Joseph Smith’s 40 Wives: It’s What They Didn’t Say

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Nov 192014
 

I learned that Joseph Smith had many wives when I was in seminary at Provo High School in the 1970’s. It bothered me, but I figured if the Church is true we would just have to accept certain doctrines whether we liked them or not or understood them or not. It was the same with the teaching that Heavenly Father came down and had sexual intercourse with Mary, the mother of Jesus. I clearly remember sitting in my seminary class in 10th grade. The teacher said that Jesus was the “literal” son of Heavenly father and was conceived in the same way that the rest of us were. I was mortified. Just to clarify and make sure I understood him correctly, I went up after class and asked,

“Brother Tanner, are you saying that…well, you know…that Heavenly Father came down and, well, you know,” I felt my cheeks turning red, “that he ‘did it’ with Mary?”

“That’s right,” the teacher replied. “But there was nothing immoral about it. Mary was set apart as one of Heavenly Father’s wives in the preexistence.”

“But What about Joseph?” My mind was reeling. That poor man! Spending his life with Mary for “time only,” while in the eternities she would be given back to Heavenly Father.

“We don’t have to worry about that,” Brother Tanner said. “It will all be worked out when this life is over.”

My eyes welled up with tears, and as soon as I got out the door of the seminary building I ran across the lawn behind the school, weeping. “How can this be?” I cried out in silent prayer. “Heavenly Father, please help me understand!” The thought that maybe the Church wasn’t true struck me, and I was suddenly gripped with fear. What if I had made the biggest mistake of my life by becoming a Mormon?

For days I was in turmoil. Fast & Testimony Meeting Sunday approached, and when it came I heard affirmation after affirmation by all the people I respected as they testified of the truthfulness of the gospel. I felt comforted at last. I decided to put Jesus’ conception on a mental shelf tucked carefully away in the back of my mind. If the Church was true then all the things I didn’t understand at present would be sorted out in the afterlife. Polygamy was one of those issues.

The seminary program rotated the curriculum over a four-year period, so from ninth through twelfth grades students would learn about the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants/Pearl of Great Price, Old Testament, and New Testament. During the year we studied the D&C I learned about Joseph Smith’s polygamy and how Emma had a hard time coming to terms with it. I was taught that Joseph himself was loathe to take on other wives, but that an angel with a drawn flaming sword threatened to take his life if he didn’t obey God and live the principle of plural marriage. I felt sorry for him and Emma both.

Over the years we didn’t hear much about Joseph Smith’s polygamy. The knowledge of it was always bubbling under the surface, and on the rare occasions when it was brought up in a Sunday school or Relief Society lesson it was always spoken in somber and reverential tones. If the Prophet Joseph Smith wasn’t too happy about having to have more than one wife, then we shouldn’t be happy discussing it. That was our inference.

Brigham Young and his 50-something wives was a different story altogether. It was almost an enjoyable narrative to discuss, as it was easy to imagine President Young compassionately marrying as many pioneer widows as possible, whose husbands had perished on the plains. Of course, I secretly harbored the thought that he could have just provided for them instead of marrying them, which would have been the nobler thing to do; giving to someone that you know can’t give back. Otherwise it appeared too gauche: I’ll take care of you as long as you put out once every 53 days.

I knew a lot about the Church’s history and the foibles of its leaders. I knew they weren’t perfect and didn’t expect them to be. Maybe a cut above the rest of us; after all, they were so valiant in the preexistence that they were sent down to earth to be the great leaders of The Restoration. The Church told us not to expect perfection from its leaders, although we were warned never to speak ill of them. The truth was they were human too. But that’s only half the story.

It wasn’t the half-truths (the half that I was told) that made me leave the Church. It was the other half, the untold half that caused me to realize that Mormonism is not the Way, the Truth, and the Life that leads to reconciliation with God. The Mormon Church, for all the good it may have done over the last couple centuries, is simply a religion that began in the imagination of a man named Joseph Smith and evolved into a massive organization ran by men whose ideals got confused somewhere along the way.

The history shows that Mormonism was never based on truth. It began with a con about Gold Plates that (conveniently) got taken up to heaven, that were never actually seen by the physical eyes of the Three Witnesses, but rather with their “spiritual eyes” (in other words they imagined it).

You see, as members of the Church we were told one thing, but the reality was another.

  • The Urim and Thummim? Smith buried his face in his hat.
  • The angel Moroni? The original story was the angel Nephi.
  • Joseph had a few wives? 40 to be exact, including a 14-year-old and other men’s wives.
  • The Temple Ceremony? Lifted from the Masons.
  • American Indians descended from Jews? DNA proves otherwise.
  • Book of Abraham written by the Patriarch Abraham himself? Uh, not.
  • Early Mormons persecuted? Yes, after doing some pretty horrendous things first.

I didn’t leave the Church because of the things I was taught; I left over the things I wasn’t. When I found out the details they weren’t telling me, they denied it despite the evidence, like a five year old insisting he didn’t get into the cookies when there are crumbs all over his shirt and remnants of chocolate chips in his teeth. And when I got the courage to point out that “the emperor had no clothes,” they demonized me and threatened to excommunicate me simply for speaking the truth.

To those Mormons who are now questioning, whose faith has been shaken, I implore you to do your own research. The Church lied to you about many things; how can you trust that their new “transparency” (think “Perestroika and Glasnost”) is really all that transparent?

