Why did Mormons practice plural marriage? Part 1

Viewpoint on Mormonism. The program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints from a biblical perspective viewpoint on Mormonism, is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry since 1979. Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now your host for today's viewpoint on Mormonism.

Why did Latter-Day Saints practice plural marriage in the early days of the church? Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry. And with me today is Erik Johnson, my colleague at M r m. We are looking at an article that was written by a woman by the name of Kate Holbrook. If you were to go to her Web site, Kate Holbrook dot org. It says in the first paragraph that she has a P HD and is a leading voice in the study of Mormon women and Mormon food ways as managing historian of women's history at the LDS Church History Department. She writes studies and interprets history full time. Her major research interests are religion, gender and food. Yet Kate Holbrook had an article in the June 2020 edition of Inside magazine titled Why Did They Practice Plural Marriage in the Early Days? And I have to be quite honest with you, Eric. I know that this is a complicated subject, probably much more complicated than the three large paragraphs that is devoted to answering this question. And the question is, as I stated at the beginning of the show. It says, why did they practice plural marriage in the early days of the church? But I have to be quite honest with you, Eric. I don't think she does a real good job answering that question. I'm sure many Latter-Day Saints reading this article, as short as it is, might feel satisfied with her answers. But when you look deeper into some of the responses she gives, I don't know if, let's say a Mormon scholar would be happy with this. They would probably want much more explanation to the statements that she makes, because I think in some cases she's actually misleading.

Well, let's be honest. Who is this article for? It's for faithful Latter-Day Saints women, I believe. I think the men probably don't care so much about this issue as much as the women do. And the church in just a few years ago put together gospel topics essay. Several of them are addressed to this issue of plural marriage because it has been an issue why many Latter-Day Saints have left the church. They do not like the idea that maybe Joseph Smith had 30 to 40 wives or that it was practice as much as it really was until 1890, when the church officially decided not to practice this anymore. But I'm going to say that, as you said, the the author, Kate Holbrook, is putting together some information that doesn't go very deep. And we're going to look at this and see that the argumentation is very poor.

Yeah, there's a whole lot more to the story than what we see here. And again, we admit this is not a long, exhaustive study of the topic, but sometimes going to short rather than too long tends to cause more problems than it solves. In other words, after I read this article, if I was a latter day saint who was troubled by this subject and looking at the title, I thought maybe this is going to answer my question. I would probably walk away thinking I have more questions now than what I had before I read the article. And that becomes the danger when you try to be too concise in answering a very complicated subject. But what does she say in the first paragraph?

Book of Mormon instruction about plural marriage says that monogamy is the Lord's wish for his people. But there are rare exceptions when he commands the practice of plural marriage to raise up a righteous people. See Jacob two 30. This is the rare exception that Jesse Smith was commanded to instigate.

OK, let's look very carefully here. And I don't want to criticize her English on this, but I don't think she worded the sentence very well when she says. But there are rare exceptions. Sounds plural to me when he commands the practice of plural marriage. But then in the last sentence says this is the rare exception that Joseph Smith was commanded to instigate. And what is that rare exception that she's referring to? Well, of course, as you said, it's the reference to Jacob to 30 in the Book of Mormon. I know we've discussed this in the past, but I think it's important to revisit what it actually says. And Jacob, two 30.

It reads four, if I will say it, the lord of hosts raise up seed unto me. I will command my people. Otherwise, they shall hakin unto these things. Well, what are these things that verse 30 refers to? Well, it goes back to verse 27 where it reads, Wherefore my brethren hear me and hearken to the word of the Lord for their shall. Not any man among you have. Save it. Be one wife and concubines. He shall have none. What we gather from those two verses is that if God decides to implement the practice of plural marriage, what's known as the principle, the only reason he is giving here in this text is to raise up seed or to increase the population. Now we know historically that didn't even happen. We know from studies that have been done that wives married in a plural wife relationship tended to bear fewer children than wives who were in a monogamous relationship. So if anything else, it shows that that God's reasoning. If we are to assume that this is the God of the universe speaking, he gets it wrong. It didn't work that way. But we also have a problem with the fact that Joseph Smith didn't seem to have any offspring from these relationships that he had with his plural wives. And you would think if that was the reason he's supposed to do it, there would at least be some examples of this. But there are none.

