Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Preface

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Contents

Response to claims made in "Preface"


A work by author: George D. Smith
 Chapter 1

flyleaf

Claim
  • The book claims that Bishop Edwin Woolley married a plural wife without having her first divorce her legal husband.

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided
Response

ix

Claim
  • Did Joseph propose a "tryst" with his plural wife Sarah Ann Whitney?

Author's source(s)
  • Joseph Smith to "Brother and Sister, [Newel K.] Whitney, and &c. [Sarah Ann,] Nauvoo, Illinois, August 18, 1842, Joseph Smith Collections, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), Salt Lake City, Utah
  • Full text of the letter may be viewed at Letter from Joseph Smith to the Whitneys (18 August 1842) (Wikisource)
Whitney "love letter" (edit) Response

ix

Claim
  • The point is made that Joseph was age 36, versus Sarah Ann Whitney at age 17.

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided
Ages of wives (edit)
  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408
Response

ix

Claim
  • The book presents Joseph's letter to Sarah Whitney as analogous to Napoleon's passionate love letter to Josephine.

Author's source(s)
  • Author's opinion.
Whitney "love letter" (edit) Womanizing & romance (edit) Response

x

Claim
  • Did Joseph have a "predilection" to "take an interest in more than one woman?"

Author's source(s)
  • Author's opinion.
Womanizing & romance (edit) Response

x

Claim
  • The author posits that Napoleon's Egyptian findings "lit a fire in Smith that inspired even the language of his religious prose."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Egyptian influence? (edit) Response

xi

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "Little did Napoleon dream that by unearthing the Egyptian past, he would provide the mystery language of a new religion."

Author's source(s)
  • Author's opinion.
Egyptian influence? (edit) Response
  • This is simply the author's opinion.

xii

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "Beyond [Joseph's] quest for female companionship...."

Author's source(s)
  • Author's opinion.
Womanizing & romance (edit) Response

xii

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "...Smith utilized plural marriage to create a byzantine structure of relationships intended for successive worlds."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Response

xii

Claim
  • After the Nauvoo Expositor was destroyed, was Joseph arrested for "destroying a local press?"

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Nauvoo Expositor (edit)
  • See also ch. Preface: xii
  • See also ch. 4: 285
  • See also ch. 6: 408
  • See also ch. 7: 435
Response
  •  History unclear or in error The destruction of the press was a decision ordered by Joseph as mayor with the approval of the Nauvoo city council. Joseph was charged with riot because of the press' destruction, released on bail, and offered to pay a fine if necessary. He was rearrested on a capital charge of treason.
  • Nauvoo Expositor

xii

Claim
  • The book claims that it is not known whether or not Joseph's wife Emma consented to plural marriages, and that this "remains a mystery," although she is known to have "sent away" at least five of Joseph's plural wives.

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Response

xiii

Claim
  • None of Joseph's plural wives are mentioned in History of the Church.

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Necessary for salvation? (edit)
  • See also ch. Preface: xiv
  • See also ch. 1: 6
  • See also ch. 2: 55
  • See also ch. 6: 356
Response

xiii

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "...today, in official Mormon circles, Smith's granting of favors to chosen followers, allowing them to take extra women into the home, is rarely mentioned."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Censorship of Church History (edit) Response

xiii-xiv

Claim
  • Has all mention of plural marriage "been expurgated" from Church historical records?

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Censorship of Church History (edit) Response

xiv

Claim
  • Did it become "difficult to access" Church records regarding polygamy after the 1890 Manifesto was issued?

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Censorship of Church History (edit) Response

xiv

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "The cyclical nature of this suppression of information, first in Illinois and later in Utah, left a brief window in Mormon history from which most of the documentation has been recovered."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Censorship of Church History (edit) Response

xiv

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "because the history of polygamy in Nauvoo was never officially rewritten, even during the period of openness, Joseph Smith's initiation of the practice has remained in an historical penumbra to this day."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Censorship of Church History (edit) Response

xiv

Claim
  • Joseph "courted and eloped with his first wife."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Emma and Joseph Eloped (edit)
  • See also ch. Preface: xiv
  • See also ch. 1: 12
Response

xiv - The author claims that the topic of polygamy was already on Joseph's mind as early as the 1820s

The author(s) of Nauvoo Polygamy make(s) the following claim:

The author claims that the topic of polygamy was already on Joseph's mind as early as the 1820s.

