Utilisateur:RogerNicholson/Nauvoo Polygamy/Romance

Historical errors

A FAIR Analysis of: Utilisateur:RogerNicholson/Nauvoo Polygamy A work by author: George D. Smith Mind reading

Censorship

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Romance

G.D. Smith often presumes (without evidence or argument) that Joseph's plural marriages had a romantic and/or sexual basis. In presuming this, he ignores evidence to the contrary. For example, Richard Bushman has noted that

Romance played only a slight part. In making proposals, Joseph would sometimes say God had given a woman to him, or they were meant for each other, but there was no romantic talk of adoring love. He did not court his prospective wives by first trying to win their affections. Often he asked a relative—a father or an uncle—to propose the marriage. Sometimes one of his current wives proposed for him. When he made the proposal himself, a friend like Brigham Young was often present. THe language was religious and doctrinal....She was to seek spiritual confirmation....

Women—in partnership, not as individuals—were at last represented in Joseph's theology.^[1]

The following are some of our favorite quotes:

• xiv "The topic [of polygamy] was already on Joseph's mind, even in the 1820s."
• 21 "He had come effectively to de-emphasize the feelings of sin and guilt he had once experienced."
• 22 "…it must have been a fascinating courtship, conducted as it was among unseen spirits and Joseph's unsettling conversations with angels."
• 28 "…Joseph was haunted by the suspicion, which followed him from place to place, that he crossed moral boundaries in his friendship with other women."

Endnotes

1. [retour]  Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 440, 445.