Difference between revisions of "Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Chapter 8"

452

• The History of the Church was largely based on Joseph's diaries. It is therefore not surprising that Joseph's polygamy is not treated in the History, when not detailed in the main primary source.
• Censorship_and_revision_of_LDS_history
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Censorship

• No source provided.

Censorship of Church History (edit)

• See also ch. Preface: xiii, xiii-xiv, and xv
• See also ch. 1: 5
• See also ch. 2: 57 and 75
• See also ch. 2a: 88, 103, 119, 137, and 185
• See also ch. 4: 289
• See also ch. 6: 356
• See also ch. 8: 453 and 473

453

• A lone citation might make little sense without context.
• If G. D. Smith can think of no reason to exclude an entry besides malicious intent to deceive, perhaps he can explain his own editing decision when he published the William Clayton diaries. Jim Allen observed that

“in his abridgement, however, Smith kept only about one-sixth of the total entry. . . . By including only the somewhat titillating material and leaving out the much more important information about Clayton and what he was doing as a missionary, this ‘abridgement’ does little but distort the day’s activity.”^[1]

• Censorship_and_revision_of_LDS_history
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Censorship
• Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)

• No source provided.

Censorship of Church History (edit)

• See also ch. Preface: xiii, xiii-xiv, and xv
• See also ch. 1: 5
• See also ch. 2: 57 and 75
• See also ch. 2a: 88, 103, 119, 137, and 185
• See also ch. 4: 289
• See also ch. 6: 356
• See also ch. 8: 453 and 473

473

• There is no evidence provided of this assertion.
• The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, institute manuals, and LDS historians also discuss plural marriage in Joseph and others.
• Brigham_Young_and_polygamy
• LDS histories over many years omit plural marriage
• Censorship_and_revision_of_LDS_history
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Censorship
• Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)

• No source provided.

Censorship of Church History (edit)

• See also ch. Preface: xiii, xiii-xiv, and xv
• See also ch. 1: 5
• See also ch. 2: 57 and 75
• See also ch. 2a: 88, 103, 119, 137, and 185
• See also ch. 4: 289
• See also ch. 6: 356
• See also ch. 8: 453 and 473

513

• The historical comparison is inaccurate on virtually every level.
• Mormon women were never forced to marry (unlike the Munster Anabaptists), and Mormon women always had the right of divorce (though Brigham was much stricter with men about divorce).
• This is not a parallel, but a contrast.

• Williams, Radical Reformation, 3d. ed., 570; no reference for the LDS claims.

532

• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Misrepresentation_of_sources#.22wonderful_lustful_spirit.22
• See also ch. 5: 327

• Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 8.

535

• It is not clear why Smith chooses to quote from Walker's diary.
• Second coming remark in Feb 1835
• Joseph_Smith_prophesied_the_Second_Coming_to_be_in_1890

• Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, 2:522.

Predicting 2nd Coming (edit)

• See also ch. 1: 6 and 9
• See also ch. 8: 535

535-536

• G. D. Smith leaves unmentioned the study’s observation that Orderville was somewhat unique because “one suspects that membership in Mormondom’s most successful attempt to establish the United Order may have required a commitment to plural matrimony. Unlike the pattern that usually prevailed in Mormon towns, many young men of Orderville entered the celestial order when they first married or soon thereafter.” Nearby Kanab was less successful in its communal economy and had less than half as many polygamists. Furthermore, all of southern Utah was more likely to be polygamist than Utah as a whole, for similar reasons.
• Incidence of polygamy
• Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)

• Lowell “Ben” Bennion, “The Incidence of Mormon Polygamy in 1880: ‘Dixie’ Versus Davis Stake,” Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 27–42.

Statistical problems (edit)

• See also ch. Preface: xv
• See also ch. 4: 253 and 289
• See also ch. 8: 535-536

541

• The author grossly mischaracterizes the doctrine on this point. He omits key parts of Brigham's recorded discourse: "…if a man magnifies his priesthood, observing faithfully his covenants to the end of his life, all the wives and children sealed to him, all the blessings and honors promised to him in his ordinations and sealing blessings are immutably and eternally fixed; no power can wrench them from his possession. You may inquire, in case a wife becomes disaffected with her husband, her affections lost, she becomes alienated from him and wishes to be the wife of another, can she not leave him? I know of no law in heaven or on earth by which she can be made free while her husband remains faithful and magnifies his priesthood before God and he is not disposed to put her away, she having done nothing worthy of being put away."
• Brigham Young 8 October 1861 discourse on plural marriage
• Full details: Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men."

• S. George Ellsworth, ed., The Journals of Addison Pratt (SLC: U of Utah Press, 1990), 515; Smith, Intimate Chronicle, 227n.
• CHECK THESE!! ^{[needs work]}

Brigham Young's 8 October 1861 talk (edit)

• See also ch. 2: 78
• See also ch. 8: 541

541

The author omits key parts of Brigham's recorded discourse: "…if a man magnifies his priesthood, observing faithfully his covenants to the end of his life, all the wives and children sealed to him, all the blessings and honors promised to him in his ordinations and sealing blessings are immutably and eternally fixed; no power can wrench them from his possession. You may inquire, in case a wife becomes disaffected with her husband, her affections lost, she becomes alienated from him and wishes to be the wife of another, can she not leave him? I know of no law in heaven or on earth by which she can be made free while her husband remains faithful and magnifies his priesthood before God and he is not disposed to put her away, she having done nothing worthy of being put away."

• Brigham Young 8 October 1861 discourse on plural marriage
• Full details: Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men."

• Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 37-46.
• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 34, 442-44. ( Index of claims )
• Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd edition, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 100-01.

Brigham Young's 8 October 1861 talk (edit)

• See also ch. 2: 78
• See also ch. 8: 541

546

• Using the author of the Communist Manifesto may serve to prejudice readers.
• Latter-day Saints (despite the efforts of their critics like G.D. Smith) never taught or endorsed "free love."
• Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Loaded and prejudicial language

• Hill, World Turned Upside Down, 247; citing Engel's manuscript, "The Book of Revelation," (1883, published in 20th century in Moscow).

546

• This claim is false as of the summer of 2008. A FAIR member went on the tour, and Brigham's many wives and children were mentioned frequently, especially in the family "store" from which goods were distributed.^[2]

•  History unclear or in error
• No sources given.

547

• Who were Miller's "church leaders"? A bishop? A stake president? An elders' quorum president? High priests' group leader? Did he interpret what he was told correctly? There is, of course, no way to say.
• Members may believe whatever they wish about such matters. In a work of serious scholarship, however, this tells us little about official LDS doctrine, or even what most members believe.
• Non-members, however, might well be confused, and G.D. Smith does nothing to lessen the confusion.

• Dana Miller, "Celestial Polygamy," May 9, 2008, Public Forum letter to the Salt Lake Tribune.