I’ve been doing some research about Mormon temple weddings lately, for a friend of mine. Alot of this research has included many things that I already knew though. Such as the garments that are worn under clothing after the “endowment”, and the exclusion of famlies and friends from the weddings who aren’t “good mormons”, or who are “unbelievers”. However this thread isn’t about mormon weddings, it is in fact about Joseph Smith. Many of the websites I’ve read make references to Joseph Smith instituting certain Masonic rites into the Mormon temple wedding. This is false, and one of many things that the Mormons have changed to fit their beliefs. According to the original Church history, (Original meaning the Church as it was before the murder of Joseph Smith and his brother)Joseph Smith was not a Mason and did not institute the secret handshakes and passwords that are part of the mormon temple weddings. This much I know to be fact, as I have read original transcripts from the church history, which can be bought at any Herald House Publishing website or store. I would also like to say that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist (hope i spelled that right 
) as the mormon church would have you believe. The specific rites that I mentioned, the masonic handshake, the secret passwords, the endowment cloth and the practice of polygamy were actually instituted by Brigham Young.
With any level of actual digging into the subject I think most people who are subjective (non-mormon), will be able to locate the same information I found, I will make an adendum to this thread later citing actual books and references and let you choose for yourself. In the meantime thanks for letting me vent.
This would appear to relate toWhat’s the story on secret Mormon weddings?. It is conventional to give a link to the column you are commenting on.
I cannot pretend to possess sufficient historical expertise to discuss the actual relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism, given the amount of outright lies said on both sides. One suspects, however, that it cannot wholly a coincidence that Mormonism was born one year after the kidnapping and presumed murder of Captain William Morgan by Freemasons, a mere 50 miles from Joseph Smith’s home, set off one of the biggest witch hunts in US history.
How do you account for the fact that Nauvoo (so ruled by Smith that even the church calls it “the City of Joseph”) had a Masonic Lodge if he did not believe in Masonry? Or the fact that Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, Orson Pratt and other Apostles and early churchmembers, ALL of whom were subordinate to Joseph and none of whom were expecting his death, were (and this can’t be denied) practicing polygamy for at least two years before his death? Wouldn’t Joseph, if he didn’t believe in the practice, have told them “Don’t do that?” Or what have Eliza Roxey Snow and Zina Huntington and other of Young’s wives who never wavered in that they had been Smith’s wives, or of Sarah Ann Pratt who actually apostasized along with her son Orson Jr. but continued to make this assertion? Or of Hyrum’s son Joseph Fielding Smith who was not only a polygamist himself & president of the church but who stated as granted the multiply married status of his father and uncle?
If you don’t mind my asking, are you a member of the Reorganized Church of JCLDS? And have you ever read No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie incidentally? Regardless of your opinions of the author’s merits, her research is well documented.
My great-great-great-grandmother would dispute this. She was married to Joseph Smith and then after his death was married to Brigham Young. If I could I’d quote bits of her diaries at you but some other member of the extended family got the diaries when all grandma’s stuff was divied up.
Really? That’s fascinating… what was her name? (I did tons and tons of research on Brigham Young while on the Ph.D. path in history; at one time {pre computer} I actually had paper files on each of his known wives and their children; the pathetic thing is that 20 years later I still remember most of them! Zina was the wife of Smith & Young that I did the most research on, though (especially her work in Hawaii after Brigham’s death).
Funny you should mention this. I’m in the process of writing a Staff Report on this very subject.
Let me at least correct a couple of your statements that have been proven to be false. If you would like cites, I’ll be happy to provide them, including those from both Mormon and non-Mormon sources.
“…Joseph Smith instituting certain Masonic rites into the Mormon temple wedding. This is false…” You are correct. The Masonic symbolism is in the temple Endowment ceremony. The only Masonic symbol used in the temple wedding is one of the “secret handshakes,” as you put it.
“…* According to the original Church history, (Original meaning the Church as it was before the murder of Joseph Smith and his brother)Joseph Smith was not a Mason and did not institute the secret handshakes and passwords that are part of the mormon temple weddings…*” Wrong. Smith was initiated into the Masonic Order on March 15, 1842, and was raised to Master Mason (3rd Degree) the next night, something that takes some Masonic members months to accomplish.
