Gospel Topics Chapter 8 Smith Part 2

You hear a knock on the door and open it to find two friendly representatives from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon Church.

So what will you say? Will you send them away without a Christian witness, or will you engage them in a meaningful and Christ-honoring conversation? If you desire the latter, may we suggest the book, Answering Mormon's Questions, by Mormonism Research Ministries Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson. Answering Mormon's Questions is available wherever you find quality Christian books. 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. So glad you could be with us for 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. Yesterday we began looking at Chapter 8 in the book, The LDS Gospel Topics Series, a Scholarly Engagement.

This chapter is dealing with a Gospel Topics essay that was published publicly by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on December 17, 2013. It is titled Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah, and the title of this chapter is Remembering, Forgetting, and Re-Remembering 19th Century LDS Plural Marriage. The chapter was written by George D. Smith, who also wrote a whole book on polygamy in the city of Nauvoo. So I think George D. Smith has the credentials to certainly write this chapter, and he brings out a lot of very interesting information.

Today we're going to begin looking at the bottom of page 214. He writes, When the Latter-day Saints migrated westward from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Great Salt Lake Valley, they collected polygamy-related primary documents intended to cement their communal memory. They also sought to counter allegations from the recently formed, reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now the Community of Christ, that plural marriage did not originate with founder Joseph Smith but was the innovation of Brigham Young.

Yet until the Saints were secure in their new home in the Mountain West, the marriage practice that had brought civil disruption in Nauvoo went largely unspoken. Let's back up a little bit because it mentions the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he talks about it now known as the Community of Christ. They changed their name in 2001, and yes, they were known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They did not hyphenate Latter-day, and day was a capital D. I know that's not a big deal, but to many Latter-day Saints, that is a big deal. But when it says that the LDS people were trying to counter allegations from the RLDS that polygamy or plural marriage did not originate with founder Joseph Smith but was rather the innovation of Brigham Young, that's what it taught for a number of years. They never tried to equate Joseph Smith with plural marriage.

And here's what bothers me about that, though. Emma Smith, Joseph Smith's first wife—Emma Hale was her maiden name—she knew otherwise. And yet, why don't we find a concerted effort on the part of Emma to correct the record for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Why did she allow that lie to go on? She knew that Joseph Smith most certainly was practicing plural marriage, and that he was the instigator of it all. And yet, at that time when Emma was living, the RLDS Church did not hold that Joseph Smith was polygamous, because that's what she was telling her sons. And they interviewed her a number of times. In fact, she was interviewed toward the end of her life, and she continued to hold that Joseph Smith had not been married polygamously.

But we have lots of historical evidence to support otherwise. And it's interesting, because one historian who's not LDS, Jan Shipps—I remember her being interviewed about this subject, and the name of Emma came up—and Jan Shipps said something to the effect that Emma was in the practice of forgetting. Which is interesting, because that's really the chapter title, Remembering, Forgetting, and Re-remembering Nineteenth-Century LDS Plural Marriage.

I think Jan Shipps was trying to be kind, perhaps, to Emma Smith's memory, but I still have a problem with that. She knew otherwise, and yet refused to say anything, at least that we know of. But she went along with the lie, letting her sons, as you mentioned, Eric, and the entire RLDS Church, believe that this was all something that that evil Brigham Young brought up.

And of course, Brigham Young was not looked upon as being any sort of hero by members of the RLDS community. The chapter goes on to say, Following at least a decade of polygamy practiced mostly in secret, the LDS Church in 1852 publicly announced the practice, and in 1876 included the revelation as Doctrine and Covenants section 132. What's interesting about this that I don't believe Mr. Smith brings up, there was a special conference just to announce the practice of polygamy.

In fact, Brigham Young gave that quote-unquote honor to Orson Pratt. He was the one that was allowed to tell the church that now we are going to go public on this practice, whereas you can see from this paragraph, it certainly was practiced in secret. He goes on to say, Today, pressure against plural marriage had increased when federal laws, initiated by the Moral Antibigamy Act of 1862, and the courts, notably in the Reynolds versus United States decision of 1878, lined up against the practice and put the opposing parties on notice to reach a solution. This is an interesting paragraph that he has here, because when he mentions the Morrill Act, first of all, you have to understand, folks, it's not spelled M-O-R-A-L, it's spelled M-O-R-R-I-L-L, and Morrill was at this time a congressman from the state of Vermont. His name was Justin Smith Morrill, and he introduces this Antibigamy Act in 1862.

