Gospel Topics Chapter 8 Smith Part 3

Unprepared to engage Mormon missionaries when they knock on your door? Perhaps the 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. The book was published by Signature, came out in late 2020, contains 13 chapters which critique the 13 original Gospel Topics essays that were posted online on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints official website. And these chapters, in the one we're looking at today, is chapter 8, written by George D. Smith, titled Remembering, Forgetting, and Remembering 19th Century LDS Plural Marriage. These chapters critique each of those original essays. There were three originally written on the subject of plural marriage.

That is not the way it is today. They have taken the three and moved them over to another section on their website and have written a new essay on the subject of polygamy, and in many places have taken from the other three essays that were written. But today we are going to start again with page 215. I want to recap what we were talking about yesterday because it's pertinent to what we're going to discuss today, and that is the demise of plural marriage officially in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now, on yesterday's show, we were talking about the pressure that was being put on the LDS Church to abandon the doctrine of polygamy. We mentioned the Moral Antibigamy Act of 1862.

This was a bill that was put together by a congressman from the state of Vermont, Justin Smith Morrill, M-O-R-R-I-L-L. We also talked about the Reynolds versus the United States decision of 1878, where George Reynolds was found guilty of unlawful cohabitation. Yesterday we also discussed in this same paragraph that Mr. Smith writes about Brigham Young marrying some 58 women, supporting more or less 27 families, and participating in at least 31 afterlife ceilings. That's quite a few women that were attached to Brigham Young, at least in this official capacity within the context of Mormonism. But there was a statement that we didn't really talk about, as I think we should, and that statement has to do with why Brigham Young thought that plural marriage was a moral alternative to prostitution. Eric, we were talking off-air, and I had to ask the question, how many women in the early years of the Mormons moving out to Utah really thought that prostitution would be an alternative? Did they really think there would be a big market among a bunch of religious men who would come to Salt Lake City?

I don't know, maybe later on that could have certainly been the issue, especially after the railroad came through in 1869. But Mr. Smith writes that Brigham Young declared that plural marriage protected women who would otherwise be single and would have no proper means of financial support. See, that's a question that I have often asked when I visited the Beehive House, because when you bring that up, it's not uncommon for the tour guide to say, well, polygamy was used to help the financial needs of single women. My rebuttal question to that has always been, but why did he have to marry them in order to meet the financial needs of some of these women?

You don't have to do that. You can merely set up an endowment fund of some sort that would help these women out who perhaps did not have a husband at the time. Why did you have to marry them? I had one tour guide say, well, it was for legal reasons, such as land. And I responded by saying, well, that can't be because the Morrill Act of 1862 made it illegal to begin with. So the government never recognized plural marriages to begin with. Now, they might argue, well, in the territory of Utah it did.

Maybe that's how they're going to argue that one. But the fact is, the United States did not agree with Brigham Young's reasoning or the church's reasoning. The United States didn't care, well, God commanded it for us. They didn't care about that.

So this is going to cause some friction. And George Smith goes on to say at the top of page 216 that, after Young's death, his later successor as church president, prophet, apostle, and revelator, Wilford Woodruff, traveled to San Francisco to negotiate a deal with the U.S. government. In 1889, this would be one year before the manifesto comes out, Wilford Woodruff eventually agreed with Senator Leland Stanford and others to end the practice of plural marriage. Now, Leland Stanford is the one that put up the money for Stanford University in California.

It was named after his son, Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid fever. Now we come up to the point of the manifesto being made public, which is supposed to officially bring plural marriage to an end. It doesn't. In fact, there's an essay that deals specifically with plural marriage after the manifesto that we will be eventually getting to. But this is where we are in this chapter written by George Smith. He writes on page 216, Eric, let me ask you, how do you think that may have affected a lot of the LDS members living towards the end of the 19th century? He's going to be getting into some quotations by Mormon leaders regarding the importance of this practice.

And yet in 1890, all of a sudden, they have to stop taking those statements seriously any longer. You can understand why this would cause a lot of faithful Latter-day Saints to wonder what in the world is going on here. We've been told we're never going to give up this practice, no matter if it's illegal. We've been told that it's an act by God for us to practice.

We've been told that if we don't practice it, we're not going to receive the best our religion has for us. And now all of a sudden, that's all over with. That's just for the lay people who are confused. But I think this also had a part in why Mormonism and its leaders continue to practice polygamy after 1890. It took a number of years, really, for many Latter-day Saints to get that out of their system. Well, you had ended that paragraph with the sentence, LDS manuals erased most mention of plural wives, and church colleges and universities discouraged research on the subject. What does George Smith say in footnote number seven on page 216? He says in 1973, LDS church archivist Earl E. Olson specifically identified plural marriage as a topic to be restricted for research. And he says that he has this from a statement dated January 30, 1973, photocopy in my possession. That's an interesting statement that this man, Earl E. Olson, would say.

Now, he doesn't seem to say it publicly, because it's a statement that apparently George Smith has on paper as it mentions here. Realize something as important as plural marriage had everything to do with your status in the next life. And now you get to a point where Earl Olson says in 1973, it's a topic that is restricted for research.

You're not supposed to talk about it. Notice also on a chart that George Smith has on page 217, he shows how the, quote, mention of polygamy and plural marriage in LDS general conference talks between 1850 and 2010 diminished drastically. What does he show under the years 1850 to 1890? How many occurrences does he list where polygamy or plural marriage was talked about? 528 times in that 40 some odd year period versus the 1900s to the 2010s, which is over a century, only 97. So we go from 528 times over 40 years to only 97 times as this mentioned over a period of 110 years. So I think the church was probably fairly successful, you might say, in making sure that this was not a topic of discussion, at least not in general conference. Let me give you one talk that was given by Gordon B. Hinckley in October of 1998.

This is printed in the InSign Conference Edition, November 1998, page 71. This is what he said about polygamy. If any of our members are found to be practicing plural marriage, they are excommunicated, the most serious penalty the church can impose. Not only are those so involved in direct violation of the civil law, they are in violation of the law of this church. What's interesting, too, is when we do find certain church leaders using the word cult, they use it within the context of plural marriage.

For instance, there was a First Presidency statement, and you can find this in the teachings of Spencer W. Kimball on page 447, where it says, Now, here's what I find interesting about that. They refer to people who are practicing polygamy, plural marriage, as cultists, but they certainly would not look at themselves as cultists. But they certainly would not look at themselves when they were practicing polygamy as cultists.

And how do they excuse this? They excuse it because the membership had been told that this was commanded by God. Well, in 1890, with the Manifesto, that command is rescinded. And so now, if you practice polygamy after 1890, you are classified as a cultist.

Well, maybe we should say 1904, because they did have to come out with another Manifesto in 1904. And if you've heard me talk on this subject, I casually refer to it as the Now We Really Mean It Manifesto, because that's when they started excommunicating people who were engaged in this practice. 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 Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism. The book Sharing the Good News with Mormons, edited by Sean McDowell in Mormonism Research Ministry's Eric Johnson, offers practical witnessing strategies by a number of Christian missionaries, scholars, and pastors. Sharing the Good News with Mormons is published by Harvest House and is available at your favorite online bookstore, or order it directly from mrm.org. If you're looking for practical strategies for getting the conversation started, be sure to check out Sharing the Good News with Mormons.