{"id":3841,"date":"2016-04-26T09:21:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T15:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3841"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:40:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:40:19","slug":"ces-reply-polygamy-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-polygamy-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: Polygamy (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing\u00a0my reply<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>to Jeremy Runnell\u2019s \u201cLetter to a CES Director,\u201d with Jeremy\u2019s original words in green:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Polygamy\/Polyandry Concerns & Questions:<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things that really disturbed me in my research was discovering the real origins of\u00a0polygamy and how Joseph Smith really practiced it.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is an interesting way to describe your objections to polygamy. It implies that you\u2019re not, in the abstract, upset that polygamy was practiced, but its \u201creal origins\u201d and Joseph Smith\u2019s\u00a0personal polygamy was uniquely and egregiously wicked in and of itself.<\/p>\n

Seems like we\u2019re going to be talking about plural marriage for quite awhile, so I thought I\u2019d begin with my personal overview on the subject. My great-grandfather was Heber J. Grant, who had three wives. My grandmother was his youngest daughter, and she lived in hiding for twelve years, raised by her sister and unable to use her real name. It\u2019s undeniable that the whole history of polygamy in the LDS Church is fraught with difficulty, and everyone would just as soon forget that it ever happened. That\u2019s pretty hard to do, though, especially since it was the defining doctrine of the church for about half a century. So where there ought to be frank discussion, too often there\u2019s awkward silence.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s mainly because modern Mormons find the practice abhorrent, including me. I had never met an actual polygamist until I moved to St. George and saw polygamous women crowding into the local Wal-Mart and Costco, their dowdy homespun dresses and strange, braided, non-bangs hair making them stick out like sore thumbs. I had been operating under the illusion that my ancestors weren\u2019t nearly this weird, but that\u2019s much harder to do when confronted with actual polygamists. My ancestors were probably just as weird. Maybe even weirder.<\/p>\n

Where does that leave me?<\/p>\n

Still in denial, at least to a degree. Because, first off, my grandmother wasn\u2019t<\/i> weird. She was an accomplished woman who, to my knowledge, was never forced to wear an ugly burlap dress or yank her hair back in a strange, swooshy coiffure. I don\u2019t know when dowdiness became part and parcel with the polygamy experience, but they could certainly do without it. And in the second place, I\u2019ve seen no evidence that the systemic physical and sexual abuse that is rampant in these polygamous subcultures was part of polygamy back in the day.<\/p>\n

Yet the modern practice of polygamy invites everyone to imagine the worst.<\/p>\n

Every young Mormon missionary is deluged with questions about polygamy, and few of them give substantive or satisfying answers. Some talk about the glut of single ladies on the frontier who needed the protection of a land-owning husband, so Mormon men dutifully obliged them in a historical anomaly that vanished when conditions changed. I\u2019ve never used that line, because, frankly, it\u2019s not true. Polygamy was always a religious principle, and to minimize its importance in the early history of the church is the height of disingenuity. But it\u2019s a principle that repulses me in practice, so how do I reconcile its previous sanction by my church with my present faith?<\/p>\n

I do it the same way the Book of Mormon does.<\/p>\n

Many anti-Mormons take delight in pointing out that the Book of Mormon rails on polygamy with more ferocity than anything in the Bible. The Lord condemns the unauthorized practice of polygamy as an \u201cabomination\u201d and refers to the taking of multiple wives as \u201cwhoredoms,\u201d and then says the following:<\/p>\n

\u201cWherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none.\u201d (Jacob 2:27)<\/p>\n

That seems to be a pretty clear-cut standard, which makes you wonder how Joseph Smith could possibly lead the church to go contrary to the plain language of the scripture he himself translated.<\/p>\n

Until you read on to verse 30:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, monogamy is the norm, unless commanded otherwise by the Lord to \u201craise up seed\u201d unto Him. That\u2019s exactly what happened when the Church practiced polygamy in the 19th century. The doctrine bound the church together through a torturous time and raised up a large second generation to carry the gospel forward. And now, when it is no longer necessary, the Lord has commanded us to revert back to the norm.<\/p>\n

Still, while the doctrine seems clear, the practice remains disturbing, to me and to most other Mormons I know. I appreciate the essays on this subject, and I view them as solid first steps towards coming to terms with our past.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s see if we can confront this issue together.<\/p>\n

Joseph Smith was married to at least 34 women<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, no, and sort of. The Wikipedia list you link to includes several disputed names, but, more importantly it makes no distinction between marriages and sealings. That distinction is essential, because Joseph was married \u2013 i.e. sealed \u2013 to dozens of other women, most of them after his death. Heber J. Grant\u2019s father Jedidiah M. Grant stood proxy as his wife was sealed to Joseph Smith. Much of the confusion over polyandry is explained by the fact that Joseph was sealed to other men\u2019s wives but not married to them. We\u2019ll no doubt discuss that crucial distinction going forward, because it\u2019s one you repeatedly ignore.<\/p>\n

