FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Joseph Smith's marriage to Helen Mar Kimball
Joseph Smith's marriage to Helen Mar Kimball
Jump to details:
- Question: Was Joseph Smith's marriage to 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball indicative of "pedophilia"?
- It is claimed by critics that the average age of menarche in 1840 was 16.4 years and that therefore Helen Mar Kimball was prepubescent when she was sealed to Joseph Smith at age 14
- The age of menarche in America in 1840 has a normal distribution close to a mean of 15.2 years and a standard deviation of 1.85
- Helen and her contemporaries considered her mature for her age
- Joseph was sealed to Helen Mar Kimball at her father's request
- Evidence supports that Mormon teens did not marry until they had reached maturity.
- Helen continued to live with her parents after the sealing, and then married someone else and had children with them after Joseph's death
- There is no evidence whatsoever that Helen's marriage to Joseph was ever consummated—even where such evidence might be expected.
- Critics have alleged that at one point, Helen "confessed" to sexual relations with Joseph.
- Helen spoke out on the subject later in her life
Question: Was Joseph Smith's marriage to 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball indicative of "pedophilia"?
Joseph was sealed to Helen Mar Kimball at her father's request
Joseph was indeed sealed to 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, and it was at her father's request. According to Helen:
My father was the first to introduce it to me, which had a similar effect to a sudden shock of a small earthquake. When he found (after the first outburst of displeasure for supposed injury) that I received it meekly, he took the first opportunity to introduce Sarah Ann [Whitney] to me as Joseph's wife.
—Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, 1828-1896, Autobiography (c. 1839-1846), "Life Incidents," Woman's Exponent 9-10 (1880-1882) and "Scenes and Incidents in Nauvoo," Woman's Exponent 11 (1882-83)) off-site
There is no evidence whatsoever that Helen's marriage to Joseph was ever consummated—even where such evidence might be expected.
There is, despite the critics' insinuations, no evidence that Helen Mar Kimball's marriage was consummated. Consummation would not have been inappropriate, since this was a marriage, but the critics are too anxious to find problems where no evidence for such exists.
Critics have alleged that at one point, Helen "confessed" to sexual relations with Joseph.
Critics have alleged that Helen confessed to having sexual relations with Joseph. This is refuted elsewhere on the wiki.
Helen spoke out on the subject later in her life
Helen later saw her youthful displeasure with her marriage to Joseph as inappropriate and insisted that she had been protected and blessed by being a plural wife, even though she did not know it at the time. Helen ought to be allowed to speak for herself here:
I did not try to conceal the fact of its having been a trial, but confessed that it had been one of the severest of my life; but that it had also proven one of the greatest of blessings. I could truly say it had done the most towards making me a Saint and a free woman, in every sense of the word; and I knew many others who could say the same, and to whom it had proven one of the greatest boons--a "blessing in disguise." [1]
Key sources |
|
Wiki links |
|
Online |
|
Navigators |
Notes
- ↑ Helen Mar Kimball, Why We Practice Plural Marriage, 23-24. Cited in Andrus, Doctrines of the Kingdom.