"We are not living plural marriage," he said in September.
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Some families today are monogamous, and others practice plural marriage.
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Some sects and breakaway groups, however, follow the early doctrine of plural marriage.
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The Spanish Princess focuses on their sons' (yes, plural) marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
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FLDS is a U.S.-based splinter group of the Mormon church that endorses plural marriage.
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One London School of Economics study found a strong link between plural marriage and civil war.
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Ulrich notes that the practice of plural marriage did not descend fully formed from the heavens.
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The official Mormon church—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—does not recognize plural marriage.
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Mexico seemed like a haven at the time, a place where the group could continue practicing plural marriage.
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She even makes a case for plural marriage as a vehicle for a form of feminist consciousness-raising.
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Together, they make up Short Creek, where people practicing plural marriage first sought refuge more than a century ago.
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A HOUSE FULL OF FEMALES Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 21889-1870By Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Illustrated.
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A HOUSE FULL OF FEMALES: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
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Unaffiliated with the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some practice plural marriage, while others are monogamous.
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Still others came to embrace plural marriage as a form of communitarianism, in which women shared domestic burdens and labor.
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Some, seeking to preserve abandoned institutions such as "plural marriage" (polygamy) and communal ownership, formed communities practising "Old-Fashioned Mormonism".
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The FLDS split off from the mainline Mormon (LDS) church in 22005 after the church denounced the principal of plural marriage.
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If the bill becomes law, punishments for plural marriage would be limited to fines of up to $750 and community service.
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The two men have been leaders in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which believes in plural marriage.
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Some still live "the principle," meaning plural marriage; others see it as too connected to the trauma of the FLDS under Jeffs.
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But the church disavowed plural marriage in 1890 under pressure from the US government, which had imprisoned polygamists and seized their assets.
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The men have been leaders in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon sect that believes in plural marriage.
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Because of the nature of their practice of plural marriage, ancillary wives are considered single mothers, and they can collect welfare and food stamps.
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The Brown family and their 17 children are members of the Apostolic United Brethren, a Utah-based church which follows a plural marriage doctrine.
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And on Friday afternoon, patriarch Kody Brown and his Sister Wives family brought the cameras with them as they rallied to make plural marriage legal.
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But it's also true that Targaryens practiced plural marriage, and for all we know Rhaegar and Lyanna were legally married — at least in Targaryen eyes.
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The 2016 trial lifted the veil surrounding a secretive society that practices plural marriage and believes God speaks to the faithful through the prophet, Jeffs.
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Only a few still practice plural marriage, but they continue to live as an observant religious community deep in some of Mexico's most turbulent borderlands.
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"Vigorous enforcement of the law during the mid-twentieth century did not deter the practice of plural marriage," she wrote in an email to CNN.
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"A House Full of Females" is sensitive to the difficulty and confusion that accompanied early plural marriage, with its implied loss of status for women.
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Though this case is not directly about polygamy, the widespread practice of plural marriage among the FLDS did come up in Jeffs' most recent detention hearing.
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Ulrich focuses instead on the confusion and excitement that accompanied the "glorious" revelation sanctioning plural marriage within the Mormon community, especially among its most elite members.
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While some women objected to plural marriage, Ulrich notes, others sought it out as a means of securing economic stability or of escaping from abusive marriages.
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If the constitution demands that gay marriage be allowed (as the Supreme Court ruled in 2015), then surely it is unconstitutional to disallow plural marriage, they argue.
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Although the mainstream Mormon Church abandoned polygamy more than 100 years ago, many fundamentalist splinter groups still practice plural marriage across Utah, where it's illegal but not criminalized.
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Many polygamists, as well as non-polygamists unfamiliar with the insidious intricacies of the practice, will defend the right to plural marriage by aligning it with gay marriage.
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Unlike Wyoming, the first to approve woman suffrage, Utah was already majority-female at that point, and many of those Mormon women supported both suffrage and plural marriage.
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Split from the mainstream Mormon Church The FLDS, which split from the mainstream Mormon Church over the practice of plural marriage, first settled in Short Creek in the 1930s.
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Read More: Why I Left a Polygamist Colony but Stayed in My Plural Marriage The Cranbrook courtroom also heard details of the cultural practices that encouraged early marriage and obedience.
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Her main interest is in what plural marriage meant for Mormon women in the 19th century, forced to adapt on the fly to a situation they could never have anticipated.
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In a 2014 teaching, "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo," the church said that Joseph Smith, the church founder, had married as many as 233 women, some of them already married.
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The legal experiment with plural marriage came to an end in 1890, when Wilford Woodruff himself, risen to new heights as president of the church, signed the "Official Declaration" ending the practice.
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Woodruff also points me to the Gospel Topics Essays, a series on divisive points in the Church's history ("Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah") and its present ("Book of Mormon and DNA Studies").
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He and James Oler, a fellow adherent of a fundamentalist splinter sect of the Mormon church, practised "plural marriage" for decades until a court found them guilty in July of the crime of polygamy.
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"They are both, by all accounts, law-abiding, hard-working citizens, honest men," he said Both men have been leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which condones plural marriage.
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Henderson argued that current law has created a culture that empowers abusers, such as Warren Jeffs, the infamous leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a denomination known for practicing plural marriage and dressing in historic clothing.
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Like their country cousins on the Utah/Arizona border, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the Order is a tight-knit polygamous community, practicing arranged plural marriage between underage girls and much older men, very often close relatives.
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Founded in 21 by Mormon Fundamentalists who broke away from the traditional Latter-Day Saints church in order to practice the principal of plural marriage, this community, geographically isolated by the Vermillion Cliffs of the Colorado Plateau, is a step back in time for anyone who drives through it.
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Alongside a front page of the Woman's Exponent , one of the first women's-media outlets west of the Mississippi—it was published, in Salt Lake City, from 1872 until 1914—Ware recounts the life of a contributor, Emmeline Wells, who advocated on behalf of women's rights and the Mormon doctrine of plural marriage.
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The FLDS started out as a few fringe families in the late 1890s; as more seeking to follow the principal of plural marriage moved to the polygamous towns in the early-to-mid 20053th century, the gene pool grew, but by the 90s, under the stricter control of prophet Rulon Jeffs (Warren's father), they were tightening up and selectively marrying and breeding in a sort of misfired eugenics experiment that ultimately yielded its own genetic disorder: fumarase deficiency (FD), otherwise known as Polygamist Down's.
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Briggs was a fervent opponent of polygamy, and when Strang began to practice plural marriage openly, Briggs broke with his organization. He affiliated briefly with William Smith's organization of the church before learning that William, too, had been practicing plural marriage.
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He was a practitioner of plural marriage and had four wives and fifteen children.
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Luddington practiced plural marriage and was married to three wives. He died in Salt Lake City.
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423, 1 February 1844 On 7 June 1844 the Nauvoo Expositor criticized Smith for plural marriage.
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Eldredge practiced plural marriage and fathered 28 children. He died in Salt Lake City of lung trouble.
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C. Scribner, 1924, p. 310. Smith began practicing plural marriage when he married Johanne Kirstine Jensen in 1867.
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Like many early members of the LDS Church, Little practiced plural marriage. He had three wives and 27 children.
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The AUB currently supports plural marriage, justified on the "1886 Meeting". While not all members practice plural marriage, it is considered a crucial step to achieve the highest glory of heaven. The leaders of the AUB do not arrange marriages, nor do they authorize marriage for people under 18, nor for those who are closely related.
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Kingston died in 1987 and was living plural marriage until his death. Ortell had at least thirteen wives and dozens of children. Kingston's seven sons from his first wife comprised most of the members of the highest echelon of leadership within the financial conglomerate as well as the primary focus of plural marriage activity within the group.
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In the 1940s, Petersen coined the term "Mormon fundamentalist" to describe people who had left the LDS Church to practice plural marriage.
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Babbitt and his wife Julia were the parents of six children, four of which survived to adulthood. Babbitt also practiced plural marriage.
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Kimball received private instruction from Joseph Smith on plural marriage (polygamy). Initially reluctant, Kimball accepted the responsibility and married a second wife, Sarah Noon. His first wife, Vilate Murray Kimball, accepted plural marriage and welcomed the additional wives as sisters. Heber and Vilate agreed and gave their 14-year-old daughter Helen Marr as a plural wife of Joseph Smith.
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In 1843, Smith dictated a revelation on plural marriage to Clayton. As the practice of polygamy was initially secret, Clayton spent time dealing with rumors and innuendo about the practice both in the church and surrounding community. he accepted plural marriage as a religious principle, and ultimately married nine wives and fathered 42 children. Three of his wives later left him.
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Salt Lake city: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2020. p. 513. She also wrote the pamphlets Plural Marriage as Taught bt the Prophet Joseph and Why We Practice Plural Marriage which defended the truthfulness and uprightness of this practice.No Unhallowed hand p. 513 In 1896 Helen Kimball Whitney died at the age of 68 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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The ages of a man's plural wives can vary greatly, although the first wife is generally close to the husband’s age. The process for entering a plural marriage is slightly different. Married men do not normally volunteer themselves to enter plural marriage, but wait to be asked by the Priesthood Council. Delaying is allowed but declining is generally frowned upon.
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Fullmer married Olive Amanda Smith Cook on January 21, 1846 in Nauvoo, Illinois. She was Fullmer's second wife under the early practice of plural marriage.
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While not all members take part in plural marriage, it is considered a crucial step in the quest for obtaining the highest glory of heaven.
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He was also the recorder of many of the discourses included in the Journal of Discourses. Sloan practiced plural marriage and had three wives and 15 children.
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The following notable Latter Day Saints are alleged to have practiced plural marriage prior to the 1844 succession crisis that followed the death of Joseph Smith, Jr..
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Although Madan was an adherent only of polygyny in a Christian context, this particular volume set the foundation of what is considered the modern Christian Plural Marriage movement.
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"Polygamist Warren Jeffs Can Now Marry Off Underaged Girls With Impunity" . Ms. blog. Retrieved 8 December 2012. for the purpose of sometimes involuntary plural marriage and sexual abuse.
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"Polygamist Warren Jeffs Can Now Marry Off Underaged Girls With Impunity". Ms. blog. Retrieved 8 December 2012. for the purpose of sometimes involuntary plural marriage and sexual slavery.
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Although some LDS Church members continue to believe in the doctrine of plural marriage without practicing it,For example, one LDS Church commentator has said regarding plural marriage that "[o]bviously the practice will commence again after the Second Coming" of Jesus Christ: see Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 578. Joseph Smith's teachings on plural marriage remain part of the scriptural canon of the LDS Church.Doctrine and Covenants The LDS Church prevents any of its members who sympathize with Mormon fundamentalist teachings from entering its temples. During the 1920s, a church dissenter named Lorin C. Woolley claimed a separate line of priesthood authority from the LDS Church's hierarchy, effectively setting in motion the development of Mormon fundamentalism.
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Gates served in the Utah Territorial Legislature, representing Washington and Kane counties, from 1864 to 1867. Gates practiced plural marriage and fathered 11 children. He died in Provo, Utah Territory.
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He instituted plural marriage among his followers, and had himself sealed to several white wives in a changed, sealing ceremony that consisted of sex with him and his first wife Lucy.
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In the following quote, apostle Lorenzo Snow, who later became president of the LDS Church, refers to "celestial plural marriage" rather than simply "celestial marriage": > He knew the voice of God—he knew the commandment of the Almighty to him was > to go forward—to set the example, and establish Celestial plural marriage. > He knew that he had not only his own prejudices and pre-possessions to > combat and to overcome, but those of the whole Christian world...; but God > ... had given the commandment. Nevertheless, it is correct that "celestial > marriage" was often used to refer to plural marriage. Mormon fundamentalists cleave to the view that there is no celestial marriage that is not plural, while the LDS Church claims otherwise.
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Philly's Black Muslims Increasingly turn to polygamy. Most American Muslim leaders openly discourage this practice, however, as being contrary to United States law. Early in its history, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practiced polygamy in the United States and referred to it as "plural marriage". It was publicly announced by the church in 1852, and the plural marriage ceremony (as conducted by an authorized priesthood leader) was viewed as a sacred, eternal ordinance.
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Some members, including apostle Moses Thatcher, only reluctantly supported the Manifesto and interpreted it as a sign that the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent, after which plural marriage would be reinstated.
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In 1944, the family was excommunicated from the LDS Church for teaching and practicing plural marriage. For the next 11 years, the family were members of Rulon C. Allred's Apostolic United Brethren.
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Like many early Latter Day Saints, Benson practiced plural marriage. On April 27, 1844, Benson married his first plural wife, Adeline Brooks Andrus, the sister of Pamelia.Dew, Sheri. Ezra Taft Benson: A Biography.
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Pratt practiced plural marriage. He was murdered in 1857 by the estranged husband of his twelfth wife. Pratt fathered thirty children. His living descendants in 2011 were estimated to number 30,000 to 50,000.
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Some members of the LDS Church did not accept the 1890 Manifesto put forth by Woodruff, and there was a strong division of opinion on plural marriage even in the priesthood hierarchy of the church. The LDS Church was also in severe financial difficulties, some of which were related to the legal problems over plural marriage. Snow approached this problem first by issuing short term bonds with a total value of one million dollars. This was followed by emphatic teaching on tithing.
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After Joseph Smith was killed by a mob on 27 June 1844, the main body of Latter Day Saints left Nauvoo and followed Brigham Young to Utah where the practice of plural marriage continued., a video presentation concerning the history of Mormon polygamy and its modern manifestations. In 1852, Brigham Young, the second president of the LDS Church, publicly acknowledged the practice of plural marriage through a sermon he gave. Additional sermons by top Mormon leaders on the virtues of polygamy followed.
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Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1: Stake Presidencies and Bishoprics. (Salt Lake City, Utah: LDS Church) pp. 105–115. The cessation of plural marriage within LDS Church gave rise to the Mormon fundamentalist movement.
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Members generally respected the right of the Priesthood Council to assign marriages. Parents' consent for their children to marry in plural marriage was considered relevant when they were "in harmony" with the Priesthood Council.
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Miller's first wife, Mary Fry, was sealed to him in the Nauvoo Temple on 13 January 1846. Miller practiced plural marriage, and he was sealed to Elizabeth Bouton and Sophia Wallace on January 25, 1846.
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In 1844, the residents of Nauvoo were split over the issue of plural marriage, leading to the arrest of Joseph Smith, Jr. A believer in plural marriage, Hamblin took a second wife, Rachel Judd. A mob of men assassinated Smith while he was in jail, resulting in the succession crisis. Hamblin supported Brigham Young, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, as President of the Church. Following growing anti-Mormon sentiment around Nauvoo, Hamblin migrated west with Young on the Mormon Trail.
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In addition, both prophets received visits from an angel, leading to additional books of scripture. Both religions share a high emphasis on family life, charitable giving, chastity, abstention from alcohol, and a special reverence for, though not worship of, their founding prophet. Before the 1890 Manifesto against plural marriage, Mormonism and Islam also shared in the belief in and practice of plural marriage, a practice now held in common by Islam and various branches of Mormon fundamentalism. The religions differ significantly in their views on God.
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Records show that Smith publicly preached and wrote against the doctrine of plural marriage;Times and Seasons, vol. 5, p. 423, 474, 490–91. however, it is also clear that Smith performed dozens of plural marriages.
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She is known as the Masked Rider. ;Elder Tull Tull practices "plural marriage" and desires to marry Jane Withersteen. He also wants to drive Bern Venters and Lassiter out of town and out of the region.
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He served as a major in the Nauvoo Legion.Flake, "Hunt", p. 520 Soon after he was ordained to the office of High Priest and later became an early participant in plural marriage when he married Matilda Nease.
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As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hanks practiced plural marriage, having 4 wives and 26 children. His wives were Harriet Amelia Decker (m. 22 September 1848), Jane Maria Capener (m.
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Young practiced plural marriage. His first wife was Catherine Curtis Spencer. Among their children was Brigham Spencer Young, who would later serve as president of the Northwestern States Mission of the church.Conference Report, October 1926, p. 2.
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Lorenzo Snow funeral As President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, Snow became the church's presiding officer when its president, Wilford Woodruff, died. One of the first things he did was to reorganize the First Presidency almost immediately after Woodruff's death, rather than waiting years as his predecessors had. As he began his tenure as church president, Snow had to deal with the aftermath of legal battles with the United States over the practice of plural marriage. Men engaging in plural marriage were still being arrested and confined in Utah.
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At these times, the leadership of the LDS Church supported polygamy or "plural marriage" as it was called by the Mormons. It is estimated that 20-25% of Latter-day Saints were members of polygamous households with the practice involving approximately one third of Mormon women who reached marriageable age. The LDS Church in territorial Utah viewed plural marriage as religious doctrine until 1890, when it was removed as an official practice of the Church by Wilford Woodruff. However, the rest of American society rejected polygamy, and some commentators accused the Mormons of gross immorality.
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Bickerton acted as Presiding Elder of this Latter Day Saint church in West Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. In 1852, representatives of LDS Church president Brigham Young visited Bickerton and informed him that he must teach plural marriage. Bickerton replied, "If the approval of God were to come to me by accepting the doctrine of polygamy, I prefer the displeasure of God." Bickerton disassociated himself from the LDS Church because of its adherence to doctrines that he felt could not be substantiated in the Bible or the Book of Mormon, particularly plural marriage.
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The House of Aaron states that they have never believed in or practiced polygamy and House of Aaron leader John M. Conrad has described polygamy as "abhorrent and disgusting." However, in 2005, due to numerous publications which claimed the House of Aaron practiced plural marriage, the House of Aaron was included in the Utah Attorney General's Office and the Arizona Attorney General's Office publication titled The Primer. It was included within the list of "Fundamentalist Groups" that are practitioners of plural marriage. However, in 2011 the House of Aaron was removed from the publication.
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The principle most often associated with Mormon fundamentalism is plural marriage, a form of polygyny first taught in the Latter Day Saint movement by the movement's founder, Smith. A second and closely associated principle is that of the United Order, a form of egalitarian communalism. Mormon fundamentalists believe that these and other principles were wrongly abandoned or changed by the LDS Church in its efforts to become reconciled with mainstream American society. Today, the LDS Church excommunicates any of its members who practice plural marriage or who otherwise closely associate themselves with Mormon fundamentalist practices.
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In accordance with what Joseph Smith indicated was a revelation, the practice of plural marriage, the marriage of one man to two or more women, was instituted among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 1840s. Despite Smith's revelation, the 1835 edition of the 101st Section of the Doctrine and Covenants, written after the doctrine of plural marriage began to be practiced, publicly condemned polygamy. This scripture was used by John Taylor in 1850 to quash Mormon polygamy rumors in Liverpool, England.Three nights public discussion between the Revds.
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However, tensions between Mormons and non-Mormons again escalated, and in 1844 Smith was killed by a mob, precipitating a succession crisis. The largest group of Mormons (LDS Church) accepted Brigham Young as the new prophet/leader and emigrated to what became the Utah Territory. There, the church began the open practice of plural marriage, a form of polygyny which Smith had instituted in Nauvoo. Plural marriage became the faith's most sensational characteristic during the 19th century, but vigorous opposition by the United States Congress threatened the church's existence as a legal institution.
