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In what ways, and to what extent, was polygamy tied to the implementation of temple ordinances? What, if anything, does that say about temple ordinances today? It’s been a few years since I did an intense study on the origins and history of the temple, your questions make me want to revisit my study. But my thoughts from recollection are that there is a connection on what Joseph was trying to do, link together the human family for salvation and restore the things of the bible that were taken from the earth.
I don’t see the temple a result of polygamy, and if I dismiss polygamy I must dismiss the temple as of no worth.
Instead, I see the the teachings and practice of polygamy similar to the United Order that they tried to fit into the things being taught in the temple of a higher order of things (based on their limited view at the time, which we now know is misguided). In concept, all things in heaven are not limited to our possession or jealousy or envies. Both United Order and Polygamy could fit into what we are taught in the temple from a certain point of view, as we all try to return to live with God as one big family for eternity.
In reality, based on our human nature and living in the world, economic laws and social laws of relationships, I don’t think those laws are meant to be lived literally. And the result of trying seems to me to have lead to negative consequences to women and others as it did not hold up over time as a good practice.
And that doesn’t diminish the temple ceremony in today’s church where we are not asked to live such laws. Nor does it require I accept the concept of polygamy today as I visit the temple. I can now separate out polygamy from the temple entirely. The connection in the beginning was based on Joseph’s world and vision, not an eternal view.
Rough Stone Rolling shows how many different things Joseph was trying to institute to accomplish his vision, and over time, some things were not successful (law of consecration) and some things were (tithing)…and yadda yadda yadda…we have today’s church, and today’s temple ceremony and practices, denouncing polygamy and preaching eternal marriage.
Thanks Heber. Right now I’m grouping the initiatory and endowment and wearing garments with past mistakes, such as polygamy and the priesthood ban. I simply do not like endowment sessions and I have not done initiatory since it was done for myself. However, I see baptism for the dead and marriage sealings differently. Baptisms in temples are cool. I have simply felt good when witnessing live sealings, and my own temple marriage was a very good experience. I really hope God intended sealings to be done regardless of “plural marriage.” Eternal marriage to my one wife is very important to me. If it is crushed, as other beliefs have been, I will be devastated.
The key in seeing how much the temple is tied to polygamy is in noting the differences between promises made to men and promises made to women. Throughout, men make promises to God and are rewarded by being kings and priests to God, but women repeatedly make promises to their husbands and are queens and priestesses to them, not to God. It is very hard to attend the temple as a woman. I suppose the church should just come clean already and admit that women are eternally unequal to men in Mormon theology. A great article explaining male vs. female temple experience (and by great I mean genuinely heartbreaking but accurate):
http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/2014/04/the-mormon-priestess-the-short-version/ Two more things:
1 – sealings, initiatories and endowments all contain different language for women than men that puts women accountable to men, men accountable to God (or husband as God to women). Baptisms for the dead don’t contain this sexism.
2 – garments were originally for men only as a signal that they were participating in polygamy. Later, women lobbied to wear them too (darn those women!), and it was granted. Not until the mid-20th century did women’s garments reflect a different pattern than men’s (meaning made for a woman’s body).
hawkgrrrl wrote:… men make promises to God and are rewarded by being kings and priests to God, but women repeatedly make promises to their husbands and are queens and priestesses to them, not to God.
In some alternate universe where the LDS church had never practiced polygamy, I guess you could still have ended up with this in the mid-to-late 1800’s, but would it have stayed around untouched into the 21st century? Most religions’ marriage vows/ceremonies have changed in that period of time to reflect a belief in men and women standing as equals before God.
I wish I could know how the language and content of the initiatory/endowment are striking the huge numbers of young, unmarried women going through pre-mission these days.
I know quite a few who simply don’t take it literally – who see it as old language that just doesn’t reflect reality but who aren’t bothered much by it since they don’t believe in any inequality. I also know quite a few who are bothered by it but who still don’t take it literally or believe it will affect their own marriages in negative ways.
I know some who are bothered enough by it that they don’t participate much, if any, after the initial time.
As with many things, someone’s ability to categorize and compartmentalize things is a huge factor in the differences I’ve seen.
