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SnowEyes, I’m glad it helped. (One thing I find interesting about these threads is that they’re time-stamped, partly because the thing that seemed like yesterday was really two years ago.) But it’s also discouraging to see time ticking away post-polygamy essays and get the feeling that we still haven’t and may never really deal with the issue. Just yesterday a member of the Seventy at our stake conference finished a beautiful talk with the comment that he didn’t know why Joseph was killed. To be clear, I’m not saying it was polygamy alone, and I’m certainly not saying it was anything but murder. But to completely glide over it that way in a packed meeting house? To tell a story about Joseph giving a former slave his horse so he could get back south to help free his family? While ignoring the fact that trading around women not unlike livestock was causing massive upheaval in the church and its environs? I understand that he’s trying to round out the picture of Joseph, but everyone seems to want to do it without addressing polygamy, and that’s impossible.
I really think that if we want the best of Joseph’s thought to get some loft, we have to cut the ropes that attach it to the dead weight of polygamy.
I just came across this church article. It states that Zina married BY after “she was deserted by her husband.” I am stunned. There is hard fact that BY sent her husband on multiple missions and finally told him that he needed to go find a different wife. It was NOT desertion. https://www.lds.org/friend/1989/02/zina-diantha-huntington-young-angel-of-mercy?lang=eng Carol Lynn Pearson’s new book, “The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy” makes it plain that Henry was purposely kept away from her by BY with repeated mission calls. That something so false would end up on LDS.org is appalling. If ever there was a case of unrighteous dominion and blatant manipulation by BY for his own personal agenda this is it. Just one of many things he’s going to have to answer for. Sounds like something that needs to be called out. AP, why not write a guest post on one of the bigger blogs and ask everyone to click on the “feedback” button at the bottom of the LDS.ORG page you have a link.
The magazine editors need to know this is the kind of whitewashing that is causing people to leave.
That’s an article from February 1989. When did more accurate details of the story start to become more clear to people? Was this article quoted or linked to in a more recent church publication? How would the church go about correcting something like this? If someone were to redact or change content in the archive it would be viewed as a different type of whitewashing. Maybe have the article in its original format with an addendum on the end to correct any mistakes? That would be a full time job, they’d have a hard time amending the archives based on the work that the Race and the Priesthood essay alone generated.
I’m not excusing the church, I don’t even know what the person that wrote the original article knew when they wrote it. I’m just saying that I’d expect things like this to be littered throughout the church archives, even the general conference archives.
Maybe the approach that was taken with the Race and the Priesthood essay? Provide new information that supersedes the old but both the old and the new are available. Someone cites a justification for the ban from a conference talk in 1894? I can cite an essay written in 2014 correcting them. There’s still the issue of the updated views not receiving near as much spotlight as the original views. We could do a better job with getting the word out and not rely so much on generational replacement to solve all our problems.
I hate to say it, I’m just trying to be real, but if you’re waiting for an article in the Friend about BY abusing his authority… I don’t see it happening. The only case where the church comes out without a black eye is to never repeat the teaching and hope no one comes along to call you out on it. The average charitable case would be to come out with an official “our bad” but by now there are so many skeletons in the closet we’d be the Church of Our Bad of Latter-day Saints.
Great, now I have this mental image. Picture it, it’s the Saturday morning session of general conference (or whichever session has the lowest ratings). The speaker says, “We’d like to issue the following corrections.” and then this massive text wall in 8pt font scrolls across the screen at 60 mph. E.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSxbQIHvixkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSxbQIHvixk” class=”bbcode_url”> Bonus if they do it during a prayer while people’s eyes are closed.
😈 :angel: nibbler wrote:Bonus if they do it during a prayer while people’s eyes are closed.
😈 :angel:
They could also do it in the audit report section.At least the author should have mentioned that she was a plural wife of JS at the same time she was legally married to Henry Jacobs. The feedback idea was a good one. I’ll let you know if I get a response. Quote:How would the church go about correcting something like this?
All I can say is that the church had a real opportunity in the essays to deal with many “somethings like this,” and they squandered it. (Can y’all tell? I’m still extremely disappointed in those.)
There could have been blanket statements that addressed a hundred or a thousand like somethings at a time, but they didn’t do it.
Combing through all church publications is not practical. Revising the essays is doable. And it would be welcome evidence to modern LDS women and girls that we and our leaders are on the same planet. It’s not that polygamy happened; it’s how they want us to view and talk about it now that is so objectionable.
