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SilentDawning wrote:
I had this listed, in my head, as another reason for using the plural marriage doctrine — to prove the loyalty of the people who professed to be faithful in the church. To prove the loyalty of people he would appoint to key positions.
It’s possible, SD. We just don’t know what was going on in his head, so your idea is possible. Although he didn’t seem to do this consistently with appointments to key positions.
Quote:There are times when I wondered if the Fanny Alger thing was a gateway.
It’s possible. It seems to be one of the toughest ways to do this…where he openly talked to the husbands in most cases, and did a lot of things that seem to be the difficult path to take as a process to just justify things. And as Ray pointed out…it wasn’t all young women, and there is the thing about not really seeing much offspring from it which adds more questions on what was really happening.
Lots of questions. But I like reading Quinn and Bushman to be more informed of the historical facts, rather than just ignore it and be ignorant to the complexity of it.
Quote:It’s odd — many very good people appear to have bought into the concept, so it appears that when couched in morality or doctrine, what is normally considered adultery becomes acceptable even in the eyes of the pure hearted.
It is odd, indeed.
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It’s possible, SD. We just don’t know what was going on in his head, so your idea is possible. Although he didn’t seem to do this consistently with appointments to key positions...later you mentioned he married women in all different age ranges…
I’m going to say what I really think here. I hope it doesn’t offend. If you use the premise that he made a mistake with Fanny Alger, and then entered the path of plural marriage as a result, and wanted to make it seem fully justifiable doctrinally, he would have HAD to mix up the ages. It reminds me of an Agatha Christie story called the ABC Murders. (Please don’t get sidetracked by the murder in the title, or the murder analogy, it has nothing to do with Joseph)….The detective determines that the first person knocked off had a last name that started with an “A”, the second person had a last name that started with a “B” and the next person’s last name started with a “C”. What you learn in the end, was that the murderer was really someone close to “B”, and disguised their connection by making it look like the actions of a serial killer following an alphabetical pattern. In short, he real murderer was obscuring his original motive — to remove the person whose last name started with a “B”. It was harder to connect his real motives to the murders when the person with a surname starting with “B” was part of a collection of seemingly unrelated other murders.
If Joseph was really pursuing lust for young girls, and trying to clothe it in doctrine, it would make sense to have women of all different ages in the plural marriage. With some of them, he didn’t even have intercourse. It would be interesting to know which ones he did, and which ones he didn’t. If he did it with all the young girls, but not most of the older women, it might suggest clearer motives.
I want to add — the reason Joseph didn’t test all of his high ranking leaders was perhaps he trusted some more than others. Or perhaps some had special skills and he didn’t want to lose them over his “test”. There could be a lot of reasons why he didn’t apply this test consistently.
I also think Joseph at this time was working and studying on the bible…trying to restore things of old back to this era. He was studying about Abraham and linking the human family for salvation, zion, and how things of the past were lost in Joseph’s day. Low and behold…wives and concubines came up. What’s that about?? It could be elaborate plans from Joseph. Or it could be like a lot of other things he was getting revelations on…questions of his day that led to trying to do things he thought the Lord was pointing him towards. And like a lot of things…not really stuff from God but from his own mind as he was trying to know the will of God, with honest efforts to do what he thought was right.
It really is a fascinating thing to think about how God works with prophets. And how inexact the process seems.
I honestly chalk it up to Joseph trying, even thinking it was required, but just off the mark a bit on what was truth. And as we saw with blacks and the priesthood…some things can be justified and taught and perpetuated for decades before it gets corrected. When i read what other things Joseph was trying to do, that seems to fit in more with his character and efforts than a grand scheme for carnal reasons. That’s just my opinion.
The whole thing, when viewed in its entirety, is complicated enough that I simply can’t reach firm conclusions about much of it. I can dislike it in every practical way, wish it wasn’t part of our history, think the idea might have started because of over-active hormones (along with a restorationist mindset while trying to better translate the Old Testament), believe it mutated improperly while in Utah, etc. – but . . . In a very real way, the idea of loving relationships lasting beyond death even when someone has had more than one deary loved spouse is extremely comforting and hope-enabling for many people. I can’t reject that idea entirely, knowing SO many people for whom it is a lifeline and godsend.
Without the whole polygamy/polyandry/eternal marriage conundrum, we probably wouldn’t have the beautiful concept of a Heavenly Mother – even with the issues of vagueness and some conclusions I personally don’t like.
