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On whether polygamy (or… well… plural marriage, to use the Church’s term) is doctrinal… I absolutely believe it is. In NO WAY am I defending it. I think it is deplorable and I recognize that the doctrine has been the cause of heartache since its inception right up to the present day. But the reason I say it is doctrine is as follows:
– D&C 132 – It’s not only doctrine, it is revealed doctrine. It’s straight from God according to 132, and I quote, “Thus saith the Lord.”
– Jacob 2:27-30 – This oft-cited anti-polygamy BofM scripture has the Lord saying that he reserves the right to command it.
– Current Seminary Manual – the manual clearly points to God as the author of D&C 132 and plural marriage.
As I have always said, and will continue to say, the Church needs to refute it as being “from God” or it will remain on our books, whether we practice it in this life or not. Letting it stand as a doctrine is going to keep punishing the women of the Church. Even though women of the Church will never be subjected to it in this life, they must accept and support it as a matter of faith and be ‘willing’ or they aren’t true believers. I believe that causes untold anguish to a degree that I cannot begin to imagine. If we could ever once get to the obvious position of saying that it was JS’s attempt to restore OT patterns, but that polygamy itself wasn’t from God, and that we believe that now, in the past, and in the future marriage should be monogamous, then we can relegate polygamy to its rightful status as a failed experiment, and we can begin to move forward.
Simply ignoring it doesn’t help. Pretending that it’s all in the past is in some ways even worse, because it’s in the present for anyone who plans on being exalted, since the Church is non-committal about monogamy in the eternities.
Ann wrote:Am I an apostate if I decide to openly speak against this kind of teaching and conditioning?
Nope! Quote GBH from Larry King Live interview and tell your kids to memorize it…Quote:Larry King: You condemn it.
Gordon B. Hinckley: I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.
When the prophet says it is not doctrinal…we should heavily consider that.
One thing as a commenter and one thing as a moderator: Commenter – I love that quote from President Hinckley and use it, paraphrased, often. That is how I deal with polygamy – by emphasizing as often as necessary that it was discontinued, that it has been condemned by a modern prophet and that NO prophet or apostle in a long time has said it will be required in the next life. I can grin inside to know that, as a former participant liked to say, those who insist that it will be reinstated aren’t following their current prophets when they make that claim.
Moderator – Polygamy is an emotional issue, and it is a common one here. Seriously, we probably have more threads about it in our archives than any other topic – and we even have two current ones at this moment. Pretty much nobody here, with a very few exceptions, approves or believes it was or is divine will.
We will never moderate a thread simply because it deals with polygamy, and this one is nowhere near moderation, but we need to be careful not to let it spiral away from our central mission – helping people figure out how to stay LDS despite issues. This topic has the tendency to become nothing but venting with no “dealing” involved – and while venting is fine, we can’t encourage things that only can prolong a cancerous outlook.
We all hate polygamy. We recognize that. How can we deal with that in what ultimately is a positive way?
Old-Timer wrote:
We all hate polygamy. We recognize that. How can we deal with that in what ultimately is a positive way?From Heber 13’s Wheat and Tares post:
Quote:MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION. You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the ‘binocular trick.”
Example: Polygamy is a huge problem, even if the Church is involved in lots of humanitarian efforts today…I just can’t see past polygamy.
I favor minimization. Don’t think about it. Don’t talk or blog about it. Don’t forget about it.
Three thoughts #1 Don’t throw tomatoes – but I have some distant pioneer relative who divorced her husband because he wouldn’t practice polygamy. So as weird as it seems from our chair, for others it was a vital link.
#2 Ironically she is the only polygamist wife in the tree, none of the others ever practiced it and those families were personal friends of JS, BY, and John Taylor. They were called as mission leaders and trek leaders, which means polygamy was not a required practice for full solid membership.
#3 Polygamy may become the next race issue. Even though people think LGBT will, I think the word of polygamy spreading will force a conversation that will facilitate in fulfilling GBH quote and renouncing it. But as the ship turns slow, it’s going to make us seasick until then.
Old-Timer wrote:We all hate polygamy. We recognize that. How can we deal with that in what ultimately is a positive way?
What if every man and woman who hated polygamy said so to their priesthood leaders? I haven’t done that because I’m afraid. I’m guessing that most of us here haven’t done that. Is it out of fear?
Ann wrote:Old-Timer wrote:We all hate polygamy. We recognize that. How can we deal with that in what ultimately is a positive way?
What if every man and woman who hated polygamy said so to their priesthood leaders? I haven’t done that because I’m afraid. I’m guessing that most of us here haven’t done that. Is it out of fear?
I will take you up on the challenge. I have enough of a relationship with my bishop that I can talk to him about some things like this. It may take a few months before I can bring it up. I will try and remember to report back.I hve mentioned it multiple times in multiple settings, but, as I have said in other threads, I also don’t want to rip the heart out of people who have married and loved more than one spouse and can’t bear to be faced with choosing between them. Thus, I say what I think about it privately quite often but never publicly. What I say publicly is that no top leader has said it will be required for a long, long time and that I will refuse if asked.