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Further, polygamy was also a major cause for the opposition to Mormonism in the states of Idaho and Arizona. In the 1890 Manifesto, church president Wilford Woodruff announced the official end of plural marriage.; Because of the formal abolition of plural marriage in 1890, several smaller groups of Mormons broke with the LDS Church forming several denominations of Mormon fundamentalism. Meanwhile, the LDS Church had become a proponent of monogamy and patriotism, has extended its reach internationally by a vigorous missionary program, and has grown in size to a reported membership of over 16 million.
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John Smith's grave marker Smith was involved in plural marriage and had two wives. Smith's first wife was Hellen Maria Fisher. She was born on September 20, 1835 in Pennsylvania. Smith and Fisher married on December 25, 1853.
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In addition to standard Mormon doctrines, ordinances, and practices, the Righteous Branch also practices plural marriage, teaches the Adam–God doctrine, the Curse of Cain doctrine, and lives the United Order.Moore-Emmett, Andrea. (2004) God's Brothel. Pince- Nez Press.
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Grant was the last LDS Church president to practice plural marriage. He married a first time in 1877 and then twice more in 1884. However, by the time he became church president, only one of his wives, Augusta, was still alive.
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Hoagland began practicing plural marriage in 1847 when he married Agnes Taylor, the younger sister of later church president John Taylor. They divorced in 1861.Summary of Abraham Hoagland Journals: 1857 to 1870. George Q. Cannon Family Association, p. 5.
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The AUB is one of the more liberal of the Mormon groups practicing plural marriage. The leaders of the AUB do not arrange marriages nor do they authorize plural marriages for people under 18 or for those who are closely related.
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In 1864, he helped pioneer Bear Lake County, Idaho, where he first helped settle Paris and then Fish Haven, Idaho. Unlike some other Mormons at the time, Howell did not practice plural marriage. He died at Fish Haven.Bear Lake Pioneers.
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His wives were not Latter Day Saints; rather, two were Roman Catholics, one was a Methodist, and one was a Presbyterian.D. Michael Quinn, "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 22–23.
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It has been argued that the LDS Church's policy on sealings and cancellations reflect its doctrine of plural marriage. Although plural marriage is currently prohibited in the church, a man can be sealed to multiple women, in the case of widowers who are sealed to both their deceased and living wives. Additionally, men who are dead may be sealed by proxy to all women to whom they were legally married while alive. Recent changes in church policy also allow women to be sealed to multiple men, but only after both she and her husband(s) are dead.
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He stated that upon being taught about plural marriage, "It was the first time in my life that I desired the grave." By the time of his death, Young had 59 children by 16 of his wives; 46 of his children reached adulthood.
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She had two children from a previous marriage. Casper adopted her children and the couple went on to have seven more together. Unlike some early Latter Day Saints, Casper did not practice plural marriage. He died in Holladay, Utah, and is buried there.
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Their marriage produced 8 children. A lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she consented to her husband's participation in plural marriage, though David's second wife (Ida Hunt) lived in another town. She died in 1937 in Saint Johns.
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On March 22, 1845, Charles married Mary Ann Patten, a 23-year-old from rural Pennsylvania. They eventually had three children together. In 1849, he began practicing plural marriage when he married Mary's younger half-sister, Ann, in Iowa. They eventually had 11 children together.
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He served a full-time mission for the Church attempting to grow cotton in southern Utah. Hancock helped settle Washington, Utah, and was ordained a church patriarch in 1872. He died at Washington, Utah. Like many early Latter Day Saints, Hancock practiced plural marriage.
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"Polygamy: Latter-day Saints and the Practice of Plural Marriage", LDS Newsroom, mormonnewsroom.org. In defence of the practice, some early church leaders taught that God the Father and Jesus Christ both practiced polygamy. These ideas were generally accepted among church members in the 1850s.
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569 As a member of the LDS Church, he served as a missionary in Japan. In the early 1970s, Bryant became convinced that the LDS Church had unjustifiably abandoned plural marriage, and joined the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) in Utah, led by Rulon C. Allred.
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1889 Portrait of polygamists in prison, at the Utah Penitentiary, including Cannon, arrested under the Edmunds-Tucker Act. Cannon practiced plural marriage and was married to six women.George Q. Cannon: A Biography, Davis Bitton, 1999, pg. 463 Cannon frequently spoke in justification of the practice.
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Embry, Jessie L. 1994. "Polygamy." In Utah History Encyclopedia, edited by A. K. Powell. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. . . Enforcement of the 1890 Manifesto caused various splinter groups to leave the LDS Church in order to continue the practice of plural marriage.
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Rockwood practiced plural marriage and fathered 22 children. He died in Sugar House, Utah Territory, at his home on Elizabeth Street at approximately 1200 East and 2500 in Salt Lake City, Utah (no longer standing), where he was surrounded by his family and friends.
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Baptism for the dead, celestial marriage, plural marriage, and exaltation doctrines are all rejected by the Temple Lot church. The offices of high priest and patriarch are also rejected as being "doctrinal innovations" not sanctioned in the Bible, Book of Mormon, or Book of Commandments.
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Many early converts to the religion including Brigham Young,Journal History, 26 August 1857; cited by Hyrum Leslie Andrus, Doctrines of the Kingdom (Salt Lake City, Utah: Desert Book Co., 1999), 489n436 () Orson Pratt, and Lyman Johnson, recorded that Joseph Smith was teaching plural marriage privately as early as 1831 or 1832. Pratt reported that Smith told some early members in 1831 and 1832 that plural marriage was a true principle, but that the time to practice it had not yet come.Orson Pratt, "Celestial Marriage," Journal of Discourses, reported by David W. Evans (7 October 1869), Vol. 13 (London: Latter-day Saint's Book Depot, 1871), 192–93.
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Polygamy became a significant social and political issue in the United States in 1852, when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) made it known that a form of the practice, called plural marriage, was part of its doctrine. Opposition to the practice by the United States government resulted in an intense legal conflict, and culminated in LDS Church president Wilford Woodruff announcing the church's official abandonment of the practice on September 25, 1890.Woodruff's declaration was formally accepted in a church general conference on October 6, 1890. However, breakaway Mormon fundamentalist groups living mostly in the western United States, Canada, and Mexico still practice plural marriage.
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The Council of Friends became the governing ecclesiastical body over the Mormon fundamentalists at Short Creek. The early years of the movement were contentious and saw many differing interpretations and opinions among leaders as to how plural marriage should be practised. These contentions eventually led to the subsequent schisms that created the multiple Mormon fundamentalist organizations that now exist, including the FLDS Church, the Apostolic United Brethren, and the Latter-day Church of Christ or Kingston group. It is commonly believed by all of these sects that the early leaders of the fundamentalist movement claimed to receive revelations from God commanding that plural marriage should not cease.
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Kraut was excommunicated in 1972, but Wilde was able to keep her marriage to Kraut a secret for many decades. She was excommunicated sometime after 2002 and speaks on behalf of polygamists. She is a co-author of Voices in Harmony: Contemporary Women Celebrate Plural Marriage.
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Kessinger Publishing, 2004, p. 48. . He worked there with little success from 1853 to 1855. Like many early Latter-day Saints, Ballantyne practiced plural marriage. He married Huldah M. Clark in 1847, Mary Pierce in 1855, and Caroline Sanderson in 1857The Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine.
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Howard, F. Burton. Marion G. Romney: His Life and Faith. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1988) p. 10 When he was young his family moved to the Mormon colonies in Mexico so that his father could continue practicing plural marriage, which was illegal in the United States.
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This latter method of freely choosing marriage partners is still predominately used by most Mormon fundamentalists who believe in or practice plural marriage. Most fundamentalist Mormons, apart from the FLDS, do not practice arranged marriages. Rather, they believe that arranged marriages violate the members’ "free agency".
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Although Latter- day Saints contended that their religiously based practice of plural marriage was protected by the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States determined otherwise, leading to the formal ending of the practice in 1890, reinforced by further decrees in 1904 mandating excommunication for any member either practicing or advocating polygamy. Certain fundamentalist Mormon sects continue to practice plural marriage today, albeit outside of the mainstream LDS Church body. Although the mainstream LDS Church has renounced the practice of plural marriage, it still believes and teaches that a celestial marriage contracted between a single unmarried man"Unmarried", for men, meaning in terms of this world; a Mormon man may be "sealed" to more than one woman, but not more than one living woman at a time. Mormon women may only ever be "sealed" to one man, although they may apply for an ecclesiastical divorce (called a "Cancellation of Sealing"; men, too, may apply for this if they wish to terminate their marriage to a Mormon woman, living or dead) if they wish to be sealed to another man.
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In 1851, he married Clarinda Ricks, with whom he would have four children. Shortly after their marriage, Brigham Young asked the couple to settle in Parowan. Smith practiced plural marriage and in 1853 married Sarah Ann Ricks, his first wife's sister. Smith and Sarah Ricks would have five children.
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198–199 during the 1839–44 Nauvoo era when several top Mormon leaders, including Smith, Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball took multiple wives. Mormon elders who publicly taught that all men were commanded to enter plural marriage were subject to harsh discipline.Times and Seasons, vol. 5, p.
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After Young's death, the settling projects in Mexico shifted from a proselyting foundation towards finding a refuge for families that had adopted plural marriage and felt threatened by the US Government's prosecution of polygamists.S.C. Richardson. "Remembering Colonia Diaz." Improvement Era, vol 40, May 1937, pages 298-300, 322, 331.
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Cannon married Sarah A. Jenkins on October 16, 1878. Cannon practiced plural marriage. He married his second wife, Wilhelmina Mousley, on October 15, 1879. On March 17, 1886, Cannon was convicted under the Edmunds Act of unlawful cohabitation and sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a fine of $300.
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Smith practiced plural marriage. He had five wives and forty-four children. Smith was eighteen years old when his oldest child was born and seventy when his youngest was born. Of the forty-four children, forty-two lived to adulthood, forty were married and thirty-eight had children.
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This figure includes seized stock and cash in bank accounts as well as $10,000 "credits due on sheep." Real property, including LDS temples, was never seized, although the ruling authorized it. Within five months, the LDS Church officially discontinued the practice of plural marriage with the 1890 Manifesto.
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Historian Todd Compton notes that Smith's practices included elements of both polygyny and polyandry.In Sacred Loneliness, pp. 15-16. In time, polygyny came to predominate. However, a very small minority of his followers believe the evidence is not legitimate, and that Smith did not advocate or practice plural marriage.
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Grant succeeded Joseph F. Smith as church president in November 1918. He was not sustained in the position by the general church membership, however, until June 1919 because of the influenza pandemic of 1918, which forced a delay of the church's traditional springtime general conference. Grant upon becoming church president (late 1918 or early 1919) During his tenure as church president, Grant enforced the 1890 Manifesto outlawing plural marriage and gave guidance as the church's social structure evolved away from its early days of plural marriage. In 1927, he authorized the implementation of the church's "Good Neighbor" policy, which was intended to reduce antagonism between Latter-day Saints and the US government.
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Mormon fundamentalists are groups or individuals who have broken from the dominant form of Mormonism practiced by the LDS Church. Since the mid-19th century, numerous fundamentalist sects have been established, many of which are located in small, cohesive, and isolated communities in areas of the Western United States, western Canada, and Mexico. Mormon fundamentalists advocate a return to Mormon doctrines and practices which, they believe, were wrongly abandoned, such as plural marriage, the law of consecration, the Adam–God doctrine, the Patriarchal Priesthood, elements of the Mormon endowment ritual, and often the exclusion of blacks from the priesthood. Plural marriage is generally considered the most central and significant doctrine separating fundamentalists from mainstream Mormonism.
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People on the east coast were heavily motivated to push women's enfranchisement in Utah Territory, believing it would put an end to polygamy. By 1870, the idea became so popular and supported in the East that Utah territorial legislature began debate over the right of women to vote. On February 10, 1869, after two weeks of debate, a unanimous vote passed a bill enfranchising the women of Utah, fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteed women nationwide the right to vote. However, instead of voting against plural marriage, Mormon women helped double the majority in favor of plural marriage by reelecting William H. Hooper, who defended polygamy.
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Furthermore, she felt that while apostles had authority in unorganized parts of the church, they did not have authority in the stake of Zion, Nauvoo. This reasoning was one of many interpretations put forward by various factions in the months after Smith's death. Historian D. Michael Quinn claims that despite the foregoing, church succession in Nauvoo revolved around one central issue: plural marriage. Quinn maintains that Marks' known opposition to plural marriage was a crucial issue, and that although a small group of church leaders almost approved Marks as the next church president by July 10, 1844, Elder Willard Richards—one the Church's Twelve Apostles—delayed all action until Quorum President Brigham Young returned from the presidential campaign.
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On one of Kingston's trips to Salt Lake City, he met Charles Zitting, a Latter-day Saint who was married to three plural wives but had not been excommunicated by the LDS Church. Zitting introduced Kingston to John W. Woolley, who had performed Zitting's plural marriages. In 1928, Kingston was barred from entering the Salt Lake Temple when temple president George F. Richards learned that Kingston did not agree with the LDS Church's 1890 and 1904 renunciations of plural marriage. Kingston was initially opposed in his beliefs by his wife, children, and parents, all of whom tried to convince him to abandon a belief in plural marriage in order to prevent his excommunication from the LDS Church.
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It was not until 1904, under the leadership of church president Joseph F. Smith, that the church completely banned new plural marriages worldwide.Scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for the Sunday Schools, Salt Lake City: Deseret Sunday School Union, 1968, p. 159. Not surprisingly, rumors persisted of marriages performed after the 1890 Manifesto, and beginning in January 1904, testimony given in the Smoot hearings made it clear that plural marriage had not been completely extinguished. The ambiguity was ended in the General Conference of April 1904, when Smith issued the "Second Manifesto," an emphatic declaration that prohibited plural marriage and proclaimed that offenders would be subject to church discipline.
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As a result, he was imprisoned, beaten and exiled from Italy to the Netherlands. His book was burned by the public executioner. He never married nor desired wedlock. Samuel Friedrich Willenberg, a doctor of law at the University of Cracow wrote the pro-plural marriage book De finibus polygamiae licitae.
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The Book of Zevs instructs Cosmos to build a nudist community city called "Cosmos", which was to be situated northwest of the Grand Canyon. The book also condemns Mormon fundamentalists near the Utah–Arizona border for their practice of plural marriage and their belief in the inferiority of black people.
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During the Mormon Exodus to Utah, she agrees to become one of Young's wives, with the understanding that their marriage will never be consummated. Dinah lives to the age of 100, not only outliving all her husbands, but also outlasting the practice of plural marriage, which the Church abandoned in 1890.
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Like several church leaders of his time, John Van Cott was instructed to practice plural marriage. He had five wives and 28 children. His first child was born in 1838, his last in 1878. Some did not live to see adulthood, while others did; some became prominent members of their communities.
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These inner conflicts led Joseph Smith to suspend all meetings of the organization. After the death of Joseph Smith in June 1844, Brigham Young assumed leadership of the majority of Latter Day Saints. Desiring to continue plural marriage, Young disbanded the Relief Society before leaving Nauvoo for the Salt Lake Valley.
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766 and later became a partner in the store where he worked. It was there he met Rebecca Neibar (who was the sister of one of Rosenbaum's wives) and was married in 1869. Following the 19th century practice of plural marriage, Nibley married Ellen Ricks in 1880 and Julia Budge in 1885.
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Of the 400 members of the Confederate Nations of Israel members, approximately one-fourth practice polygamy, and very few of these individuals have ever been a member of any Latter Day Saint denomination.D. Michael Quinn, "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 22–23.
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Compton dates this marriage to March or April 1833, well before Joseph was accused of an affair. However, historian Lawrence Foster dismisses the marriage of Alger to Joseph Smith as "debatable supposition" rather than "established fact.""Review of Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith" , Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33 (Spring 2001): 184–86 Others conclude that many Latter-day Saints entered into plural marriage based on the belief that it was a religious commandment, rather than as an excuse for sexual license. For instance, many of the figures who came to be best associated with plural marriage, including church president Brigham Young and his counselor Heber C. Kimball, expressed revulsion at the system when it was first introduced to them.
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" And for those in the larger world, plural marriage "would confirm all their worst fears" about Mormonism. "Sexual excess was considered that all too common fruit of pretended revelation."Bushman (2005), 438: "Joseph's enemies would delight in one more evidence of a revelator's antinomian transgressions. He also risked prosecution under Illinois's anti-bigamy law.
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In 1835, Lyman married Louisa Maria Tanner in Kirtland. They had eight children.Louisa Maria Tanner Lyman went by the name Maria, so sometimes she was called "Maria Louisa," but census records, correspondence, and the Tanner family history show her name to be "Louisa Maria." In April 1844, Smith taught Lyman the principle of plural marriage.
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Stevenson also served as the co-leader of one of the Utah pioneer teams in 1855, and served as the leader of a second one in 1859. Like most prominent Mormon leaders at the time, Stevenson practiced plural marriage, eventually marrying seven simultaneous wives, including two sets of sisters. He had at least 24 children.
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However, they tend to disagree to varying degrees with the LDS Church concerning doctrine and church leadership. The main branches of the Latter Day Saint movement resulted from the crisis of succession upon the death of Joseph Smith. Other branches may be considered later offshoots of the LDS Church branch, mainly due to disagreements about plural marriage.
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A year later, they started a cattle ranch in Beaver County, Utah. Flake was called by church leaders to enter into a plural marriage in 1868. Lucy agreed to the marriage, because of her belief in the LDS Church; she even helped choose his second wife. William Flake and Prudence Kartchner were married in October 1868.
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They were awaiting trial for crimes related to the destruction of the printing press of the Nauvoo Expositor. At the time, Joseph Smith was a minor candidate for President of the United States with Sidney Rigdon as his running mate. Before his death, Smith also began teaching doctrines that were rejected by the later church, particularly plural marriage.
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The first RLDS Church's leader was Joseph Smith's oldest son Joseph Smith III. Smith III's opinions about his father and polygamy evolved throughout his life. In general, however, Smith III was an ardent opponent of plural marriage. Throughout his tenure as Prophet-President of the RLDS Church, Smith denied his father's involvement and attributed its invention to Brigham Young.
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She died on September 3, 1907. Hellen was outspoken about her lack of enthusiasm for plural marriage which was a highly encouraged practice by the LDS Church at the time. Brigham Young encouraged Smith to marry another woman, which Smith obeyed five months later. Smith married twenty-three year old Nancy Melissa Lemmon on February 18, 1857.
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They were the parents of three sons and a daughter, all of whom died as children. In 1877 Cluff began the practice of plural marriage. In 1887 he was arrested on charges of unlawful cohabitation and eventually served six months in prison. The house he had built in 1877 is on the National Register of Historic Places.
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Mary Woolley married Thomas Chamberlain in Mexico (his sixth and last wife) on August 6, 1900. She was 30; he was 46. It was 10 years after Wilford Woodruff declared the Manifesto to end plural marriage in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The law forced them to marry in Mexico, where it was still legal.
