Episode 190: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith

Don Bradley’s recent research on Fanny Alger found that Andrew Jenson’s record (which cited Fanny Alger as a wife) was in the handwriting of Eliza R. Snow, who lived with the Smiths at the time (1835). Andrew had gathered names himself and Eliza added several for which she presumably had direct knowledge. All it proves is that Eliza considered Fanny a wife but that is arguably a better source than we are led to believe by most accounts. The other statement of Fanny being a wife comes from Mosiah Hancock in 1903, who is Fanny’s cousin. He stated that his father (Levi Hancock) performed the marriage between Fanny and Joseph, but he clearly got the date wrong (1833) and thus he is often discounted as a reliable source.

Sigh, I totally mixed up a few things. Embarrassed. This is why I really like to write things down, that way I can make sure I’m not bobbling a date or a name.

It’s my understanding that William Law was a member of the First Presidency during the period in question.  William Marks was the Nauvoo Stake President.  If you correct this later in the podcast, great.  I know I’ll forget it if I wait until the end to mention this.

Fascinating episode with some new information I had not heard before.

The COJCOLDS is definitely in a major bind when it comes to the doctrine of polygamy, but I don’t see them ever coming clean about it.  Despite the fact that more and more Mormons are learning the truth about all this stuff thanks to the internet, my prediction is that very little will change from the top because the leadership lacks humility and always has.

Interesting discussion near the end when the possibility of comparing Joseph Smith to Peter from the NT as a flawed vessel was brought up along with the idea that polygamy has the potential to be a good thing if practiced properly.  The problem with the former is that Mormonism is a pharisaical religion based on works, laws, and ordinances which teaches that people must earn their way into the highest heaven.  In that kind of system, there is no room for Joseph Smith being a flawed vessel because if he didn’t earn his way to the top through rigteousness, how can anyone else?  The problem with polygamy is that there seems to be little evidence to indicate it has ever produced good results.  Whether we’re looking at the stories from the OT, the middle east today, or groups like the FLDS in our own country, the only thing I see is heartache and oppression.

And a few additional books that I’d throw out there for polygamy studies…

I’d also throw in “The Persistence of Polygamy, Vol I” edited by Bringhurst and Foster. Great essays and insights into things like the Fanny Alger altercation.

Indeed polygamy is not “behind us” as President Hinckley tried to assert in his 1998 interview with Larry King.  It’s shocking to me to realize that more people practice polygamy today in 2012 in direct response to Joseph Smith’s teachings than there were total members of the LDS Church in 1844 when Joseph Smith was killed.  The Feb 2010 National Geographic cover story on the FLDS church notes that “an estimated 38,000 breakaway Mormon fundamentalists continue the practice of plural marriage in North America today”.  While the LDS Church Almanac notes that there were 26,146 members in 1844 (and the vast majority of them did not practice polygamy, let alone know anything of it).  So while LDS church leaders try to distance the LDS church from the FLDS with such statements as Hinckley stating to King, “It has nothing whatever to do with it”, the doctrine of polygamy as practiced by the FLDS will be ever sourced to the very founder of the LDS Church, Joseph Smith. 

Even more damning, as noted in the podcast, polygamy is still essentially practiced by the LDS Church in the temple since a man can be sealed to more than one woman, meaning he’ll have concurrent relationships with multiple women in the afterlife.  How can LDS leaders say that the church has nothing to do with it anymore?

And how many active LDS women do you know today, who secretly dread some perceived duty to eventually accept that their husband will have other wives in the afterlife?  My own active LDS mother can’t even talk about polygamy because, as she once confided in me, she fears it’s an eternal principle that will inevitably be reintroduced.  Indeed, the doctrine of polygamy is alive and well in the very psyche of LDS women (and men too).    

The sad truth is that both the practice of polygamy by FLDS and the belief or fear of its return by Latter-day Saints is a reality today!  What I personally perceive to be a convenient doctrine introduced by Joseph Smith to justify his unquenchable thirst for power over others, has now snowballed 168 years later into an absolute mess that wreaks havoc in the lives of thousands of unwilling practitioners (think FLDS underage/unwilling wives, or lost boys) and the belief systems of countless Latter-day Saints who actually think it’s an eternal doctrine that Heavenly Father is probably practicing right now, and all other Celestial Kingdom aspirants need to prepare for.    