“…This much I know to be fact, as I have read original transcripts from the church history…” Try non-approved LDS sources. The LDS church has changed so many things within their religion, including revising their history, several times in their history.
“…I would also like to say that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist …” You must be kidding me. According to Smith, God gave him a revelation instructing him to not only enter the practice of polygamy, the revelation threatens his wife Emma with death if she does not let him. Emma caught Joseph in an adulterous affair and threatened to leave him if he did not immediately discontinue the affair. In response, Smith secretly married the girl, named Fanny Alger, and she became his first plural wife. This is straight from ldshistory.net. Emma then threatened to leave, but Joseph produced a written revelation that he had purportedly received from God, basically telling Emma that she was to allow Joseph all the wives he wanted, and she was to stay with him, or be destroyed (see Doctrine and Covenants, section 132, verses 51-57).
I’m not a Mormon, though I was raised one, went through 4 years of Seminary (LDS church school) and am a returned missionary. You may want to double-check your sources, c>f.
I found this interesting. Both mormon and non-mormon accounts agree that Smith’s final words were “Oh Lord, my God” if not the entire masonic call for aid.
one of many cites
Most accounts report that before or as Smith fell from the window, he called “Oh Lord, my God!” or some similar phrase (*), which some have noted is similar to “Oh, Lord, My God, is there no help for the widow’s son?” a traditional masonic call for aid. Smith was a freemason, and his last recorded words have led to speculation that his statement was a call for aid from any Masons in the mob. Quinn reports that the official church paper, “The Times and Seasons … (15 July 1844) implied that Smith’s final words were an effort to utter the Masonic cry of distress” and further noted that Smith’s “polygamous wife Zina D. Huntington was more specific in her claims: ‘I am the widow of a master mason, who, when leaping from the window of Carthage Jail pierced with bullets, made the masonic cry for distress…’”
Emily Dow Partridge. If you’re familiar with other prominant early Mormon leaders you may recognize her father Edward Partidge. According to what I can find online she was married to to Joseph Smith on March 4 1843. Without the permission or knowledge of his wife Emma Smith. After Emma was coerced into giving consent they apparently held another les secret ceremony on May 11. Joseph was killed on June 27, 1844.
Emily was married to Brigham Young in September of 1844. According to some versions of family lore her first child, Edward, was fathered by Joseph Smith and his paternity was later concealed (possibly to protect him?). If you look up Edward’s geneology he’s listed as the child of Brigham Young. I’m decended from Emily Partridge’s daughter Emily Augusta Young.
oh-my-goodness-gracious-me-oh-my (as my dear ol’ Granny used to say). This thread ain’t gonna go nowhere good.
slinks toward the door
Yeah, I have a bad feeling about this.
Here’s the Moderator’s Stern Advice: in this thread, you may discuss stuff that is mentioned in the Staff Report already cited, What’s the story on secret Mormon weddings?.
Other topics related to Mormons, LDS, etc are to be put in the appropriate forums.
- Factual questions of history should be discussed in GQ (that would include who was married to whom, deaths, etc)
- Debatable topics not related to wedding ceremonies should go in Great Debates forum, as should any witnessing or anti-witnessing
When rico’s guest Staff Report gets published, which I hope will be in about three weeks, then we can open some debate here.
All clear?
My question about your friend being a member of the Reorganized Church of JC of LDS is because they were (and are) headed by Smith’s sons and male descendants with Emma Hale and have always denied that Smith practiced polygamy. Whether they are a schism of the original LDS or whether the Salt Lake branch (which is well over 95% of world Mormon-ry) is a schism of the true faith depends on which side you ask.
None of Smith’s sons by Emma Hale made the trek to Utah (Emma herself remarried and remained in the MidWest), though brother Hyrum’s family did migrate.
