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Does anyone want to share their opinions on this subject? Not in a critical way, but how do you deal with the fact that Joseph married other men’s wives? I think one of the most difficult questions to answer is “why did Joseph marry Orson Hyde’s wife when Orson was still out on his famous mission to the holy land?” I know it’s all speculation, but sometimes helpful speculation can help displace negative thoughts when something is difficult to understand.
Hush! put the crazy uncle back up in the attic 😆 We don’t talk about that here!I’m just kidding.
This is most definately a tough topic for people, a lot of people. I would love to get a conversation going about it.
Short answer: I have come to believe that Joseph learned as he grew, and that he came to see polygamy very differently than Brigham did. I look at the dynastic and communal sealing nature of his situation and the literal “multiple wives of one husband with lots and lots of kids” nature of what came to be after the martyrdom, and I see two very different things for two very different times. I don’t think the “raise up seed unto me” concept of Jacob 2 deals with number of kids, but I do think it deals with posterity forged in the furnace of affliction.
It also created, in a very real way, a new and unique ethnicity – and I think that is not insignificant.Finally, I think the practice of polygamy burned into their souls the concept of eternal marriage and communal unity in the hereafter that is a bit different than understood by the world.
Bushman said Joseph lusted for kin more than he lusted for women. To me he seems to have a bottomless pit of need for family. He also seemed to not really understand the endowment or the principles of sealing very clearly. He seems to be not just making it up as he goes, but trying to make sense of it. I think he struggled to understand these ideas, and possibly misinterpreted some. But here are some things that help me:
– Many women who initially hated the idea said they received a spiritual confirmation that they should participate. Were they deluded into it? While they were undoubtedly pressured, there were some who vehemently resisted pressure and later accepted it based on their own spiritual confirmation. I’m not willing to dismiss those women out of hand. Who am I to judge?
– Even if Joseph committed adultery (vs. polygamy), I can disaggregate that from the body of his work. He created a world-class theology. There’s more to it than just the man. And knowing I am a sinner, I’m not inclined to judge. His sins don’t justify my own. We tend to forget that all human beings are sinners.
Lowell Bennion rightly theorized that in a weird way the idea of eventual polygamy (in the CK or whatever) probably makes married couples less close than they might otherwise be, robbing them of their intimacy because they are resigned to the idea that marriage should not be intimate between a couple, but that we should be less possessive than that kind of intimacy would entail.
OK – I’ll say it….I think it is all of the devil! I think both JS, BY and whoever else practiced it were misled.
Seriously I dont get it at all….probably never will so if I see it in the afterlife I will get it then! I think if I do see it, it will be nothing like how it was practiced on earth.
Yes I could get it if it was just a man taking responsibility for a woman’s temporal needs etc (eg when her husband died at war or whatever etc)…thus 1st wife would have normal marriage (eg sexual bond), 2nd wife would be cared for in all material ways but would have more of brother/sister type love for the new husband taking that on etc…this would show me that God just wants all women to be able to enjoy the peace of being looked after etc….. but the facts show it was not practiced like this at all…men going behind their wives backs proposing marriage to others (many teenagers and married women), men going against the law, lying publicly etc…..that behaviour is not of God. Well not the one I believe in anyway.
But the whole BIG LOVE scene of multiple sexual partners, all these wives playing happy families etc is not on my wave length. All but the 1st wife feel less then what they should in my opinion…the God I believe in wants EVERY woman to feel cherished etc…and I pesonally do not feel you can get that if you are sharing one man among multiple women in the physical sense…it just destroys the beauty of sex when it is shared…..
Anyway thats my 2cents.
Opps. I did not mean to sound critical of what past leaders have said/practiced. I just dont believe it was right.
If I have offended anyone I aplogize.
