Polyandry not “hidden” any more

[Anonymous]

QuestionsAbound wrote:

I think I will say in answer OON…Don’t take me too seriously. I certainly don’t.

Haha… fair enough. Let’s just both hope together that GC is less… exciting… than the what-if scenario above.

[Anonymous]

Thanks.

I would actually like to see “some” excitement in GC.

I remember being held captive in our chapel as a child…watching GC on small TV screens set up around the room.

Now that we can watch at home, my kids complain LOUDLY that they are asked to sit with me at all…so…I don’t even fight them on it. I do like to listen to conference…and I always hope for some enlightening moment. More often than not, I just hear a “good message”.

But…maybe?

Earlier this year a female was allowed to pray.

In October the priesthood session will be broadcast into homes! I bet men will simply not tune in, opting to watch something else with the remote instead.

I wonder what next spring will bring. :

[Anonymous]

QuestionAbound wrote:

What I can’t figure out are the following:

If a sealing is required for exaltation, why would these polyandous wives choose JS over their husbands? In some cases the husband was an active church member. Was there a teaching about PM that we don’t know about that made both these women AND JS think that it was okay to NOT help the husband along in his path to exaltation? If the church is all about family, JS should have turned these women away and should have insisted that they create a unity with their husband…and father to their children. Because…if you think about it, that man’s children are now sealed to JS…and not to the father. Not entirely fair in my mind…but again, perhaps there was a teaching that we didn’t get to hear about.

I believe that part of the reason the modern church doesn’t understand polygamy very well is because we are trying to impose our current understanding if things on the practice. I think we would have a better time looking at a group (like the shakers)that we don’t have such preconceived notions about and try to determine from their own writings why they did things. I had put together 4 justifications for polygamy but several of them seem quite foreign to our modern understanding of how heaven works.

Quote:

Polygyny Justifications of JS

1. God commands it: “God said thou shalt not kill, at another time he said thou shalt utterly destroy…that which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another…Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is…although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.” RSR p. 441 “I have constantly said no man shall have but one wife at a time, unless the Lord directs otherwise. “TPJS p. 256, 324

2. To fashion a righteous generation on the eve of the Second Coming: “The Lord has revealed to me that it is his will that righteous men shall take righteous women, even a plurality of wives, that a righteous race may be sent forth upon the earth preparatory to the ushering in of the millennial reign of our Redeemer.” RSR p. 326, Jacob 2:24-30

3. For “greater glory”: “The first commandment was to ‘Multiply’ and the Prophet taught us that Dominion & power in the great future would be commensurate with the number of ‘wives, children & friends’ that we inherit here and that our great mission to earth was to organize a nucleus of Heaven to take with us. To the increase of which there would be no end.”…”When the family organization was revealed from heaven- the patriarchal order of God, and Joseph began, on the right hand and the left, to add to his family, what a quaking there was in Israel.” In Sacred loneliness p. 10-11 “Joseph’s kingdom grew with the size of his family, and those bonded to that family would be exalted with him.” The purpose was “to create a network of related wives, children, and kinsmen that would endure into the eternities…Like Abraham of old, Joseph yearned for familial plentitude.” RSR p 439-440, D & C 132:55

4. Pre-mortal commitments: “Joseph said I was his, before I came here. He said all the Devils in Hell should never get me from him.” JS had been told to marry Mary, “or suffer condemnation- for I (Mary) was created for him before the foundation of the Earth was laid.” In Sacred Loneliness, also “thou made a covenant with one of thy kindred spirits to be thy guardian angel while here in mortality, also with two others, male and female spirits, that thou wouldst come and take a tabernacle through their lineage, and become one of their offspring. You also choose a kindred spirit whom you loved in the spirit world … to be your be head, stay, husband, and protector on the earth, and to exalt you in the eternal worlds. All these were arranged.” The Origin and Destiny of Women, John Taylor. Said Asael Smith, Grandfather of the Prophet, “I believe God hath created the persons for each other, and that Nature will find its own.” The Family of Joseph Smith p 16

2) Since over 150 years have passed and the Second Coming still hasn’t transpired this reasoning seems rather weak in our eyes but it seems to have been BIG for them.

3) Under this reasoning it would seem that someone with the larger family would achieve greater exaltation. The quickest way to increase your family size was by adding wives and children through sealings. This helps to explain the “law of adoption” whereby grown men would be sealed as sons to GA’s. This also helps to explain why additional women would be sealed to JS after his death that did not have this sort of relationship with him while he was alive. I understand that during the BY Utah period a woman could leave her husband to be sealed to someone else (GA) for the sole reason that the woman felt that her new husband would take her higher in the celestial kingdom than the former. And if the amount of wives in this life is a quick and dirty method of gauging the amount of glory in the next – you could see how this could snowball to the advantage of those that already have many wives. Under polyandry it is possible that both the wife and the original (and still) husband would gain protection and eternal glory by being added to the kingdom/family of the prophet. Some women were promised exaltation to themselves and their ENTIRE HOUSEHOLD for participation.