Author's sources: No source provided.

FAIR's Response

Question: Is it possible to deduce Joseph Smith's thoughts and dreams years after his death?

Some critics of the Church attempt to discern Joseph Smith's motivations, thoughts and dreams, in order to explain the rise of the Church

Secular critics face a tough challenge when attempting to explain the foundational stories of Church—the primary sources from Joseph Smith and his associates do not provide them with any useful information. The only explanation left to them is that Joseph must have been lying about everything that he said. Authors then resort to fabricating Joseph's thoughts and dreams, and deducing his motivations based upon his surroundings. As one reviewer of Vogel's work puts it, "if no evidence can be gathered to demonstrate that a historical actor thought what you attribute to him or her, no conjecture can be beyond the realm of hypothetical possibility—just make things up, if you need to."[1]:326 This technique allows secular critics to quite literally create any explanation that they wish to account for Joseph's ability to restore the Church.

Creating a "psychobiography" by putting thoughts into Joseph's head

Secular critics, as a result of their inability to accept what they call "paranormal experiences," must come up with explanations for why Joseph Smith was able to create and grow the Church. Since many of the primary documents from Joseph and his associates accept evidence of spiritual experiences and angelic visitations as normal, secular critics look at Joseph's surrounding environment in order to deduce his thoughts and dreams, thus creating a "psychobiography" of the Prophet. A well-known critical work in which this technique is heavily employed is Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Consider the following:

But the need for deference was strong within [Joseph]. Talented far beyond his brothers or friends, he was impatient with their modest hopes and humdrum fancies. Nimble-witted, ambitious, and gifted with a boundless imagination, he dreamed of escape into an illustrious and affluent future. For Joseph was not meant to be a plodding farmer, tied to the earth by habit or by love for the recurrent miracle of harvest. He detested the plow as only a farmer's son can, and looked with despair on the fearful mortage [check spelling] that clouded their future.[2]:18

Brodie's prose is very readable, and would be well suited to a fictional novel. Unfortunately, nothing in the paragraph quoted above is referenced to any sort of a source. According to Dr. Charles L. Cohen, professor of history and religious studies, and director of the Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

This habit of insinuating herself into historical actors' minds constitutes the second part of Brodie's method. "For weeks" after learning that Martin Harris had lost the 116-page translation of the golden plates, she stated, "Joseph writhed in self-reproach for his folly." Lucy Smith described her son's distraught reaction when Harris told him the bad news, but, though one can well imagine Joseph agonizing over what to do, there is insufficient evidence to say in an unqualified declarative sentence what he actually did.[3]

The speculation of one author becomes a later author's "fact"

Since Brodie's work is heavily referenced by critics, Brodie's opinions eventually become considered to be "fact" by those who wish to tear down the Church. Brodie's pronouncements regarding Joseph's motives are then passed along to the next anti-Mormon writer. Consider how the following claim evolves from speculation to "documented endnote," when Brodie states:

The awesome vision he described in later years was probably the elaboration of some half-remembered dream stimulated by the early revival excitement and reinforced by the rich folklore of visions circulating in his neighborhood. Or it may have been sheer invention, created some time after 1830 when the need arose for a magnificent tradition to cancel out the stories of his fortune-telling and money-digging. Dream images came easily to this youth, whose imagination was as untrammeled as the whole West (emphasis added).[2]:25

Now observe how author Richard Abanes treats this quote in his book Becoming Gods (retitled Inside Today's Mormonism):

Such a theory boldly challenges LDS apostle James Faust's contention that critics of the First Vision "find it difficult to explain away." His assertion is further weakened by yet another theory of Brodie's, which posits that Smith's story might have been "created some time after 1830 when the need arose for a magnificent tradition to cancel out the stories of his fortune-telling and money-digging" (emphasis added).[4]

Here we have an unsupported theory by Brodie being confirmed by another author to "further weaken" LDS claims about the First Vision. Brodie's speculation of "was probably" and "it may have been" now becomes a cited endnote in Abanes' work. The speculation of one author has become the documented fact for the next author down the line.