I actually found that article about Zina last week and I don’t like it. The article “Zina and Her Men” ( FairMormon linknotdesert them. It states:
Quote:After the 1844 death of Joseph Smith, the Saints in Nauvoo redoubled their efforts to complete the temple. Early on the morning of January 3, 1846, Henry and Zina received their washings, anointings, and endowments, being among the first company through the temple that day. A month later they were back in the temple, on February 2, 1846. On this day Zina received her second anointing from Parley P. Pratt, but there is no record of such being done for Henry. The records, however, do indicate that sealings were performed that day that involved Zina:
Quote:Joseph Smith (martyred) Dec 23, 1805 Sharon, Windsor Co. Vermont
Zina Diantha Huntington Jan 31 – 1821 Watertown, Jefferson Co. N.Y. were sealed husband & wife for time & all eternity (Prest. Brigham Young acting proxy for the deceased).
Brigham Young & Zina Diantha Smith were then sealed husband & wife for time by H.C. Kimball in presence of William D. Huntington, & Henry B. Jacobs & J.D.L. Young, Henry B. Jacobs expressed his willingness that it should be so in the presence of these witnesses done at 15 m. to 6.
Franklin D. Richards Clk
So Henry was actually there when Brigham and Zina were sealed. Also this:
Quote:When Henry and Zina were forced out of Nauvoo a week later as part of the general exodus from the city, they left as husband and wife…There is no doubt that the marriage of Henry and Zina dissolved at Mt. Pisgah; it was here for a very short time–just a matter of days–that they last lived together.
However, there is little support for the idea that Brigham told Henry to go find a different wife:
Quote:Critics of the early Saints have, often with glee, latched onto William Hall’s story and used it as a prime example of ecclesiastical abuse, pitting a powerful Brigham Young against a penniless and ill Henry Jacobs, with Zina as some kind of prize for the winner of their imagined contest. It is easy to understand how one might see things that way; it is certainly the way that William Hall portrayed the episode:
Quote:At a place called, by the Mormons, Pisgah, in Iowa, as they were passing through to Council Bluffs, Brigham Young spoke in this wise, in the hearing of hundreds: He said it was time for men who were walking in other men’s shoes to step out of them. “Brother Jacobs,” he says, “the woman you claim for a wife does not belong to you. She is the spiritual wife of brother Joseph, sealed up to him. I am his proxy, and she, in this behalf, with her children, are my property. You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirit.”
The immediate problem with such a statement is that there is no contemporary corroboration for it. Hall states that Brigham’s statement was made in the hearing of hundreds of people, yet there are no other diaries that indicate such a statement or, indeed, any statement from Brigham to Henry…I’m trying harder to be open-minded and pleasant about the people at FAIR. I think the recent conference speakers are generating a lot of good discussion. Plus, it’s not like I know any of them personally. And I wouldn’t want them to talk about me not knowing me But the above is a perfect example of what I can’t stand about their approach. This isn’t a game of “Gotcha!” So what, SO WHAT, that the gleeful accusation of critics can’t be corroborated in this instance? What the does record
as a whole– all the journals and reminiscences of all the women included – say about Mormon polygamy? There is cajoling and coercion in abundance. Speak to that. Stop talking about Abrahamic tests or “misunderstandings.” Start hearing with a modern woman’s ears what the church is saying: The coercion that went on was God’s will and we must keep this door ajar…because ya never know. Are you serious?Shawn, I’m not criticizing bringing up the “rest of the story” here. Hope you know that.
Last thing: To my mind, the real “immediate problem with such a statement” is that is sounds
just likethings that BY did say on many other verified occasions. Ann wrote:
Last thing: To my mind, the real “immediate problem with such a statement” is that is soundsjust likethings that BY did say on many other verified occasions.
Let the church say amen.Shawn wrote:You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirit.”
If this statement is true then it would provide one more evidence of the doctrine of “kindred spirits” (essentially that there were spirits that had pre-existing relationships and commitments in the pre-mortal life. Somewhat like “soul mates.”) underpinning the practice of polygamy.
To be fair to FAIR, that article is from the 2006 FAIR conference. I am quite certain it would be different if written by the current organization.
Old Timer wrote:To be fair to FAIR, that article is from the 2006 FAIR conference.
I am quite certain it would be different if written by the current organization.
I can agree. I don’t read at FAIR. Do they routinely revisit and revise, I wonder.
I do sense that FAIR has made a change. I by and large wrote off the “old” FAIR as it didn’t answer almost any of my questions / concerns. It felt too much of “you are making too big of a deal out of this” along with “twist your head this way to see that problem in a better light” and “turn your head totally different to see this other issue” and even “stand on your head”. They had a few other issues I won’t go into. But the new podcast (thanks hawkgrrrl for getting me to start listening again) is really quite different than the old ones and they are bringing in some really different authors – most are not even LDS. They bring some really interesting topics and seem to be suggesting to really be more nuanced.
And with their latest conference with Mason’s talk and some comments by Boyd Peterson, it is clear they are trying a different tactic.
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