Polyandry: Of those 34 women, 11 of them were married women of other living men.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yep. There it is.<\/p>\n

Joseph married lots of women, and some of them were, in fact, already married at the time. Yet in plural marriages where Joseph married other men\u2019s wives, the supposed cuckolds knew about this arrangement, sanctioned it, and, what\u2019s more, went on to live with their wives as they had before Joseph Smith came on the scene. Never mind Joseph Smith \u2013 what husband would allow such a thing? What on earth was going on?<\/p>\n

The answer, as I foreshadowed earlier, comes from an understanding of the difference between a marriage and a sealing. Because there is a crucial difference, especially in the early years of the Church. And, not to put too fine a point on it, that difference is sex. (More on that later.)<\/p>\n

The word \u201cseal\u201d comes from D&C 132:45, where the Lord says to Joseph Smith, \u201c[W]hatsoever you [i.e. Joseph Smith] seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever you bind on earth, in my name and by my word, saith the Lord, it shall be eternally bound in the heavens.\u201d This \u201csealing power\u201d is thought by Mormons to be identical to the authority given to the apostle Peter in the New Testament as written in Matthew 18:18 \u2013 \u201cVerily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.\u201d Binding\/sealing a couple with this authority perpetuates family bonds beyond the grave.<\/p>\n

Today, the word \u201csealing\u201d is often synonymous with \u201cmarriage,\u201d but not always. Children, for instance, are \u201csealed\u201d in temple ceremonies to their parents. Joseph saw all of this as part of his role in the \u201crestitution of all things\u201d mentioned in Acts 3:21. That included restoring both the sealing, or binding, power mentioned earlier, along with the ancient practice of plural marriage.<\/p>\n

Evidence suggests that what happened in the so-called \u201cpolyandry\u201d was that Joseph drew a distinction between sealing and regular marriage. Some married women were sealed to Joseph, but, in this life, they stayed faithful to their husbands, who were aware of the sealing and consented to it. Many more women, including my own great-great grandmother, were sealed to Joseph after his death.<\/p>\n

Back to the sexual question, the record indicates that Joseph had sex with women to whom he was both married and sealed. When Joseph was sealed to a woman but not married to her, sexual relations would have constituted adultery, and they were absent from the relationship. There is no solid evidence to suggest that Joseph slept with the women who remained married to other men, and not much in the way of flimsy evidence, either.<\/p>\n

Those who claim that the doctrine of plural marriage was a convenient outlet for Joseph\u2019s libido overlook the reality of how Joseph actually conducted himself in living this principle.<\/p>\n

There were no orgies or harems. A large number of his plural wives got a wedding ceremony and nothing else. Offshoots of the mainstream LDS Church, notably the Community of Christ, insist Joseph couldn\u2019t possibly have been a polygamist. After all, how could a man be married to over two dozen women and father children with none of them? The answer is that Joseph did not view polygamy as a license for licentiousness, and how he lived this doctrine defies the modern caricatures that have sprung up around it.<\/p>\n

Again, understand the narrowness of my point. I\u2019m not saying polygamy is wonderful, and I concede it is strange and disturbing. What I am saying is that it wasn\u2019t the sexual free-for-all that you\u2019re suggesting with accusations of polyandry, and all this needs to be understood in its proper historical and theological context.<\/p>\n

Also, I\u2019m probably going to have to say the word \u201csex\u201d a lot, mainly to deny its inclusion in Joseph\u2019s non-marriage sealings. I know that, puritanically speaking, we got into trouble about this sort of thing when we had to acknowledge that God has genitalia, but the main objection to polyandry is the idea that Joseph was sleeping with other men\u2019s wives, and Joseph wasn\u2019t sleeping with other men\u2019s wives. He was sealed to them in a religious ceremony, and then these women continued sleeping with their lawful husbands.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an odd arrangement by modern standards, surely, but it\u2019s not consistent with the caricature you\u2019re trying to perpetuate.<\/p>\n

Among them being Apostle Orson Hyde who was sent on his mission to dedicate Israel when Joseph secretly married his wife, Marinda Hyde.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not true. Joseph may have been sealed to Marinda Hyde \u2013 the reports are conflicting, and they only come from antagonistic sources \u2013 but this would have been a sealing and not a marriage. Marinda Hyde continued to live with Orson Hyde long afterward, and she was sealed to him after his death, even though they had been divorced. It has never been church policy to seal a woman to two men, so the fact that Marinda was sealed to Orson and not Joseph suggests that the sealing of Joseph and Marinda may have been fabricated by church critics. Regardless, there is zero evidence that Joseph and Marinda had a sexual relationship.<\/p>\n

