Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Chapter 8

FAIR Answers—back to home page

Response to claims made in "Chapter 8"

Chapter 7

A FAIR Analysis of: Nauvoo Polygamy: "... but we called it celestial marriage" A work by author: George D. Smith

452

Claim

• The author notes that "Joseph Smith's diaries [are] silent on his courtships and marriages."

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Censorship of Church History (edit)

Response

• The History of the Church was largely based on Joseph's diaries. It is therefore not surprising that Joseph's polygamy is not treated in the History, when not detailed in the main primary source.
• Church history/Censorship and revision
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Censorship

453

Claim

• It is noted that the only mention of a marriage by Joseph is in April 1842 and that "[t]he History of the Church deleted even that one citation."

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Censorship of Church History (edit)

Response

• A lone citation might make little sense without context.
• If the author can think of no reason to exclude an entry besides malicious intent to deceive, perhaps he can explain his own editing decision when he published the William Clayton diaries. Jim Allen observed that

“in his abridgement, however, Smith kept only about one-sixth of the total entry. . . . By including only the somewhat titillating material and leaving out the much more important information about Clayton and what he was doing as a missionary, this ‘abridgement’ does little but distort the day’s activity.”^[1]

• Church history/Censorship and revision
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Censorship
• Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)

473

Claim

•  Author's quote: "…the polygamous family associations of Joseph Smith, and now even Brigham Young, are not acknowledged in LDS gatherings…."

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Censorship of Church History (edit)

Response

• There is no evidence provided of this assertion. Plural marriage simply isn't a normal topic of discussion among Latter-day Saints. It is difficult to understand why those attending modern "LDS gatherings" would be discussing the topic.
• The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, institute manuals, and LDS historians also discuss plural marriage in Joseph and others.
• Brigham Young and polygamy
• LDS histories over many years omit plural marriage
• Church history/Censorship and revision
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Censorship
• Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)

513

Claim

• Munster Anabaptists' practices are claimed to be "reminiscent of Brigham Young's policies," and "over hundred women were allowed to divorce the men they had been forced to marry."

Author's source(s)

• Williams, Radical Reformation, 3d. ed., 570; no reference for the LDS claims.

Response

• The historical comparison is inaccurate on virtually every level.
• Mormon women were never forced to marry (unlike the Munster Anabaptists), and Mormon women always had the right of divorce (though Brigham was much stricter with men about divorce).
• This is not a parallel, but a contrast.

532

Claim

• The author suggests that Orson Hyde "might have been sensitized by Joseph Smith's 1831 suggestion of plural marriage to Native Americans and therefore judged the Cochranites less harshly than otherwise."

Author's source(s)

• Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 8.

Response

• This is a reference to the idea that Native Americans were to be made "white and delightsome" through plural marriage. See: Polygamy/Lamanites to become "white and delightsome" through polygamous marriage
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Use_of_sources#.22wonderful_lustful_spirit.22

535

Claim

• The author suggests that Joseph Smith had predicted the return of Jesus Christ when he said that "fifty-six years should wind up the scene and the Saviour should come to his people."

Author's source(s)

• Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, 2:522.

Predicting 2nd Coming (edit)

Response

• It is not clear why Smith chooses to quote from Walker's diary.
• Use of sources: Second coming remark in Feb 1835
• Joseph Smith/Prophecies/Second Coming to be in 1890

535-536

Claim

• It is claimed that before 1890 “the number of [polygamy] practitioners had expanded exponentially.” In support of this, we are told that "67 percent in Orderville, Utah" were polygamists.

Author's source(s)

• Lowell “Ben” Bennion, “The Incidence of Mormon Polygamy in 1880: ‘Dixie’ Versus Davis Stake,” Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 27–42.

