This week New York Times blogger Timothy Egan made a sophomoric attempt to connect the modern FLDS church’s practice of polygamy to that of early Mormon leaders Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Excerpt:
[Mitt Romney’s] faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr., an itinerant treasure-seeker from upstate New York who used a set of magic glasses to translate a lost scripture from God. His personality was infectious, the religion very approachable.
It would have been just another Christian faith had not Smith let his libido lead him into trouble. Before he died at the hands of a mob, he married at least 33 women and girls; the youngest was 14, and was told she had to become Smith’s bedmate or risk eternal damnation.
Smith was fortunate to find a religious cover for his desire. His polygamy “revelation” was put into The Doctrine and Covenants, one of three sacred texts of Mormonism. It’s still there – the word of God. And that’s why, to the people in the compound at Eldorado, [Texas,] the real heretics are in Salt Lake City.
As his biographer, Fawn Brodie, wrote, Joseph Smith “could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage.”
It is hard for me to imagine more factual errors and loaded language that could be squeezed into four short paragraphs.
It’s clear that Mr. Egan has done little research to prepare himself to opine on Latter-day Saint history. His two sources of information, by his own admission, are Fawn Brodie’s 1945 psychobiography of Joseph Smith and Jon Krakauer’s 2003 examination of the religious murders committed by the Lafferty brothers. As one observant commenter noted:
Having read Brodie and Krakauer [Mr. Egan] believes he knows what there is to know about Mormonism. If he had cited Mark Twain’s line about the Book of Mormon being “chloroform in print,” the piece would have then qualified as carbon copy to 10 or 12 others that have run during the last year.
Nothing seems to indicate that Mr. Egan is aware of scholarship that questions Brodie and Krakauer’s methodology and conclusions (for example, here and here). It’s also quite clear that Egan isn’t aware of the differences between the 19th-century LDS practice of polygamy and the 21st-century FLDS practice of polygamy. (To say nothing of the differences between the FLDS practice today and just 50 years ago.)
Mr. Egan’s use of Fawn Brodie to understand Joseph Smith speaks volumes. Ms. Brodie’s book, despite its enduring popularity, is seriously dated. An enormous amount of research into Joseph Smith’s life has been done in the last 62 years, and her book has long been superseded, especially by the recent biography by Richard Bushman.
But what I believe attracts Mr. Egan to Brodie is not so much her research, but her conclusions. Brodie, the thoroughgoing naturalist, simply dismissed any statements made by contemporary believers, chalking them up to delusions or Joseph Smith’s powers of hypnotism. Having eliminated faithful witnesses, she was able to substitute her own theory for the existence of Mormonism — lust, greed, and accidental chance. It is no wonder that Brodie remains so popular among sectarian and secular critics of Mormonism, for it provides the only possible explanation for the miracle of Joseph Smith, no matter how ham-handed. (I’m still trying to understand Mosiah 3, Alma 36, and D&C 88 as the products of mind solely fixated on bedding young girls.)
Unfortunately many otherwise intelligent readers will be exposed to Joseph Smith only through the eyes of Timothy Egan, and that is a tragedy.
Interesting thing about Bushman’s biography of Joseph is that it ironically takes Joseph further out of the center of Mormonism than he was in Brodie’s analysis. A lot of Mormonism – especially what was going on in Missouri while Joseph was in Kirtland – happened pretty-much independent of him and almost indifferently to Joseph. A lot of early saints never even met the prophet until they had already been members for quite some time. Early missionaries often didn’t even bother mentioning Joseph Smith.
As for his personality – Bushman paints a Joseph who is compelling and fascinating, but not really a magnetic personality such as Brodie paints him to be. The Bushman image isn’t half as charismatic as Brodie’s apparently.
Er … did you really link to a Lou Midgely article as an example of “scholarship”? Yikes.
Seth,
You humbly failed to plug your own thoughts on Mr. Egan’s article. They’re worth linking to:
Christopher:
Accusations of poor scholarship are cheap and easy. Evidence of poor scholarship is harder to come by, and, in your case, notably absent.
Christopher,
I hope you will explain and perhaps defend your reservations about Midgely’s scholarship. In my humble opinion, I think he does intellectual history in Mormon Studies better than anyone I know.
Mr. Egan’s point is plain: He’s judging the whole by the worst elements; in the case of the Church, by renegades we jettisoned generations ago.
I wonder if Mr. Egan would like it if we judged atheists by Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot, who each murdered multiple millions….
Your comparison comes close to reductio ad Hitlerum, Steven, but it’s well-taken and an important one.
As the recently departed Krister Stendahl wisely commented, “Don’t compare your best with their worst.” It’s not right to judge Joseph, Brigham, and all 19th (or 20th or 21st) century Mormons by the actions of a fringe element that we have disavowed.
With 14 year old Helen Mar Kimball she was not Joseph Smiths bedmate. Todd Compton said there was no sexuality in the marriage. He figured that following a later practice in Utah sexuality would have developed when she got older. I myself treat it as a time and for eternity ceromony meant only to start in the eternity. Whatever the case the author alludes to Todd Compton’s list of 33 without ever at all studying all his research in-depth.
If his libido had been the problem he wouldn’t have waited for Helen Kimball until the afterlife. If his libido had been his motive we should have evidence of a bunch of verified children of his via plural wives.
Robert also indirectly brings up another important point:
If Joseph Smith were such a sexual animal, why bother to marry these women? Marriages means convincing people his plural marriage doctrine is correct, getting them to go along with it, getting witnesses together, and then having them keep quiet about it. If it blows up (as it did, thanks to the Nauvoo Expositor), there’s no plausible deniability.