This is one issue that I am perfectly fine leaving on a shelf for now and waiting to understand it in the next life – even as I believe it’s important to struggle with the issues it has caused and continues to cause in this life. I also admit a recognition of my privilege as a man in saying that.
SD, I think there’s an even simpler interpretation of the differences in ages of the women and I’ll also give the shoot from the hip disclaimer: She’s attractive. Oooh, her too. And that one. Oooh, ooh, her. Oh, most definitely her. With no regard for how old they were, driven purely by attraction, and as we all know – beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Wive selection could have boiled down to consolidating power. Age differences might owe themselves to who’s available for marriage in order to achieve that.
There’s also a simplistic explanation for the “this was only a test” situations. It’s the easy out when a proposal blows up in your face. Calm down, calm down. It was only a test.
Not saying that this represents the true motive, the true motives are certainly more complicated that that, but these are plausible possibilities.
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I suppose now that this has it’s own tread I can give a small review of RSR that I alluded to earlier. It’s a good book and it does an excellent job of placing you in the time period and in the circumstances. I found it incredibly easy to step into the perspective of JS. Reading the book left me with something I didn’t expect at all… sympathy for JS. Keep in mind, up until reading the book if I had to be brutally honest I would have said that JS was a con man, but isn’t it great to know that even con men can inspire people to do good.
I think it’s interesting that RSR is very detailed on some subjects and then takes a more high level approach in other areas. Here’s an
extremelyexaggerated example: lets say you got in a car accident and you had to testify about what happened in court. Your honor, I started out the day by stepping outside. It was cold so I went back in to get a jacket. There was frost on the windshield of my car and I didn’t have an ice scraper. I had to wait 7 minutes and 38 seconds for the car to warm up enough to melt the ice with the defroster. The windshield finally defrosted and I was off to work. I put the radio station on my favorite station, Z104. I got in a car wreck. I arrived at work, used my security badge to enter, sat down at my desk, logged in, and noticed I had 23 e-mails in my inbox. 19 were spam. Etc.
Notice how the level of detail dropped way off on the important place. What’s important to me isn’t important to someone else and vice versa, still there were times where I felt like RSR had gaps in the narrative. In my studies I recognized some areas were things appeared to be glossed over, sometimes it felt intentional.
At times the book seems like it is trying to justify JS’s behavior. I can’t decide if that was Bushman’s way of narrating the environment JS was very much a part of or whether it was an attempt to rationalize information the author thinks the reader might find troubling.
Make no mistake, it was a good book. It helped me understand the situations JS found himself in and it was easy to feel for the man. I also had to remind myself that it was a biography, not a book on “the issues.” I may have started reading it with an axe to grind so in that sense it may have been like the cave in Empire Strikes Back. You only find what you take with you.
🙂 Like I said, I haven’t finished the book yet (I’m a sloooooooooooooow reader) but I got this overwhelming sense that JS was just a child caught up in something that was much larger than himself… just like all of us.
I might have more thoughts on the book but that’s what comes to me right now.
Oh, a few more thoughts. A small part of me wondered if a play to sympathies was deliberately used to help some of the “pills” go down a little easier. Heber13 wrote:I can understand people wondering if Joseph was justifying carnal urges in a deceitful way…it’s one possible position. But reading RSR doesn’t give me the impression that is what Joseph was doing when put into context of other things Joseph was doing,
nor did the facts make Bushman lose his faith. I get what you are saying, I just wanted to clarify my thoughts. How to articulate this…
I get that it’s good to have examples of people that are able to see the facts and look past them. I feel like I’ve done that (to some minor extent
:angel: ). At the same time I don’t like the direction that can take people. Saying Bushman didn’t lose faith in light of all the facts might imply that his is the more favorable path. Does what I’m trying to say make sense? I’m reluctant to shine a light on someone for having kept the faith in spite of the issues because it runs the risk of making people feel like they’ve still got things “wrong” because they didn’t arrive a similar conclusion. I think it’s perfectly fine to look at the same facts and lose faith in certain things. Heck, I’m pretty sure we’ve all done our cafeteria thing and allowed faith in some things to go away and faith in other things to increase as a result of being exposed to facts.nibbler wrote:I’m reluctant to shine a light on someone for having kept the faith in spite of the issues because it runs the risk of making people feel like they’ve still got things “wrong” because they didn’t arrive a similar conclusion.
