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The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 24

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Part 24: CES Letter Polygamy & Polyandry Questions [Section E]

by Sarah Allen

 

Today, we’re talking about Fanny Alger, the nature of her relationship with Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery’s reaction to the whole thing, William McLellin, his relationship with the Church and with Emma Smith specifically, and maybe more. It’s a lot to cover, so I’m just going to start without a prolonged introduction.

An illegal marriage to Fanny Alger, which was described by Oliver Cowdery as a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair” – Rough Stone Rolling, p.323

All plural marriages for time or time and eternity performed in Kirtland and Nauvoo were illegal from a secular stance, so I’m not sure why Runnells is singling out this one as being so. As the Church’s essay on Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo states:

Polygamy had been permitted for millennia in many cultures and religions, but, with few exceptions, was rejected in Western cultures. In Joseph Smith’s time, monogamy was the only legal form of marriage in the United States. Joseph knew the practice of plural marriage would stir up public ire. After receiving the commandment, he taught a few associates about it, but he did not spread this teaching widely in the 1830s.

The Algers were some of those associates. We don’t know much at all about Joseph’s relationship with Fanny, the daughter who worked in the Smith home, and most of what we do know is from later accounts. Eliza R. Snow, who was well-acquainted with Fanny and the Smith family, listed her among Joseph’s plural wives for Andrew Jenson’s affidavits, so some people were directly aware of the union. However, most of what we have is rumors, innuendo, and other second- or third-hand sources. Many of those accounts are contradictory as well, which means there is very, very little we actually know and most everything else is just guesswork. We have to weigh the sources and decide which ones we think are the most trustworthy.

[Read more…] about The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 24

Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132 (additional post)

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What Do We Do with Section 132?

By Brian C. Hales

Doctrine and Covenants section 132 is undoubtedly the most controversial of all of Joseph Smith’s revelations because it mentions the practice of plural marriage. Ironically, it is also one of the least discussed of all of Joseph’s official teachings for the same reason.

The 2014 Gospel Topics Essay discussing plural marriage encourages a new transparency on this subject and the historical and doctrinal references within the revelation. Yet, talking about polygamy more frequently does not necessarily make it any easier to understand or accept. Why? Because it favors men and is impossible to defend it as being fair.

Not only is polygamy here in mortality very difficult to practice, an associated fear involves the possibility of eternal plural marriage, which from our current view might be considered eternal unfairness. I have a daughter who has harbored the anxiety that if she dies before her husband (to whom she is sealed) passes away, he might remarry in the temple and she would become an eternal polygamist without her choosing. Here’s a few thoughts on the subject: [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132 (additional post)

FAIR Conference Podcast #65 – Edwin E. Gantt, “Agentic Sexuality: How a Latter-day Saint Perspective Can Rescue Humanity from the Tyranny of the Abstract”

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Podcast: Download (13.0MB)

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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Edwin E. Gantt, Agentic Sexuality: How a Latter-day Saint Perspective Can Rescue Humanity from the Tyranny of the Abstract

A transcript is available here.

Edwin’s book, Who Is Truth: Reframing Our Questions for a Richer Faith, is available from our bookstore.

Edwin E. Gantt is currently Professor of Psychology at Brigham Young University and a Research Fellow of the Wheatley Institution. He received his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne University. He is the author of over 80 scholarly articles and book chapters. His primary research interests revolve around the questions of moral agency and the relationship between religion, science, and psychology. He is co-author (with Richard N. Williams) of Hijacking Science:  Exploring the Nature and Consequences of Overreach in Psychology, editor of the textbook series Taking Sides:  Clashing Views on Psychological Issues, and Co-Editor of the journal Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy (the official journal of the Association of Latter-day Saint Counselors and Psychologists). He teaches courses in the History and Philosophy of Psychology, Personality Theory, Qualitative Research Methods, Psychology of Religion, and (his favorite) LDS Perspectives on Psychology. He and his wife Anita live in Springville and have four wonderful sons, two amazing daughters-in-law, and two beautiful grandsons.

 

Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132

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Reading D&C 132 with Elder Quentin L. Cook’s Comments in Mind

by V.H. Cassler

If you were not reading carefully, you may have missed an extraordinary bit of commentary by Elder Quentin L. Cook in the July 2020 Ensign. Speaking about how Church history can be a source of strength and inspiration, Elder Cook stated [I’ve added some highlights]: [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132

The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 23

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Part 23: CES Letter Polygamy & Polyandry Questions [Section D]

by Sarah Allen

 

There are some heavy, complicated topics on the agenda for today, so I’m just going to dive right in. Again in big red letters, Jeremy Runnells continues:

JOSEPH’S POLYGAMY ALSO INCLUDED:

Dishonesty in public sermons, 1835 D&C 101:4, denials by Joseph Smith that he was practicing polygamy, Joseph’s destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor that exposed his polygamy and which destruction of the printing press initiated the chain of events that led to Joseph’s death.

First, it’s not as simple as just Joseph and some of the other early Church leaders lying, the way Jeremy tries to make it seem.

It’s incredibly difficult to boil down 15 years’ worth of religious, historical, political, and societal events down into something that makes sense for the average person who isn’t familiar with any of it, so I’m not even going to try. But we have to understand the climate these people were living in—they’d been shunned by family members for joining the Church; they’d been prevented from voting; they’d been driven from their homes at gunpoint without anything, more than once; they’d been blamed for all of the local unrest simply because they moved into an area and built a farm or city; they and their friends and family members had been starved, robbed, beaten, raped, and murdered; they were held under siege by the state militia; they’d had an extermination order placed against them; and their current situation was beginning to mirror that of Kirtland and Missouri. They were terrified of what might happen to them next. And Joseph and the Twelve were responsible for keeping all of them safe. They knew that if they publicly announced the plural marriage doctrine before they were in a position of relative safety, the Church would be destroyed—literally. The members would all be massacred and the Church would die out because there was no one left to carry it forward. That’s what they were facing, and they knew it.