Deducing Joseph's thoughts from his environment

Another author who takes great liberties in deducing Joseph's thoughts and dreams is Dan Vogel. Vogel's book Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet liberally assigns motives to the Prophet which cannot be backed up with any primary source. Instead, the author must interpret the meaning behind second- and third-hand sources that agree with his point-of-view.

Frankly admitting his "inclination . . . to interpret any claim of the paranormal . . . as delusion or fraud" (p. xii), Vogel refuses to accept Joseph's and his supporters' autobiographical statements—most of which grant, either explicitly or implicitly, such "paranormal" phenomena as angels, revelation, visions, and prophecy—at face value. Vogel's Joseph opens his mouth only to lie and deceive; and whatever he might be experiencing, or trying to do, or thinking about, one can rest assured that it's not what any record generated by him or his sympathizers would have us believe.[5]:206

When an author disregards the primary sources—the statements made by Joseph Smith himself—it becomes possible to create any story, motivation, thought or dream which suits the author's purpose. Responding to Vogel's description of Joseph's prayers and thoughts on September 21, 1823 leading up to the visit of Moroni, BYU professors Andrew and Dawson Hedges note:

What more could a student of early Mormon history possibly want? Here, in a crisp three pages, is a detailed account of what Joseph Smith was thinking about, praying about, and hesitating about over 180 years ago during one of the most significant 24-hour periods in church history. And not just what he was thinking about, in general terms, but how and when, within this 24-hour period, his thoughts evolve! And Vogel gives us all this without a single source to guide his pen—indeed, in direct contravention of what the sources say! One might chalk up this ability to navigate so confidently and so deftly through Joseph's mind to some type of clairvoyance on Vogel's part—"clairvogelance," we could call it—were it not that he himself protests so loudly against anything smacking of the "paranormal."[5]:211

Again, as with Brodie, and freed from the constraint of having to use actual sources, the author can attribute any thought or motivation to the Prophet that they wish in order to explain the unexplainable.


xv

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "...these same polygamists continued marrying to the point that they had acquired an average of nearly six wives per family. This model became the blueprint for forty years of Utah polygamy."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error
Statistical problems (edit)
  • See also ch. Preface: xv
  • See also ch. 4: 253 and 289
  • See also ch. 8: 535-536
Response
  •  Internal contradiction: p. 289: "the typical Utah polygamist whose roots in the principle extended back to Nauvoo, had between three and four wives."
    Prevalence of polygamy

xv

Claim
  • "suppressed history"

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Censorship of Church History (edit) Response

xv

Claim
  • Nauvoo "a more or less insignificant river town"

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error
Response
  •  Internal contradiction: p. 2: Nauvoo was "a bustling Mississippi River town with several thousand inhabitants." And, ultimately only Chicago was a larger city in all of Illinois. [6]

xv

Claim
  • "sources which somehow survived both neglect and contempt so that we are able to know both the facts of the matter and the behind-the-scenes human emotions"

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Censorship of Church History (edit) Response

xvi

Claim
  • Mormon "grandparents considered [polygamy] requisite for heaven."

Author's source(s)
  • No source provided.
Necessary for salvation? (edit)
  • See also ch. Preface: xiv
  • See also ch. 1: 6
  • See also ch. 2: 55
  • See also ch. 6: 356
Response

Notes


  1. ↑ Alan Goff, "Dan Vogel's Family Romance and the Book of Mormon as Smith Family Allegory (Review of: Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet)," FARMS Review 17/2 (2005): 321–400. [{{{url}}} off-site]
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945). ( Index of claims )
  3. ↑ Charles L. Cohen, "No Man Knows My Psychology: Fawn Brodie, Joseph Smith, and Psychoanalysis," Brigham Young University Studies 44 no. 1, 68.
  4. ↑ Richard Abanes, Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism (Harvest House Publishers: 2005). 44, note 135. ( Index of claims )
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Andrew H. Hedges and Dawson W. Hedges, "No, Dan, That's Still Not History (Review of: Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, by Dan Vogel)," FARMS Review 17/1 (2005): 205–222. [{{{url}}} off-site]
  6. ↑ Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf : distributed by Random House/University of Illinois Press, [1979] 1992), 69. ISBN 0252062361. off-site
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