Statistical problems (edit)

Response

• The author leaves unmentioned the study’s observation that Orderville was somewhat unique because “one suspects that membership in Mormondom’s most successful attempt to establish the United Order may have required a commitment to plural matrimony. Unlike the pattern that usually prevailed in Mormon towns, many young men of Orderville entered the celestial order when they first married or soon thereafter.” Nearby Kanab was less successful in its communal economy and had less than half as many polygamists. Furthermore, all of southern Utah was more likely to be polygamist than Utah as a whole, for similar reasons.
• Polygamy/Prevalence of in Utah
• Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)

541

Claim

• ((AuthorQuote

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources
|response=

• The author grossly mischaracterizes the doctrine on this point. He omits key parts of Brigham's recorded discourse: "…if a man magnifies his priesthood, observing faithfully his covenants to the end of his life, all the wives and children sealed to him, all the blessings and honors promised to him in his ordinations and sealing blessings are immutably and eternally fixed; no power can wrench them from his possession. You may inquire, in case a wife becomes disaffected with her husband, her affections lost, she becomes alienated from him and wishes to be the wife of another, can she not leave him? I know of no law in heaven or on earth by which she can be made free while her husband remains faithful and magnifies his priesthood before God and he is not disposed to put her away, she having done nothing worthy of being put away." (emphasis added)
• Brigham Young 8 October 1861 discourse on plural marriage
• Full details: Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men."
• This is a reference to what other critics call "wife swapping." See: Wife swapping

|authorsources=

• S. George Ellsworth, ed., The Journals of Addison Pratt (SLC: U of Utah Press, 1990), 515; Smith, Intimate Chronicle, 227n.
• CHECK THESE!! ^[ATTENTION!]

Brigham Young's 8 October 1861 talk (edit)

}}

541

Claim

• [continued from above] "Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young had set such examples."

Author's source(s)

• Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 37-46.
• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 34, 442-44. ( Index of claims )
• Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd edition, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 100-01.

Brigham Young's 8 October 1861 talk (edit)

Response

• The author omits key parts of Brigham's recorded discourse: "…if a man magnifies his priesthood, observing faithfully his covenants to the end of his life, all the wives and children sealed to him, all the blessings and honors promised to him in his ordinations and sealing blessings are immutably and eternally fixed; no power can wrench them from his possession. You may inquire, in case a wife becomes disaffected with her husband, her affections lost, she becomes alienated from him and wishes to be the wife of another, can she not leave him? I know of no law in heaven or on earth by which she can be made free while her husband remains faithful and magnifies his priesthood before God and he is not disposed to put her away, she having done nothing worthy of being put away."
• Brigham Young 8 October 1861 discourse on plural marriage
• Full details: Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men."
• This is a reference to what other critics call "wife swapping." See: Wife swapping

546

Claim

• Communist author Friedrich Engels wrote "that with every great revolutionary movement the question of 'free love' comes into the foreground."

Author's source(s)

• Hill, World Turned Upside Down, 247; citing Engel's manuscript, "The Book of Revelation," (1883, published in 20th century in Moscow).

Response

• Using an author of the Communist Manifesto may serve to prejudice readers.
• Latter-day Saints (despite the efforts of their critics like the author to convince modern readers otherwise) never taught or endorsed "free love." The relevance of Engels to LDS history, then, is unclear.
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Loaded and prejudicial language

546

Claim

•  Author's quote: "Tours of [Brigham Young's] Salt Lake City home, the Beehive House, notably omit mention of Young's numerous wives."

Author's source(s)

• No sources given.

Response

•  The author's claim is false This claim is false as of the summer of 2008. A FairMormon member went on the tour, and Brigham's many wives and children were mentioned frequently, especially in the family "store" from which goods were distributed.

547

Claim

• The author claims that "Dana Miller of Idaho Falls was told by his church leaders that 'men will have more than one wife in the celestial kingdom. It's doctrinal.'"

Author's source(s)

• Dana Miller, "Celestial Polygamy," May 9, 2008, Public Forum letter to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Response

• Who were Miller's "church leaders"? A bishop? A stake president? An elders' quorum president? High priests' group leader? Did he interpret what he was told correctly? There is, of course, no way to say.
• Members may believe whatever they wish about such matters. In a work of serious scholarship, however, this tells us little about official LDS doctrine, or even what most members believe.
• Non-members, however, might well be confused, and the author does nothing to lessen the confusion.

Notes