Now, if you're familiar with what was going on in the United States in 1862, you know that we were right in the middle of the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln did not want to be distracted with the problems being caused by the Mormons, so even though this Antibigamy Act was passed while Lincoln was president, nothing was done about it at that time. They would wait until after the Civil War was over to turn their attention to this practice that was unique to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

When it mentions the court case of Reynolds versus the United States that came out in 1878, it's speaking of George Reynolds. An interesting bit of trivia here is that George Reynolds was found guilty of practicing plural marriage, and what's fascinating is that his daughter, Ethel Georgina Reynolds, ends up marrying Joseph Fielding Smith, who becomes the tenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You can see the web of polygamy all over the place. This is why when the comment is made that it was probably not very well known among Latter-day Saints, this is why I have a problem if you assume that that is talking about the state of Utah. Because polygamy in Utah, it's not that big of a secret among a lot of the people that we have talked to around here. Perhaps living outside of the state, okay, I might give you that, but probably not for most members who live within the state of Utah.

He continues and writes, Now, let's go back. LDS president Brigham Young married some 58 women. Now, if you were listening to yesterday's show, we cited a New York Times op-ed journalist by the name of Timothy Egan. He cited that Brigham Young was married to 55 women. I've also heard as few as 54. I've also heard 56. So you're going to find that when people are talking about the plural wives of Brigham Young, there's going to be a discrepancy in the numbers.

I personally don't let that bother me. Many times I'll usually tell people when I'm discussing this subject, well, we know that Brigham Young at least had over 50 plural wives. But when it says supporting more or less 27 families and participating in at least 31 afterlife ceilings, now let's just look at those 31 afterlife ceilings. Add that to the 58 women that George D. Smith mentioned specifically in this paragraph, you've got 93 wives. Certainly the 31 are not really significant to what I'm about to say. Let's look at the 58 that he talks about.

Whether it was 54, 56, 58, who cares? The point is, you have a man like Brigham Young and a lot of his top lieutenants, and I would mention, for instance, Heber C. Kimball, who had around 40 wives as well. They're having all these wives in a situation at that time when there were few women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah. It's a pioneer religion, and so there were more men than there were women. So when you hear a Latter-day Saint say, well, there were so many women who didn't have husbands and there were not enough men to go around, that's just not true. There were more men than women. But yet, even though as George Smith is going to talk about the necessity of practicing plural marriage in order to be exalted in the next life, you have these top leaders in the Church.

Well, can I use the word? Hoarding all these women? And that's exactly what they were doing. They were taking away females that were needed for other men in the Church if they hoped to receive the best Mormonism was offering its members at that time. We mentioned yesterday, Jacob 2.30 was the one verse used to support the idea that the Book of Mormon teaches that God said polygamy was okay. It says that only if you were going to raise up seed, which is to have children. Let me give you a quote that comes from Wilford Woodruff's journal.

This is page 42 of volume 5 that's published by Signature Books, the same publisher that published the book we're reviewing right now. This is what Brigham Young said according to Wilford Woodruff. There is many women that care more about their wives, husbands sleeping with them than they do about God or his kingdom. And if a man was to submit to such women, he would not be worth shucks in building up the kingdom of God. I have got some such women, and I visit them once a year or once in three years as I please, and they may go to heaven or hell just as they please.

I shall not turn away from the work of God for any woman. We need to understand, of his wives, 55, 56, 58, he only has children, Brigham Young does, with 16 of them. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of polygamy in the first place if we're to raise up seed, and he's only having children with about a third or even fewer of his wives. You raise an excellent point, and if a Mormon is going to believe that Jacob chapter 2 is actual ancient scripture, then why is there a discrepancy here with fulfilling that call? And I think that's a question that an honest Latter-day Saint has to ask themselves. For more information on Mormonism and its research ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism. Mormonism 101 for Teens is a valuable resource for anyone wanting a simplified view of the Mormon religion from a Christian perspective. Mormonism 101 for Teens is available at the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore in Salt Lake City or mrm.org.