Gospel Topics Chapter 7 Bergera Part 4

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Were teenage marriages a common occurrence in 19th century America? 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 Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. We are looking at the book, the LDS Gospel Topics Series, a scholarly engagement, and we are discussing the subject of plural marriage.

We're looking at chapter 7, titled Through a Glass Darkly, Joseph Smith and Plural Marriage, written by Gary James Bergera. In yesterday's show, we were discussing this idea that, as Mr. Bergera cites the essay, where it implies that marriages to teenagers is certainly not something that is appropriate by today's standards. But the essay assumes that back in the 19th century, that was not all that uncommon.

Now, we didn't give you any statistics in yesterday's show, and I wanted to continue that thought and give you some. If you were to do your own research on this subject, here are some of the numbers that you were probably going to come across. The average age for females being married in the 19th century was 24, and as we mentioned yesterday, this essay admits that Joseph Smith married a 14-year-old, a young girl by the name of Helen Mar Kimball. The essay actually says that he married her several months before her 15th birthday, as if using the number 15 makes you feel all that much better. Another point that I want to bring out is that 3-4% married as teens, 3-4%, 0.04% married at 14 or 15. And this would be the age group in which Helen Mar Kimball can be found, 0.04% married at 14 or 15. But as I brought out yesterday, let's not forget that number probably is far less than 0.04% when you consider that Joseph Smith is not only 38 years old at the time, but he's also married to another woman.

That would drive that percentage probably down to zero, I would imagine. So this is not normal, at least certainly not as normal as the Gospel Topics essay is trying to imply. At the bottom of page 200, Berger goes on to say, the essay next speculates about Smith's plural marriages to already civilly married women, which the essay implies is the most problematic aspect of Smith's practice. He continues, perhaps such marriages function to link entire families together in social chains of eternal duration. Or possibly such marriages, if understood to be eternity-only ceilings, were Smith's way of obeying the letter of the command that he practiced plural marriage, quote, without requiring him to have normal sexual marriage relationships, end quote. This in turn saving his own civil wife, Emma Smith, the sorrow it would otherwise bring to her. Or perhaps the marriages were sought after, if not actually instigated by the already married women themselves who may have believed an eternal sealant Joseph Smith would give them blessings they might not otherwise receive in the next life, particularly those women in unhappy marriages and or married to non-Mormons. Berger says, each of these explanations ostensibly dulls the sting of adultery and or stresses that Smith tried hard not to practice plural marriage in its full sexual sense. Why do you think the essay had to include some of those possibly or perhaps? Why do you think it had to say that? Could it be because the author or authors knew that this is probably going to upset a lot of people?

So let's try to make some excuses for Joseph Smith, and let's throw in some scenarios that we can't really prove, but hopefully it would give some Latter-day Saints a bit of comfort knowing that maybe he wasn't the one instigating this in the first place. When you read those words, or possibly or perhaps, it doesn't sound like they have evidence to back that up. Otherwise you wouldn't use words like that. But I think Mr. Berger is right when he says that each of these explanations ostensibly dulls the sting of adultery. And isn't that really what the essay is trying to do to the reader?

Steer you away from what most people would see in these kind of relationships and make you feel like it's not really as bad as it appears. But of course it is as bad as it appears. This is a married man going after other married women, going after teenage girls. That should bother anybody who has a New Testament conscience, you might say. And as we talked about yesterday, this idea that Joseph Smith may not have had sexual relations with all the women has been debunked by a number of scholars. Not just one or two, but a number have said that that was the main purpose of what Joseph Smith was doing. So we have to ask the question, is that supported by the Bible? No. Is that supported by the Book of Mormon? We talked about earlier this week Jacob 2.30.

No. The only reason would be to raise up seed, to have children. Well, we don't have any indications that Joseph Smith ever had children. And we should talk about that, because that is often the excuse.

Well, that is the issue. That issue puts the Mormon between a rock and a hard place. The Latter-day Saint does not want to believe that Joseph Smith had sex with these women, that that somehow makes it okay.