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However, plural marriage remains a divisive issue, as despite the official renunciation of 1890, it still has sympathizers, defenders, and semi-secret practitioners. More recent criticism has focused on questions of historical revisionism, homophobia, racism,"Skin Color in Mormon Scripture and Theology" sexist policies, inadequate financial disclosure, and the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
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On January 9, 1846, Smoot began practicing plural marriage. He was sealed to his second wife, Sarah Gibbens, then to his third, Emily Hill, with the approval of Adkinson. She gave her "fullest and freest consent" for Smoot to enter into polygamy. Hill was a widow with two children from her previous marriage, William and Artimisia.
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Most fundamentalist Mormons today are not and never were members of the LDS Church, because that church renounced polygamy in 1890 and excommunicated any of its members who were found to be practicing "plural marriage" (i.e. polygamy). Most fundamentalist Mormons today are descendants of those who were excommunicated from the LDS Church for entering into polygamous marriages.
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He teaches her that her husband in England had proven himself unworthy of her by his rejection of the Gospel and by forcing her to choose between God and husband. Joseph introduces Dinah to the still-covert practice of plural marriage, and they are sealed for eternity as husband and wife. Forced to keep secret her eternal union to Joseph causes strains on her relationships with the other women of the town, particularly, Emma Smith, Joseph's first wife. After Joseph's death during his incarceration at Carthage, Dinah uses her influence to help Brigham Young emerge as the new Prophet of the Church, largely because he alone of the potential prophet candidates is determined to uphold the Principle (as plural marriage has come to be known among its adherents).
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The LDS official position is God rescinded the commandment to practice plural marriage. Church apostle Joseph F. Smith explained, "The doctrine is not repealed, the truth is not annulled, the law is right and just now as ever, but the observance of it is stopped".Letter from Joseph F. Smith to the Honorable A. Saxey, Provo, Utah, 9 January 1897.
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In 1870, Burton was tried and acquitted for the murder of Isabella Bowman, a person who had been killed by Utah militia while surrendering in the Morrisite War. Burton practiced plural marriage and fathered 27 children. He married his first wife, Maria S. Haven (1826–1920) in 1845. He married his other two wives, Sarah A. Garr and Susan E. McBride in 1856.
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United States. The Court affirmed Reynolds's conviction unanimously and rejected Reynolds' argument that the Latter-day Saint practice of plural marriage was protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Thus, his conviction was upheld, as was the constitutionality of the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. Chief Justice Morrison Waite wrote on behalf of himself and seven colleagues.
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In 1854 Felt entered the practice of plural marriage, marrying Sarah Strange as his second wife. In 1854-1856 Felt served as a missionary in New York City where he served as assistant editor of The Mormon under John Taylor. During Felt's journey back from New York he intercepted the tragic handcart companies of 1856 including the Willie and Martin group.
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Adherents of Mormon fundamentalism generally accept the Adam–God doctrine. The LDS Church's disavowal of the doctrine contributes to what fundamentalists perceive to be a general intellectual or spiritual retreat from important principles that were rejected due to unpopularity. Along with the practice of plural marriage, belief in the Adam–God doctrine became a defining aspect of the Mormon fundamentalist movement.
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The state of Utah politics was reorganized after the 1890 Manifesto led by Wilford Woodruff. The 1890 Manifesto officially ended the traditionally Mormon practice of Polygamy. Many prominent polygamist Mormons were imprisoned, punished and harassed since the 1890 Manifesto prohibited plural marriage. This action granted the Utah Territory statehood in 1896 on the condition that polygamy was banned in the state constitution.
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The LDS Church president Wilford Woodruff announced the church's official abandonment of the practice on September 25, 1890.Woodruff's declaration was formally accepted in a church general conference on October 6, 1890. However, breakaway Mormon fundamentalist groups living mostly in the western United States, Canada, and Mexico still practice plural marriage. Some other Americans practice polygamy including some American Muslims.
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When Junius F. Wells became the first general superintendent of the YMMIA in 1876, he chose Milton H. Hardy and Badger as his assistants. Badger acted in this capacity until 1880, when Wells was released and replaced by Wilford Woodruff. Badger practiced plural marriage and was married to three wives. Badger died in Salt Lake City of sepsis from a streptococcus infection.
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The day Joseph married the Partridge sisters, he bought Emma a new carriage. Nevertheless, "from that hour," Emily later wrote, "Emma was our bitter enemy," and they had to leave the household.Quoted in Brodie, 339. According to Smith's scribe, William Clayton, Joseph's brother Hyrum encouraged him to write down his revelation on plural marriage to present to Emma, and Joseph did so.
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Taylor practiced plural marriage and was married to eight wives: Leonora Cannon, Elizabeth Kaighin, Jane Ballantyne, Mary Ann Oakley, Sophia Whitaker, Harriet Whitaker, and Margaret Young.B. H. Roberts, The Life of John Taylor (Salt Lake City, Utah: George Q. Cannon & Sons, 1897). He was the father of 34 children.Richard L. Jensen, “The John Taylor Family,” Ensign, February 1980, pp. 50–51.
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Born in Carbunca, Iowa, Smith was the son of Sarah Ann Libby and LDS Church apostle and First Presidency member, George A. Smith. He came west to Utah in a company co-led by his father in 1849, arriving in Salt Lake City on October 27, 1849. His mother died in 1851. Smith practiced plural marriage and was the father of 19 children.
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Mose was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father, Lars Christensen, had emigrated from Denmark in the early 1850s to Utah as one of the Mormon pioneers. Mose's mother, Elsa Bjerregaard, was Lars Christensen's second wife in a plural marriage. Mose began his musical training with his father, who played the violin, and his mother, who played the piano.
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The Utah State Capitol, Salt Lake City The Scott Matheson Courthouse is the seat of the Utah Supreme Court. In the late 19th century, the federal government took issue with polygamy in the LDS Church. The LDS Church discontinued plural marriage in 1890, and in 1896 Utah gained admission to the Union. Many new people settled the area soon after the Mormon pioneers.
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Young incorporated the LDS Church as a legal entity, and initially governed both the church and the state as a theocratic leader. He also publicized the practice of plural marriage,The Mormon doctrine of plural wives was officially announced by one of the Twelve Apostles Orson Pratt and Smith's successor Brigham Young in a special conference of the elders of the church assembled in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on August 28, 1852, and reprinted in an extra edition of the Deseret News Only a small percentage of church leaders participated in plural marriage believing it was a part of a restitution of ancient Priesthood blessings and a commandment of god to raise up a righteous generation. At the time, it was not barred by statute within the United States.. See also: The 1850s: Official sanction in the LDS Church a form of polygamy.
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Other issues of contention included plural marriage, freedom of speech, the anti-slavery views expressed by Smith during his 1844 presidential campaign, and Smith's teachings on the deification of man. After the destruction of the press of the Nauvoo Expositor, Smith was arrested and incarcerated in Carthage Jail where he was killed by a mob on June 27, 1844. The persecution in Illinois became so severe that most of the residents of Nauvoo fled across the Mississippi River in February 1846. Even after Mormons established a community hundreds of miles away in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, anti-Mormon activists in Utah Territory convinced U.S. President James Buchanan that the Mormons in the territory were rebelling against the United States; critics pointed to the Mountain Meadows massacre and plural marriage as signs of the rebellion.
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Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley each resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles due to disagreement with the church's position on plural marriage.Victor W. Jorgensen and B. Carmon Hardy, "The Taylor-Cowley Affair and the Watershed of Mormon History", Utah Historical Quarterly 48:4 (1980). Involvement in or teaching plural marriage continues to be grounds for excommunication from the LDS Church.LDS Church (2006).
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One such act was the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, which was signed into law on July 8, 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln. The act banned plural marriage and limited church and non-profit ownership in any territory of the United States to $50,000.Statutes at Large, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, page 501. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: US Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 - 1875.
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In 1715, his book was ordered to be burned. Friedrich escaped with his life, but was fined one hundred thousand gold pieces. One of the more notable published works regarding the modern concept of Christian Plural Marriage dates from the 18th century. The book Thelyphthora was written by Martin Madan, a significant writer of hymns and a contemporary of John Wesley and Charles Wesley.
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Bernhisel also served as regent of the University of Utah. Bernhisel was a bachelor until he was 46 years old (March 1845), when he married Julia Ann Haight, the widow of William Van Orden and mother of five children. The couple had one child, also named John Milton Bernhisel (born in 1846). Like some early LDS Church members, Bernhisel went on to practice plural marriage.
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In 1998 President Gordon B. Hinckley stated, > "If any of our members are found to be practicing plural marriage, they are > excommunicated, the most serious penalty the Church can impose. Not only are > those so involved in direct violation of the civil law, they are in > violation of the law of this Church." > Gordon B. Hinckley, "What Are People Asking About Us?", Ensign, November > 1998, p. 70.
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Over time, many who rejected the LDS Church's discontinuation of plural marriage formed small, close-knit communities in areas of the Rocky Mountains. These groups continue to practice what they refer to as "the principle", despite its illegality, and consider polygamy a requirement for entry into the highest heaven. Commonly called Mormon fundamentalists, they may practice as individuals, as families, or within organized denominations.
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Leaders of the church secretly practiced and taught plural marriage from about 1831 to 1852. Today, the church is opposed to such marriages and excommunicates members who participate in them or publicly teach that they are sanctioned by God. The LDS Church also opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage.Fred Karger, "The Mormon church won't drop its opposition to gay marriage", The Guardian, 2013-11-29.
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However, despite his disinterest in formal education, he read avidly with favorite authors being Ralph Waldo Emerson and Montaigne. Early influences from the Mormon families around him led him to be disinterested in maintaining LDS Church activity. Examples of these influences included abuse of the law of plural marriage and excessive piety among church members. Young was athletic and participated in baseball and football teams.
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He asked her to leave Nauvoo to live with his parents once more, but she refused. James Harris died as a sailor in the Indian Ocean and never returned to his wife. left The young Emmeline Harris returned to teaching. Through his children's attending her school, Harris met and later married Newel K. Whitney on February 24, 1845, under the Mormon practice of plural marriage.
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He was clerk at the April 1844 general conference of the church, an assistant to Church Historian and Recorder Willard Richards from 1842 to 1854, and was the clerk to the Council of Fifty from 1846 to 1882. While with the Church Historian's Office, Bullock was responsible for writing some portions of History of the Church. Like many early Latter Day Saints, Bullock practiced plural marriage.
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Like many 19th-century members of the LDS Church, Smith practiced plural marriage, and had five wives simultaneously. In July 1887, Smith was arrested for violating the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. He pleaded guilty, and on 31 March 1888 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a $300 fine. Smith was imprisoned until 20 July 1888, when he was pardoned by U.S. President Grover Cleveland.
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Of all Smith's innovations during the years immediately preceding his death, the one that received the most hostile reception was his institution of plural marriage. Joseph Smith married at least twenty-eight women.Bushman, 493; Compton, 4-7; Remini, 153-54; Brodie, "The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith," Appendix C in No Man Knows My History, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971), 457-88. Remini, 153.
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Law paid his workers in cash, but Smith "operated on scrip, credit, and tithed labor." Law was also convinced that Smith was misappropriating money donated by church members to complete the Nauvoo House hotel in order to buy land and sell it to converts at a profit. Ostlings, 14; Brodie, 368. But the most significant difference between the two was Law's opposition to plural marriage.
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However, plural marriage remains a controversial and divisive issue, as despite the official renunciation of 1890, it still has sympathizers, defenders, and semi-secret practitioners within Mormonism, though not within the LDS Church. More recent criticism has focused on questions of historical revisionism, homophobia, racism,"Skin Color in Mormon Scripture and Theology" sexist policies, inadequate financial disclosure, and the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
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He served as both an apostle and temple president until his death. Like many early leaders in the LDS Church, Merrill practiced plural marriage. Merrill married his second wife, Cyrene Standley, on 5 June 1856, and married also, in 1867, Maria Loenza Kingsbury, granddaughter of noted Mormon pioneer Stillman Pond and mother of future Apostle Joseph F. Merrill. Marriner eventually married eight wives and had 46 children.
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Tanner retired in 1906 and emigrated to Alberta, Canada, where he farmed in the Cardston area. From 1906 to 1921 Tanner wrote extensively for the Improvement Era, an official periodical of the LDS Church. He wrote a number of books, including manuals for the church's Sunday School and a biography of John R. Murdock. Tanner was a practitioner of plural marriage and had five wives.
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Angus was also called to testify and after a court hearing, was sent to jail. Cannon joined the Mormon "underground" seeking to avoid providing federal marshals with proof of her plural marriage to Angus. She also feared being forced to provide testimony against others, based on information gathered through her obstetrical practice. Cannon found that she was pregnant after Angus was sent to jail.
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J. Spencer Cornwall (1958). A Century of Singing: The Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book). Like many early Latter Day Saints, Parry practiced plural marriage. In 1851, he married Patty Bartlett Sessions, and over the next two years he would marry Grace Ann Williams—a sister of his deceased wife Mary—and Harriet Parry, one of his first cousins.
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In 1870, Stenhouse was convinced by the writings of William S. Godbe, who criticised LDS Church President Brigham Young on political and religious grounds. The Stenhouses were particularly opposed to the LDS Church's practice of plural marriage. Stenhouse and his wife became part of the "Godbeites" and were excommunicated from the LDS Church. As Godbeites, Stenhouse and his wife published several exposés of Mormonism.
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". This principle of total obedience and submission to male church leaders came to define her faith. In her last conference of the Relief Society in October 1900 in the Salt Lake Assembly Hall, Zina advised, "Sisters, never speak a word against the authorities of this church." In time, however, Zina accepted polygamy as a lifestyle. On one occasion, she proclaimed, "The principle of plural marriage is honorable.
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Pratt declined invitations from Mormon leaders and entreaties of his wife Louisa to follow the practice of plural marriage. As a result, Pratt and his wife were separated and estranged for much of his later life. Pratt died in Anaheim, California and is buried there. Pratt was present at the discovery of gold in California, working on Sutter's Mill at the time of discovery.
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Father Domínguez met the chief and his sons. With villagers gathered, Domínguez preached through Andrés Muñiz, the interpreter. He expressed concern about their practices of plural marriage and naming people for animals, which he said was a lower form of life than man. They referred to one of the Ute guides as "Silvestre", and said that he was a Laguna, a Timpanogo from the Utah Lake region.
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Certainly there were many genuine converts to Christianity, but ulterior political motives cannot be ignored as the impetus for many religious conversions during this time period. Like his father, it seems that Talavou's professions of Christianity were more of a socio-political tactic than a spiritual conversion, especially since he continued to defy basic Christian tenets regarding plural marriage and warfare until his death.
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Nevertheless, even after the Manifesto, the church quietly continued to perform a small number of plural marriages in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, thus a Second Manifesto was released during U.S. congressional hearings which were held in 1904. Although neither Manifesto dissolved existing plural marriages, plural marriage in the LDS Church gradually died by attrition during the early 1900s. The Manifesto was canonized in the LDS Church standard works as Official Declaration 1 and mainstream Mormons, believe it was prompted by a divine revelation in which Woodruff was shown that the church would be thrown into turmoil if they did not comply with it. Mormon fundamentalists dispute the claim that Woodruff received any such revelation and as a result, they continue to practice plural marriage; these denominations include the Apostolic United Brethren and Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, among others.
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He was selected by Smith as an inaugural member of the Council of Fifty on March 1, 1844. When Smith was killed on June 27, 1844, Young was campaigning in Ohio on behalf of Smith's bid for the presidency of the United States. Like many early Latter Day Saints, Young practiced plural marriage. On January 16, 1846, he was married to Lucinda Allen and Lydia Caroline Hagar, in the Nauvoo Temple.
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Mary Ann Angell Young (June 8, 1803 – June 27, 1882) was the second woman married to Brigham Young, who would be president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were married on March 31, 1834. Young's first wife, Miriam Angeline Works, had died on September 8, 1832. With the permission of Mary, Young began practicing plural marriage in 1842 when he married Lucy Ann Decker.
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These messengers told him that the Dream Mine would be a "Relief Mine" which would provide financial relief after the disasters leading up to the Second Coming. The mine would be the first "City of Refuge," providing material survival until plural marriage and the United Order were reestablished. They also warned Koyle that the Dream Mine would face "false rumors" and experience opposition from leaders of the LDS Church.
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Their two sisters who had been married to Ervil LeBaron disappeared. Heber had accused the women of knowing about Arturo's murder in advance, and authorities believe cult members killed them. Evoniuk was killed in 1987 by cult members. Although Heber did not spend a great deal of time proselytizing about religion to his followers, he fully embraced plural marriage and used it to tighten his influence over the group's members.
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Smith's son Joseph Smith III, his widow Emma Smith, and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church, now called Community of Christ) challenged the evidence and taught that Joseph Smith had opposed polygamy. They instead claimed that Brigham Young, the head of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), introduced plural marriage after Smith's death.Times and Seasons, vol. 5, no.
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He also served as the first recorder of the St. George Temple. He served as the first president of the Kanab Stake when it was organized in 1877. Starting in 1897, he served as a member of the General Board of the Deseret Sunday School Union. In 1879, Nuttall became a private secretary for John Taylor, replacing George Reynolds, who was serving a prison term for practicing plural marriage.
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In 1890, church president Wilford Woodruff had issued the initial Manifesto, in which he suspended the LDS Church's long-standing practice of plural marriage. However, after the Manifesto, it became clear that a number of church members, including members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, were continuing to enter into or solemnize polygamous marriages.Kenneth Cannon II, "After the Manifesto: Mormon Polygamy, 1890–1906", Sunstone, Jan.–Apr. 1983, p. 27.
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When the Supreme Court upheld the ban on plural marriage in the 1879 Reynolds v. United States decision, Cannon stated: Eventually, Cannon went "underground" with others in the church leadership as a fugitive from the federal authorities. In September 1888, Cannon surrendered himself and pleaded guilty at trial to charges of unlawful cohabitation under the Edmunds Act. As a result, Cannon served nearly six months in Utah's federal penitentiary.
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Strang reversed course in 1849 to become one of plural marriage's strongest advocates. Since many of his early disciples had looked to him as a monogamous counterweight to Young's polygamous version of Mormonism, Strang's decision to embrace plural marriage proved costly to him and his church. Martin Harris circa 1870, age 87.Strang found his greatest support among the scattered outlying branches of Mormonism, which he frequently toured.
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Mormon scholar Terryl Givens notes that the book presents plural marriage as a "marathon Abrahamic test" of faith similar to colonizing Utah's desert. Polygamy is more than an unusual set of sexual partners; it is the setting of emotional and spiritual sacrifice. Whipple also shows how isolated Clory was when she notes Clory's excitement to see a non- Mormon, or "Gentile." Whipple focuses on the actions of pioneers, not their beliefs.
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José María was ordained as its bishop. However, the LDS Church was facing difficulties regarding plural marriage back in the United States, and as a result, fewer missionaries were sent to Mexico. Because of the lack of contact with American missionaries, the small congregation in Nopala struggled, and its bishop, still José María, ended up renouncing his priesthood. In 1886, Desideria was severely beaten and robbed in her home.