There’s a great book about Joseph Smith’s last son, David Hyrum Smith, who was born like five months after Joseph Smith himself was killed, called From Mission to Madness. As a young man, he was sent as a missionary for the RLDS church (the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ) to try to convert the “Brighamites” (as they called the Utah Mormons, which, as we all know, ended up being the main Mormon denomination). One of the things he had always been taught was what courage>fear claims above, that Joseph Smith did not practice polygamy, but that it was started by Brigham Young. During his mission to Utah, he was confronted with overwhelming evidence that his father had indeed been a polygamist, and when he went back to his home, he confronted his mother about her distortions of the truth. He lost his faith and became a rationalist, but eventually fell victim to mental illness and spent most of his life in an asylum, dying in 1904. Fascinating tale.
Speaking of Emma and David Hyrum Smith, I’ve always thought this was a poignant photograph; it’s of her holding her youngest son about 1 1/2 years after her husband’s death. As if to prove the old-wive’s tale about posthumous children, David H. bore a striking resemblance to his father. (There were other babies born in Nauvoo in the 1840s who resembled Smith quite a bit, but that’s another thread.)
The Prophet’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith (1776-1856) (a very interesting person in her own right) definitely threw her lot in with the “Brighamites” and very much wanted to go to Deseret with them, but a combination of the pleas of her daughter-in-law and daughter (both of whom rejected Young’s leadership) as well as her own infirm health (severe arthritis among other things) convinced her to remain in Nauvoo.
Going to Herald House for factual information on the LDS church would be similar to looking for information about the Catholic church in a Protestant bookstore.
Herald House is run by the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). This is a splinter group which left the LDS church after Joseph Smith was killed, and they immediately set forth to revise the church history and remove any references to things that didn’t match up with their view of how it should have been.
There are ample historical references, some of which have been cited here, that indeed, Joseph Smith was a Mason (although the temple ceremony is not stolen from Masonic rituals as some claim), and that he did indeed institute and practice polygamy.
Specifically, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was formed by Emma and her children, and thus they removed references to things they considered unflattering about Joseph Smith, such as polygamy.
It’s usually acknowledged even by Mormons that parts of the temple ceremony bear a strong resemblance to parts of Masonic rituals. The usual explanation I was given was that Masonry derived in a corrupted way from the rituals of the temple of Solomon, and the temple ceremony was revealed by God as an accurate restoration of the temple of Solomon rituals, as in this article: Was Masonry Derived from Mormonism?, which of course answers the question in the affirmative.
This is something that is never going to be resolved, I think. The RLDS (now Community of Christ) claims to be the the “original” church, and they still own the first Temple (built with Joseph Smith was alive). The RLDS even won a lawsuit. The LDS sued, hoping to get some of Joseph Smith’s property, but the suit found for the RLDS, and did not accept the LDS’s claim that they (LDS) were the “original” church.
From the cite linked above:
Not that this is going to change any LDS members’ minds, I am sure. But it does give members of the RLDS (CoC) something to work with too, since how many “splinter groups” have lawsuits found in their favor, and own significant property associated with the church? I suspect that the Kirtland Temple still being in the CoC’s hands after all these years might be a bit of a thorn in the side of the LDS.
Excuse me?
Am I imagining things, or didn’t a Moderator come here and say that this thread was to be limited to conversation about Mormon Wedding ceremonies?
OK, I’ll say it again. There are threads galore about the history, psychology, religion, and what-not of the LDS. This is a thread about a Staff Report on wedding ceremonies. Period.
No further straying, or I’ll close this and move it to Great Debates.
OK, maybe this will keep us on track…
Can anyone shed some light on the advantage of the secrecy surrounding Mormon weddings? It seems contradictory to me to encourage people to join your religion, yet keep everything so secret. Generally, people don’t like stepping into a black box. Plus, keeping the rituals shuttered just encourages the rumors and misconceptions that swirl around Mormon rituals. So, why are these ceremonies so secretive?
The way it was explained to me when a cousin converted to Mormonism (specifically for the purpose of marriage to a Mormon man) was that “if you see these rituals and rites performed without having spent a significant amount of time becoming versed in the teachings of Mormonism, it will just seem very weird and be easy to misinterpret, and it’s not a time to ask questions about what’s going on, so it’s only for the initiated”. Now, they would be more than happy to send guys to your house to get you started on a course of study that would explain these things…
Thanks, Sampiro . At least that makes sense, though I’m still not sure that it’s in the best interest of the church. There are Catholic wedding rituals that I don’t understand, but I’m still allowed to attend the wedding.