Liars, Damned Liars, and Mormon Apologists

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Oct 282014
 

Lies

The expression, “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics,” made popular by Mark Twain[1] was given a twist by a judge who postulated there are three kinds of witnesses: “Liars, damned liars, and experts.”[2] Given the recent admission—or shall I say confession—by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that its founder Joseph Smith took teenage brides as young as 14, as well as married other’s men’s wives, one has to wonder what else the organization and its expert apologists have been less than forthright about.

For decades (or longer) BYU’s paid-apologists have excoriated and cast aspersions on those who vocalized concerns about or publicized accounts of Joseph Smith’s polygamous marriages, especially if the information came from non- or ex-Mormons. LDS historians who published scholarly work detailing discrepancies in the Church’s doctrines or added true color to its white-washed history have been excommunicated or disfellowshipped for their candor (example, the “September Six”).[3] Even though crow-pie should be on the menu at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship cafeteria, the Church’s new essay entitled Plural Marriage in Nauvoo will have to do.

Up until now, the majority of devout Mormons (and more so the younger generations) were unaware that by 1844, the year Joseph Smith was killed by a mob, he had accumulated roughly 33 wives; 11 between the ages of 14 and 20, and another 11 concurrently married to other men. The leader was 38 years old when he took 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball to wife. This was after he tried getting Helen’s father, Heber C. Kimball, to surrender his wife Vilate to him. Kimball refused, until Smith commanded him “in the name of the Lord” to do so.[4] When Kimball presented his wife to the Mormon prophet, Smith declared it was only an “Abrahamic test.” Perhaps Smith had his eye on Helen all along and figured Kimball would gladly give his daughter’s hand in marriage after nearly losing his own wife. To make the marriage proposal more attractive, the prophet promised eternal life for the Kimball family if they would accept. In Helen’s own words, Smith came to her house,

[and explained] the principle of Celestial marrage [sic]…After which he said to me, ‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.’[5]

Although uncommon, it wasn’t unheard of for a 14-year old girl to marry in the 19th century; however, a 14-year-old girl marrying a 38-year-old man would certainly have raised eyebrows. As others online have observed, I, too, find it interesting that whenever LDS prophets, apostles, and apologists describe Joseph Smith at the time of his First Vision experience, it’s as:

  • A 14-year-old boy
  • Being very tender of years
  • Only 14 years old
  • Young boy
  • So young
  • Youth of 14
  • Young lad
  • A boy, a mere lad

Incongruously, Kimball is described more like an adult, marrying Smith “several months before her 15th birthday” and that “some women married in their mid-teens” (emphasis mine).[6] At least the Church is (finally) being more honest than its founder, who vehemently denied having plural wives all the while being a practicing polygamist;

What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one.[7]

Additionally, Smith lied repeatedly to his first wife, Emma, about his other marriages, urging his plural wives to keep secret or to participate in cover-ups. The Church speculates in its essay that not all of Smith’s marriages were consummated, somewhat akin–in my opinion–to former president Bill Clinton insisting he didn’t inhale while smoking weed. 

Two sets of sisters had been “adopted” into the Smith family as foster children when their parents died (Emily and Eliza Partridge, ages 16 and 20 respectively; and Sarah and Maria Lawrence, ages 16 and 18). Smith soon married them, unbeknownst to Emma. His first plural wife was 16-year-old Fanny Alger, who was a hired servant in the Smith home.[8] Smith’s counselor, friend, and confidante Oliver Cowdery referred to Smith’s relationship with Alger as a “dirty, filthy, nasty affair.”[9]

There are many good, reliable sources that go in-depth on the polygamous marriages of Joseph Smith. One such source is the well-documented book In Sacred Loneliness by LDS researcher Todd Compton, a practicing Latter-day Saint. Information can also be researched through the Church’s genealogy library.

My article isn’t so much to inform as it is to point out that ex-Mormons, so-called anti-Mormons and apostates have finally been vindicated. The issue of Smith’s polyandry was a deal-breaker for me when I was in the process of finding out that Mormonism wasn’t what it claimed to be. There were many troubling issues that I just couldn’t reconcile, but the fact that the revered Prophet Joseph Smith took young teenage brides and women already married to other men as his own wives was the final nail in Mormonism’s coffin. I could no longer believe he was a true prophet of God.

For the last 14 years whenever I’ve brought up Smith’s polyandry to my LDS family and friends, I’ve been told I was mistaken or misled. When I wrote about it in articles, Mormons who don’t know me have sent emails calling me not only a liar, but a damned liar at that. That hurts. It’s awful to be pitied by loved ones and scorned by strangers too scared, stubborn, or unwilling to look at the evidence. I’m not holding my breath for any apologies. Sometimes it just feels good to say “I told you so.”

References:

[1] Retrieved from http://www.twainquotes.com/Statistics.html
[2]  Attributed to Lord Young, as quoted from A Time to Keep (1934) by Dr. Halliday Sutherland.
[3] Haglund, David. The Case of the Mormon Historian. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2012/11/d_michael_quinn_and_mormon_excommunication_the_complicated_life_of_a_mormon.html
[4] Life of Heber C. Kimball. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/lifeofheberckimb00whitrich#page/335/mode/1up
[5] Retrieved from http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/26-HelenMarKimball.htm
[6] Retrieved from https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng
[7] History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 411.
[8] http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/02-FannyAlger.htm
[9] Compton, Todd. In Sacred Loneliness. Pp. 26-28, 34-35, 38-39