- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Quote:
No worries at all! The issue for me anymore isn’t polygamy per se, it’s whether I fit into a church that has just condoned it anew.Ann – You have my support whichever way you need to go.
Thanks, Ann, for sharing the article, and thanks everyone for your responses. The thread has been both disheartening and a pleasure to read, in that it deals with such a sensitive topic that’s always bothered me, but at the same time, it’s comforting to know that there are so many others out there who struggle with this part of the church’s history and doctrine. I’ve learned a lot about polygamy that I didn’t know before joining this group, and I’m very glad for the knowledge and insight from y’all. Most members who lived while it was being taught actively didn’t accept it personally or live it. You aren’t alone by any stretch. Old-Timer wrote:Most members who lived while it was being taught actively didn’t accept it personally or live it. You aren’t alone by any stretch.
Wasn’t it estimated to be about 7-8% of membership? I seem to remember seeing that estimate, although it was difficult to know because of so much hidden from public records for obviousl reasons.Both sides of my family (mom’s and dad’s) all go back to pioneer ancestry. I have not found anyone on either side of my family that accepted it or practiced it. I’m still looking, but haven’t found any, and they were mostly all active according to family journals.
Where it was greatest was in the upper leadership positions of the church, I think.
But it is a good reminder…we don’t like it and many even back then didn’t…it almost seemed to become a test of faith for some called to live it. (shudder). It is as hard to imagine God would ask that, and even let it be lived for decades, just as a test. I mean, even Abraham was spared by the angel from sacrificing his son, after he proved he was willing…but he didn’t actually have to carry it out.
We tend to think there is no place for us if we don’t accept or live something (in this case, polygamy), but most members throughout our modern history have not accepted or lived something (even polygamy when it was taught as the ideal). I’m not trying to minimize the difficulty of something, particularly at the emotional level, but it’s important to understand that our discomfort with or even rejection of something that is taught does not make us unique in the modern LDS Church. MANY people don’t have a faith crisis specifically because they reject some things and just don’t worry about doing so. Personalities differ, so I’m not saying one reaction is right and one is wrong. I’m just saying we are nowhere close to alone in this regard.
Quote:Both sides of my family (mom’s and dad’s) all go back to pioneer ancestry. I have not found anyone on either side of my family that accepted it or practiced it. I’m still looking, but haven’t found any, and they were mostly all active according to family journals.
I have a similar history, and my pioneer ancestors met Joseph and Hyrum right off the boat, helped them parcel out land in Nauvoo for new Saints who kept coming in. Eventually crossed the plains twice. Once with the 2nd company, then returned to get John Taylor’s cattle and bring them across. Once they settled in Salt Lake – they were commissioned to settle Southern Utah. Worked closely with Parley Pratt and so on. Only one person practiced it, some cousin, ironically it was women, she divorced her husband because he wouldn’t practice polygamy and hitched herself to a man who would. Now there is a stunner. Other than that we have no record of practice or of request to practice or anything. So it is mysterious how it all went down, even after Joseph.
Hawkgrrrl – I think you provided a voice for a problem previously passed over in bloggernacle discussion. Polygamy went from being the first thing ‘on my shelf’ as a fourteen year old girl (it kept me up at night; I was the kind of youth who was almost in competition with myself to be the most obedient, to live with exactness, and the thought of my reward being part of a harem, while my husband/lord figure created worlds with Jesus was something I felt very guilty for hating) to what cracked it. I felt frustrated that the church acknowledged in one line that polygamy was most negative for women, and in another explained that God didn’t give specifics on how to institute polygamy but he did give the power on that one to men. Nothing underlines what I feel to be second-classhood more than this for me.
Old-Timer wrote:We tend to think there is no place for us if we don’t accept or live something (in this case, polygamy), but most members throughout our modern history have not accepted or lived something (even polygamy when it was taught as the ideal).
I’m not trying to minimize the difficulty of something, particularly at the emotional level, but it’s important to understand that our discomfort with or even rejection of something that is taught does not make us unique in the modern LDS Church. MANY people don’t have a faith crisis specifically because they reject some things and just don’t worry about doing so. Personalities differ, so I’m not saying one reaction is right and one is wrong. I’m just saying we are nowhere close to alone in this regard.
I see what you’re saying. I liked the fMh piece because the author wasn’t obsessed with polygamy. It came more or less uninvited into her thoughts, conversations, classes, church activities. She’s living her life. But we see the cost, the negatives,
the toll on herfor living and worshipping with people who believe so differently. Could I be in a church that updates its website to say, “Freedom is God’s standard unless He commands slavery?” That’s extreme, but that’s what this situation verges on for me. (For me, I get that it doesn’t for others.) I have only recently rejected polygamy. I have defended it before on this forum and I am very sorry for that. Ann: “The issue for me anymore isn’t polygamy per se, it’s whether I fit into a church that has just condoned it anew.” I feel that way, too. Realistically, I don’t know what the church could have done better in those essays aside from paying some attention to how women would see them (which is obviously too big an ask), but even so, there is nothing short of refuting it entirely that would satisfy me, so realistically, it’s a no win. Wow Shawn that is a big change. I agree with what many have said that polygamy slowly erodes and destroys many lds women from the inside out still to this day. That it truly places women’s eternal worth to not only their husbands but also to Heavenly Father into question. The sad part is that lds women are so conditioned to not question and accept blindly what they are told that many will never admit openly what they feel internally. How can they when lds women of the past were threatened with eternal damnation if they did not comply? It was Annie Clark Tanner’s, “A Mormon Mother” that convinced me about polygamy and what it did to women. Eleanor Roosevelt was quoted as saying she could never read it without crying. My first wife read it and told me about it around the time that her mother gave me a copy of “A Book of Mormons”, not knowing what it was. The two together pretty much finished off my shelf. I read Tanner’s book myself sometime later and that sealed it for me. I don’t see God in the black priesthood/temple and I’m glad that the church has almost entirely disavowed it. I also don’t see God in Polygamy. I’m glad the church essay has opened up to the reality of it. I hope that one day they will take the next step and disavow it too.
In my view:
There was no commanding angel
There was no flaming sword
There was no revelation behind section 132
There was no divine mandate for polygamy
We don’t have to wrestle with why God would command this. He didn’t.
mackay11 wrote:I don’t see God in the black priesthood/temple and I’m glad that the church has almost entirely disavowed it.
I also don’t see God in Polygamy. I’m glad the church essay has opened up to the reality of it. I hope that one day they will take the next step and disavow it too.
In my view:
There was no commanding angel
There was no flaming sword
There was no revelation behind section 132
There was no divine mandate for polygamy
We don’t have to wrestle with why God would command this. He didn’t.
I completely agree with you Mac, and feel the same way. However, the vast majority of church members don’t view it this way at all, leaving us to deal with them. That generally means biting our tongues in meetings and conversations while essentially being forced to listen to that which goes against our own beliefs.
Dax wrote:Wow Shawn that is a big change.
Yep, and it’s been a miserable change. What I mean is that it sucks to learn about how ugly it really was, but it would be worse for me to stick to the notion that “God commanded it, and that’s that.”
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.