martyrdom?lang=eng
“Leaders of the conspiracy were exposed in the Times and Seasons and were excommunicated from the Church. Thwarted in their plans, the dissenters decided to publish an opposition newspaper. The first and only issue of their paper, which was called the Nauvoo Expositor, appeared on 7 June 1844. Throughout the paper they accused Joseph Smith of teaching vicious principles, practicing whoredoms, advocating so-called spiritual wifery, grasping for political power, preaching that there were many gods, speaking blasphemously of God, and promoting an inquisition.”
“Moreover, they reasoned that if nothing were done to stop the libelous paper, the anti-Mormons would be aroused to mob action.”
These quotes are straight from student manuals on LDS.org. What are these lies in the Nauvoo expositor? What is the libelous paper talking about – mainly that Joseph smith practiced plural marriage. That is why Joseph Smith was murdered. Of course the average member is confused when the above inaccurate, I would argue dishonest, narrative is what members are being taught in the churches own manuals. .Couple this with the quote of Joseph Smith saying “when I can only find one” and a desire to belief Joseph was a prophet and a good human being and you can understand why members think that Josephs polygamy or at least the extent and details were anti-mormon lies."
(End long post)
“It is evident how vague the subject was intended to be throughout all the sources. Sometimes the references feel as if the author assumes the audience is supposed to learn about it in more detail elsewhere, except, that elsewhere did not exist within the endorsed sources. Another interesting aspect about polygamy is how absolutely mute the Church is regarding the complex web of doctrinal ramifications used to justify the practice, persuade members (especially already married subjects) into it, and provide a solid frame within the official doctrines to gain salvation and different statuses in the life to come. It was secretive then thanks to the close link to the temple and it is hard to understand now as the Church seems to have made efforts to blur as much as possible the bizarre doctrines. I think this is in part what was most disappointing to me, the doctrinal side of it. Members were pressured, and in my opinion, sometimes cruelly compelled to live the lifestyle under what almost amounts to threats to their personal salvation and the salvation of their loved ones. This is what nobody is talking about, and what the Church continues to leave untouched. Which I find strange since it is this is the very tactic that is still employed by polygamists today to coerce their members to live the lifestyle.”
“The practice in the Church during my lifetime, as expressed in manuals and enforced by culture, is to discourage discussion of polygamy in Church. I cannot recall a single lesson that I have attended as an adult that directly addressed the question of polygamy. I can recall a few cursory mentions of the practice and then quickly moving on. If you wanted to discuss polygamy you went to an evil symposium, read publications by alternate voices, or (more recently) went online.”
“As near as I can tell, you’ve compiled every interesting official statement by the church about polygamy in recent memory. And it comes out to a few pages. So let’s make sure to keep the significance of the project in perspective.
Against these few pages, we have a mountain of other official materials (lessons, conference talks, paintings, sculpture, movies, history museums, promotional materials, etc., etc.,) pertaining to the Nauvoo period generally and Joseph and Emma in particular that has been put out by the church over the past 50 years. When seen together from a broader perspective, it’s not terribly hard to see how someone might have missed the handful of needles for the bales of hay.”
“In the late 80′s I attended an institute class taught by a full time CES instructor. He is now a BYU Religion professor. The topic he prepared for the class that day was a discussion on polygamy. He told us that his information showed that only a very small percentage <10% of members participated, and that it was primarily to take care of widows. He also taught that the practice was revealed to Joseph Smith, but implemented by Brigham Young. None of this was correct. I don’t believe that he was intentionally misleading the class, so I conclude that either it was difficult for an institute teacher to get correct information on the subject, or that this was an area where research was not encouraged. The class received the same sanitized version of history commonly held by many members at the time.”
“I was taught this exact same version by CES in Mexico and I was also taught this as I asked the missionaries teaching me the discussions. At least part of this version, was also uttered by President Hinckley as a response during his 60 minutes interview. I don’t think this is the result of someone doing serious research, I think this is a carefully concocted PR answer that was perpetuated by the Church as quick and easy damage control to the polygamy question. I don’t know who put it together, but I find it really hard to believe whoever did actually believed it to be true. This is part of the misinformation the Church has spread and one of the elements in keeping so many in ignorance about the realities of polygamy in LDS history.”
“the messages we hear to this day, telling us that Joseph’s character was “unimpeachable” – well, this is where the rubber meets the road for me, and right now it’s burning and squealing and stinking and smoking and leaving a black skidmark on a pavement of pain.”
“the motives behind the church’s retreat from anti-intellectualism—stay away from Sunstone symposia, don’t listen to “alternate voices,” intellectuals are one of the three pillars of the axis of evil—are of great importance to me and others who feel that the institution has been something less than forthcoming in its handling of difficult historical and doctrinal issues. The church’s motives have a direct bearing on my willingness to trust its future pronouncements on these subjects… I, for one, am much more inclined to follow a leader who admits his errors than one who makes a dubious promise to never lead me astray.”
When correlation* is specifically designed to withhold major information about the nature and depth of Joseph’s polygamy, and is also designed to discourage members from going elsewhere to learn about Joseph’s polygamy, and also designed to discourage teachers from delving too far into the subject, you have a clear pattern of the church deliberately keeping its members ignorant about it.
That’s what your post seems to gloss over. It’s not just a footnote. It’s the crux of the problem.
(Note: *correlation is the term used by the Mormon church to ensure that every lesson taught is standandized and contains only approved material.