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In 1928, at the age of 84, Biesinger travelled to Czechoslovakia as a missionary and obtained legal permission for the LDS Church to operate in that country. On 24 July 1929, the LDS Church established the Czechoslovakia Mission, which existed until the church was expelled from communist Czechoslovakia in 1950. Biesinger practiced plural marriage and had four wives and 17 children. Biesinger died in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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Orson Hyde around 1862 Hyde married Marinda Nancy Johnson, in Kirtland, Ohio, on September 4, 1834. Joseph Smith was sealed to Marinda as a plural wife in Spring 1842 while Hyde was on his mission to Jerusalem. It is not clear when, or if, Hyde learned about his wife's sealing to Smith. However, three months after his return, Hyde had learned about plural marriage and married two additional wives.
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Richards ca. 1915 In 1905, two members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles resigned after an argument over LDS Church doctrine and policy. John W. Taylor disagreed with the 1890 Manifesto forbidding plural marriage; Matthias F. Cowley felt that it should apply only to the territory of the United States. In February of the next year, apostle Marriner W. Merrill died; this left three vacancies in the Quorum.
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He also asked leaders to stop preaching the practice of plural marriage. On behalf of the church, Woodruff courted the favor of businessman Alexander Badlam Jr. and prominent Republican Isaac Trumbo. The two men moved to Arlington, Virginia, under false names, seeking to persuade Republican congressmen to support Utah's bid for statehood in 1888. After Utah was denied statehood, Woodruff personally traveled to California in 1889 to speak with politicians.
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The title of the book is drawn from an 1880 address by John Taylor, the third president of the LDS Church, defending the practice of plural marriage: > God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts > with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven against the > Government. The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. God > says different.Krakauer, Chapter 20, p.
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Mary joined Thomas in Mexico to be married. They went home separately and she continued to work at the store for another year. She quit her job to go into hiding in Salt Lake City due to being pregnant with her first son as a result of a plural marriage. She began using the pseudonym "Thomas" as a surname to avoid detection, this way of living lasted six years.
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During this time, the LDS Church was experiencing strained relations with the federal United States government over the church practice of plural marriage. Card requested to be sent to Mexico, but was instead assigned to settle in Canada. Church president John Taylor instructed him to find "asylum and justice" in the north. Card took his wife, Zina Williams Card, and left for Canada in 1886, successfully escaping arrest.
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Moses 7:18 In the Mormon fundamentalism movement, a more literal interpretation of Zion as a specific geographical location is held to more strongly and a more stringent emphasis is placed upon individual and community lifestyle requirements that are considered, to be necessary prerequisites to establishing such a community. These requirements are often referred to as "the fulness of the gospel" and as "ordinances," specific commandments which have long set this movement apart from mainstream Christianity. The two most frequently noted requirements are the United Order (a form of agrarian communalism) and plural marriage, both of which are de- emphasized in the mainstream LDS Church and, in the case of plural marriage, expressly prohibited and denounced. A modern-day proponent of the Mormon fundamentalist movement, Ogden Kraut, summarized the fundamentalist/dissident position on "Zion" as follows: > The Saints failed to live the higher laws in the center stake of Zion in > Missouri so they were expelled.
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Nevertheless, the LDS Church still wielded significant political power in the Utah Territory. At Young's death in 1877, he was followed by other church presidents, who resisted efforts by the United States Congress to outlaw Mormon polygamous marriages. In 1878, the United States Supreme Court, in Reynolds v. United States, decreed that "religious duty" to engage in plural marriage was not a valid defense to prosecutions for violating state laws against polygamy.
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Bennett was subsequently expelled from Nauvoo in the summer of 1842, and Smith himself became the city's second mayor. Bennett's fall led to Brigham Young becoming more prominent among Smith's confidants. Young proved more loyal than Bennett, helping Smith promote the teachings of the Church and the practice of plural marriage with greater discretion. Another key development was Smith's 1844 establishment of the Council of Fifty based upon his political theory of theodemocracy.
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Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, privately taught and practiced polygamy. After Smith's death in 1844, the church he established splintered into several competing groups. Disagreement over Smith's doctrine of "plural marriage" has been among the primary reasons for multiple church schisms. The members of the largest faction, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), do not continue to teach and practice polygamy today.
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Julina Lambson was born to Alfred Boaz Lambson and Melissa Jane Bigler in Salt Lake City. Her parents were Mormon pioneers who arrived in Utah in 1847. Her family's home was the first house in Salt Lake City to be plastered. As a young girl Julina would often stay with her aunt Bathsheba W. Smith and it was in her home that Julina was first introduced to the idea of plural marriage.
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This was part of the by-then 20-year struggle by the U.S. government to curb the LDS practice of plural marriage in Utah Territory and other locations in the American West. Among other things, the law felonized the practice of polygamy and disenfranchised polygamists. As a result, over a thousand Latter-day Saint men and women were eventually fined and jailed. Some were sent as far away as Michigan to fulfill their terms.
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In the 19th century, the term "celestial marriage" usually referred to the practice of plural marriage, a practice which the LDS Church formally abandoned in 1890. The term is still used in this sense by Mormon fundamentalists not affiliated with the LDS Church. In the LDS Church today, both men and women may enter a celestial marriage with only one living partner at a time. A man may be sealed to more than one woman.
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Lot Smith (May 15, 1830 - June 20, 1892) was a Mormon pioneer, soldier, lawman and American frontiersman. He became known as "The Horseman" for his exceptional skills on horseback as well as for his help in rounding up wild mustangs on Utah's Antelope Island. He is most famous for his exploits during the 1857 Utah War. Smith practiced the Latter-day Saint doctrine of plural marriage, and had eight wives and 52 children.
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Jens Larson "Limeburner" Jenson > (sometimes spelled Jensen) was born in Dalby, Scona, Sweden, July 14, 1827. > He was baptised into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in > 1855, and arrived in Utah in 1859 as a member of the Rowley Handcart > Company. Jenson lived the doctrine of plural marriage, being joined to three > women; and later served a sixty-two day sentence for polygamy. With It is located north of Richfield.
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On October 12, 1856, Hardy was called to be the first counselor to the church's Presiding Bishop, Edward Hunter. When Hunter died in 1883, William B. Preston became the new presiding bishop and Hardy was again selected as the first counselor. However, after just a few months working under Preston, Hardy died in Salt Lake City and was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery. Hardy practiced plural marriage and was the father of 18 children.
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After the death of his oldest brother, his family moved to Short Creek in the winter of 1945. At age nine he became the first of his siblings baptized into the polygamous church. After Bistline's father's death in 1949, his mother became the fifth wife of Rich Jessop (son of Joseph Smith Jessop). Bistline received permission from his stepfather to court one of his daughters on the condition Bistline would practice plural marriage.
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His pamphlet "An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions" was the first published account of the First Vision and included a list of beliefs that is similar to Smith's 1842 "Articles of Faith". In "Absurdities of Immaterialism", Pratt defended the Mormon doctrine of materiality, with reference to science, philosophy, and theology. Although these materials were primarily used in the mission field, Pratt was also a church spokesman on the topic of plural marriage.
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Because Rigdon was rejected by Smith, most of the core leadership of the church, including members of the Council of Fifty and Anointed Quorum, questioned Rigdon's standing and authority and later, his claim to succeed Smith as head of the church. Rigdon and Marks were also known opponents of plural marriage. Those who supported this controversial practice instituted by Smith saw such dissent as disloyal. Smith also spoke at the funeral of Marks's son.
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Like other fundamentalist Latter Day Saint churches, members practice polygamy and a form of the communal United Order. The church also runs a printing business called Resto Graphics, based in Mississauga, Ontario. After breaking from the RLDS Church, Stan King (known as "Prophet" by his followers) reinstated the old Mormon practice of plural marriage. Former church member Carol Christie claims King already had three "church wives" when she married him in the 1970s.
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Most Latter Day Saint denominations are derived from the Church of Christ (Latter Day Saints) established by Joseph Smith in 1830. The largest worldwide denomination is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as Mormonism. Various considerably smaller sects broke from this movement after its relocation to the Rocky Mountains in the mid-1800s. Several of these broke away over the abandonment of practicing plural marriage after the 1890 Manifesto.
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Smith typically responded to such accusations by saying that he was "not positive nor sure that was innocent", and that if, indeed, the elder Smith had been involved, it was still a false practice. However, many members of the Community of Christ and some of the groups that were formerly associated with it are not convinced that Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage and feel that the evidence that he did is flawed.
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John Whitaker Taylor (May 15, 1858 - October 10, 1916) was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and was the son of John Taylor, the third president of the church. While he was an apostle, Taylor was excommunicated from the LDS Church for opposing the church's abandonment of plural marriage. He was subsequently posthumously re-baptized in 1965.
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Although the church officially forbade the practice with the 1890 Manifesto, Taylor continued to privately marry additional wives and under pressure submitted his resignation from the Quorum of the Twelve on October 28, 1905.Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986) pp. 65–66. Matthias F. Cowley also resigned from the Quorum at the same time over the plural marriage dispute.
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The LDS Church has instructed leaders that a church membership council is mandatory when evidence suggests that a member of the church may have committed any of the following offences against the standards of the church: Murder; rape; sexual assault conviction; child or youth abuse; abuse of a spouse or another adult; predatory behavior (violent, sexual, or financial); incest; child pornography; plural marriage; serious sin while holding a prominent church position; and most felony convictions.
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It was a strong voice in support of woman's suffrage. It also actively supported plural marriage, which was a religious practice of the Church at the time. Home, family, and the overall role of women were also frequent topics. The Exponent both expressed that the "woman's sphere" in the home was a noble construct of society and encouraged women to expand beyond it; education for women was often urged to the audience.
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Jenson was born in Millville, Utah, to Eslie D. Jenson, a member of the Priesthood Council of the Apostolic United Brethren under leadership of Joseph W. Musser. Jenson grew up in the Salt Lake Valley and graduated from Jordan High School in 1953. Jenson went on to work in the building materials industry and owned the Jenson Lumber in Draper, Utah. Jenson was a follower of the Apostolic United Brethren practice of Plural Marriage.
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Matthias Foss Cowley (August 25, 1858 – June 16, 1940) was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1897 until 1905. He resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve due to his unwillingness to support the church's abolition of plural marriage. He and John W. Taylor are the most recent apostles of the LDS Church to have resigned from their positions.
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She witnessed Utah achieve statehood and the Manifesto end plural marriage. However, her condemnations of Mormons became their most severe upon hearing that a writer was going to publish a book that claimed Thomas Kane was secretly a Mormon. She defended her husband, claiming that he was too intelligent to have believed stories in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. She attributed his interest in Mormons solely to pity and gratitude.
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In March 1842, Whitney became one of the original leaders of the Relief Society, with Emma Hale Smith, Sarah M. Cleveland, and Eliza Roxcy Snow (who had been her acquaintance in Kirtland). Whitney served as the second counselor under Emma Smith.Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, p. 8 Whitney presided over many of the Relief Society's last meetings in Nauvoo, as Emma Smith was away travelling, ill, or struggling with Joseph Smith's doctrine of plural marriage.
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Two men were arrested for obstructing the raid but were later released. Several men were found guilty and convicted of sexual assault, rape, and bigamy involving underage girls. The stars of the TLC show Sister Wives challenged the state of Utah's bigamy laws, though also acknowledging that the state's constitutional ban of plural marriage licenses would remain regardless of the lawsuit's outcome. On December 13, 2013, US Federal Judge Clark Waddoups ruled in Brown v.
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Jacob Cochran (also Cochrane, 1782-1836) was a non-denominational preacher born in Enfield, New Hampshire, United States who founded the Cochranites in Saco, Maine. Cochranite worship is said to have resembled Shakerism, but which also practiced a new doctrine called spiritual wifery. Cochranism may have influenced the Mormon doctrines of plural marriage and the United Order, as well as the free love practice called complex marriage once favored by the Oneida Community.
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On May 18, Cowles was excommunicated for apostasy, along with James Blakesley, Francis M. Higbee of the Nauvoo Legion, and Charles Ivins. On May 29, the high council published document purporting to show Higbee's brother Chauncey L. Higbee had also committed misdeeds. In 1844, Cowles swore an affidavit accusing the church of teaching the doctrine of plural marriage. This statement was published along with others, in the first and only issue of the Nauvoo Expositor.
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In 1879, Forbes married a second wife, Mary Jane Gardner, with whom he had eleven children. He devoted equal time to both wives. In 1887 with the passage of the Edmunds- Tucker Act, plural marriage became a crime, and Forbes was forced into hiding. Eventually he was arrested and detained in the penitentiary in Salt Lake City until he signed a document indicating his intention to consider himself married only to his first wife.
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In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the anti- bigamy bill known as the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, but it was not rigorously enforced against Mormons in Utah Territory. This "legislation struck at both polygamy and Church power by prohibiting plural marriage in the territories, disincorporating the [...] Church, and restricting the Church's ownership of property to fifty thousand dollars."Gustive O. Larson, "Government, Politics, and Conflict" in Richard D. Poll et al., eds.
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The Centennial Park group is led by a Priesthood Council and teaches the doctrine of plural marriage. This doctrine states that a man having multiple wives is ordained by God. The doctrine requires multiple wives in order for a man and his wives to receive the highest form of salvation. Like the members of the FLDS Church, the members of the Centennial Park group practice a form of placement marriage, but men do not solicit marriage.
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David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson (2014), Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 58–59, . and is considered by mainstream Mormons to have been prompted by divine revelation (although not a revelation itself), in which Woodruff was shown that the church would be thrown into turmoil if they did not comply with it."Polygamy: Latter-day Saints and the Practice of Plural Marriage", mormonnewsroom.org.
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She reported that Smith told her that an angel threatened to take away his life unless he followed God's instruction to practice plural marriage. He also predicted that her husband would not join the church and, therefore, she needed to be sealed to a priesthood holder. Mary would not marry Smith until she had received a witness from God for herself. She prayed about the proposal, and reported that she saw an angel pass through her room.
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The following year, George was imprisoned for practicing polygamy. Taylor continued to support and defend plural marriage. At a meeting of the LDS Church's organization for adolescent girls held June 19, 1880, in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square, Taylor was appointed the first general president of the Young Ladies' National Mutual Improvement Association, the original name of the church's Young Women organization. Taylor was the general president of the organization until her death in 1904.
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Caricature of Young's wives, after his death Young was a polygamist, marrying a total of 55 wives, 54 of them after he converted to Mormonism. The policy was difficult for many in the church. Young stated that upon being taught about plural marriage, "It was the first time in my life that I desired the grave." By the time of his death, Young had 56 children by 16 of his wives; 46 of his children reached adulthood.
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In 1852, Young felt the church in Utah was secure enough to announce the practice of plural marriage to the world. Shortly after the announcement, however, the Latter-day Saints in Utah experienced a period of trial. The population of the new territory was increasing at a rapid rate as Mormon converts from Europe joined the American Saints in their migration across the Great Plains. In 1855, a drought struck the flourishing but still largely undeveloped territory.
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It continued until 1890 when Wilford Woodruff received a revelation, known as the "Manifesto", that stopped plural marriage. Following the Manifesto, many groups and individuals left the church in order to continue the practice; however, these groups have no affiliation with the church today. Although some church leaders are known to have large polygamous families, two-thirds of the men who practiced polygamy in the church only had two wives. Women were able to divorce their husbands.
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77, 169-82, 219-47, 287-305. Cutlerites do not believe that Joseph Smith ever authored the 119th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which mandates tithing, claiming that it was never presented to the membership until after Smith's death.Fletcher, pp. 297-305. Cutlerites believe that this section and section 132 (authorizing plural marriage) were both forgeries that were created after Smith's death to justify what they consider to be departures from Smith's teachings by the Utah LDS Church.
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He concludes that Smith may have learned something about Swedenborg through third parties, but was unlikely to have read much if any of Swedenborg's works for himself. Among Smith's connections was Sarah Cleveland, who was married to a Swedenborgian at the time of her plural marriage to Smith in 1842.Craig Miller, "Did Emanuel Swedenborg Influence LDS Doctrine?" It was shortly afterwards, in July 1843, that Smith recorded receiving a revelation regarding eternal marriage in Doctrine and Covenants 132.
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Thomas Arthur "Tom" Green (born 1948)"Utah polygamist found guilty," May 19, 2001, CNN, accessed March 22, 2007 is a Mormon fundamentalist in Utah who is a practitioner of plural marriage. After a high-profile trial, Green was convicted by the state of Utah on May 18, 2001, of four counts of bigamy and one count of failure to pay child support. This decision was upheld by the Utah State Supreme Court in 2004.State v.
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Green was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He served as a Mormon missionary in the church's Great Lakes Mission (Indiana and Michigan) from June 1967 to June 1969. In the 1980s, while in his thirties, Green left the LDS Church and converted to a type of Mormon fundamentalism which teaches that its adherents should practice plural marriage. The LDS church stopped allowing polygamy in the 1890s.
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Church members were rebaptized prior to new covenants and ordinances, such as ordination to a new office of the priesthood, receiving temple ordinances, getting married, or entering plural marriage. Current church policy prohibits rebaptism for these purposes. Rebaptism of somebody already known to have been baptized according to LDS doctrine is practiced only when a previously excommunicated member rejoins the church. In such cases, the wording of the ordinance is identical to that of the first baptismal ordinance.
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13 and Nauvoo.Autumn Leaves, Vol 1; p. 202 Within the years following Smith's murder, Brigham Young apparently made earnest entreaties to his sons, Joseph Smith III and David Hyrum Smith, to join his church's hierarchy in Utah, which may represent some recognition by Young of the patrilineal right of succession for Smith’s sons. Both Smiths, however, were profoundly opposed to a number of practices of the church in Utah, especially plural marriage, and refused to join with them.
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At a special conference in Salt Lake City in August 1852, Pratt publicly preached a sermon announcing the doctrine of plural marriage. He later published an essay in defense of the practice in 12 monthly installments in the church periodical The Seer, which provides the most complete defense of the Mormon doctrine during this period. As part of his system of Mormon theology, Pratt embraced the philosophical doctrine of hylozoism. Pratt's views were not always without controversy.
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1207–08; Jill Mulvay Derr, "Relief Society," in Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History, ed. Arnold K. Garr, Donald Q. Cannon, and Richard O. Cowan (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 2000) pp. 992–97. Smith had often used the Relief Society as a pulpit to express her opposition to plural marriage. However, several of the society's members and leaders were themselves secretly in plural marriages, including to Smith's own husband, who himself counseled the society against exposing iniquity.
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Another has suggested that the raid's "only American parallel is the federal actions against Native Americans in the nineteenth century."D. Michael Quinn, "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1998, p. 1. When Pyle lost his bid for re-election in 1954 to Democratic candidate Ernest McFarland, Pyle blamed the fallout from the raid as having destroyed his political career.Abbie Gripman, "Short Creek Raid Remembered" , The Miner, 2002-08-02.
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During this period Lee converted and baptized "Wild Bill" Hickman. Lee practiced plural marriage and had nineteen wives (at least eleven of whom eventually left him) along with sixty-seven children. Lee was allegedly a member of the Danites, a group considered to be a fraternal organization, although this claim has been disputed, because there is little evidence of the group existing after 1838. The Danites were believed to have started in Missouri, Caldwell County during the Mormon War.
