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/Polygamy/Marriages to young women
< Joseph Smith | Polygamy
This article is a draft. FairMormon editors are currently editing it. We welcome your suggestions on improving the content.
Contents
Criticism
Critics argue that Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages to young women are evidence that he was immoral, perhaps even a pedophile.
Response
The information we have on Joseph Smith's plural marriages is sketchy, simply because there were few official records kept at the time because of the fear of misunderstanding and persecution. What we do know is culled from journals and reminiscenses of those who were involved.
The most conservative estimates indicate that Joseph entered into plural marriages with 33 women, 6 of whom were under the age of 18. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball, who was 14. The rest were 16 (two) or 17 (three).
Probably the one about whom we know the least is Fanny Alger, Joseph's first plural wife, whom he came to know in early 1833 when she stayed at the Smith home as a house-assistant of sorts to Emma (such work was common for young women at the time). There are no first-hand accounts of their relationship (from Joseph or Fanny), nor are there second-hand accounts (from Emma or Fanny's family). All that we do have is third hand accounts, most of them from many years after the events.
Unfortunately, this lack of reliable and extensive historical detail leaves much room for critics to claim that Joseph Smith had an affair with Fanny and then later invented plural marriage as way to justify his actions. The problem is that we just don't know exactly what happened, and so are left to assume that Joseph acted honorably (as believers) or dishonorably (as critics).
Further reading
FAIR wiki articles
FAIR web site
Printed material
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997). The introduction and prologue are available online at the Signature Books web site.
- Reviews of In Sacred Loneliness:
- Richard Lloyd Anderson and Scott H. Faulring, "The Prophet Joseph Smith and His Plural Wives," FARMS Review of Books 10/2 (1998), pp. 67–104.
- Danel W. Bachman,"Prologue to the Study of Joseph Smith's Marital Theology," FARMS Review of Books 10/2 (1998), pp. 105–37.