Sally M – FWIW, I don’t like it either. Not one bit. I can’t think of a scenario in which I would comply with it. But as I said, I also don’t want to dismiss the perspective of those women who found it repugnant yet felt they had a spiritual witness they should participate. Now, the men, OTOH, I don’t really have a great excuse for one way or another–and I’m not a man, so it’s hard to identify. Clearly it was not great for anyone, but obviously worse for women in most ways (although it did enable many to pursue careers through opportunities opened up by group parenting.) ahh polygamy…what a topic. like many Mormons, I’m a descendant of a polygamist. that said, i think it is and always has been wrong, evil, vile, etc. I don’t personally think it was ever a commandment of God.
A little food for thought from one of my favorite philosophers, Soren Kierkegaard. He has an idea called the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical,’ that is, God can command us to do something that would seem unethical, yet serves his higher purpose. The example he uses to frame this idea is Abraham offering Isaac. But I disagree with Kierkegaard. I don’t believe God would command us to do something unethical or immoral. Would he not then cease to be God? I know maybe people would say that God’s ways are higher than ours, so we have to take it on faith, but I just don’t believe God would do that. I don’t believe God has multiple wives either.
The thing about it is, monogamous relationships are a highly evolved form of living — and polygamy takes something I believe to be beautiful — the love between man and wife to create a family — to it’s basest form. polygamy is about procreation, not about love.
I tend to agree with what Joseph told William Marks: “This doctrine of polygamy, or spiritual wife-system, that has been taught and practiced among us, will prove our destruction and overthrow. I have been deceived; it is a curse to mankind, and we shall have to leave the United States soon, unless it can be put down, and its practice stopped in the Church.”
It took another 45 years or so to be put down, but thank the good Lord above it was.
I have thought about polyamy alot during my life as a member of the lds church. I have been married for over 26 yrs and born more than 10 children. Many times my husband was interested in physical intimacy and I was in tactile overload. I thought that it would be nice if there were more than myself taking care of his needs. I also thought that it would be very very nice to share the load of caring for children so that each of us sister wives would have the possiblility of a few hours of peace without children pawing and needing and talking and questioning, like a break!!!! AND the math just doesn’t add up for me. I see no truth to the belief that polygamy is necessary here on earth NOR in the afterlife. I do NOT buy into the story that more women than men are righteous so there will be more women in Heaven than men. HOGWASH!!!! My husband is a Saint, I am the one of little faith and who has had overt negative behaviors in the past. I am happy to believe that JS had real hungar for something that led him to marry so many women, including already married women and that he explained it from a spiritual perspective. I am not certain that we will look like we look now in the afterlife anyway. The whole female/male thing is still not solid in my Eternal perspective. AND the belief just doesnt add if I attempt to look at it from the perspective of one who believes in the perpetuation of the male/female resurrected body view. Either way, I believe CK will be full of ALL of us, NOT more women than men.
That is my limited view.
Orson wrote:but how do you deal with the fact that Joseph married other men’s wives? I think one of the most difficult questions to answer is “why did Joseph marry Orson Hyde’s wife when Orson was still out on his famous mission to the holy land?”
I’ll try to give you my answer on your original question 1st . I believe that some of the spiritual justifications for polygamy help to explain how JS could rationalize things like marrying men’s wives while they were out on mission. I remember from Comptons “in Sacred Loneliness” the idea of the docrine of Kindred Spirits which basically states that if you met a women and you felt a kinship towards her that you must have known her in the prexistence and that you were preordianed to find eachother. Also there is the thought that if a women was aready married but a leader with higher athourity desired her then it was OK for the said leader to take the women to wife as she would have a greater chance to gain exaltation sort of by piggybacking her way into that leaders kingdom. It is intresting to note here that people were so eager to join leaders families that you see grown men in Nauvoo being adopted into the families of men like BY. Also it was believed that earthly athourity was not binding so these women in JS’s eyes were not really married or taken in the sence we understand a married women to be , while very rough we see in my opinion the begins of the concept of priesthood authority in this and of temple marriage and eternal families ( Mormonism is unique in teaching that we are saved as a family unit this is probally the origins of that teaching ). In the docrine of Kindred Spirits we see the rough beginings of our belief in pre existence and eternal progression. The way I appraoch these difficult topics is to look at the church as a evolving system and allow it the right to refine its teachings over time . Hope this was helpful i’ll give my thoughts on polygamy soon.