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Often, homes consisted of only small rundown clapboard houses, with peeling paint and broken windows.D. Michael Quinn, "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism" , Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 31(2) (Summer 1998): 1–68, accessed 6 June 2009. Connie Rugg, a former member, stated: "The men in the Kingston group do little or nothing to support their many wives and children". Sometimes wives will "go gardening" (scrounging through garbage cans to find food) for themselves and their children.
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A small military detachment out of Fort Wingate restored white citizens to order. In 1913, an Indian agent ordered a Navajo and his three wives to come in, and then arrested them for having a plural marriage. A small group of Navajo used force to free the women and retreated to Beautiful Mountain with 30 or 40 sympathizers. They refused to surrender to the agent, and local law enforcement and military refused the agent's request for an armed engagement.
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In 1904 Cummings chaired the committee that put together the LDS education exhibit for the Palace of Education at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and exhibit that came away with more awards than the other state entrants. In 1905, Cummings became the Commissioner of Church Schools for the LDS Church, succeeding Joseph M. Tanner. He served in this position until 1920, when he was succeeded by apostle David O. McKay. Cummings practiced plural marriage and was married to two women.
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Among other things, the act disincorporated the LDS Church. Within five months, the LDS Church officially discontinued the practice of plural marriage with the 1890 Manifesto. On October 25, 1893, a congressional resolution authorized the release of assets seized from the LDS Church because, "said church has discontinued the practice of polygamy and no longer encourages or gives countenance to any manner of practices in violation of law, or contrary to good morals or public policy."Jt. Res 11.
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Some modern scholars suggest the law may be unconstitutional for being in violation of the Free Exercise Clause. The Edmunds Act restrictions were enforced regardless of whether an individual was actually practicing polygamy, or merely stated a belief in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint's doctrine of plural marriage without actually participating. It also provided for a five-man Utah Commission appointed by the president to supervise all aspects of the electoral process in Utah Territory.
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Polygamy was probably a significant factor in the Utah War of 1857 and 1858, given Republican attempts to paint Democratic President James Buchanan as weak in his opposition to both polygamy and slavery. In 1862, the United States Congress passed the Morrill Anti- Bigamy Act, which prohibited plural marriage in the territories. In spite of the law, Mormons continued to practice polygamy, believing that it was protected by the First Amendment. In 1879, in Reynolds v.
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Although the LDS Church has abandoned the practice of plural marriage, it has not abandoned the underlying doctrines of polygamy. According to the church's sacred texts and pronouncements by its leaders and theologians, the church leaves open the possibility that it may one day re-institute the practice. It is still the practice of monogamous Mormon couples to be sealed to one another. However, in some circumstances, men and women may be sealed to multiple spouses.
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Cannon and Wells acknowledged that prior to their marriage they had considered plural marriage, but had decided against it. After being humiliated in a preliminary hearing in which she had to testify, Louie Wells went to San Francisco to live with her half-sister and brother-in-law, Belle Whitney and Septimus Sears. There, Wells delivered a stillborn baby boy and died a month later from complications of the childbirth. Her mother, Emmeline Wells, was broken-hearted.
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Ray B. West in the Saturday Review of Literature wrote that the book showed the "tenderness and sympathy" between early Mormons. However, The Giant Joshua did not have endorsement from any LDS Church leaders. John A. Widtsoe wrote in The Improvement Era that its treatment of polygamy was unfair, though he praised how it showed the "epic value" of Mormon settlements. The book presents plural marriage as a test of faith similar to colonizing Utah's desert.
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Alex Joseph (1936 – September 27, 1998) (born Alec Richard Joseph; also referred to as Ronald Ellison)Joseph is given the pseudonym of "Ronald Ellison" when discussed by Dorothy Allred Solomon in her book In My Father's House; see D. Michael Quinn, "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism", in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.) (1991). Fundamentalism and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ) pp. 240–290 at p. 286 n. 61.
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Many of these immigrants crossed the Great Plains in wagons drawn by oxen, while some later groups pulled their possessions in small handcarts. During the 1860s, newcomers began using the new railroad that was under construction.. In 1852, church leaders publicized the previously secret practice of plural marriage, a form of polygamy. (Plural marriage originated in a revelation that Joseph Smith apparently received in 1831 and wrote down in 1843. It was first publicly announced in a general conference in 1852); The Mormon doctrine of plural wives was officially announced by one of the Twelve Apostles, Orson Pratt, and Young in a special conference of the elders of the LDS Church assembled in the Mormon Tabernacle on August 28, 1852, and reprinted in an extra edition of the Deseret News . See also The 1850s: Official sanction in the LDS Church Over the next 50 years, many Mormons (between 20 and 30 percent of Mormon families). entered into plural marriages as a religious duty, with the number of plural marriages reaching a peak around 1860, and then declining through the rest of the century.
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He acquired Egyptian papyrus scrolls which he said contained the writings of the Biblical patriarchs Abraham and Joseph. According to some reports, it was in Kirtland that Smith first began to practice the doctrine of plural marriage when he married Fanny Alger as his first plural wife in 1833. In 1837 Smith and Rigdon founded an "anti-bank" called the Kirtland Safety Society. When it failed, some 300 of the Kirtland membership became disillusioned, including a third of the church leadership.
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Felt herself stated that Lillie Freeze and Mary Ann Freeze supported her spiritual development at the time. Mary Ann Freeze called Felt as the first counselor in the stake young women's organization and she became her ward's Primary president in 1878. Felt was unable to have children after a miscarriage from her time in Muddy River. She encouraged her husband to live the Latter-day Saint law of plural marriage. Joseph married Elizabeth Mineer in 1875 and Elizabeth Lidell in 1881.
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According to LDS Church theology, men and women may be "sealed" to one another so that their marital bond continues into the eternities.A man may be sealed to more than one wife if his previous wives are either dead or legally divorced from him; a living woman, however, may only be sealed to one husband. See . Thus, there is a common view within the LDS Church that though prohibited by the LDS Church in mortality, plural marriage will exist in the afterlife.
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Allen and Leonard, pp. 180–181 Illinoisans, generally unaware of the Church's and Smith's legal history in Missouri, began to consider this a serious subversion of the judiciary which weakened the legal position of Nauvoo and the Latter Day Saint leadership. Dissatisfaction with the perceived theocracy also arose from within. In 1844, First Presidency member William Law — an important merchant and counselor to Smith — broke with the church president over both the issue of plural marriage and the legal issues in Nauvoo.
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In 1896, Cannon was elected to the Utah State Senate and served as its first president. When The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) modified stake boundaries in 1900, dividing the new Granite Stake off from the Salt Lake Stake, Cannon became the Sunday School Superintendent of the new stake. From 1901 until after 1930, Cannon served as a member of the General Board of the Deseret Sunday School Union. Cannon practiced plural marriage after the 1890 Manifesto.
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Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite) have historically taught and, in limited numbers, have practiced plural marriage. James Strang was married to several women during his leadership of the church. However, the Strangites reject the 1843 revelation on polygamy by Joseph Smith. The Book of the Law of the Lord, a part of the Strangite canon, sanctions polygamy, but the church reports that "there are no known cases of polygamy currently in the church".
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The status of women in the LDS Church has been a source of public debate beginning in the 19th century, when the church found itself at odds with the United States federal government over its practice of polygamy.e.g. Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act (1862), Edmunds–Tucker Act (1887). Polygamy was introduced into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints when Joseph Smith prayed about the plural marriage as practiced in the Old Testament. The practice was established in the church in 1831.
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As viewed by the LDS Church, plural marriages in the early church, when properly authorized and conducted, were, in fact, celestial marriages; but celestial marriages need not be plural marriages. In addition, since celestial marriages must be performed by someone with proper priesthood authority, and since plural marriage is no longer authorized by the LDS Church, no authorized celestial plural marriages can be performed today. Mormon fundamentalists argue, in return, that they have retained the priesthood authority to perform these marriages.
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Less than one year later, the magazine attacked the skepticism of Henry David Thoreau. Mormon polygamy was also a frequent target. One contributor traveled to Utah to observe the Mormon settlement there and argued that the new sect would have to end its practice of plural marriage if it was to survive and American control could be exercised over the western territories. At the same time, Scribner’s Monthly, being non-dogmatic in its Protestantism, expressed little hostility towards modern science.
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Horne joined the Relief Society in January 1846. Soon after, she was appointed as the president of the 14th Ward Relief Society and then as Stake Relief Society president from 1877–1903 in the Salt Lake stake. In 1870, Brigham Young asked Horne to lead the Retrenchment movement, which pushed for women in the Relief Society to spend more time on spiritual growth and less time on daily household chores. In 1880, the Retrenchment group also began speaking in favor of plural marriage.
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When Church members were expelled from Jackson County by a mob, many fled to Clay County, where local citizens, mostly Democrats, were sympathetic and friendly toward the Mormons. These citizens were pejoratively labeled "Jack" Mormons by the antagonistic citizens of Jackson County. During the early 1980s, it was also used as a description of members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church) who broke from the church, in part, over belief in plural marriage.
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In Nazi Germany, there was an effort by Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler to introduce new legislation concerning plural marriage. The argument ran that after the war, 3 to 4 million women would have to remain unmarried due to the great number of soldiers fallen in battle. In order to make it possible for these women to have children, a procedure for application and selection for suitable men (i.e. decorated war heroes) to enter a marital relationship with an additional woman was planned.
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In the LDS Church, Taylor was ordained as a deacon around 1872 and as a teacher in 1874. He also served as missionary in the United States, Canada, and England. Taylor was asked to be an apostle and member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the church by his father. He was ordained on May 15, 1884, his 26th birthday. Taylor was a staunch believer in the doctrine of plural marriage, and had six wives and 36 children.
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Taylor's son, John W. Taylor, continued to serve in the church and in politics and helped to shepherd Utah to statehood in 1896. John W. Taylor was ultimately excommunicated from the LDS Church for his opposition to the church's abandonment of plural marriage. His son, Samuel W. Taylor, became a writer, and the biographer of his father and grandfather. Another son, William W. Taylor, served as one of the first presidents of the seventy and also served in the Utah territorial legislature.
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Kingston was living plural marriage until his death; he had married at least 13 wives and had dozens of children. Like his brother, Kingston believed he came from genetically superior ancestry and that he was a direct literal descendant of Jesus. Kingston had worked on a dairy farm owned by the co-op at Woodscross, Davis County, Utah, where he reportedly developed theories on genetics that he later decided could be used to purify his own family pedigree.Moore-Emmett, Andrea.
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In 1904, the town of Kingsville, Emery County, Utah, was renamed Clawson in his honor after he visited the town to organize a ward. That same year, Clawson secretly contracted a plural marriage with Pearl Udall, daughter of David King Udall and Eliza Stewart Udall. In 1921, Clawson became the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He served in this position for 22 years, the second- longest tenure for this position in the history of the LDS Church.
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The movement rejects Young's assertions to possess authority to fill the position held by Smith. The movement agrees with mainstream LDS in rejection of Young's theological innovations such as Young's attempt to formulate his Adam God theory. The movement goes further and rejects any doctrinal innovations by Young. Most in the movement agree with a foundational belief among the RLDS (now called Community of Christ) that Joseph Smith did not practice plural marriage and this innovation was promulgated by Young.
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Wilford Woodruff Sr. (March 1, 1807September 2, 1898) was an American religious leader who served as the fourth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1889 until his death. He formally ended the practice of plural marriage among the members of the LDS Church in 1890. Woodruff joined the Latter Day Saint church after studying Restorationism as a young adult. He met Joseph Smith in Kirtland, Ohio, before joining Zion's Camp in April 1834.
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For the most part, the rest of the United States considered plural marriage offensive. On July 8, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act into law, which forbade the practice in U.S. territories. Lincoln made a statement that he had no intentions of enforcing it if the LDS Church would not interfere with him, and so the matter was laid to rest for a time. But rhetoric continued, and polygamy became an impediment to Utah being admitted as a state.
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According to this view, the 1890 Manifesto and Second Manifesto rescinded God's prior authorization given to Joseph Smith. However, Bruce R. McConkie controversially stated in his 1958 book, Mormon Doctrine, that God will "obviously" re-institute the practice of polygamy after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This echoes earlier teachings by Brigham Young that the primary purpose of polygamy was to bring about the Millennium. Current official church materials do not make any mention of the future re-institution of plural marriage.
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The Mormon practice of plural marriage was officially introduced by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, on July 12, 1843. Because polygamy was illegal in the state of Illinois,Greiner & Sherman, Revised Laws of Illinois, 1833, pp. 198–199 it was practiced in secret during Smith's lifetime. During the 1839–1844 Nauvoo era, while several Mormon leaders (including Smith, Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball) took plural wives, any Mormon leaders who publicly taught the polygamous doctrine were disciplined.
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Scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for the Sunday Schools, Salt Lake City: Deseret Sunday School Union, 1968, p. 159 Although the Second Manifesto ended the official practice of new plural marriages, existing plural marriages were not automatically dissolved. Many Mormons, including prominent LDS Church leaders, maintained existing plural marriages well into the 20th century. A small percentage of adherents rejected the change, identifying as Mormon fundamentalists and leaving the mainstream LDS Church to continue practicing plural marriage.
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In 1946, Harold (aka Micheal) Blackmore, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church), bought property near Lister and moved there with his family. Other members of the church who believed in the principles of plural marriage soon followed. After Winston Blackmore became the bishop in the 1980s, the group took the name of Bountiful, British Columbia. In 1998, the estimated population of Bountiful was 600 and has since grown to about 1,000.
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In 1904 the LDS Church issued the Second Manifesto, and eventually excommunicated those who continued to solemnize or enter into new plural marriages. Short Creek soon became a gathering place for polygamist former members of the LDS Church. In 1935, the LDS Church excommunicated the Mormon residents of Short Creek who refused to sign an oath renouncing polygamy. Following this, John Y. Barlow began to lead a group of Mormon fundamentalists who were dedicated to preserving the practice of plural marriage.
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Abraham Owen Smoot (February 17, 1815 - March 6, 1895) was an American pioneer, businessman, religious leader, and politician. He spent his early life as a missionary in Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, and England. Like other early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), Smoot practiced plural marriage, eventually marrying six women and having 27 children. After migrating west to Utah, he was elected as the second mayor of Salt Lake City (1857 to 1866).
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In 1852, Gurley broke with James Strang over the issue of plural marriage and was eventually excommunicated from Strang's church. Along with Jason W. Briggs, Gurley became an important early leader of the "New Organization" of the church that developed in the Midwest in the 1850s. In 1853, he was called as an apostle in the New Organization, which is today known as the Community of Christ. Along with William Marks, Gurley ordained Joseph Smith III as President of the Church in 1860.
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Numerous marriages also were performed in international waters on the high seas. However, a significant minority were performed in Utah and other western American states and territories. The estimates of the number of post-Manifesto plural marriages performed range from scores to thousands, with the actual figure probably close to 250. Today, the LDS Church officially acknowledges that although the Manifesto officially ended the practice of plural marriage in the church, "on an exceptional basis, some new plural marriages were performed between 1890 and 1904".
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Murdock was ordained as a patriarch in Lehi, Utah, and fulfilled his duties until March 1867 when his illness, which is postulated by historians to be Parkinson's disease, prevented it. Murdock avoided participating in the LDS practice of plural marriage for over thirty years. In January 1857, he succumbed to ecclesiastical pressure and married widow Majory McEwan as a plural wife. After they were married in Salt Lake City, McEwan returned home to her children rather than sleeping in the house with her new husband.
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Although, according to some reports, Smith himself had been secretly practicing what he later called plural marriage for some time, in Nauvoo he began to teach other leaders the doctrine. In March 1844, Smith was said by William Law to have organized a secret council of the church called the "Council of the Kingdom". Practices of this council included acclaiming Joseph Smith as "Prophet, Priest, and King" in addition to polygamy. These secrets were threatened to be released in a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor.
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At the organization of the church in Washington, Pennsylvania, Caldwell was elected as the first president of the church, and he was succeeded by his nephew, Lawrence Dias. The church was strongly opposed to plural marriage, plurality of gods, and baptism for the dead. The Primitive Church of Jesus Christ eventually merged with the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ, another schismatic Bickertonite sect that had been created in 1907. By the 1970s, the combined church had dwindled to a single congregation in Erie, Pennsylvania.
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Autobiography of Sarah Dearmon Pea Rich Rich followed the church's principle of plural marriage, taking six wives and fathering a total of 51 children. In 1863, Rich led a party of early Mormons to colonize parts of southeastern Idaho, which at the time was thought to be part of Utah Territory. The communities of Paris and Geneva, Idaho, as well as some other neighboring towns, were under his direction. Rich died in Paris in 1883 at the age of 75, after suffering several debilitating strokes.
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Members of the Reformed Church believed that "Mormonism" as it had been originally practiced was true, but that the practice of plural marriage in particular was a corruption. William Law did not claim to be a prophet, but merely the president of the church. The church taught that Smith was a "fallen prophet". This group was responsible for printing the Nauvoo Expositor, which was also critical of Smith and polygamy, leading to his death and contributing to the expulsion of the Latter Day Saints from Nauvoo.
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Sharp practiced plural marriage; in 1885, he was prosecuted for unlawful cohabitation under the Edmunds Act. Sharp initially pleaded not guilty, but withdrew his plea and pleaded guilty to the charge. He was fined $300 and court costs. As a result of pleading guilty, rather than plead not guilty as other LDS Church leaders had done, Sharp was asked by the stake high council and the First Presidency to resign as bishop of the Salt Lake Twentieth Ward, which he did on 3 November 1885.
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On their marriage day, Forscutt and his wife began their emigration to Utah Territory with the intention of joining the gathering of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. Upon arriving in Utah, he became a secretary to Brigham Young, the president of the LDS Church. Shortly after his arrival, Forscutt began to learn about the LDS practice of plural marriage, which he had not been aware of previously. This discovery, combined with other disagreements with Brigham Young, led Forscutt to disassociate himself from the LDS Church.
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Ervil Morrell LeBaron (February 22, 1925 - August 15, 1981) was the leader of a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist group who ordered the killings of many of his opponents, using the religious doctrine of blood atonement to justify the murders. He was sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating the murder of an opponent, and died there in 1981. He had at least 13 wives in a plural marriage, several of whom he married while they were still underage, and several of whom were involved in the murders.
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Frances Ward ("Fanny") Alger Custer (September 30, 1816 - November 29, 1889)Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997) has no date for Alger's death; however, a descendant has since discovered a clipped obituary in a family Bible. was possibly the first plural wife of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, although scholars have disagreed about whether Smith's relationship with Alger was an early plural marriage or simply a sexual indiscretion.
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At the time many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practiced polygamy, but the Richards stayed monogamous. Richards became a spokesperson representing Utah and its women by speaking on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was the public face of the LDS church while the religious organization transitioned "from plural marriage toward monogamy and assimilation." In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Richards served as a member of the Relief Society General Board.
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As the largest denomination within Mormonism, the LDS Church has been the subject of criticism since it was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. Perhaps the most controversial, and a key contributing factor for Smith's murder, is the claim that plural marriage (as defenders call it) or polygamy (as critics call it) is biblically authorized. Under heavy pressure — Utah would not be accepted as a state if polygamy was practiced — the church formally and publicly renounced the practice in 1890. Utah's statehood soon followed.