It definitely bothered me a lot the first time I went through, as a single woman preparing to go on a mission. The temple language has never not bothered me, but I was unaware that the male initiatory language differed from the women’s until just this year. That puts the women’s language in stark contrast. Basically, I struggle to see why I as a woman would want to participate and be reminded yet again how the church views women. My local ward doesn’t treat women the way the temple does. I am not viewed as subordinate to my husband or his appendage or one of his future harem. Men aren’t elevated above women in my local ward; we all work together to make it enjoyable. That’s the sense of community I get from the church. But every time the organization has a chance to deal with its own sexism, they retrench. Clearly they feel it’s the crown jewels to treat women as second class citizens, property to men, in the kingdom of God. Quote:Clearly they feel it’s the crown jewels to treat women as second class citizens, property to men, in the kingdom of God.
To be fair, the senior leaders generally are older, as are their wives and even their daughters. They were raised in a different time with a different outlook on issues of sex and gender.
I think it’s more that they just don’t see or feel the inequality personally and, therefore, don’t understand how it looks and feels to younger, more “modern” women, especially, and men – and, even though that is changing, it takes longer to alter things like this than it does to change other aspects of the ordinances that aren’t as imbedded into every aspect of one’s upbringing.
I have no doubt whatsoever the parts of the endowment that obviously are sexist will be changed, and probably in my lifetime (assuming I live to an average age) – but I am not confident it will be “soon”. The most senior leadership will experience a huge change in the next 10 years. It will be interesting to see what happens then.
The inequality is a bummer, but it doesn’t negate the sealing in my view. My wife knows she is not my subordinate and that I will never have a harem. Despite not feeling good about the initiatory or endowment, I just feel good about eternal
monogamousmarriage. I really want that part of my religion to remain intact. I realized that some things I’ve said may cause some people to refrain from commenting on this subject. I said “Eternal marriage to my one wife is very important to me. If it is crushed, as other beliefs have been, I will be devastated.” And “I really want that part of my religion to remain intact.” Well, I appreciate the consideration anyone may have given to that, but I just want to get all the cards on the table. I may as well get it over with now.
I guess the first sealings performed were polygamous.
The “principal” of plural marriage was actually referred to as simply the “priesthood” sometimes, which is a bit disturbing. Here are some excerpts from
Williams Clayton’s journal
Quote:27 April 1843
At the Temple A.M. went to prests. who rode with me to bro. H.C, Kimballs where sister Margt. Moon was sealed up by the priesthood, by the president–and M to me. … evening told Mother in law concerning the priesthood.
26 May 1843
…Hyrum received the doctrine of priesthood
16 August 1843
This A.M. J. told me that since E. came back from St Louis
she had resisted the P. in toto& he had to tell her he would relinquish all for her sake. She said she would given him E. & E. P but he knew if he took them she would pitch on him & obtain a divorce & leave him. He however told me he should not relinquish any thing
The last entry indicates Emma resisted the priesthood in total by rejected polygamy. Accepting polygamy was a big deal, and it seems that polygamy and sealings were interdependent.Hi Shawn, I understand that during the Nauvoo period Emma and others were not permitted to be sealed to their spouses until they accepted polygamy (at least in theory, for Emma this meant accepting some of JS’s wives [even here she did not know of all of them]). It was all part of joining the “anointed quorum.”
I understand polygamy to be very tied up in the view of heaven in those days, with the glory and dominion one may recieve in heaven being dependant on the amount of wives and children he had in this life. Essentially that men are to build their own personal kingdoms on earth that thay are to take with them to the next life.
Shawn wrote:The “principal” of plural marriage was actually referred to as simply the “priesthood” sometimes
If “priesthood” was seen as synonymous with “dominion” or “the process by which one becomes like God” then I could very much see polygamy referred to as the “law concerning the priesthood” or “the doctrine of the priesthood.”
I see this problem as rooted in the evolution of our doctine. Our doctrine has evolved over time. The structure of heaven, the priesthood, the temple, sealings were at one point very tied up with polygamy. Now they are not. All of these items have evolved to the point where thay can stand on their own two feet independant of polygamy.
We could relegate polygamy to an historical oddity – a blip of communal speculative expiramentation. We could also view polygamy as necessary in the nacsient phase to birth the doctrines that are now in a more mature state in the modern church.