While many Latter-Day Saints might assume that Joseph Smith wasn't having sexual relations with these multiple wives between 30 and 40, as the church has admitted in a gospel topics essay. But Todd Compton wrote a book called In Sacred Loneliness, page 15, and he deals with this. And I just want to read this because it helps us to understand where Joseph Smith's wives come from. He said, In conclusion, though, it is possible that Joseph had some marriages in which there were no sexual relations. There is no explicit or convincing evidence for this, except perhaps in the cases of the older wives, judging from later Mormon polygamy. And in a significant number of marriages, there is evidence for sexual relationships. So Joseph Smith, according to the scholars, was having sexual relationships with most of those 30 to 40 wives. Many of them were in childbearing years. Compton goes on and says 18 of Smith's wise, 55 percent were single when he married them and had not been married previously. Another four 12 percent were widows. However, the remaining eleven women, 33 percent were married to other husbands and cohabiting with them when Smith married them. If one superimposes a chronological perspective, one sees that of Smith's first 12 Wives nine or Polly Andrus.

Now, folks, listen to what Eric just said. If, in fact, the exception, the rare exception, that's the way Kate Holbrook describes this, is to raise up seed. Why does Joseph Smith go after married women? As you heard, nine of the first 12 of Joseph Smith's plural wives already had living husbands. As far as I know, there's no record that shows that all of these husbands that were married to these women were either impotent or sterile. So why in the world would Joseph Smith go after this category of women? It doesn't make any sense.

And especially in light of Jacob two 30, which she says in the next sentence after she mentions Jacob to 30. This is the rare exception that Joseph Smith was commanded to instigate. So while she used the plural rare exceptions, as you mentioned earlier, she says this is the rare exception. And to me, the way she wrote that, it's kind of awkward the way she did it. But that is the only way that polygamy should have been allowed, according to, if you believe, the Book of Mormon to be true.

And it also raises another difficulty, because we know that in the case of Heber C. Kimball, Joseph Smith said that he wanted Heber C. Kimble's wife to be a plural wife. Now, later on, he's he basically tried to tell Kimball that he was only testing him and that really wasn't something that he felt God wanted for him.

But then his daughter, Helen, Mark Kimble. There was this notion of somehow if Heber C. Kimball was to give his daughter to Joseph Smith, that the. Pymble family in the Smith family would be some kind of a dynasty in the next life. There's no exception for this dynastic concept, but yet we hear that that is a part of this whole plural marriage plan. In those early years, I think it's important to note that you're right, the only written authority that we have scriptural authority in the context of Mormonism would be this passage from Jacob to. And of course, Joseph Smith doesn't seem to live up to that exception. That should be a problem for a lot of thinking, Latter-Day Saints, because it shows that Smith, first of all, doesn't meet the requirement. But it seems awfully odd to me, Eric, that he actually goes after a category of women that you would think he would not need in order to raise up seed. He could go after other women and do that. Which, of course, he does later on. But nine out of the first twelve plural wives that Joseph Smith takes are married to living men. Where is there any exception for polyandry?

It doesn't seem to be one of those exceptions that Kate Holbrook's talking about, because she makes it very clear that it's only to raise up seed once again, based on what Compton has said, that the eleven women, 33 percent, were married to other husbands as a third of his wives. And yet, as Compton has said, he's having sexual relationships with most of them. And if you think, well, maybe Todd Compton is not telling the truth. How about a authority like Richard L. Bushman, who is an LDS church historian? He wrote a book called Joseph Smith, Rough Stone, Rolling Page 439, and he agrees with Compton. This is what he says. Even so, nothing indicates that sexual relations were left out of plural marriages. Joseph Bates Noble testified many years later that Jeffs has spent the night with Lui's up Eiman after the wedding. But there was no Mormon, Cigarillo or Mormon or Nabu Haram as his enemies charge. Not until many years later did anyone claim Joseph Smith's paternity. And evidence for the tiny handful of supposed children is tenuous.

And that doesn't even explain Brigham Young. Brigham Young also married married women. So why are they engaging in these Pollyannas relationships if the exception is only to raise upsy?

Yeah, Young had fifty five wives. Twenty one had never been married before. 16 were widows. Six were divorced and six had living husbands.

It just seems a little bit odd that this would be the defense for plural marriage. But tomorrow we're going to continue looking at this article by Kate Holbrook titled Why Did They Practice Plural Marriage in the early days of the church?

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