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Only a few years earlier, another prominent Utah Mormon, B. H. Roberts, had been elected to the House of Representatives. He was denied his seat on the basis that he practiced plural marriage (polygamy), which was illegal in Utah as well as all other states of the Union. The LDS Church had officially renounced future plural marriages in an 1890 Manifesto, before Utah was admitted as a state. However, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that church leaders continued to approve secretly of new, post-Manifesto plural marriages.
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History , cofchrist.org website accessed May 14, 2008 The formal reorganization occurred on April 6, 1860, in Amboy, Illinois, as the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", adding the word Reorganized to the church name in 1872. The church was founded to repudiate the doctrine of plural marriage, and also as a less-theocratic and more mainstream alternative to the Strangites and the larger LDS church led by Brigham Young. It has long been considered the "liberal" Midwestern wing of the Latter Day Saint movement.
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Reynolds was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, United States, to George Reynolds and Mary Ann Tuddenham. Her father, George Reynolds, was a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and a longtime secretary to the First Presidency of the church. When Alice was six years old, George was incarcerated for two years because he practiced plural marriage. At the age of four she attended a private school taught by Izzie Calder, daughter of David O. Calder.
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The LDS Church officially renounced this practice in 1890, and gradually discontinued it, resulting in the Utah Territory becoming a U.S. state. This change resulted in the formation of a number of small sects who sought to maintain polygamy and other 19th-century doctrines and practices, now referred to as "Mormon fundamentalism". Other groups originating within the Latter Day Saint movement followed different paths in Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. For the most part, these groups rejected plural marriage and some of Smith's later teachings.
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As early as the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, Latter Day Saint doctrine maintained that polygamy was allowable only if it was commanded by God. The Book of Jacob condemned polygamy as adultery,. but left open the proviso that "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise, they shall hearken unto these things.". Thus, the LDS Church today teaches that plural marriage can only be practiced when specifically authorized by God.
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Soon after organizing the church, Harmston taught a number of semi-private seminars known as "the Models," discussing the necessity of following early Mormon doctrines. Besides the doctrines of plural marriage and the law of consecration, the TLC also teaches "multiple mortal probations," a form of reincarnation limited in scope to one's own gender and species, i.e., human men are reincarnated as human men and human women as human women. This doctrine is considered false by the LDS Church and some Mormon fundamentalist groups.
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The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) is one of the largest of the fundamentalist Mormon denominations and one of the largest organizations in the United States having members who practice polygamy. The fundamentalist Mormon movement emerged in the early 20th century when its founding members were excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), largely because of their refusal to abandon the practice of plural marriage after it was renounced in the "Second Manifesto" (1904).
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John Clawson Zina recorded in her autobiography that when she was eighteen she was courted by Henry Bailey Jacobs. During this time, Joseph Smith, also taught her about plural marriage in private conversations; he proposed that she become his spiritual wife on at least three different occasions. Zina declined the proposals out of her respect for Emma Smith and for traditional Christian monogamy, and because such a union would require secrecy. On March 7, 1841, she married Jacobs, believing she had thus avoided future proposals from Smith.
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Isaac Struble Isaac Sterling "Ike" Struble (November 3, 1843 - February 17, 1913) was a four-term Republican Representative of Iowa's 11th congressional district. Serving from 1883 to 1891, the Plymouth County resident was a noted congressional opponent of plural marriage in the Utah Territory. The member of a politically active family, Isaac's six brothers included John T. Struble of Iowa, and George R. Struble, former speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives. He was the granduncle of Bob Struble, Sr. and great- granduncle of Bob Struble, Jr.
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Hinckley practiced plural marriage. He had four wives, but never more than three at one time: Eliza Jane Evans, Adelaide Cameron Noble, her sister Angeline Wilcox Noble, and Margaret Harley, who was 31 years his junior. Hinckley was the father of 21 children. The last- born, a daughter of Harley who was born when Ira was 61, did not meet her father until she was almost two years old because he was afraid that he might be arrested for cohabitation if he visited her house.
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The Supreme Court had already ruled in Davis v. Beason. that a law in Idaho Territory which disenfranchised individuals who practiced or believed in plural marriage was constitutional. Woodruff would later recount that on the night of September 23, 1890, he received a revelation from Jesus that the church should cease the practice of plural marriage.Remaraks of Wilford Woodruff at Cache Stake Conference, Logan, Utah, 1891-11-01; reported at Wilford Woodruff, "Remarks", Deseret Weekly (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1891-11-14; excerpts reprinted in LDS Church, "Official Declaration 1", Doctrine and Covenants.
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He served in the War of 1812 from 1812–15, and later held the position of captain in the Ohio militia. In June 1812, Morley married Lucy Gunn in Massachusetts, with whom he had seven children. Some years after becoming a member of the church in 1830, he practiced plural marriage, taking Leonora Snow (the older sister of Lorenzo and Eliza R. Snow) and Hannah Blakesley (also found as Blaixly or Blakeslee) as his second and third wife in 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois. Blakesley bore him an additional three children.
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Mormons have developed a strong sense of commonality that stems from their doctrine and history. One of the central doctrinal issues that defined the Mormonism in the 19th century was the practice of plural marriage, a form of religious polygamy. Between 1852 and 1904, Mormons who had followed Brigham Young to the Utah Territory openly practiced polygamy. The Mormons who followed James Strang (known as Strangites) practiced polygamy until Strang's death, after which the majority left to join the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS, today the Community of Christ).
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46–47; Irwin Altman, "Polygamous Family Life: The Case of Contemporary Mormon Fundamentalists", Utah Law Review (1996) p. 369; Stephen Eliot Smith, "'The Mormon Question' Revisited: Anti-Polygamy Laws and the Free Exercise Clause", LL.M. thesis, Harvard Law School, 2005. There are a number of fundamentalist sects, the largest two being the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) and the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB). In addition to plural marriage, some of these groups also practice a form of Christian communalism known as the law of consecration or the United Order.
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Brigham Young was a tradesman from Whitingham, Vermont who converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church) in 1830. He joined with President of the Church Joseph Smith in 1832 and moved the Churches headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio. After the Church relocated to Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith named Young to the first Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and named him president of the group in 1839. In 1844, the residents of Nauvoo were split over the issue of plural marriage, leading to the arrest of Smith.
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After continued difficulties and persecution in Illinois, Young left Nauvoo in 1846 and led his followers, the Mormon pioneers, to the Great Salt Lake Valley. The group branched out in an effort to pioneer a large state to be called Deseret, eventually establishing colonies from Canada to present-day Mexico. Young incorporated the LDS Church as a legal entity, and governed his followers as a theocratic leader, serving in both political and religious positions. He also publicized the previously secret practice of plural marriage, a form of polygamy.
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However, modern critics of the church and popular writers often attribute a formal doctrine of blood atonement to the Church. Throughout the winter special meetings were held and Mormons urged to adhere to the commandments of God and the practices and precepts of the church. Preaching placed emphasis on the practice of plural marriage, adherence to the Word of Wisdom, attendance at church meetings, and personal prayer. On December 30, 1856, the entire all-Mormon territorial legislature was rebaptized for the remission of their sins, and confirmed under the hands of the Twelve Apostles.
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As one of "Brigham's Boys", he was on call to serve whenever and wherever Brigham Young and the other Latter-day Saint leaders needed minutemen to protect the pioneers. Kimball settled in Parley's Park, where his stage station and hotel gained notoriety with travelers, including Mark Twain. Like many early Latter- day Saints, Kimball practiced plural marriage and had five wives and twenty- five children. (He was eventually divorced from two of his wives.) His house and barn stand to this day at Kimball's Junction near Park City, Utah.
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The wagon train trails became less important with the advent of the first complete transcontinental railway in 1869, but while trail use diminished after that, their use continued on at lesser rates until late in the nineteenth century. The Mormon Battalion began their march from Kanesville to California during the Mexican–American War. This was where plural marriage first began to be openly practiced. Orson Hyde began publishing The Frontier Guardian newspaper, and Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS church).
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When Joseph Smith III died in 1914 and Frederick Smith took control of the church, Evans' frustration over being overlooked as a worthy successor continued to grow. In 1918, Evans broke with the RLDS Church. Evans had complained about Prophet–President Frederick M. Smith's administrative style and the church's continuing denials that Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith had practiced and taught plural marriage. A number of RLDS Church members in Toronto followed Evans, and they began a church they called the Church of the Christian Brotherhood.
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HB99 was sponsored by Utah state senator Kevin T. Van Tassell (whose daughter is engaged in a plural marriage) and Utah state representative Michael E. Noel. After its passing in congress, the bill was signed by Utah Governor Gary Herbert on March 28, 2017. A short time before, polygamists and others who opposed the bill rallied at the Utah state capitol to protest the legislation on February 10, 2017. Many polygamists and polygamist supporters argued that the bills punitive approach was unconstitutional by targeting a specific religious minority.
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In 1843, 13 years after the Church was formed, Joseph Smith called two missionaries - George J. Adams and Orson Hyde - to serve in Russia. Smith stated that "some of the most important things concerning the ... building up of the kingdom of God in the last days" involved Russia. Adams and Hyde's mission, however, was canceled after the death of Joseph Smith. In the 1840s, the Russian press reported the Mormon pioneers' move west, and in the 1870s and 80s chronicled the struggle between the Church and the U.S. government over the practice of plural marriage.
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According to Young: "The time is coming when justice will be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet; when we shall take the old broadsword and ask, Are you for God? And if you are not heartily on the Lord's side, you will be hewn down." Throughout the winter special meetings were held, and Mormons urged to adhere to the commandments of God and the practices and precepts of the church. Preaching placed emphasis on the practice of plural marriage, adherence to the Word of Wisdom, attendance at church meetings, and personal prayer.
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Academia Juárez, part of the Mormon community from Colonia Dublán. The Mormon colonies in Mexico are settlements located near the Sierra Madre mountains in northern Mexico which were established by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) beginning in 1885. The colonists came to Mexico due to federal attempts to curb and prosecute polygamy in the United States. Plural marriage, as polygamous relationships were called by church members, was an important tenet of the church—although it was never practiced by a majority of the membership.
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His personality tended toward sharing news and opinion through letters; many of which have been saved by the Historians Office of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others. He crusaded vigorously in favor of the practice of plural marriage after 1854 (including a formal "remonstration" to congress) and he watched political matters closely. He was elected several times as either alderman or member of the city council in Salt Lake. As he aged his health declined, but he maintained employment as a cashier for ZCMI.
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After escaping state custody in 1839, Smith directed the conversion of a swampland into Nauvoo, Illinois, where he became both mayor and commander of a nearly autonomous militia. In 1843, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. The following year, after the Nauvoo Expositor criticized his power and such new doctrines as plural marriage, Smith and the Nauvoo city council ordered the newspaper's destruction as a nuisance. In a futile attempt to check public outrage, Smith first declared martial law, then surrendered to the governor of Illinois.
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Plural marriage was an Apache custom, and was recognized by the U.S. government and he had two wives, Tah-jon-nay whom he married in 1871 and her sister, Anna in about 1881. However Chief Alchesay's first wife was a young girl named Apache who bore him a son. As the leader of the Tribe, Alchesay sought better conditions for his people, and In 1887 traveled to Washington D.C. to speak to President Grover Cleveland. He met with President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909, and with Warren G. Harding in 1921.
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For many, the decision to accept polygamy and practice it was an agonizing and difficult process that brought them closer to God. Some women did not accept polygamy at first and had to pray about, study, and question the practice before receiving an answer from God and accepting it. Elizabeth Graham MacDonald saw polygamy as a form of discipline that taught her subordination to God and her family. For some women, like Hannah Tapfield King, plural marriage was a way for women to obtain the highest blessings of salvation.
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In Mormon fundamentalist groups, women are typically expected or encouraged to adhere to a strongly patriarchal perspective on women's roles and activities and, in many cases, participate in plural marriage. Even though women in fundamentalist groups are often expected to rear children and other domestic tasks, it is not accurate to assume that all women in polygamous relationships in Mormon fundamentalist groups are powerless. Mormon women in fundamentalist groups experience their gender roles differently than women in the LDS church. In fundamentalists sects, sex is viewed as a necessary evil for reproduction.
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Mark Hill Forscutt (19 June 1834 – 18 October 1903) was an English hymn writer and a leader in several denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement. A convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), Forscutt broke with that denomination for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the practice of plural marriage. Forscutt went on to serve in leadership positions in the Morrisite sect and later in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church). Forscutt was born in Godmanchester, England.
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Polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or plural marriage, is generally believed to have originated with the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. According to several of his associates, Smith taught that polygamy was a divine commandment and practiced it personally, by some accounts marrying more than 30 women, some of whom had existing marriages to other men. Evidence for Smith's polygamy is provided by the church's "sealing" records, affidavits, letters, journals, and diaries. However, until his death, Smith and the leading church quorums denied that he preached or practiced polygamy.
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Three authors assert that a second record of the revelation exists, believed to be in the LDS Church's historical department, though its existence has not been confirmed by the church. Though the 1831 revelation is cited by Mormon historians,BYU history professor Hyrum Andrus, who writes "the Prophet understood the principle of plural marriage as early as 1831. … [a]ccording to Elder Phelps, the revelation then indicated that in due time the brethren would be required to take plural wives." () non-Mormon historians, and critics, there are dissenting opinions, and no consensus has been reached.
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His church denies the authority of Brigham Young, who led the majority of Latter Day Saints to Utah after Smith's death, together with that of Joseph Smith III, who became the leader of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The church also disavows plural marriage, and is unique in the Latter Day Saint movement in that it teaches the existence of a bipartite god (God the Father and Jesus Christ), as opposed to the usual three part godhead of Mormonism (God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit).
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The Church of Jesus Christ is independent of any other church in the Latter Day Saint movement. The Church of Jesus Christ has long rejected plural marriage, celestial marriage, two separate priesthoods, and many other doctrines taught by some other Latter Day Saint movement denominations. The Church of Jesus Christ teaches that many of the doctrines and revelations Joseph Smith taught were not from God and were contrary to the Bible and the Book of Mormon. The church also teaches that many of the Latter Day Saint denominations fell into error by following these revelations.
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In 1908, the American Party ran John A. Street for governor of Utah."Anti-Mormon State Ticket: American Party Charges that Polygamy is Still Practiced", The New York Times, 1908-09-30. Central platforms of the party were that the leaders of the LDS Church were still participating in plural marriage and had no intention of abiding by the 1890 Manifesto. The party also alleged that the LDS Church monopolized lines of business within Utah and that the state needed a more vigorous enforcement of the separation between church and state.
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In September 1904, Thompson was one of the founders of the anti-Mormon American Party. The party's principal goal was to eliminate the influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) over politics in Utah. In 1905, Thompson was the new party's candidate for mayor, and he was elected; four other elected members of the city council were also members of the American Party. During this term, Thompson was an outspoken critic of the LDS Church and accused church leaders of continuing to sanction the practice of plural marriage.
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The AUB regards the Book of Mormon as sacred scripture in addition to the Bible, and accept the Articles of Faith written by Joseph Smith to summarize Latter Day Saint beliefs. The AUB teaches that the LDS Church is still fulfilling a divine role in spreading the Book of Mormon and other basic doctrines of Mormonism, and in facilitating genealogy. Members of the AUB are known for their belief in plural marriage. Other key beliefs include the United Order, the Adam–God doctrine, and what is commonly called the "1886 Meeting".
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Willes was born in Jefferson County, New York. In 1846, he marched as a member of the Mormon Battalion (private, Company B)."A Documented, Researched Roster of the Mormon Battalion". www.mormonbattalion.com. . Accessed 20 August 2007. In 1851 he arrived in Lehi, Utah. In 1852, he married 18-year-old Lucinda Alzina Lott, daughter of Cornelius Lott. They had 10 children together. Five years later Willes began practicing plural marriage when he married 24-year-old Docia Emmerine Molen. They had one child together, but then divorced. Docia married Lucinda's older brother in 1862.
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Many Mormons, including prominent church leaders, maintained existing plural marriages into the 1940s and 1950s. As the church began to excommunicate those who continued to enter into plural marriages, some of those individuals began the Mormon fundamentalist movement. Many such dissidents were motivated by the belief that it was improper for the church to ban plural marriage, which they saw as an "eternal commandment", while others pointed out that neither the original nor the Second Manifestos were presented as revelations from God, as previous statements of important church doctrine had been.Kraut, Ogden.
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He contributed to the mission by preaching in Scotland, and producing an early missionary tract, "An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions". This tract contains the earliest known public printing of an account of Smith's First Vision and also contains material similar to that later published as the 1842 Articles of Faith. On his return to America in 1841, Pratt found the church membership in contention over several issues. Rumors and gossip were rife in Nauvoo, Illinois, and Pratt found the religious principle of plural marriage difficult to accept.
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Chinese immigrant with his three wives and fourteen children, Cairns, Australia, 1904 Polygamy is a marriage that includes more than two partners. When a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship is called polygyny; and when a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, it is called polyandry. If a marriage includes multiple husbands and wives, it can be called polyamory, group or conjoint marriage. Polygyny is a form of plural marriage, in which a man is allowed more than one wife .
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One of the few media outlets to applaud the raid was the Salt Lake City-based Deseret News, which was owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).By the 1950s, the LDS Church was opposed to the traditional Mormon practice of plural marriage and excommunicated any of its members that practiced it. The News applauded the action as a needed response to prevent the fundamentalists from becoming "a cancer of a sort that is beyond hope of human repair."Deseret News, 1953-07-27.
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The Smoot Hearings in 1904, which documented that the LDS Church was still practicing polygamy spurred the LDS Church to issue a Second Manifesto again claiming that it had ceased performing new plural marriages. By 1910 the LDS Church excommunicated those who entered into, or performed, new plural marriages. Even so, many plural husbands and wives continued to cohabit until their deaths in the 1940s and 1950s. Enforcement of the 1890 Manifesto caused various splinter groups to leave the LDS Church in order to continue the practice of plural marriage.
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Such fundamentalists often use a purported 1886 revelation to John Taylor as the basis for their authority to continue the practice of plural marriage. The Salt Lake Tribune stated in 2005 there were as many as 37,000 fundamentalists with less than half of them living in polygamous households. On 13 December 2013, US Federal Judge Clark Waddoups ruled in Brown v. Buhman that the portions of Utah's anti-polygamy laws which prohibit multiple cohabitation were unconstitutional, but also allowed Utah to maintain its ban on multiple marriage licenses.
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John W. Taylor was born in Provo, Utah Territory, while his parents John Taylor and Sophia Whitaker were taking shelter there, along with other church members, during the Utah War. He married May Leona Rich (daughter of John Taylor Rich and Agnes Young) on October 19, 1882, and moved to Cassia County, Idaho, to ranch. As a practitioner of plural marriage, Taylor later married Nellie Todd, Janet Maria Wooley, Eliza Roxie Welling, Rhoda Welling, and Ellen Georgina Sandberg. He also worked as a county clerk and a newspaper editor.