Church historian Elder Marlin K. Jensen and unofficial apologists like FairMormon do not dispute the polyandry. The Church now admits the polyandry in its October 2014 Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo essay.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not true, at least not in the context you suggest. Elder Jensen, FairMormon, and the Church\u2019s essay admit to sealings, not to sex. Footnote 30 from the Church\u2019s essay:<\/p>\n

Polyandry, the marriage of one woman to more than one man, typically involves shared financial, residential, and sexual resources, and children are often raised communally. There is no evidence that Joseph Smith\u2019s sealings functioned in this way, and <\/i>much evidence works against that view.<\/i><\/b> [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n

Out of the 34 women, 7 of them were teenage girls as young as 14-years-old.<\/span><\/p>\n

Precisely one of the girls Joseph was sealed to \u2013 Helen Mar Kimball \u2013 was 14 years old. The rest were older than sixteen, which was marriageable age in the 19th<\/sup> Century. And the evidence suggests that the sealing to Helen Mar Kimball was a sealing only, not a marriage. She continued to live with her parents, who approved the sealing, and Joseph was dead a year later. No sex.<\/p>\n

Joseph was 37-years-old when he married 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, twenty-three years his junior. Even by 19th century standards, this was shocking.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also not true, at least in the way you\u2019re implying. Joseph was sealed in a dynastic union to Helen Mar Kimball, not married in the shocking \u2013 i.e. sexual \u2013 sense. He never lived with her, and he never slept with her. Helen later married Horace Whitney when she was 18 and bore him eleven children.<\/p>\n

The Church now admits that Joseph Smith married Helen Mar Kimball \u201cseveral months before her 15th birthday\u201d in its October 2014 Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo<\/a> essay.
\n<\/span>
\nUsing phrases like \u201cthe Church now admits\u201d suggests that prior to 2014, the Church didn\u2019t acknowledge that this sealing had taken place. That\u2019s simply not true. Helen herself wrote two manuals published by the Church in the late 19th<\/sup> Century in which she defends plural marriage and acknowledges her sealing to Joseph Smith. Official admissions by the Church took place over a hundred years before the Church\u2019s recent essay.<\/p>\n

Among the women was a mother-daughter set and three sister sets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, at least they had someone to talk to at family reunions! Honestly, how does this make polygamy even worse? Would you have found polygamy acceptable if Joseph only married women who were unrelated to each other? This is just piling on for the sake of piling on.<\/p>\n

Several of these women included Joseph’s own foster daughters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph didn\u2019t have any foster daughters. The foster parenting system in the United States wasn\u2019t instituted until 1853<\/a>, so this would not have been a label anyone in Joseph Smith\u2019s era would have recognized.<\/p>\n

Some of the marriages to these women included promises by Joseph of eternal life to the girls and their families, threats of loss of salvation, and threats that he (Joseph) was going to be slain by an angel with a drawn sword<\/a> if the girls didn’t marry him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Promises of eternal blessings? Yes. Threats of loss of salvation? None. Threats that Joseph would be killed by an angel with a drawn sword if girls didn\u2019t marry him? Wrong. You\u2019re conflating a bunch of different and disparate events into one ugly mess to make Joseph look as seedy as possible.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s address each one with the appropriate context.<\/p>\n

No question Joseph promised eternal blessings to both his wives and their families should they consent to live this principle. Richard Bushman, in answering the question as to why a husband would consent to having their wives sealed to Joseph, said that the \u201conly answer seems to be the explanation Joseph gave when he asked a woman for her consent: they and their families would benefit spiritually from a close tie to the Prophet.\u201d (Rough Stone Rolling, p. 439) This kind of explanation demonstrates that these marriages functioned in a spiritual rather than a carnal context. If Joseph really were just trying to bed as many women as he possibly could, he constructed a very inefficient vehicle for that process.<\/p>\n

As for threats of hellfire should a woman refuse him, there aren\u2019t any. If you have them, you ought to produce them. Yes, there are second-hand accusations from critics of Joseph that were leveled long after the fact, but no woman to whom Joseph proposed or married provides a firsthand account of such a thing.<\/p>\n

A columnist named Mike Adams, in order to smear Mormonism during the Mitt Romney campaign, thought he\u2019d found one in the case of Lucy Walker. \u201cI am sorry that after her mother died, Joseph Smith approached teenager Lucy Walker with a command that she marry Smith with the threat of eternal damnation as the punishment if she refused,\u201d Adams wrote<\/a>. \u201cI am sorry that the year before Joseph Smith died, he said the following to Lucy: \u2018I will give you until tomorrow to decide (whether to marry me). If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Game over, right? Well, just like your accusation, there is much about this story that Adams isn\u2019t telling you, because it doesn\u2019t make for nearly as sordid a tale.<\/p>\n