That’s fair. And actually my point is that it can be taken in various ways. One path is you can keep your faith, even if you are an expert in the realm of Joseph Smith history, which I think Bushman is. Others will see these and come to other conclusions about the motives of Joseph. I think Oliver Cowdery struggled with it. There is no one way or one path. I’ve acknowledged that I can accept SD’s hypotheticals are a possibility.
We should just be aware of what the facts are. Then we can choose how we interpret them based on our points of view.
Heber13 wrote:That’s fair. And actually my point is that it can be taken in various ways. One path is you can keep your faith, even if you are an expert in the realm of Joseph Smith history, which I think Bushman is.
I think it would be interesting to have a candid account of Richard Bushman’s faith journey. Was he like Ray in that he knew some of these things and thought about them from an early age or did he ever have a FC moment? What single piece of historical evidence might have been most troubling to him?
Either way I suspect that Bro. Bushman may see many things in church much like a sociologist or anthropologist – all about communities, their rituals, and the stories they tell to one another to develop meaning rather than divine truth revealed from heaven.
That is purely my speculation and I understand why Bro. Bushman might be reluctant to go on record about his own personal beliefs and how they may differ from what is now taught is SS.
nibbler wrote:SD, I think there’s an even simpler interpretation of the differences in ages of the women and I’ll also give the shoot from the hip disclaimer: She’s attractive. Oooh, her too. And that one. Oooh, ooh, her. Oh, most definitely her. With no regard for how old they were, driven purely by attraction, and as we all know – beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Wive selection could have boiled down to consolidating power. Age differences might owe themselves to who’s available for marriage in order to achieve that.
There’s also a simplistic explanation for the “this was only a test” situations. It’s the easy out when a proposal blows up in your face. Calm down, calm down. It was only a test.
I lean toward this view. I don’t think Joseph was specifically targeting young girls. I think in some cases, he was just going for whoever floated his boat at that particular time. And regarding Nibbler’s comment that he could be claiming that he was testing people when it blew up in his face, I’ve thought that exact thing. He did the same thing with Orson Hyde’s wife, when Orson was on a mission, and then again with Sidney Rigdon’s daughter. Do I have those people right? I think those were the ones. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong. But, there were multiple examples of Joseph proposing to somebody, and then when he got some push back that could quickly go public, he immediately backed down and said it was just a test for the woman to see if she would tell her husband about it.
I think each marriage had it’s own reason. Some of them for carnal pleasure, some just for show, and some for the thrill of power. What could possibly make a man feel more powerful than going up to another man and telling him that he wanted to marry his wife or daughter or sister, and get that man to actually give in. I think in some of those cases, he had no intention of having a sexual relationship with those women. It wasn’t always just about sex. He was getting those men to surrender their wives and daughters, with the promise that all of her children would also be Joseph’s children for the rest of eternity. Can you imagine the strain that would put on your marriage if you were living a TBM lifestyle, then the prophet comes to your house and says that God told him that he has to marry your wife for eternity, and that your children would be his for eternity? And if you hesitate, then he tells both of you that if you won’t agree to it, then he would be destroyed, which would cause the church to crumble. Oh, and you’ll be damned for eternity. However, if you agree to it, then your entire family will receive eternal salvation, and you’re wife and kids can live with you for the rest of time. I can’t imagine the stress that these poor women went through. Especially some of the younger ones, who were practically given away by their parents, with very little input from the women themselves. It all looks like a big power play to me. But that’s just my personal view.
Not sure of his motives, but for me, it seemed to have started with carnal desires with Fanny Alger, and grew from there. Regarding Bushman — I don’t think he can be frank about what he really thinks. We have the examples of the September 6 and perhaps MIchael Quinn, who is a frank historian. Most were excommunicated. BYU professors are not allowed to write or speak about topics that hurt the faith of the members or they can lose their jobs or face other unpleasant consequences.
And then, the book by Grant Palmer “An Insiders view of Mormon Origins” subjected him to Church disfellowshipment. He appeared to be on the radar for a subsequent publication and eventually resigned…so Bushman doesn’t have the freedom to openly disagree or claim a loss of faith. He has some freedom to publish as he is not a BYU Professor, if my facts are correct, so at least his employment doesn’t depend on making faithful statements, but his hands are tied, in my view. Apparently both Grant and Richard did podcasts on Mormon stories, which should be interesting to listen to at some point.
SilentDawning wrote:
Quote:Yet people seem to believe in the restoration nonetheless. I have trouble accepting that Joseph smith made these mistakes, but was a valid prophet anyway.
