Gospel Topics Chapter 9 Bringhurst

Mormonism 101, a book by Mormonism Research Ministries, Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson, has helped many who want to understand what separates Mormonism from the Christian faith.

Mormonism 101 is available at your favorite Christian bookstore or online at mrm.org. 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. Plural marriage, certainly a huge topic when it comes to the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And when the Church came out with its Gospel Topics essays between the end of 2013 and the end of 2015, three of those essays dealt with the subject of polygamy or plural marriage. Today we are looking at the book, the LDS Gospel Topics series, a scholarly engagement, and we are in chapter 9 titled Plural Marriage After 1890. And of course 1890 was a banner year because that's the year that a document known as the Manifesto came out where the leadership of the Mormon Church was promising that they would no longer practice plural marriage or solemnize plural marriages. This chapter was written by a man named Newell G. Bringhurst, and we didn't get very far in yesterday's program, but we want to continue this thought about the laws that were being implemented by the federal government in order to pressure the LDS Church into abandoning their doctrine of plural marriage. And we talked about the Reynolds versus United States. This is George Reynolds. It was a test case, and as Mr. Bringhurst brings out, he says, accordingly, LDS officials mounted a vigorous legal defense all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark Reynolds versus the United States. That was in 1879. This decision by the Supreme Court went against the LDS Church. George Reynolds was found guilty. But as Mr. Bringhurst says, this caused the LDS Church to have a dilemma.

And what is that dilemma, Eric? On the one hand, Latter-day Saints sincerely desired to be loyal citizens of the United States, but also embraced plural marriage as a commandment from God. Ultimately, church leaders encouraged members to obey God rather than men. Thus, the church embarked on a course of civil disobedience, continuing to live in plural marriage and entering into new plural marriages. And we should mention that that last sentence you read is in quotation marks, that on a course of civil disobedience, then there's an ellipsis, continuing to live in plural marriage and entering into new plural marriages. Now, we were having a long discussion off air when it comes to the phrase civil disobedience.

Certainly, this phrase is used purposely, and I think we both agree on this, that it was used to, I guess, give the response to these laws to make it appear more noble when Latter-day Saints refused to abandon plural marriage. Yeah, because otherwise it's just plain old criminal activity. So, civil disobedience makes it sound, as you mentioned, noble and respectable. The problem, of course, and we both agree on this too, that nobility that comes with that phrase, I guess it all depends on the eye of the beholder. I mean, the Mormons, of course, would see this as being noble in defying the federal government, forcing them to disobey God and having them to obey man.

I get that. But of course, from the other view, it was looked upon as being merely criminal activity. In fact, as we've mentioned many times on this show, slavery and plural marriage were known as the twin relics of barbarism.

At least that's what it was called during the election of 1860. Now, we're getting towards 1890, and certainly a lot of things have changed, and the government is certainly turning its attention to the LDS people in wanting to get them to abandon this practice. Certainly, I'm sure that many of those Latter-day Saints felt they were being the most noble people in doing what God still intended for them to do, they believed, even though the Manifesto came out in 1890.

But I think that comes down to the fact that many people will call a person, well, as it's said, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. So using the word civil disobedience, I think was purposely used by the author of the Gospel Topics Essay to make this look like these people were, again, they were respectable. Well, let's move on because Mr. Bringhurst, he mentions how this essay, the Gospel Topics Essay, is divided into four sections, and the first one we've discussed yesterday and today, we just had to deal with anti-polygamy laws and civil disobedience. The second section, he mentions, is the Manifesto itself, which focuses on the official 1890 directive leading to the end of plural marriage in the Church. And he mentions again the Edmonds-Tucker Act.

We talked about that in an earlier broadcast. This was a law, according to Mr. Bringhurst, allowed for the Confiscation of Church Property. Alarmed LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff feared that the Church's temples and its ordinances were now at risk. Why would that get the Mormon's attention, Eric? Not very many of them have been built at this time, but these buildings are where celestial marriages take place. And if you take away the temple, then they're not going to be able to have a place to be able to solemnize for time and eternity these different relationships.

You would also have to get rid of the Doctrine of Baptism for the Dead, because those are also practiced in Mormon temples, so you could see why losing these buildings would be devastating to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He goes on to talk about that the 1890 Manifesto states that the Church, quote, was not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice. However, there were a lot of polygamists in the Church, including Wilford Woodruff, who signs the Manifesto of 1890, who still had plural wives.