This is why we throw in the term, well, it was just for eternity, therefore we're going to assume there was no sex involved. But at the same time, the only reason in order to practice polygamy in the first place, if you want to believe the Book of Mormon, is for the purpose of having sex that ultimately leads to having children. Now, the argument is, is that Smith probably did have children, but they were with these women who were already married. Therefore, if those women got pregnant and had children, it would be easy to say that her first husband is the father of that child.

It would be somewhat easy to conceal. Unless, of course, the child really looks like Joseph Smith, that would be a little bit harder. But even though there's one woman, and that's Sylvia Lyons Session, who does have a child, she names Josephine, we know now, after a DNA test, that Josephine was not Joseph Smith's daughter, even though Sylvia thought she was. Well, if you think that this child is Joseph Smith's child, that is pretty much an admission that you're having sex with a guy.

So I think it kind of puts the Mormon member, as well as the church, in this really awkward situation. Here you have the reason for polygamy, raise up seed. But Joseph Smith didn't raise up seed.

So did he try to raise up seed? Well, Sylvia Sessions seems to think so. So it becomes not only very confusing, it tends to be contradictory in many areas.

What is a member supposed to do with all this? But Berger goes on to say, the essay adopts a much less judgmental tone towards Emma Smith than past discussions, especially those originating among 19th century LDS church members that painted the Mormon leader's polygamy-loathing wife as a traitor to her husband's attempts to obey God's command. I think this is an example of what Gary Berger is talking about earlier, when he mentions this idea of a presentist understanding of the past.

In other words, judging the past by what is believed presently. The reason why they can take a much less judgmental tone towards Emma is because a lot of time has taken place since that era and today's era. And I think what Berger is trying to get across here is that in the early years in the 19th century, when this was all pretty fresh, and they knew about Emma's reluctance to sanction polygamy and her fighting against it, you could see back then that Mormon women would see Emma Smith as a traitor to her husband because she wouldn't go along with plural marriage, which of course she didn't.

So this could be one of those examples. Listen to the rest of that paragraph where you stop, Bill, on page 201 and it says, the essay admits that Smith deliberately kept the majority of his plural marriages secret from Emma, including his supposed eternity-only marriages. It further concedes that, quote, many aspects of their story remain known only to the two of them, end quote. Importantly, however, the essay adds that Smith's 1843 revelation provided Smith a way out of having to inform Emma of his plural marriages, since once she rejected the teaching, he was thereafter exempted from having to gain her consent, implying that Smith's clandestine behavior was heaven approved. Now, Bill, you have said before on this show a number of times that a man who is willing to lie to his wife will probably lie to anybody. And I really believe that with Joseph Smith. If he can lie to Emma about these plural marriage relationships, why wouldn't he lie in other areas of his life? This paragraph that you just read is speaking of the law of Sarah.

That phrase is actually mentioned in the essay. It says, and I'm quoting from the essay now, the revelation on marriage required that a wife give her consent before her husband could enter into plural marriage. Nevertheless, toward the end of the revelation, the Lord said that if the first wife received not this law, the command to practice plural marriage, the husband would be exempt from the law of Sarah, presumably the requirement that the husband gain the consent of the first wife before marrying additional women. So what's the point of the law of Sarah? Okay, I have to get the consent of the first wife in order to take on this plural wife, but if she doesn't give me her consent, who cares?

I'm going to marry the plural wife anyway. So what's the point of the law of Sarah? And of course, this goes back to Genesis 16, talking about Sarah and Abraham. But in that case, it was Sarah who actually suggests that Hagar be given to Abraham. So I don't know what this law of Sarah is really all about.

It just sounds silly to me because it really has no teeth for enforcement of anything. If the wife doesn't like it, too bad. I'm going to go marry her anyway. And that's exactly what Joseph Smith did. If he wasn't upfront about a plural wife, he would lie about them. And unfortunately, that's the kind of man that Joseph Smith was. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Research. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.