This is difficult for me also. We are taught that the spirit cannot strive with man except we are worthy. How can a man who is taking other men’s wives, for either lust or power, be considered worthy of revelation, not just for themselves, but for the entire church? How do we know that his version of the bible is truly inspired of God, or just what HE thought it meant when he read it? It has been said by more than a few here that if anyone today did what JS did, they would be excommunicated. How then can we take what JS says as revelation from God? I am not suggesting that he was not a prophet, but I do question if everything that he gave us is from God. And if it is not (and I expect most of you here to say it isn’t), how do we pick and choose what IS from God. Yes,we all have the right to personal revelation, but you can’t have a religion where each person gets to decide what is gospel principle and what isn’t. There would be no uniformity of doctrine.
I think this really describes my FC in a nutshell. If JS was breaking the law of chastity, how much of what he taught is actual gospel doctrine, and how much were his own personal belief that furthered and made “acceptable” his behavior. Oh, and why does Emma get such a bad rap? How would you feel if the love of your life was sleeping/marrying around behind your back and all you wanted was your own family back??
Amen to that!! Emma was a stand-up woman, and I’m amazed with what she put up with. You can’t blame her for fighting polygamy. “Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale” was another excellent book! She doesn’t get anywhere near the credit she deserves. And, I agree about how Joseph’s behavior makes it hard to know which teachings you can follow and which you can’t. That’s definitely a decision that each person has to make on an individual basis. As for me, I’ve chosen to throw out most of Joseph’s teachings, and I focus mainly on what Jesus Christ taught. When Christ came to the Earth, His teachings replaced a lot of the old Mosaic law from the Old Testament. Instead of eye-for-an-eye, turn the other cheek. Instead of burnt offerings and animal sacrifice, repentance and sacrament. The world that Jesus was born into was a dangerous, ruthless time to be living. Then, along comes this guy talking about love God, love your neighbor, serve one another… It was a refreshing new message for those times. Jesus Christ came to bring the world above the old laws of the Old Testament and to raise us to a new law. Then, along comes Joseph Smith, 1800 years later, re-implementing things from the Old Testament again, like polygamy and temples. If he’d lived longer than he did, he’d probably have us counting the number of steps we take on the Sabbath now. I don’t know, I just have a hard time finding any credibility in Joseph Smith, if you haven’t already noticed! But, I figure if I do what I can to follow Christ’s teachings and love God, love my fellowmen, and serve those around me, I can’t be too far off the path. I could be wrong, but that’s where I’m at with things.
If I’ve pieced it together correctly, Bushman had his own wrestle with beliefs, but they were more connected to Atheism. A few months ago when he spoke to a doubters group I attended, he was still discussing Atheism. Later after the event my husband spoke with him, and got the feeling that Bushman understands other people’s struggles, but Joseph Smith and early church history isn’t Bushman’s issue. Kind of like some people get sick and others don’t. Bushman is very humble and articulate, at least that was how I saw him. He loves the church, almost as a culture more than anything. Joseph Smith is just part of it and what happened 200 years ago really doesn’t affect Bushman. Bushman goes into this more in his book Believing History.
Quote:Yet people seem to believe in the restoration nonetheless. I have trouble accepting that Joseph smith made these mistakes, but was a valid prophet anyway.
Thats why I love the Old Testament. Have you read their stories? Try Jacob/Isreal – there is a hum dinger, from plotting and stealing his brothers birthright, concocting the plan with his mother, then have a favorite child after you have had 11 others, then having a daughter, Dinah, who was raped/or premarital sex Jacob ignores the issue, then the boy wants to marry her, but he is a gentile, so her older brothers – you know Rueben and Crew – the guys who threw Joseph down the well and lied about his death. Yes them – the say the gentile boy can marry her IF he and the whole town become circumcised. The town agrees, the men are in agony of healing, when surprise Rueben and Crew come in and slaughter them. The chapter ends with the family of Jacob fleeing, then offering sacrifice and the Lord still calling him Isreal.
Don’t ask me, but both JS and Jacob/Isreal seem to fail on the perfect soul scenario big time. I have decided to leave it up to God. It’s way too much for me to sort out.
In the past I may have looked to Joseph Smith as a person to revere, someone that rose above the rest of us to commune with Jehovah. Now I recognize that he was just like the rest of us and that means I too can commune with Jehovah. As stupid as it sounds, discovering all of Joseph Smith’s issues suddenly made deity more accessible to me.
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