Old-Timer wrote:
What I say publicly is that no top leader has said it will be required for a long, long time and that I will refuse if asked.Honestly, if polygamy came back, or if I was asked to live it, that would lead me from trying to ‘Stay LDS’ to becoming anti-LDS. I feel like I can disavow Joseph Smith’s teachings, but still go to church based on the most basic teaching of the gospel like service, love, etc. If the church started to actively teach polygamy again, that would be it for me. I can’t imagine hearing my daughter saying that she’d be willing to live in a polygamous marriage.
:sick: HC I don’t know that I’d become anti- but it sure would make it harder to StayLDS. I decided long ago that if my wife died before I do I don’t want to remarry. It is possible I might change my mind about that, but at present I don’t believe I would actively seek a new spouse. And I don’t see that as unusual among older singles in my ward and stake. LookingHard wrote:Ann wrote:Old-Timer wrote:We all hate polygamy. We recognize that. How can we deal with that in what ultimately is a positive way?
What if every man and woman who hated polygamy said so to their priesthood leaders? I haven’t done that because I’m afraid. I’m guessing that most of us here haven’t done that. Is it out of fear?
I will take you up on the challenge. I have enough of a relationship with my bishop that I can talk to him about some things like this. It may take a few months before I can bring it up. I will try and remember to report back.I’ll be interested to hear. It may also take me a bit to find an opening, but I am going to relate the incident in this class and see where it leads.
Old-Timer wrote:… I also don’t want to rip the heart out of people who have married and loved more than one spouse and can’t bear to be faced with choosing between them.
I know that this conversation has been had nearly word for word in other threads, but I won’t be able to find it without reading reams. So we are repeating ourselves, but I (honestly) don’t remember how you’ve laid out the unbreakable connection between multiple, serial spouses and the polygamy we agree is hate-worthy.
“Top leaders” don’t have to teach the dismaying doctrine because it’s being done for them. The girls in this class got the message loud and clear. Your church thinks this is okay. My daughter walks into a class on the Parables of Jesus and ends up in a surreal discussion about how rejecting polygamy is making your heart the stony ground in which the seed can’t grow.
Old-Timer wrote:I also don’t want to rip the heart out of people who have married and loved more than one spouse and can’t bear to be faced with choosing between them.
Ray, I know that you are speaking as an individual and I understand your “do no harm” position – however, as an organization are we not asking women who have married and loved more than one spouse to choose between them? Do we not seal a woman to her second husband for time only (in the case where the first marriage was solemnized in the temple)? Even in cases where all the parties are dead and we seal them all – even then we expect that God will work it out with each woman having only one husband.
I do not favor ripping hearts out of the HPG members, but what of the sisters in the RS? Is not what is good for the goose good also for the gander?
I personally do not speak against polygamy because I find it personally unwise to do so. How could I do so without some/many people thinking I am suggesting that the entire church is built on whoredoms. I do not see that going well for me at all. I see polygamy as a harmful doctrine that harms the church and harms the members – but I cannot change it. I suppose we all believe in weird and damaging things to some extent. Why should Mormons be any different?
I understand all of those issues, everyone – but I also believe that our current stance is, essentially, “God will work it out in the end in a way that will ensure that nobody will be in a situation they don’t want,” and that now includes sealing women to all of their husbands. Think about what that says of the symbolic nature of sealing – that we shouldn’t take it all literally, no matter what was taught in the past. If some people are sealed but aren’t sealed literally (women with more than one husband), then why do we need to accept that other people are sealed literally (men with more than one wife)? Just because it was taught and is understood generally that way? No thanks. I will take it all symbolically, as our faith that what we want in the end (our agency) will be honored. Given the complexity of human relationships, I like that stance.
Ironically, that is a liberal stance, since it allows for multiple results for people who want different outcomes.It would be different if polygamy actively was being requested of us now or if the current leadership was preaching eternal polygamy for everyone, but that is not happening. Individuals still do sometimes, but the VAST majority of members also aren’t – and a teacher talking about polygamy in a lesson on the parables of Jesus is an extreme oddity. That should be the basis of talking with a Bishop, and I would do it without hesitation if it was happening in my ward or stake. I think JS philandered. And then used his gift/ability to create religion (as Richard Bushman put it), to justify it in the form of plural marriage. Fortunately, there are instances in the OT of plural marriage to justify it. Further, plural wives accelerates church growth when the people who practice it have committed genes. All that fueled the practice. The idea of having multiple sexual partners is probably attractive to certain men, particularly if they fall into all different age groups, or have wives who grow uninterested in sex as they get older and have had a lot of it. Funny, my TBM wife said she’d be fine with plural marriage because she doesn’t like cleaning. She’d love to have another helping hand around the house! The thought of my daughter in a plural marrige makes me cringe.
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