So this is far from behind us!!  The impact of Joseph Smith’s polygamy is all around us, if not in our own families.  And if I were a betting man, which I am, I’d put money on the fact that the impacts of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, especially with the “revelations” being in canonized form, will play out for centuries to come in the lives of those who will yet believe Joseph was a prophet of God . . . when all of this was just a result of his clever attempt to justify himself.

One huge issue/question that doesn’t ever get discussed regarding this subject is what exactly was the nature of these marriages? How can apologists maintain that these marriages were legitimate if they were all performed before the sealing ordinances were revealed and the temple built? We’re these pre-Nauvoo era marriages just for time? How could they have been performed for eternity outside the temple? If they weren’t sealings, where they just for time only? This is a huge gaping hole in the fabric of these stories in my opinion. Am I seeing this wrong?

Lindsay and Kaimi are very worthy additions to the Mormon Expressions discussion.  I enjoyed and learned a lot from their scholarly insights.  What I learned from their contributions to these discussions about LDS and Joseph Smith’s history, however, only further reinforced my disillusionment with the LDS Church and the growing strength of my conviction that it is extremely unlikely that Joseph Smith was anything more that a narcissistic, religious fraud–perhaps a pious fraud who eventually came to believe somewhat in his own scam, but a fraud, nevertheless.  I have little doubt that at least some of the General Authorities in the Church (even among the top 15) would acknowledge that, if they were truly honest with themselves and with others.
 
I share Kevin Johnson’s anger at how the Church has lied to us and misled us, and still does on important issues.  Despite that, however, I think that most of the Church’s current leaders possess some good intentions and genuinely want to improve the lot of its members.  Maybe some of them feel that, at this point, it would be kinder to enable people to hold on to their cherished illusions, in which they have invested so much devotion and resources, than to shatter those illusions and possibly cause them to despair that it was all for naught.
 
Despite everything, it can’t be denied that the COJCOLDS has inspired a lot of very good, admirable people to honorable achievements.  The most beloved people in my life (especially my immediate family) are still active, believing members.  Nothing would break my heart more than to be excluded from their company!

I think one should use the simplest explanation that fits all the facts.  With that in mind, try this little experiment.  Find a non-Mormon who doesn’t know anything (or much) about Mormonism.  Tell them this story:

“A friend of mine recently caught her over-thirty husband having sex with a seventeen-year-old girl that was living in their home.  My friend was really angry with her husband, but the husband convinced her that God had given him permission to do it, and that God had commanded my friend to accept the young girl as his “wife.”

After you tell this story, watch the look on the non-Mormon’s face.  I’ve actually tried this experiment and the response is always the same — laughter, incredulity, amazement that anyone would be daft enough to believe such a cockamamie story.

Okay.  Back to the idea that one should use the simplest explanation that fits all the facts.  Here’s a theory that (I think) does that.  I didn’t invent the theory, I think it follows effortlessly from the podcast; this is just how I’d word it:

1)  Joseph was horny.  Joseph wanted sex. Joseph had sex with Fanny Alger.
2)  Emma caught Joseph in the act.  Emma was hopping mad, as any wife would be.
3)  Joseph was really good at making up stories on the spot.  Joseph had a fertile imagination, had possibly been thinking about taking on more wives, and was in a tight spot with Emma.
4)  Joseph started talking about god and polygamy — as a way to get out of hot water with Emma.
5)  Over time, Joseph saw other uses for polygamy.  For example, he saw that he could establish “dynastic” control over other men if he married their wives/daughters.  Joseph like power and control, and this was a good alternative use for polygamy.
6)  Joseph evolved the new “doctrine” of polygamy as a way of not only having sex, but of exercising dominion.  For Joseph, polygamy evolved into something bigger than sex, but it started out with sex,and Joseph spinning a story to get out of hot water with Emma.

Men have been cheating on their wives since the birth of our species — and they have been coming up with stories and excuses for just as long.  Joseph probably wasn’t the first to say “god told me to do it.”  It’s just remarkable that anyone would believe such a cockamamie story, or that a church would build a key doctrine around an act that was, without doubt, instigated by genes that just wanted to propagate themselves via Smith’s sperm and Alger’s unfertilized egg.