Quote:The way I approach these difficult topics is to look at the church as a evolving system and allow it the right to refine its teachings over time.
I really like this. I believe strongly that the term “Dispensation of the Fullness of Times” refers to the condition at the END of the dispensation, not the beginning. I also believe that the term “Restoration” refers to a process, not an event. Finally, I believe one of the central purposes of both is removing the natural elements or apostasy from the Church that were incorporated through the simple fact that it is made up of people who bring and pass on their own “incorrect traditions” within the organization.
The early history of the Church was incredibly messy on many levels, not least of which was the need to sort through all of the assumptions early leaders (including Joseph himself) would make about the impressions and visions and revelations they were receiving in such a rapid-fire way. It’s like they were riding a tidal wave of spiritualism and trying to figure out where it was taking them – trying to establish a firm foundation from everything that was swirling around them.
Personally, I don’t fault those that couldn’t take it and left – just as I don’t fault those now who yearn for rock-solid, never-changing stability and leave for the exact same reason. On-going revelation means on-going change – and that change often is radical and unsettling.
I think polygamy is something everyone struggles to understand in the church myself included. I am working from the point of view that polygamy was not inspired of God so you can take or leave what I have to say. I don’t look at the early participents as being evil or filled with the devil, I think they were trying to work out what there relationship to God should be and how they should live. I think JS had a dangerous world view , He believed he was a prophet of God and he believed that if he had a thought/inspiration/revelation then he had to see it threw. Polygamy was one of those thoughts. It is dangerous to think that if it goes threw your head then it is inspired of God it is fair to say that what made JS brilliant also made him dangerous. This was the first time in America that people had the right to create there own system and experiment socially , part of making chioces is making poor ones. I look at polygamy largely as a social experiment that would ultimately fail. Here are some of the good things that came out of polygamy first I think it served as a way to insure that JS’s teachings would out live him people that would follow him in polygamy would follow him in death, further it separated believers from non believers to some extent it lead to many people leaving the church many of whom were luke warm members I think the trip west would have been extremely hard for those people and that there presence on the trip would have been negative and added to the burden of the group. It also helped to unite members to each other ,polygamist were shunned by the world so there persecution united them to eachother this allowed the church to grow and build its roots. Could the church been established without polygamy this is a hypothetical question, we don’t know we just know that it was a key factor in the development of the church and the way it was done . It is to bad the modern church tries to hide from its past and tries to present JS as someone he wasn’t .In my earlier post I discussed how I think polygamy helped establish our doctrines but also people in those days suffered greatly and I think polygamy was a way to be incontrol of there suffering and to give there suffering meaning. I think JS was a man who a times was lost in his own genius he was a great religious thinker and revolutionary but he didn’t always see how those theologies and experiments affected others, polygamy is a example of that . I hate to think of people like Emma and the heartbreak polygamy caused them. I also don’t count out that JS was a powerful man and as he told us it is the nature of all men to abuse that power. It is easy to see polygamy as a abuse of power I don’t like to think of him telling teenaged girls that a angel with drawn sword told him they must marry him . Yes I think sexuality was a factor not the only one but we cannot rule out that it played a key role or motivation . I think it was a attempt to blend sexuality and religion which always comes across as creepy to me. As I said I think it was a failed social experiment. As far as BY’s polygamy goes, polygamy was JS’s baby and BY did the best he could with what JS gave him to work with, in the end it failed because the system was flawed and not of God IMO. PS :
Old-Timer wrote:I believe strongly that the term “Dispensation of the Fullness of Times” refers to the condition at the END of the dispensation, not the beginning. I also believe that the term “Restoration” refers to a process, not an event.
Ray, I think this is a clever approach and helpful to people trying to maintian their faith.