If it was all about sex, sex, sex, why not just have affairs? That way if one of his lovers decided to go public, all Joseph would have to do is say, “That woman’s nuts.” Who’s going to take her word over the Prophet’s?
It makes no sense, and that’s clear evidence to me that Joseph’s critics are grasping at straws.
I try to raise good points in-between my bad spelling. With Helen we don’t know what would have happened. She could have been appointed another husband for time.
I tried to post on the blog. Timothy Egan might just be repeating wrong stuff he picked up from uninformed others. If i did not know better i would think FLDS polygamy and LDS polygamy was not different. The wiki article on Joseph Smith’s marriages to young women article is useful. It helped me see statutory rape laws of today can be abused to attack someone who married young back then. Mr. Egan probably does not have that same correct knowledge.
It’s unlikely he read Todd Compton’s idea Joseph Smith’s relationship with Helen was platonic. Instead he probably has read from critics over and over again that she was Joseph Smiths bed-mate. I can’t really blame the guy for writing what he thinks true. Now if he knows better and promoted the same untruth anyway i would be less merciful to his conclusions.
Since Mike Parker mentioned this thread to me, I have glanced at it a few times in the hope that Christopher would explain his April 26 “yikes” about my presumably terrible scholarship. The fact is that I am anxious to being shown that I have made mistakes, overlooked something, written the wrong kind of essay or whatever. But “yikes” is hardly an argument. If Christopher would care to explain his remark, but does not care to do so in public in this venue, then I can be reached at [email protected], or by phone, since my telephone number is in several directories.
Mike, while there is something to that, I think you also have to consider the motivations to get people to have sex. Religious pressure is a strong incentive. Critics will bring that up. Likewise you have to bring up John Bennett who was going around having affairs but still used something like polygamy to justify it.
Note in case it’s not obvious I don’t think Joseph was doing it for the sex. Look at some of the ages and appearances and I think one has to shoot that down. Critics bring up a subset of the marriages to indirectly make that case but I think it falls apart when you look at the big picture. I don’t think there is a single satisfactory answer for whom Joseph married or why. Compton’s theory about it being somewhat like marriages in the ANE to form connections between families makes the most sense. But even that is unsatisfying in many ways.
You make a good point, Clark. There are some differences between Joseph and Bennett, of course, and the main one is secrecy. Bennett was having affairs and convincing women under the pretense of fulfilling a revelation about “spiritual wifery.” Joseph, on the other hand, was telling other people about plural marriage and commanding them to live it as much as he was.
Bennett there was also no formal aspect to Bennett’s behavior.
Joseph often had another male relative approach the woman; there were witnesses and a ceremony. None of this happened with Bennett.
Besides, the critics ignore that if Joseph was in it for the sex, then Bennett was the very best ally Joseph could have had. Exposing Bennett made everything worse for Joseph; he and Bennett were running things spiritually and temporally in Nauvoo respectively.
And, it won’t wash to claim that Joseph wanted to be the “alpha male” and be the only one with all the women–he was smacking Bennett down just as he was trying to persuade the 12 to practice plural marriage.
Far easier to say this was something God only required of him (and Bennett, if needed) than to push out the one guy who would have supported him, while trying to get up-tight Victorian prudish types like Heber C. Kimball, John Taylor, and Hyrum to follow suit….
I think the claim of sex resolves around the issue of children. Let us take the polyandrous cases as an example. Sylvia Session on her death bed told her daughter she was a daughter of the prophet Joseph Smith. And also probably because the mother was talking about a Temple thing told her daughter not to talk about it. Was she really Joseph’s biological child? We may never know short of DNA test results.
But Lucy Walker held her and Heber Kimball’s eight kids were Joseph Smiths children in the resurrection. I wonder if Sylvia meant something similar and thus confused the heck out of her daughter. So her daughter took it as a biological claim.
Angus Cannon reported hearing Brigham Young say before his death in 1877 that Patty Session’s said the same thing? If true then his statement is reliable. If Brigham Young never said it then Angus cannon made it up.
D.&C. 132:41-44 prevents a woman from having two husbands at the same time. It seems to require a divorce from the original husband in order not to be counted as adultury. With the 11 women living with the husbands again that requires a divorce from Joseph smith, or the woman would be guilty of adultury. So based on what i noticed i favor viewing these “time and for eternity” ceremonies as marriages in name only. I doubt the women thought it proper to live with Joseph Smith in life or have children.
I have read In Sacred Lonliness by Todd Compton on his list of 33 wives. I find these lists misleading as they seem to lump platonic marriages to Joseph Smith in name only with ones that may have involved sexuality. To me the ceremony wording just does not have to say only married for eternity to be a marriage only for eternity. To me its more of what the women and Joseph Smith thought was improper as far as sharing marital relations in the flesh meant. So to me the wording can be for “time and eternity” but sill be a platonic marriage in name only.
Didn’t they do DNA tests on purported descendants of Joseph and all came up negative?
There has been a study of alleged/claimed descendants of JS thru wives other than Emma. I heard a DNA researcher present a paper on it at MHA conference in 2005.
My understanding is that none of the claims so far holds up.
My understanding is DNA studies are still ongoing on a list of 7 or more reputed children of Joseph Smith via plural wives. That five have been proven not his. With Sylvia Sessions daughter Josephine i am not sure DNA studies on her and her descendants are still ongoing. I heard DNA studies wern’t able to confirm, or deny her claim one way or another. I once asked Ugo Perego via e-mail about what the status of his research on her was. He just told me he yet had reached no conclusions, but if he ever did that his research would be published.
I hope the research can eventually settle the truth or error of the remaining reputed children rumors. The DNA debate on children of Joseph Smith is far from over. The research is ongoing perhaps for a few years to come.