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Let me just say this. Shawn. Thanks for the links. I will read them.
You are correct about the difference between the church and the gospel…you get that. Perhaps…that is why you are here.
RAY… just some good moderation today…some good follow up posts. And I mean that. Some days, not so much…today… I give you a pass and break.
Carry on boys.
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Thanks, friend. It’s a fine line, and I make plenty of mistakes.
😳 I hope I get it right enough to be an OK balance.🙂 Old-Timer wrote:Shawn, I think cwald is saying that many orthodox members don’t want Joseph to have been fully human – that they don’t want to see and admit faults and mistakes and even sins – that they have a problem with “the messenger” being a real man, not a caricature.
Stated that way, I agree with cwald – but I also agree with you that many orthodox members know all about Joseph’s weaknesses, mistakes and sins and don’t have a problem with them or him when it comes to accepting him as a prophet.
Everyone, this is a great example of why over-generalizations get really dicey really fast – and why they are so divisive. I have said this more than once here, but if we who are not as orthodox in our views don’t want to be stereotyped negatively and incorrectly (I’m thinking especially of the apologetics / Midgely thread) we ought not do the same thing to those who are more orthodox.
Kettles and pots and all that jazz.
I see what you mean.Ray, you are a good man and a good moderator. With that said, what may appear to be a divisive argument is really a respectful discussion, a least I see it that way and I have reason to hope cwald does, too. I am not offended by what he writes and I think he’s okay with what I write. I say that because I have outright apologized to him before and his response was something like “I
expectyou to speak your mind and you should apologize if you don’t” (that’s the gist of it as far as I can remember). Cool. :thumbup: Given the history, I wasn’t sure.
cwald wrote:Hi Shawn.
FWIW…I agreed with you that JS was a cool dude. I consider him to be a pretty down to earth liberal, rebellious, beer drinking hippy…with some awesome progressive ideals.
I’m okay with that.
Me too.
Shawn wrote:Ann wrote:The Ensign display’s intent seems to be to flesh him out, to satisfy an understandable curiosity about the appearance of historical figure, to help us get to know him better. Also to that end, a person growing up in the church could hear on a dozen occasions about his leg operation or what kinds of games he liked to play, but I went more than forty years not hearing anything substantial about his approach to and practice of plural marriage.
When I started learning about Joseph Smith’s plural marriages, I was surprised at how little I had heard about them, and some of the details were shocking. I think it would be good if lesson manuals at least mentioned Joseph’s plural marriages so people would not be so shocked by it. TheChurch’s websiteOne thing I realized is Joseph did not really marry women who already had a husband – not in the traditional sense, at least. When people are married, they live together, sleep together, and generally share their lives. Richard Bushman wrote:
Quote:The marital status of the plural wives further complicated the issue…All told, ten of Joseph’s plural wives were married to other men. All of them went on living with their first husbands after marrying the Prophet. The reasons for choosing married women can only be surmised. Not all were married to non-Mormon men: six of the ten husbands were active Latterday Saints. In most cases, the husband knew of the plural marriage and approved. The practice seems inexplicable today. Why would a husband consent?
The only answer seems to be the explanation Joseph gave when he asked a woman for her consent: they and their families would benefit spiritually from a close tie to the Prophet…There is no certain evidence that Joseph had sexual relations with any of the wives who were married to other men. They married because Joseph’s kingdom grew with the size of his family, and those bonded to that family would be exalted with him (Rough Stone Rolling, c 25).
So I say
they were notmarriages; they were sealings. He was married to them as much as I am married to Hillary Clinton. I think it was the same with some women who were not already married. I am writing a long paper regarding plural marriage, but I will summarize here by saying that I believe the practice was commanded by God. Here’s another excerpt from Rough Stone Rolling:
Quote:The possibility of an imaginary revelation, erupting from his own heart and subconscious mind, seems not to have occurred to Joseph. To him, the words came from heaven. They required obedience even though the demand seemed contradictory or wrong. The possibility of deception did occur to him. Satanic counterfeits concerned Joseph; he talked to the Saints about the detection of fraudulent angels. But when [one of his plural wives Mary Rollins] Lightner asked if perhaps plural marriage was of the devil, Joseph said no. In his mind, the revelation came from God, and he had to obey or suffer (c 25)
You’re sealed to Hillary Clinton? Cool…
But it’s a point well made.
mackay11 wrote:You’re sealed to Hillary Clinton? Cool…
But it’s a point well made.
I would like to be sealed to her wealth.I have heard this explanation, or at least something similar to it before, helped me understand why my ancestor was sealed to his mother-in-law and sister-in-law. It explains some, but definitely not all about the idea behind polygamy.
Quote:You’re sealed to Hillary Clinton? Cool…
For some reason, I don’t think selling Bill Clinton on polygamy would be very difficult.
rebeccad wrote:I have heard this explanation, or at least something similar to it before, helped me understand why my ancestor was sealed to his mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
It explains some, but definitely not all about the idea behind polygamy.
Quote:You’re sealed to Hillary Clinton? Cool…
For some reason, I don’t think selling Bill Clinton on polygamy would be very difficult.