Salo, I like this thought:
Quote:As I said I think it was a failed social experiment. As far as BY’s polygamy goes, polygamy was JS’s baby and BY did the best he could with what JS gave him to work with, in the end it failed because the system was flawed and not of God IMO.
One thing I was interested to read was that open sexuality or communal sexual experimentation was a common thing among these “enthusiastic” new religions (those that relied heavily on manifestations of the Holy Ghost, and people were more or less waiting to hear that Mormons were practicing something odd in that vein. I find it interesting that it seems a natural byproduct of that type of worship, at least based on what else was happening at that time.
I didn’t chime in yet with a serious response. My first was sort of an attempt at humor. I agree with others when they talk about the social aspects and how it was maybe necessary in forming the seed of the restored Church. In a lot of ways Mormons had to be very special and unique. This was a whopper of a way to do that! Yes. I think it was vital in some odd way to the LDS Church not fading quickly into obscurity in the history books — a 19th century novelty.
The whole concept seemed to fail miserably. Church members do not seem to have implemented it very good. Sure, some did ok at it. A lot did not do a good job. I think they lived it mostly for the wrong reasons, especially thinking that it was necessary for salvation. That was a big mistake IMO. I personally think it’s ok if everyone involved really wanted to go that route, but it became too much of a cultural icon — if you want to be a “winner” in this community, this is what you do. I don’t think the truly willing participants are/were nearly as numerous.
In Joseph’s defense, I think he felt compelled to restore ancient practices (whether all divinely inspired or not). The LDS Church is not a reformation. It’s a restoration. It was part of the 19th century push to find primitive Christianity (the original Church that Christ founded, supposedly). Joseph went many steps further to Christianize Old Testament prophets even. To him, even people like Adam, Abraham, Moses and Isaiah were followers of Christ. That’s a somewhat radical view for his day (even today).
So what does he do with all the prominent figures in the Old Testament that had multiple wives and/or concubines? There are at least 18 characters in the Old Testament who are explicitly described as righteous men, if not prophets, that were polyamorous (Abraham, Jacob, Ephraim, Moses, David, and Solomon to name a few). Before I come across as some pro-polygamy fundamentalist, I am not promoting this lifestyle. One wife is more than I can handle
It would seem at least, from a Biblical perspective, that polygamy is permissible. I don’t think it is in any way required or even maybe preferred. If the Bible is truth though, then polygamy has been approved of by God in the past. Like I said, I think it is maybe “permissible.” It is still practiced by a majority of the nations in the World today, just not so much the Western “first world” anymore. I would argue that even we still allow its practice on a social level in the form of sexual relations outside of marriage. There are men that for all practical purposes still do this, we just don’t seem to require them to acknowledge and support all the children they father (the so-called “baby daddy”).
I can also sometimes see open sexuality as a path to losing the attachment and need for others. This is pretty far out there, but sometimes it seems to me that our ultimate goal of eternal progression is to be whole and complete — not needing and depending on anyone else. I have doubts sometimes that marriage, as we know it here, is not really a relevant concept in the afterlife. Well, it just may not be the same. I don’t know. I am not sure I really believe this, but I think about it sometimes. This would allow for polyandry as well. I think my limited exposure to eastern spirituality leads me in this direction. The process of letting go of attachments is interesting.
There’s one glaringly huge problem with all these semi-defenses. Human beings seem to fail pretty consistently when they explore these ideas. This is one of those cases where I think its better just to leave it as a theory or a concept. Polygamy and open sexuality always seem to lead to far worse trouble than they might possibly provide through some new insight gained.
So I think the issue of polygamy in the LDS Church’s history is complex. I have a hard time saying it was just one thing, or only another. It could have been a divine inspiration for the social results of making a tight-knit community? It could have been JS just making it all up? It could have been one of those things that had to be restored so that this last dispensation is truly the “fullness of times?”
I don’t know. I wish also that we could just lay it all out there and talk about it. Hiding it, as usual, seems to cause a lot of trouble.
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