And so you could see how this could also cause a problem for members of the LDS Church engaged in this practice. But then, on page 233, he says there's a third section entitled After the Manifesto, which discusses how LDS leaders and rank-and-file members dealt with issues ostensibly unresolved by the Manifesto. The essay asserts, quote, At first, many Church leaders believed the Manifesto merely suspended plural marriage for an indefinite period, end quote, carefully adding that for members of the Church, quote, having lived, taught, and suffered for plural marriage for so long, it was difficult to imagine a world without it, end quote.

The Manifesto was silent on what existing plural families should do. This, in turn, caused confusion, with some polygamous couples acting on their own initiative, separating or divorcing as a result of the Manifesto, while other husbands ceased to cohabit with all but one of their wives, but continue, quote, to provide financial and emotional support to all dependents, end quote. At the same time, many husbands, including Church leaders, continue to cohabit with their plural wives and father children with them well into the 20th century, despite the illegality of such actions. So even though you have a statement from the Church leadership saying, look, we're not going to have anything to do with this any longer, it's still going on. And that was really the whole point of, I think, this essay to begin with, because a lot of historians realize that it did continue after the Church told the government that it was not going to continue.

But then there's also a fourth section that's entitled The Second Manifesto, and I think this is probably a lesser-known Manifesto or document. Most people who, if they do know about the first one of 1890, they don't realize that there had to be a second one. Why was there a second one?

It's because they didn't really mean business with the first one. They had to now get serious about this and start doing something about those who were still practicing polygamy after the Church had, years before, told the federal government that they were no longer going to do it. On page 235, Newell Bringhurst says that the essay concludes by noting, marriage between one man and one woman is God's standard unless he declares otherwise, which he did through his prophet Joseph Smith. The Manifesto marked the beginning of the return to monogamy, which is the standard of the Church today. We had mentioned in an earlier broadcast, Eric, that when you look at the timetable of how polygamy came down, how it was practiced, and ultimately how it was no longer practiced, it tends to show that if God was really behind this, he was really short-sighted in all this. Because after this becomes an official doctrine, and let's be serious, it wasn't announced publicly until 1852, but then we find in 1890, now it's all of a sudden illegal. What's that, about 38 years? That seems like a pretty short time, especially when we're talking about God himself, to institute something and then to do a reversal on it.

It tends to tell me, and of course I'm an outsider and I admit I'm an outsider, that this looks like something that was clearly a device manufactured by men and not something that was of God. Bill, what do you say, that last part, that monogamy is the standard of the Church today? Would the LDS Church leaders like people to believe that polygamy no longer plays a role within Mormonism when Doctrine and Covenants section 132 still is found within the standard works of this Church, and the fact that there are men who are able to marry other wives for the eternities, not for this life. We understand monogamy is for this life, but that's not really stated here at the end of this essay. And I think that's misleading, and I criticized Gordon B. Hinckley when he made that same kind of a statement that the Church today has nothing to do with polygamy. That's really not true. They do not practice plural marriage the way it was practiced in the 19th century.

That's true. In other words, a Mormon male cannot be married to more than one living wife in this mortality. If you do, and you are found out, you will be excommunicated from the Church.

That's pretty much common knowledge. But a Mormon male can be sealed for eternity to more than one wife. In other words, if they were married, let's say, in this life for time and eternity to a woman in a Mormon temple, and that woman was to pass away, that widower could find another woman, and if she was not sealed to another male, she could be sealed to this man, and according to Mormonism, that male will have those two women to be his plural wives in the next life. And we have examples of that as the top two leaders of this Church. Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks both are expecting to see the two wives that they have married for eternity in the next life. And Dallin H. Oaks didn't even hide it when he was talking about his second wife. They don't need to hide it because that's what they really believe. That is a doctrine of the Church. Now, certainly, this causes a lot of consternation among some female Latter-day Saints, especially the younger women in the Church, because they tend to know in the back of their head, if they're familiar with this at all, that if they were to pass away at a young age, their spouse could more easily find a replacement who was not already sealed to another man, and she would have to share her husband with that new wife throughout eternity. 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.