4) Pre-mortal commitments raised their head in Saturday’s Warrior and were pooh –poohed as doctrine but it would also seem that this idea played a role in the understanding of Polygamy at the time.

I really wanted Brian Hales to comment on these reasons because Brian seems fairly committed to explanations of polygamy that make sense to us in our time. I wanted to see how he responds to explanations that indicate that the early saints had visions of heaven that are quite foreign to our modern notions.

P.S. I’m sort of an amatuer historian in these matters so if anyone is aware of factual errors – please bring them up.

[Anonymous]

My two cents are that Joseph got caught up in a bit of “Rock Star Syndrome”. I think he was a reformer who brought together a lot of great ideas that touched the spirits of people of his day. He fell in with other men who he looked up to, most of them good folks, a few scalawags.

Over time Joseph continued his work but was prodded and guided along an “organized religion” path by those mentors around him. Some of those likely helped Joseph explore his human side and then helped him justify it. To me this seems fairly obvious (circumstantially) as you look how things changed in 1838. After that point the organized religion thing really fired up and I think the church was mostly self perpetuating after that…with folks who deemed themselves more qualified guiding and directing this young fellow who seemed to speak so well to the spirit of the common person.

I think with the likes of Brigham Young, bennett, Snow around him Joseph found himself in a situation he was not sure what to do with…making mistakes and kind of blundering along in a church he likely never wanted….I can’t help but think of the fake religious leader in Iron Man 3 (that was an extreme charicature)….I think Joseph would not be a mormon today…not based on his wanting to drink beer or have sex with more than one woman…but because it is nothing like what he was looking for when he began his journey.

Shields up as I probably stepped on a million toes

JohnH

[Anonymous]

johnh wrote:

My two cents are that Joseph got caught up in a bit of “Rock Star Syndrome”. I think he was a reformer who brought together a lot of great ideas that touched the spirits of people of his day. He fell in with other men who he looked up to, most of them good folks, a few scalawags.

Over time Joseph continued his work but was prodded and guided along an “organized religion” path by those mentors around him. Some of those likely helped Joseph explore his human side and then helped him justify it. To me this seems fairly obvious (circumstantially) as you look how things changed in 1838. After that point the organized religion thing really fired up and I think the church was mostly self perpetuating after that…with folks who deemed themselves more qualified guiding and directing this young fellow who seemed to speak so well to the spirit of the common person.

I think with the likes of Brigham Young, bennett, Snow around him Joseph found himself in a situation he was not sure what to do with…making mistakes and kind of blundering along in a church he likely never wanted….I can’t help but think of the fake religious leader in Iron Man 3 (that was an extreme charicature)….I think Joseph would not be a mormon today…not based on his wanting to drink beer or have sex with more than one woman…but because it is nothing like what he was looking for when he began his journey.

Shields up as I probably stepped on a million toes

JohnH

Many others share your views.

Though I had not thought about him “leaning” on other men and allowing them to shape his mind.

Some suggest that the church should disqualify section 132 in D&C. It was found in a drawer after JS died. Some believe that BY had it written to explain away the PM of the time.

Many would be happy to see it go…but in 132 we hear about eternal marriage. I don’t know of another place where eternal marriage is mentioned as doctrine but in 132. So, tossing the entire section also tosses the entire reason for the temple.

What gets me is … if section 132 wasn’t published during JS’s life, how did people know about eternal marriages?

[Anonymous]

Quote:

if section 132 wasn’t published during JS’s life, how did people know about eternal marriages?

Joseph taught the general concept in the mid-1830’s, but it wasn’t started as a formal ordinance until 1843 (if I remember correctly) in the Nauvoo temple – and Joseph was the one who first performed it there. There are documents and journal entries that reference “the revelation” throughout those years, but “the revelation” wasn’t written formally until Nauvoo. I don’t think someone else wrote the section, but I don’t rule out the possibility. However, I do believe strongly it isn’t a classic, traditional revelation – that it was pieced together and reflects more Joseph’s statement of “the word of the Lord to me over time” than a transcript of any kind. It’s not the only section that was compiled in that manner – as a collective recollection, not an immediate transcription.

There is a fairly thorough treatment of that section (for a blog setting) in progress over on BCC, written by “WVS”. I think it will be a 12-part series, and I think it is on about part 6 or 7 right now. (too lazy to check at the moment) The posts are published each Sunday and tackle small parts of the section, with the first 2 or 3 laying out the available documentation before addressing the section itself.

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