But that is very difficult for many church members to get their head around. If JS was really receiving direct communication from God why would any speculation or expiramentation be necessary? If polygamy is not eternal and was just implemented temporarilly to fulfill imeadiate needs specific to the time and place (such as to increase church growth rates or to introduce related doctrines that are eternal) – why did the church leaders not understand this at the time? Why can the church even today not definatively declare that polygamy is only a thing of the past? Why the continued disparity of the temple language for men and women or the ability for a widower to remarry in the temple without voiding his previous sealing?
IMO this would require an acknowledgement of JS as a religious innovator (capable of expansively divine leaps forward as well as doctrinal mistakes that have not stood the test of time) rather than a mouthpiece for God. This would mean that even the revelations of the D&C can be truth mixed with error.
Until that time, I believe we will still be saying that God commanded polygamy – that we don’t understand why or how prevalent it may be in heaven (anywhere from 0% to 100% in the celestial kingdom) but that we are positive that it came from God.
Shawn wrote:I realized that some things I’ve said may cause some people to refrain from commenting on this subject. I said “Eternal marriage to my one wife is very important to me. If it is crushed, as other beliefs have been, I will be devastated.” And “I really want that part of my religion to remain intact.”
Have you ever considered that your eternal marriage to your wife may be independant of your sealing? That perhaps you are bound to each other based upon your love, service, and devotion to each other rather than a specific ritual? Either way, I like putting the emphasis on how the marital union is
livedmore than how it begins. Quote:IMO this would require an acknowledgement of JS as a religious innovator (capable of expansively divine leaps forward as well as doctrinal mistakes that have not stood the test of time) rather than a mouthpiece for God. This would mean that even the revelations of the D&C can be truth mixed with error.
That is how I see Joseph – and pretty much every extraordinarily visionary person in the history of the world.
Roy, you said: Quote:I understand that during the Nauvoo period Emma and others were not permitted to be sealed to their spouses until they accepted polygamy (at least in theory, for Emma this meant accepting some of JS’s wives [even here she did not know of all of them]). It was all part of joining the “anointed quorum.”
I understand polygamy to be very tied up in the view of heaven in those days, with the glory and dominion one may recieve in heaven being dependant on the amount of wives and children he had in this life. Essentially that men are to build their own personal kingdoms on earth that thay are to take with them to the next life.
What is your source for this statement? I’m not familiar with it.
Quote:I understand that during the Nauvoo period Emma and others were not permitted to be sealed to their spouses until they accepted polygamy (at least in theory, for Emma this meant accepting some of JS’s wives [even here she did not know of all of them]). It was all part of joining the “anointed quorum.”
Off the top of my head I think this came from Mormon Enigma or Rough Stone Rolling or both. I will look it up to give you something more exact.
Quote:I understand polygamy to be very tied up in the view of heaven in those days, with the glory and dominion one may recieve in heaven being dependant on the amount of wives and children he had in this life. Essentially that men are to build their own personal kingdoms on earth that thay are to take with them to the next life.
The following is from another previous post of mine where I listed the justifications given by JS for polygamy:
Quote: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
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.
Mike wrote:What is your source for this statement? I’m not familiar with it.
From chapter 27 of Rough Stone Rolling:
Quote:While Joseph was alive, there were times when Emma countenanced plural marriage. In May 1843 she approved two wives, Eliza and Emily Partridge, daughters of Edward Partridge and helpers in the Smith household. The sisters were an awkward selection because Joseph had already married them two months earlier in March without Emma’s knowledge…At first they turned Joseph down, but by the time he told Emily that “the Lord had commanded him to enter into plural marriage and had given me to him,” she was prepared. They married on March 4, 1843…Eliza Partridge married him four days later. In May, they both went through the ceremony again with Emma present. About the same time, Emma agreed to accept Maria and Sarah Lawrence, two other young women living in the Smiths’ house.
Emma’s concurrence brought about a reconciliation, which led in turn to her and Joseph’s priesthood marriage. Joseph probably would not have had the sealing performed while Emma opposed the plural-marriage revelation. But on a cold Sunday evening, May 28, 1843, in the upper room of Joseph’s redbrick store, Joseph and Emma were “sealed” for eternity by the power of the priesthood.
Unfortunately, the reconciliation did not last. Emma had agreed to the plural marriages, but she immediately regretted it.
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