Lol, two Hilaries…? Ouch…
My wife recently read the biography of the family Big Love was based on. She found it very interesting and finished sympathysing with the idea they followed. It was said by them ‘this is not about sex’ this is relationships.
I might read it too at some point. Might change my perspective on the 1800s practice.
Having followed this thread, one observation to make. While on some level Joseph was sealed to other women besides Emma and while some of them were already married, neither we nor the church knows exactly what was going on and any surmise is conjecture at best. Very little evidence of intimacy, no legitimate evidence of offspring. This makes it a difficult subject to discuss and stay on the facts. This is primarily why I see the church saying very little about this over the years. Why speak when what you say has nothing to do with another current person’s salvation and anything you say will be speculation. It would simply add to the already big list of things other leaders have said when they shouldn’t have. mackay11 wrote:Re. the earlier photo from RLDS. A guy in our ward a few years back was quite senior in the church media dept. He told priesthood one sunday that the church were in the process of investigating it to verify or deny it and until the brethren spoke on it we should stop emailing it to each other. We never heard anything else, I guess that means they were unable to verify it.
The LDS Church’s silence on the photo doesn’t mean anything. My belief is that it is JS, but also that there is no way to confirm it, short of another photo showing up. The LDS Church’s view, in my opinion, is that they don’t know if it is, they don’t know if it isn’t… and after the embarrassments of the Mark Hoffman forgeries, I doubt the LDS Church wants to be in the business of forensic study of items that can later be proved or disproved. In other words, if the church says one way or the other, and then another photo appears that contradicts the church’s conclusion, they will look foolish. In the absence of the church telling us what to think, we will have to form our own opinions
On Own Now wrote:SamBee,
Neither of those last two images are JS. The standing one is a politician from the time. The one “famous” picture is confusing because it is a daguerreotype. However, it is a daguerreotype of a painting. The earlier photo you posted is the one I find most compelling.
(By the way, the blond one is MacAulay Culkin’s brother!)
” The standing one is a politician from the time.”
But who?
” However, it is a daguerreotype of a painting.”
I disagree. I think it’s based on a real photograph, just badly touched up.
On Own Now wrote:mackay11 wrote:Re. the earlier photo from RLDS. A guy in our ward a few years back was quite senior in the church media dept. He told priesthood one sunday that the church were in the process of investigating it to verify or deny it and until the brethren spoke on it we should stop emailing it to each other. We never heard anything else, I guess that means they were unable to verify it.
The LDS Church’s silence on the photo doesn’t mean anything. My belief is that it is JS, but also that there is no way to confirm it, short of another photo showing up. The LDS Church’s view, in my opinion, is that they don’t know if it is, they don’t know if it isn’t… and after the embarrassments of the Mark Hoffman forgeries, I doubt the LDS Church wants to be in the business of forensic study of items that can later be proved or disproved. In other words, if the church says one way or the other, and then another photo appears that contradicts the church’s conclusion, they will look foolish. In the absence of the church telling us what to think, we will have to form our own opinions
I think it’s real, but I suspect that members are so use to the Socialist Realist* paintings of JS that it’s probably too much of a hot potato to change back.
As I’ve said though, the man in the photograph is actually quite handsome IMHO.
* i.e. the old artistic style of the Soviet Union, also found in Mao’s China. Tends to idealize historical figures. Mormon paintings can be similar. Note how Pres. Woodruff’s eyes are softened in LDS paintings, and Pres. GA Smith’s squint is corrected…
DBMormon wrote:Having followed this thread, one observation to make. While on some level Joseph was sealed to other women besides Emma and while some of them were already married, neither we nor the church knows exactly what was going on and any surmise is conjecture at best. Very little evidence of intimacy, no legitimate evidence of offspring. This makes it a difficult subject to discuss and stay on the facts. This is primarily why I see the church saying very little about this over the years. Why speak when what you say has nothing to do with another current person’s salvation and anything you say will be speculation. It would simply add to the already big list of things other leaders have said when they shouldn’t have.
I would agree that this would be a logical response by the Church
IFthe Church didn’t, in fact, go the opposite direction and demi-deify JS. Currently it is acceptable within the Church to proclaim that JS has gone on to his exaltation and claimed his godhood. However, one cannot stray even a little onto the other side of the line and question his personal foibles without being labeled unfaithful at best or heretic at worst. Cadence wrote:cwald wrote:Hi Shawn.
FWIW…I agreed with you that JS was a cool dude. I consider him to be a pretty down to earth liberal, rebellious, beer drinking hippy…with some awesome progressive ideals.
I’m okay with that.
Me too.
+1 me on this. I would have loved to have sat with JS and had a beer or two with him.
😆 Quote:However, one cannot stray even a little onto the other side of the line and question his personal foibles without being labeled unfaithful at best or heretic at worst.
That might have been true a while ago, and it still is true in too many local congregations, but it’s not true anymore to the extreme it once was. “Rough Stone Rolling” and the Joseph Smith Papers are two of the most visible examples, but there have been a decent number of scholarly works in the past decade by faithful, active members that deal with Joseph in a much more realistic way, including examinations of his “personal foibles”. I certainly don’t think we are where we ought to be in this regard yet, but we absolutely are moving in that direction.
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