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In the winter of 1857–1858 Kane made a strenuous trip from the East coast to Salt Lake City. Once there, he helped prevent bloodshed by mediating a dispute between the Mormons and the federal government, known as the Utah War. Mormonism, the practice of plural marriage and the governance of the Utah territory were issues in the federal election of 1856. Responding to rumors and reports of Mormon misrule in Utah shortly after his inauguration in March 1857, President James Buchanan appointed a new Utah Territorial governor Alfred Cumming of Georgia, replacing Brigham Young.
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In 1876, section 101 from the 1835 edition (and subsequent printings) was removed. Section 101 was a "Statement on Marriage" as adopted by an 1835 conference of the church,History of the Church 2:247.Messenger and Advocate, August 1835, p. 163 and contained the following text: This section was removed because it had been superseded by section 132 of the modern LDS edition, recorded in 1843, which contains a revelation received by Joseph Smith on eternal marriage and plural marriage, the principles of which can be dated to as early as 1831.
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One of the first issues Smith faced was the ongoing difficulties for the church due to the continuing practice of plural marriage. Smith supported apostle Reed Smoot's candidacy for the U.S. Senate, but Smoot's election was contested on the grounds that he was an officer in a church which continued to countenance polygamous marriages. The Senate investigation again focused national attention on Mormon marriages and political influence. Additional attention was given to Smith because of his opposition to the election and re- election of Utah's senior U.S. Senator, non-Mormon Thomas Kearns.
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O. N. Malmquist, The First 100 Years: A History of the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah State Historical Society, 1971. Following his appearance before a Senate panel in 1904, Smith took steps to prevent any surreptitious continuation of church plural marriages. On April 6, 1904, Smith issued the "Second Manifesto", and declared that any church officer who performed a plural marriage, as well as the offending couple, would be excommunicated. He clarified that the church's policy against new plural marriages applied worldwide, and not just in the United States.
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Henry W. Lawrence replaced Marshal Dyer and threatened to confiscate the temples in Logan, Manti, and St. George, as they were not used for public worship. Woodruff issued the 1890 Manifesto which officially ended the church's support of plural marriage. After the manifesto was issued, judge Charles S. Zane stated that no further church property would be confiscated. Woodruff further clarified in hearings about confiscated church property that men with plural wives should "cease associating with them," though Joseph F. Smith and Lorenzo Snow did not make such strong statements.
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However, Smith repeatedly taught that his father did not teach or practice plural marriage and that this practice was an invention of Young and his followers. Smith also resisted calls from his followers to announce a new gathering place or to quickly "redeem" and build up "Zion" (Independence, Missouri). In the 1860s and 1870s, Smith began to rebuild the structure of the church, establishing a new First Presidency, Council of Twelve Apostles, seven quorums of the Seventy, and a Presiding Bishopric. Zenas H. Gurley, Sr. became President of the Council of Twelve.
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Joseph Smith III was an ardent opponent of the practice of plural marriage throughout his life. For most of his career, Smith denied that his father had been involved in the practice and insisted that it had originated with Brigham Young. Smith served many missions to the western United States where he met with and interviewed associates and women claiming to be widows of his father, who attempted to present him with evidence to the contrary. In the end, Smith concluded that he was "not positive nor sure that [his father] was innocent".
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Mormon women's history has not been well-integrated in general histories. Arrington and Davis Bitton discussed women's issues in two chapters on marriage and sisterhood in The Mormon Experience (1992). The Story of the Latter-day Saints (1992) by James Allen and Glen Leonard mentioned women in the context of auxiliaries like Relief Society and Primary, plural marriage, suffrage, and the ERA. The Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History (2000) contained 435 entries about men, but only 64 about women, with three-quarters of the women receiving less than a page of description.
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Young famously stated that after receiving the commandment to practice plural marriage in Nauvoo, he saw a funeral procession walking down the street and he wished he could exchange places with the corpse. He recalled that "I was not desirous of shrinking from any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time."Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, p. 100 (1985).
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Escape, page 73 It was arranged that she marry Jessop in two days, and to prevent her running away, she had to sleep in her parents' bedroom.Escape, page 74-75 She wrote, "The idea of sexual or physical contact with a man thirty-two years my senior was terrifying". Escape, page 77-78 Merril Jessop already had three other wives.Escape, pages 90-91 The book portrays Jessop's experience of a loveless and dysfunctional plural marriage, her eight pregnancies, four of which were life-threatening, and the last of which very nearly killed her.
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Richard Abanes, Richard and Joan Ostling, and D. Michael Quinn note that after the 1890 Manifesto, church leaders authorized more than 200 polygamous marriages and lied about the continuing practice. Joseph F. Smith acknowledged reports that church leaders did not fully adhere to the 1890 prohibition. After the Second Manifesto in 1904, anyone entering into a new plural marriage was excommunicated.Joseph F. Smith, "A profitable and enjoyable Conference—Privilege of the people—The Gospel includes temporal as well as spiritual salvation—Official statement sustained", Conference Report, April 1904, p. 97.
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During the four years at Nauvoo, there was > not even an attempt to live the United Order, for example, so they were > again driven out. They became like the children of Israel in the desert with > only the hope of keeping Zion's laws. But here in the valleys of the Rocky > Mountains we have done worse than in Missouri and Illinois. For a few years > after the pioneers arrived, an attempt was made to live the United Order and > plural marriage, but both leaders and members failed to continue those > important laws.
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This was during a period when LDS Church leaders were justifying the practice and origins of plural marriage, particularly to Mormon splinter groups who did not agree with the practice. The key portion of the revelation proclaims: This wording is comparable with the portion of the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, which corresponds to today's 2 Nephi 30:5–6, which states that when Native Americans receive the gospel they will become a "white and a delightsome people." Unlike the 1831 revelation, the 1830 version of the Book of Mormon does not specify that the Native Americans would become "white and delightsome" through plural marriage. A note from Phelps in the same document explains how the conversion of the Native Americans coincided with Smith's plan for a new system of marriage: A reference was made to this revelation five months after its alleged date in a letter by Mormon apostate Ezra Booth to the Ohio Star on December 8, 1831, in which he refers to the "revelation [that the Mormon Elders] form a matrimonial alliance with the Natives", but the letter makes no reference to polygamy.Ezra Booth, letter dated December 6, 1831, Ohio Star (Ravenna, Ohio), December 8, 1831.
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Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that plural marriages often produced extreme unhappiness in some wives. LDS historian Todd Compton, in his book In Sacred Loneliness, described many instances where some wives in polygamous marriages were unhappy with polygamy. Mormon apologists claim that many women were very satisfied with polygamous marriages, and note that individuals such as Zina Huntington—a polygamous wife of Brigham Young—went on speaking tours as part of the suffrage movement touting the joys and benefits of plural marriage. Philip Stewart Robinson was a traveling journalist for the Telegraph of London.
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Bunker moved his family to Missouri to earn money for an outfit, and then to Mosquito Creek in Iowa, where he raised corn. He bought a team and wagon for his family, and with his mother-in-law and her two small sons, they emigrated in 1849. They settled in Ogden, Utah Territory, and he served on the first Weber Stake High Council of the LDS Church and Ogden's first city council. When plural marriage began to be lived openly in 1852, Bunker took a second wife, Sarah Ann Browning Lang, a widow with two daughters.
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It advised church members against entering into any marriage prohibited by the law of the land, and made it possible for Utah to become a U.S. state. Nevertheless, even after the Manifesto, the church quietly continued to perform a small number of plural marriages in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, thus necessitating a Second Manifesto during U.S. congressional hearings in 1904. Though neither Manifesto dissolved existing plural marriages, plural marriage in the LDS Church gradually died by attrition during the early-to-mid 20th century. The Manifesto was canonized in the LDS Church standard works as Official Declaration 1.
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Law was excommunicated and founded a reformed church called the True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He also established a newspaper named the Nauvoo Expositor which threatened to expose the practice of plural marriage; only one issue was published. On June 10, 1844, Smith held a meeting of the city council which, after two full days of meeting, condemned the Expositor as "a public nuisance" and empowered him to order the press destroyed. A portion of the Nauvoo Legion, Smith's militia, marched into the office, wrecked the press and burned every copy of the Nauvoo Expositor that could be found.
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Heber Jeddy Grant (November 22, 1856 - May 14, 1945) was an American religious leader who served as the seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Grant worked as a bookkeeper and a cashier, then was called to be an LDS apostle on October 16, 1882, at age 25. After the death of Joseph F. Smith in late 1918, Grant served as LDS church president until his death. The first president born after the exodus to Utah, Grant was also the last LDS Church president to have practiced plural marriage.
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Lyon and Staines worked in the Council House together administering temple ordinances until the Endowment House was built. In March 1855, after the Endowment House was completed and dedicated, Lyon was asked to be its superintendent and worked in that capacity for thirty years. During the 1855 October General Conference of the church, Brigham Young called Lyon, along with twenty-nine other men, as "home missionaries" to strengthen the members in Zion and hold conferences in the area. In 1856 Lyon had a dream that he entered into plural marriage and did so in March of that same year.
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Polygamist Tom Green was initially a member of the mainstream LDS church but was excommunicated when he adopted the practice of plural marriage. He resided in a makeshift trailer park in southern Utah with his large family who lived off the welfare system and a small income provided by selling magazine subscriptions. Those of Tom Green's wives who were not legally married to him would often file for welfare as single mothers to receive money. The Green Family came into the spotlight in 1999 when he told Dateline NBC that he had multiple wives during the making of a documentary.
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In the 1860s, those who felt that Smith should have been succeeded by Joseph Smith III established the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which later changed its name to Community of Christ. Under Brigham Young, the LDS Church orchestrated a massive overland migration of Latter-day Saint pioneers to Utah, by wagon train and, briefly, by handcart. The Apostles directed missionary preaching in Europe and the United States, gaining more converts who then gathered to frontier Utah. In its remote settlement, the church governed civil affairs and made public its practice of plural marriage (polygamy).
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In 2014, Park started the Year of Polygamy podcast, where she details the history of Mormon polygamy with particular emphasis on the lives and experiences of women. Starting with individual episodes giving biographical sketches of 34 women who were sealed to Joseph Smith, it goes on to cover the impact of plural marriage on the history of Latter Day Saints in the nineteenth century, and on to the present day continuance of the practice by Mormon fundamentalists. The podcast was referenced in a New York Times article on Leslie Olpin Petersen's Forgotten Wives series of paintings.
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The Edmunds Act, or Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882, was passed by the United States Congress in response to unrest about the Mormon practice of polygamy. It made polygamy a felony in U.S. territories and revoked polygamists' voting rights and their ability to serve on juries. These restrictions applied not only to those practicing polygamy but also to all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who professed belief in the church's doctrine of plural marriage. The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 provided further sanction, making polygamy punishable by fines and imprisonment.
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The latter work includes the "Lectures on Faith," which Cutlerites regard as scripture,Fletcher, pp. 330-32. as well as the revelations on baptism for the dead. The Pearl of Great Price is not part of Cutlerite scripture, save that portion of it that forms a portion of the Inspired Version of the Bible (the Book of Moses and Joseph Smith—Matthew). The Book of Abraham is rejected as scripture, as are the LDS Church concepts of eternal progression (whereby God was once a man, and man may become a god), plural marriage, and eternal marriage.
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Teenagers from polygamous families demonstrate at a pro-plural marriage rally in Salt Lake City in 2006. Over 200 supporters attended the event. Mormon fundamentalism (also called fundamentalist Mormonism) is a belief in the validity of selected fundamental aspects of Mormonism as taught and practiced in the nineteenth century, particularly during the administrations of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor, the first three presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Mormon fundamentalists seek to uphold tenets and practices no longer held by mainstream Mormons (members of the LDS Church).
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The LDS Church began prohibiting the contracting of plural marriages within the United States in 1890 after a decree by church president Wilford Woodruff. However, the practice continued underground in the U.S. and openly in Mormon colonies in northern Mexico and southern Alberta. According to some sources, many polygamous men in the United States continued to live with their plural wives with the approval of church presidents Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith.D. Michael Quinn, "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism" , Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 31(2) (Summer 1998): 1–68, accessed 2009-03-27.
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Church History in the Fulness of Times Student Manual, Chapter 36. (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). The seriousness with which this new measure was taken is evinced in the fact that apostle John W. Taylor, son of the church's third president, was excommunicated in 1911 for his continued opposition to the Manifesto. Today, the LDS Church continues to excommunicate members who advocate early Mormon doctrines such as plural marriage, enter into or solemnize plural marriages (whether in the United States or elsewhere), or actively support Mormon fundamentalist or dissident groups.
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D. Michael Quinn, "LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1985, 9–105.B. Carmon Hardy (1992). Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press). Smith issued the Second Manifesto near the beginning of the Reed Smoot hearings, United States Congressional hearings into whether LDS Church apostle Reed Smoot should be permitted to sit as a United States Senator from Utah; Smoot's opponents alleged that the LDS Church hierarchy's continued tolerance or encouragement of plural marriage should exclude Smoot from sitting in the Senate.
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Controversy followed when polygamy became a social cause, writers began to publish works condemning polygamy. The key plank of the Republican Party's 1856 platform was "to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery".GOP Convention of 1856 in Philadelphia from the Independence Hall Association website In 1862, Congress issued the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act which clarified that the practice of polygamy was illegal in all US territories. The LDS Church believed that their religiously based practice of plural marriage was protected by the United States Constitution, however, the unanimous 1878 Supreme Court decision Reynolds v.
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Ogden Wedlund Kraut (June 21, 1927 – July 17, 2002) was an American author who wrote about his independent Mormon fundamentalist beliefs. He was set apart as a "seventy" by Joseph W. Musser, a leader of the early Mormon fundamentalist movement. He also served as a missionary in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in southern California. He was one of the last missionaries to serve in the church "without purse or scrip" (financed entirely by donations from the church or from those to whom they taught), and wrote a book about his experiences.Quinn, “Plural Marriage, 1998,” 29.
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When he returned to Utah Territory in 1855, West was appointed the presiding bishop of Weber County, Utah Territory and moved to Ogden. West was involved in co-ordinating the employment of Latter-day Saints in the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad for Central Pacific in Utah Territory, and on May 10, 1869 he was present as a representative of the LDS Church at the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, Utah. West practiced plural marriage and had nine wives and 35 children. West died during a business trip to San Francisco, California, and is buried in Ogden, Utah.
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Utah Pioneer and Apostle: Marriner Wood Merrill and His Family During the time of the polygamy raids in Utah Territory, Merrill lived in his bedroom on the second floor in the west tower of the Logan Temple; for weeks at a time, he would not leave the temple. He was arrested for unlawful cohabitation on 10 January 1889, but was released within two days without being convicted. Merrill married his eighth wife, Swedish immigrant Hilda Maria Erickson, after the 1890 Manifesto announced the discontinuation of plural marriage. He is alleged also to have advocated for and performed post-Manifesto plural marriages.
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The hearings included exhaustive questioning into the continuation of plural marriage within the state of Utah and the LDS Church, and questions on church teachings, doctrines and history. Although Smoot was not a polygamist, the charge by those opposed to his election to the Senate was that he could not swear to uphold the United States Constitution while serving in the highest echelons of an organization that sanctioned law breaking. Reed Smoot is shown fleeing two volumes of the Journal of Discourses. Protestants used quotes from the volumes of teachings of the prophets when asking Smoot questions about his religion.
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Kimball was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, the son of apostle Heber C. Kimball and Christeene Golden Kimball. He was one of sixty-five children fathered by Heber C. Kimball, a practitioner of the early LDS doctrine of plural marriage. Kimball was one of the first generation of Latter-day Saints to be born after the Mormon pioneers' exodus to Utah in 1847, and was familiar with the pioneer experience and the expansion of Latter-day Saint settlements in the Intermountain Region. Kimball was the oldest of his mother's three children and was fifteen when his father died.
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United States that upheld the Edmunds–Tucker Act on May 19, 1890. Among other things, the act disincorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Within five months, the LDS Church officially discontinued the practice of plural marriage with the 1890 Manifesto. On October 25, 1893, a congressional resolution authorized the release of assets seized from the LDS Church because, "said church has discontinued the practice of polygamy and no longer encourages or gives countenance to any manner of practices in violation of law, or contrary to good morals or public policy."Jt.
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The 1843 polygamy revelation, published posthumously, counseled Smith's wife Emma to accept all of Smith's plural wives, and warns of destruction if the new covenant is not observed.A 12 July 1843 polygamy revelation on plural marriage, attributed to Joseph Smith, with the demand that Emma Smith, the first wife, accept all of Joseph Smith's plural wives. See the LDS version of the Doctrine and Covenants, 132:1–4, 19, 20, 24, 34, 35, 38, 39, 52, 60–66. Emma Smith was publicly and privately opposed to the practice and Joseph may have married some women without Emma knowing beforehand.
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Though scholars had believed the Third Convention movement had died out, anthropologist Thomas W. Murphy located an active Third Conventionist community in Ozumba, Mexico in 1997. The group was situated in Colonia Industrial, founded in 1947 as the community of Margarito Bautista, a prominent Third Conventionist. According to a local leader, there were 700 adherents going as "Mormons" with the institutional name of El Reino de Dios en su Plenitud (The Kingdom of God in its Fullness). The group practiced plural marriage and communal principles of the law of consecration, and seemed to be moderately affluent.
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When he was 21 years old he worked as a manager for a mercantile company before entering the teaching profession as a teacher in Smithfield, Utah. Raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) during the time when plural marriage (polygamy) was taught and practiced, Kerr later married a second wife, Lois Cordelia Morehead, a schoolteacher in Smithfield, Utah and they had two children, a son and a daughter. After the church renounced the practice, Kerr divorced his second wife in 1898. The emotional impact caused Kerr and his wives to leave the LDS Church.
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2, at 247 (August 1835)Messenger and Advocate (Aug 1835), at 163 and contained the following text: It was superseded by section 132 of the modern LDS edition, which contains a revelation received by Smith on eternal marriage and teaches the doctrine of plural marriage. In 1921, the LDS Church removed the "Lectures on Faith" portion of the book, with an explanation that the Lectures "were never presented to nor accepted by the Church as being otherwise than theological lectures or lessons".See Introduction, 1921 edition. The Lectures contain theology concerning the Godhead and emphasize the importance of faith and works.
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Blackmore remained party leader until 1944 when Social Credit held its first national convention and acclaimed Solon Earl Low as leader. Blackmore remained an MP until he was defeated in the 1958 election in which Social Credit lost all of its MPs. Blackmore was the first Mormon to be elected to the Canadian House of Commons and was excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1947 for "teaching and advocating the doctrine of plural marriage" at secret meetings in southern Alberta. At such meetings, men debated whether Mormon leaders were wrong to have renounced Joseph Smith's revelation regarding polygamy.
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Possibly as early as the 1830s, followers of the Latter Day Saint movement (also known as Mormonism), were practicing the doctrine of polygamy or "plural marriage". After the death of church founder Joseph Smith, the doctrine was officially announced in Utah Territory in 1852 by Mormon leader Brigham Young. The practice was attributed posthumously to Smith and it began among Mormons at large, principally in Utah where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) had relocated after the Illinois Mormon War. In the years after members of the LDS Church began practicing polygamy, it drew intense scrutiny and criticism from the United States government.