In this article, Gregory Smith tries to put it in some context by giving an analogy: [Read more…] about The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 23

“The keys whereby he may ask and receive” (D&C 124)

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Doctrine and Covenants 124 includes instructions to the prophet Joseph Smith to “show” selected others “the keys whereby [they] may ask and receive” blessings (D&C 124: 95, 97). This seems to be an allusion to “the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the holy Priesthood” that are taught in the endowment (Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe [1941], 416).

As recently reaffirmed by President Russell M. Nelson, although temple procedures and presentations are adjusted from time to time to clarify meaning, the “temple ordinances and covenants are ancient” (The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation).  This statement raises the question: Is there any evidence of such ancient ordinances and covenants?

What follows is a very brief overview of some of the historical evidence.

The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 22

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Part 22: CES Letter Polygamy & Polyandry Questions [Section C]

by Sarah Allen

 

Before we dive in, I want to talk about something personal. When I originally wrote this post, it was with a very heavy heart. A few days before I sat down to write it, a woman who was a former acquaintance and coworker of mine—a part of my larger friend group at that job but not someone I was particularly close to personally—was abducted and murdered by a man we vaguely knew, another coworker of ours from a different department. Obviously, I was pretty shaken by all of that, and that friend group and I were shocked and devastated. She was a very kind, generous woman, and she will be missed.

The reason I’m sharing this personal information is because this is the part of the Letter that starts getting a little more vicious with its allegations of mistreatment and abuse of women. As a woman myself, I find these accusations particularly offensive when compared to actual violence toward women, such as what my old coworker suffered that week.

I have been sexually harassed in the past at school and at work. Over the years, I have been catcalled. I have had multiple customers hitting on me while I’m just trying to do my job. I have had men get mad at me when I declined to date them. I have been followed by strange men on the street, all the way up the block to a corner market and then all the way back down into my hotel, to the point where I had to get the front desk clerk to get rid of them for me. I had a complete stranger fixate on me over a Facebook post, find my personal information, and call me at all hours of the day and night. I have been forcibly kissed and groped in an elevator by a stranger in a foreign country where I had no way to fight him off. And I am no supermodel. I am an introvert who blends in with the crowd. Most of you wouldn’t look twice at me if you saw me walking past because I don’t stand out. Even my name is so blandly generic that you can’t Google it without further information. But even I’ve had my fair share of mistreatment, and I know many other women who have had similar experiences.

[Read more…] about The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 22

Come, Follow Me Week 45 – Doctrine and Covenants 125-128

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By Cassandra Hedelius

It’s difficult to write this post, because the subject is baptism for the dead, and my grandpa is dying, and I love him, and he’s never accepted the gospel. His death from old age isn’t tragic, but it would be if we didn’t have so much revelation from God about His plan. For this, I thank God for prophets.

When Joseph’s older brother Alvin died, a minister preached at his funeral and “intimated very strongly that [Alvin] had gone to hell, for Alvin was not a church member.”[1] This was obviously a tactless thing to say to a grieving family, but based on the knowledge that minister had, he wasn’t really wrong! The Bible is pretty clear that baptism is an eternal necessity. What that minister needed wasn’t sensitivity training, but more revealed truth. Let’s take the charitable view that he would have been ecstatic to learn that Alvin was not in fact damned, and that God is perfectly able to overcome paltry obstacles like people dying before having a chance to accept the truth.  [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 45 – Doctrine and Covenants 125-128

FAIR Conference Podcast #64 – Jeffrey Thayne, “Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim”

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Podcast: Download (10.9MB)

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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2021 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2021 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Jeffrey Thayne, Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim

A transcript is available here.

Jeffrey’s book, Who Is Truth: Reframing Our Questions for a Richer Faith, is available from our bookstore.

Dr. Jeffrey Thayne graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology. He completed his doctorate in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. He runs the popular Latter-day Saint Philosopher blog, and spends time engaging in worldview apologetics (articulating and exploring the worldview assumptions that inform our faith). He currently resides in Washington state with his wife and two children.

The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 21

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Part 21: CES Letter Polygamy & Polyandry Questions [Section B]

by Sarah Allen

 

Polygamy is probably the single biggest issue that people have with the Church, more than the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, other aspects of Church history, living prophets today, the rejection of the common model of Trinity, the lack of allowances for LGBTQ+ relationships, etc. It is, without a doubt, the #1 topic of jokes relating to the Church and to Utah in popular entertainment. It is a big stumbling block for a lot of people…including the early Saints who were taught it and who lived it.

That was by design. The idea of polygamy as an Abrahamic sacrifice to test the early Saints is a fairly common one, and for good reason. Sacrifice is the ultimate test we’re called to give on this Earth, because that’s how we exercise faith. It’s how we grow. It’s how we prove to God that we know what’s truly important. It’s the refiner’s fire that purifies us and sanctifies us. The Savior was sacrificed for us at His Father’s behest, because that what was necessary to bring about salvation, and the Savior was devoted to fulfilling His Father’s work. Can you imagine what that must have been like for Him, knowing what was coming and what He would have to do? And yet, He did it anyway. The courage, faith and love that must have taken is astronomical. And that same courage, faith and love is what is required of us, only on a smaller scale.

[Read more…] about The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 21