To begin with, I can find no direct quote with reference to this marriage citing eternal damnation, hell, or anything similar in either Lucy Walker\u2019s writings or anyone else\u2019s. It is unlikely, then, that Joseph said anything like that in his proposal, as, if he did, that would be the money quote that would prove, beyond question, that Joseph was a beast. The best Adams has got is this bit about \u201cthe gate will be closed forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

What gate?<\/p>\n

The insinuation is that this is the \u201cPearly Gate,\u201d the gate to heaven, and that, if he turned the prophet down, the door to paradise would be slammed in her face. But that\u2019s a really odd formulation, especially since Mormon theology rejects a static heaven or hell. Something else is clearly going on here.<\/p>\n

In addition, Joseph had recently excommunicated John C. Bennett \u2013 no relation to yours truly \u2013 because this was his M.O. in picking up ladies \u2013 he tried to make them \u201cspiritual wives\u201d and threatened hellfire if they didn\u2019t sleep with him. Joseph found this reprehensible and booted him out of the church. Seems unlikely, then, that he would then turn around and apply the same tactics, especially since none of his other wives reported this kind of threat.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the full story?<\/p>\n

It begins four months prior to the supposed hellfire ultimatum. He taught Lucy Walker the principle of plural marriage and then proposed to her, and she said no, absolutely not. \u201cOh that the grave would kindly receive me that I might find rest of the bosom of my dear mother!\u201d she wrote, but four months before she consented, not 24 hours. Four months<\/i>. And during that time, Joseph didn\u2019t mention the proposal at all. He finally approached her and issued the money quote with the gate in it, which Lucy Walker refused emphatically. If she truly feared eternal torment as a consequence of her defiance, it was unlikely that she would be comfortable writing, as she did, that after she shut him down she would \u201cemphatically forbid him speaking again to me on this Subject.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph, rather than bring out the fire and brimstone, did something else entirely. From Lucy Walker\u2019s writings:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe walked across the room, returned, and stood before me. With the most beautiful expression of countenance, he said, \u2018God almighty bless you. You shall have a manifestation of the will of God concerning you; a testimony that you can never deny. I will tell you what it shall be. It shall be that peace and joy that you never knew.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGod almighty bless you?\u201d Peace and joy? That\u2019s not quite \u201cDemons will feast upon your innards,\u201d is it?<\/p>\n

Incidentally, Joseph\u2019s promise, according to Lucy Walker, was fulfilled to the letter. In her own words, with her own poor spelling:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy room became filled with a heavenly influence. To me it was in comparison like the brilliant sun bursting through the darkest cloud\u2026 My Soul was filled with a calm, sweet peace that I never knew. Supreme happiness took possession of my whole being. And I received a powerful and irristable testimony of the truth of the marriage covenant called \u2018Celestial or plural mariage.\u2019 Which has been like an anchor to the soul through all the trials of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the entire denial-of-salvation case against Joseph in this case rests on one word \u2013 gate. What did Joseph mean that the gate would be forever closed? In context, it looks as if he\u2019s talking about the opportunity to marry him. He\u2019d given her four months; she\u2019d put him off. He finally said, \u201cLook, fish or cut bait.\u201d And her refusal even on that occasion spurred Joseph\u2019s kindness, not threats. Try as he might, Mike Adams can\u2019t really shoehorn this experience into a John C. Bennett kind of nightmare. (Again, no relation. At all.)<\/p>\n

The story of the angel with the drawn sword is especially dramatic, and it comes from several different sources. But absolutely no account exists where Joseph told anyone that an angel would slay him if a specific woman didn\u2019t marry him.\u00a0 The angel appeared due to Joseph\u2019s reluctance to engage in plural marriage as a general principle. This story was never used as leverage to get a woman to agree to marry Joseph.<\/p>\n

I have a problem with this. This is Warren Jeffs<\/a> territory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, this is precisely the opposite of the way Warren Jeffs, a convicted pedophile, conducted the principle of plural marriage. Joseph saw plural marriage as a religious principle to bind families together, not a license for sexual adventurism. He was sealed to dozens of women with whom he had no sexual relations, and he did not have sexual relations with any underage women. There is no evidence of coercion, and there is solid evidence that he took no for an answer.\u00a0 Jeffs, on the other hand, forced underage girls to marry and have sex with himself and other men or be damned forever. You\u2019re trying to drag Joseph Smith into Warren Jeffs territory, but the facts don\u2019t support you in that effort.<\/p>\n

More polygamy tomorrow!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Continuing\u00a0my reply<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>to Jeremy Runnell\u2019s \u201cLetter to a CES Director,\u201d with Jeremy\u2019s original words in green:<\/span>Polygamy\/Polyandry Concerns & Questions:<\/span>One of the things that really disturbed me in my research was discovering the real origins of\u00a0polygamy and how Joseph Smith really practiced it.<\/span>This is an interesting way to describe your objections ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3841"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5157,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3841\/revisions\/5157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}