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"Historical-regional" novels were prevalent during this era, which Karl Keller called the "best fiction to come out of the Church" and criticized it as a byproduct of "a history and lifestyle that has already been created." In this genre of "provincial" novels, Samuel W. Taylor wrote the humorous Heaven Knows Why (1948). Maurine Whipple won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Prize in 1938 and published The Giant Joshua (1941), which presented plural marriage as a test of faith similar to colonizing Utah's desert. In "Fifty Important Mormon Books," Curt Bench reported that Mormon scholars in 1990 unanimously chose The Giant Joshua as the best Mormon novel before 1980.
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William Marks, former stake president of Nauvoo, served as Smith III's counselor in the reorganized First Presidency. The word "Reorganized" was added to the church's official name in 1872, mostly as a means of distinguishing it from the larger LDS Church, which at that time was involved in controversy with the U.S. government over its doctrine of plural marriage. The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was often abbreviated "RLDS Church". Over time, many Mormons, mostly in the Midwest, who had not accompanied Brigham Young and his Latter-Day Saint followers to what is now Utah, began to join the new and growing Church.
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Members of sects that broke with the LDS Church over the issue of polygamy have become known as fundamentalist Mormons; these groups differ from mainstream Mormonism primarily in their belief in and practice of plural marriage. There are thought to be between 20,000 and 60,000 members of fundamentalist sects, (0.1–0.4 percent of Mormons), with roughly half of them practicing polygamy.Martha Sonntag Bradley, "Polygamy-Practicing Mormons" in J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann (eds.) (2002). Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia 3:1023–24; Dateline NBC, January 2, 2001; Ken Driggs, "Twentieth-Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Winter 1991, pp.
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The 1890 Manifesto (also known as the Woodruff Manifesto or the Anti-polygamy Manifesto) is a statement which officially advised against any future plural marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Issued by church president Wilford Woodruff in September 1890, the Manifesto was a response to mounting anti-polygamy pressure from the United States Congress, which by 1890 had disincorporated the church, escheated its assets to the U.S. federal government, and imprisoned many prominent polygamist Mormons. Upon its issuance, the LDS Church in conference accepted Woodruff's Manifesto as "authoritative and binding." The Manifesto was a dramatic turning point in the history of the LDS Church.
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These included baptism for the dead, rebaptism, the Nauvoo-era endowment, and the ordinance of the second anointing. In addition, he created a new inner council of the church — containing both men and women — called the Anointed Quorum. Although not publicly acknowledged, Smith had been practicing plural marriage for some time, and in Nauvoo he began to teach other leaders the doctrine. Controversy arose because Smith's counselor in the First Presidency and Mayor, John C. Bennett, was caught in adultery (which Bennett considered and referred to as "spiritual wifery" or having multiple "spiritual" wives), claiming that Joseph Smith endorsed it and practiced it himself.
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A couple following their marriage in the Manti Utah Temple From the 1830s, marriage has been a central and distinctive component of Mormon theology. Mormon teachings on marriage begins with the belief that, if performed by a person who has the requisite priesthood authority, a marriage may continue in the afterlife. Such a marriage is called a "celestial marriage"In the 19th century, the term "celestial marriage" was used interchangeably with the term "plural marriage". Some early Mormons (and present-day Mormon fundamentalists) considered polygamy to be a requirement for exaltation. or a "temple marriage",Handbook 1: Bishops and Stake Presidents (Salt Lake City, Utah: LDS Church, 2010) § 3.5.1.
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She may only be sealed to subsequent partners after she has died: Handbook 1: Bishops and Stake Presidents (Salt Lake City, Utah: LDS Church, 2010) § 3.6.1. Church leaders have not clarified if women in such circumstances will live in a polyandrous relationship in the afterlife. It should be noted, however, that proxy sealings, like proxy baptisms, are merely offered to the person in the afterlife, indicating that the purpose may be to allow the woman to choose the man she wishes to be sealed to. In the 1950s, one influential church leader opined that plural marriage would "obviously" be reinstituted after the Second Coming of Jesus.
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On 12 January 1854, shortly after settling in Salt Lake, Lyon was sustained as a seventy and then as the president of the 37th Quorum of the Seventies and would serve in that capacity for the next thirty years. Lyon joined the Deseret Dramatic Association, the Universal Scientific Society, the Deseret Press Association, the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing society, and others. Lyon became great friends with a William C. Staines who would eventually marry Lyon's eighteen-year-old daughter as his second wife. This was the first time that the Lyon family would show their acceptance of plural marriage, commonly practiced in the LDS church at that time.
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Bob Navarro, The Country in Conflict, 2008, page 105 Morrill is best known for sponsoring the Morrill Act, also known as the Land Grant College Act. This act was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, and established federal funding for higher education in every state of the country. In his own words: He also authored the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, which targeted The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based on the then-existing practice of plural marriage (polygamy). It imposed a five-hundred dollar fine and up to five years imprisonment for the crime of polygamy. On January 6, 1879, in Reynolds v.
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The LDS Church openly practiced plural marriage from 1852 and went through a series of legal battles with the U.S. government, and eventually ended the practice in 1890. Sometime before 1920, Woolley taught that LDS Church President John Taylor had set apart five men, including himself and his father John W. Woolley, to ensure that the practice of polygamy would continue into perpetuity even if abandoned by the church. Taylor's alleged action came shortly after the 1886 Revelation on the subject of polygamy. Between 1929 and 1933, Woolley extended the same supposed apostolic authority that Taylor granted to him, to a seven-man Council of Friends.
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Eyring, a third- generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), was reared on a cattle ranch in Colonia Juárez, Chihuahua, a Mormon colony, for the first 11 years of his life. His father practiced plural marriage; he was married to two daughters of Miles Park Romney, the great- grandfather of Mitt Romney. Eyring's father treated both wives with equal respect and care and made sure to provide the children with a healthy family environment. In July 1912, the Eyrings and about 4,200 other immigrants were driven out of Mexico by violent insurgents during the Mexican Revolution and moved to El Paso, Texas.
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Barb grew up in a traditional, non-polygamous LDS family. Her parents were Rockefeller Republicans, and her mother campaigned for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. Barb's mother and sister disowned her because she followed Bill into polygamy; her sister is shown as the modern, one-husband wife, raising her three children, and holding down a job and good status in the local community. However, repeated references are made to Barb's mother "not being ready" to meet with Barb at the time of the first season of the show, presumably because of her disapproval of the plural marriage her daughter has entered into.
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As of August 31, 2019, Blackmore has married 27 times and has 149 children. He is the nephew of former Social Credit Party of Canada leader John Horne Blackmore who, though not a polygamist himself, was excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1947 for "teaching and advocating the doctrine of plural marriage". As an MP, the elder Blackmore urged Parliament to repeal the anti- polygamy law and succeeded in removing specific references to Mormons that had been in the law. Blackmore is also related to anti-polygamy activists Carolyn Jessop, a former FLDS member and author, and Ruby Jessop.
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Polygyny is illegal in the United States and Canada. Mormon fundamentalism believes in the validity of selected fundamental aspects of Mormonism as taught and practiced in the nineteenth century. Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints' teachings include plural marriage, a form of polygyny first taught by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. In the 21st century, several sources have claimed as many as 60,000 fundamentalist Latter-day Saints in the United States,Martha Sonntag Bradley, "Polygamy-Practicing Mormons" in J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann (eds.) (2002). Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia 3:1023–1024.Dateline NBC, 2001-01-02.
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Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1980), p. 112. (Edited for spelling and punctuation.) This funerary sermon is considered one of the most introspective and emotionally depressed discourses by Smith, and pointed to by Mormons as foreknowledge of, and a prophecy of his own death which occurred not long thereafter. In the weeks before Joseph Smith's death, Marks claimed that Joseph came to him and told him that plural marriage had proved a curse rather than a blessing to the church.
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Though the Sauk practiced plural marriage, Black Hawk had one wife, known as As-she-we-qua (died August 28, 1846), or Singing Bird (her English name was Sarah Baker) with whom he had five children. His oldest son and youngest daughter died in the same year, before 1820, and he mourned their passing following Sauk tradition for two years. According to Sauk tradition, Black Hawk spent these two years of his life mourning the loss of his children by living alone and fasting. His other children were a daughter Namequa (Running Fawn, Ailey Baker was her English name) and his sons Nasheakusk (aka Nashashuk) and Gamesett (aka Nasomsee).
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Even though plural marriage was illegal in Mexico, government officials welcomed the benefits of foreign investments and colonization by Americans and their resources, ignoring their cultural differences. In January 1885, LDS President John Taylor visited the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, selecting the Casas Grandes valley for the place where settlements were to be established. Several ambassadors were sent from Salt Lake City to negotiate purchasing of the lands and for official arrangements of foreign colonists to be accepted in Chihuahua. In May 1885 approximately 400 prospective settlers, mostly plural families from Arizona established temporary camps on the shores of Casas Grandes River.
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Heber Chase Kimball (June 14, 1801 - June 22, 1868) was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement. He served as one of the original twelve apostles in the early Church of the Latter Day Saints, and as first counselor to Brigham Young in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) for more than two decades, from 1847 until his death. Agreeing to take on plural marriage, then part of church doctrine, Kimball eventually married forty-three women, but some relationships were for caretaking. He had a total of sixty-six children by seventeen of his wives.
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Reports of Cowley's continuing involvement in new plural marriages led to his priesthood being suspended by the church on May 11, 1911. This rare and virtually unique disciplinary procedure was used for Cowley because the members of the Quorum of the Twelve disagreed about whether to leave him undisciplined, to disfellowship him, or to excommunicate him. After his priesthood was suspended, Cowley's name continued to be linked with plural marriage over the next several years. As late as the early 1920s, Cowley was meeting with excommunicated polygamists as the early Mormon fundamentalists began to coalesce at the Baldwin Radio Plant in Salt Lake City.
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In the late 1840s and early 1850s, the bulk of the Latter Day Saints either aligned themselves with Brigham Young and emigrated to Utah or they remained in the Midwest and looked to James J. Strang as church president. Strang gave indications that he believed that a son of Joseph Smith Jr. would one day lead the church and made overtures to the Smith family. Emma and her sons, however, remained aloof. Many midwestern Latter Day Saints were adamantly opposed to plural marriage and when Strang began to openly practice the doctrine in 1849, several key leaders including Jason W. Briggs and Zenas H. Gurley, Sr. broke with his leadership.
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Watson, Thora, Ann Mariah Bowen Call: Woman Colonizer of the West, 2000, p. 7. Asked by President Brigham Young to help settle and colonize the area of southern Utah called Parowan, and (before this 'restoration' church's controversial Old Testament doctrinal practice was formally declared to the world) to enter into plural marriage by taking a second wife, 40-year-old Anson Call faithfully complied. During the April 1851 General Conference, President Young, looking out over the congregation, saw slender, attractive 17-year-old Ann Mariah Bowen of Centerville, and 'recognized a good match' (it had only been 18 months since Mariah's arrival in the Salt Lake Valley).
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In 1890, LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff issued what has become known as The Manifesto, officially calling for an end to the practice of plural marriage by church members in the United States. Because certain members (Woolley among them) did not take The Manifesto seriously, in 1904 another proclamation, the Second Manifesto, was put forth by church president Joseph F. Smith, which stated that those who did not cease the continuation of the practice would be excommunicated from the church. Woolley did not comply and was excommunicated from the LDS Church on March 30, 1914. When Woolley died, his son Lorin Woolley succeeded him as a leader among Mormon fundamentalists.
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The Mormons also petitioned Congress to have Deseret admitted into the Union as a state. However, under the Compromise of 1850, Utah Territory was created and Brigham Young was appointed governor. In this situation, Young still stood as head of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as well as of Utah's secular government. After the abortive Utah War of 1857–1858, the replacement of Young by an outside Federal Territorial Governor, intense federal prosecution of LDS Church leaders, the eventual resolution of controversies regarding plural marriage, and accession by Utah to statehood, the apparent temporal aspects of LDS theodemocracy receded markedly.
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Herodotus says that the bigamy of Anaxandridas II, who married a second wife because his first had not been able to produce an heir, was un-Spartan,Herodotus, Histories, V.40.2 but Polybius wrote that it was common at his time, and a time-honoured practice.Polybius XII.6b.8 Andrew Scott suggests that polygyny would have been more common in ancient Sparta in the early 4th century BC, when the number of Spartan citizen men sharply decreased. Along with plural marriage, Xenophon states that older men with younger wives were encouraged to allow younger, more fit men impregnate their wives, in order to produce stronger children.
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Many critics of polygamy also point to the Pauline epistles that state that church officials should be respectable, above reproach, and the husband of a single wife. Hermeneutically, the Greek phrase mias gunaikos andra is an unusual Greek construction, capable of being translated in multiple ways, including (but not limited to): 1) "one wife man," (prohibiting plural marriage) or 2) "a wife man" (requiring elders to be married) or 3) "first wife man" (prohibiting divorcés from ordination). In the time around Jesus' birth, polygamy (also called bigamy or digamy in texts) was understood as having several spouses consecutively, as evidenced for example by Tertullian's work De Exhortatione Castitatis. The Apostle Paul allowed widows to remarry (1 Cor. vii. 39.
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Regardless of the legality of the plural marriage in the country of origin, the U.S. government will only recognize one marriage thus, a man with multiple wives can only sponsor one wife who wishes to immigrate to the U.S. If a man who practiced polygamy in his maternal country wishes to sponsor more than one wife he must divorce the wife in the U.S first. Any women who succeeds in avoiding the bar on polygamy is denied basic legal rights regarding marriage, divorce, and financial support. The denial of these rights "perpetuates the cycle of 'abuse and exploitation' that is sometimes synonymous with modern-day polygamy". Polygamy often puts extra, strenuous responsibilities on women.
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The status of women in Mormonism has been a source of public debate since before the death of Joseph Smith in 1844. Various denominations within the Latter Day Saint movement have taken different paths on the subject of women and their role in the church and in society. Views range from the full equal status and ordination of women to the priesthood, as practiced by the Community of Christ, to a patriarchal system practiced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), to the ultra-patriarchal plural marriage system practiced by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) and other Mormon fundamentalist groups.
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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Kingdom of God's claims of authority are based around the accounts of John Wickersham Woolley, Lorin Calvin Woolley and others, of a meeting in September 1886 between LDS Church President John Taylor, the Woolleys, and others. Prior to the meeting, Taylor is said to have met with Jesus Christ and the deceased church founder, Joseph Smith, and to have received a revelation commanding that plural marriage should not cease, but be kept alive by a group separate from the LDS Church. The following day, the Woolleys, as well as Taylor's counselor, George Q. Cannon, and others, were said to have been set apart to keep "the principle" alive.
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According to his autobiography, Charles W. Kingston became disenchanted with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in 1926 because of its abandonment of plural marriage. Kingston began preaching polygamy amongst fellow members of the LDS Church as well as distributing pamphlets and the book, Laman Manasseh Victorious: A Message of Salvation and Redemption to His People Israel, First to Ephraim and Manasseh, which he had co-written. This eventually resulted in his excommunication from the LDS Church in 1929. By 1935, his followers began moving to Bountiful, Utah, with the intention to live under a United Order communalist program as defined by Joseph Smith in the Doctrine and Covenants.
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As head of the Church of the New Covenant in Christ, Bryant has highlighted what he views as a challenge to Mormon fundamentalism: Bryant argues that Mormon fundamentalists have neglected Jesus in favor of a focus on polygamy and male patriarchy.Marsha King, "Changing beliefs led family to rearrange plural union", Seattle Times, 1985-10-13. Bryant's own experience of being "born again" after his move to Salem prompted him to change the name of his church from the "Evangelical Church of Christ" to the "Church of the New Covenant in Christ". Bryant abandoned teaching plural marriage, vowed to take no more wives, and reoriented his family life away from its previous patriarchal structure.
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They invited Smith III to lead their New Organization; he accepted only after he believed he received a personal spiritual confirmation that this was the appropriate course of action. At a conference on April 6, 1860, at Amboy, Illinois, Smith III formally accepted the leadership of what was then known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. William Marks, former stake president of Nauvoo, served as Smith III's counselor in the reorganized First Presidency. The word "Reorganized" was added to the church's official name in 1872, mostly as a means of distinguishing it from the larger LDS Church, which at that time was involved in controversy with the U.S. government over its doctrine of plural marriage.
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Joseph Stacy Murdock's Journal (unpublished but included in its entirety in Advancing the Mormon frontier: the life and times of Joseph Stacy Murdock -- pioneer, colonizer, peacemaker ) Murdock and his wife migrated with the Mormon population to the Salt Lake Valley in Daniel Spencer's 1847 Mormon pioneer company.Church Archives Database on wagon and handcart pioneers Murdock was asked by Brigham Young to enter the practice of plural marriage and was sent to jail for doing so in 1889.Andrew Jenson, Church Chronology: A Record of Important Events Pertaining to the History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, p. 174. Murdock was pardoned in 1894 by U.S. President Grover Cleveland.
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The term was initially considered pejorative,Terms used in the LDS Restorationist movement ReligiousTolerance.org but Mormons no longer consider it so (although generally preferring other terms such as Latter-day Saint or LDS). After Smith was killed by a mob while awaiting trial in 1844, most Mormons followed Brigham Young on his westward journey to the area that became the Utah Territory, calling themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Other sects include Mormon fundamentalism, which seeks to maintain practices and doctrines such as polygamy,For a discussion on a history of Mormon polygamy, see "Plural Marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", churchofjesuschrist.org.
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The problem, as seen by the two men, was that despite bigamy being outlawed by the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act and Poland Act it was practically impossible to prosecute violators as the grand juries and juries in the locations where plural marriage was practiced were dominated by Mormons who refused to punish their fellow church members. To deal with the "Mormon menace", Neil proposed disenfranchisement of the Mormons to the 11th territorial legislature. The governor's proposed legislation was not passed but he did get several anti-Mormon officials appointed to territorial positions. Neil then traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for his anti-Mormon position and serve as a speaker at anti-polygamy meetings.
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Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the U.S. government intensified due to the practice of plural marriage, or polygamy, among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons were still pushing for the establishment of a State of Deseret with the new borders of the Utah Territory. Most, if not all, of the members of the U.S. government opposed the polygamous practices of the Mormons. Members of the LDS Church were viewed as un-American and rebellious when news of their polygamous practices spread. In 1857, particularly heinous accusations of abdication of government and general immorality were leveled by former associate justice William W. Drummond, among others.
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The FLDS Church teaches the doctrine of plural marriage, which states that a man having multiple wives is ordained of and a commandment by God; the doctrine requires it in order for a man to receive the highest form of salvation. In the church it is generally believed that a man should have a minimum of three wives in order to fulfill this requirement. Connected with this doctrine is the patriarchal doctrine, the belief that wives are required to be subordinate to their husbands. The church currently practices placement marriage, whereby a young woman of marriageable age is assigned a husband by revelation from God to the leader of the church, who is regarded as a prophet.
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Soon after departing, Belnap lost his second son and child, 13-month- old John McBride Belnap,John McBride Belnap (1849-1850) who died of cholera in 1850 and was buried in his father's tool chest near the Saline Ford at the confluence of Salt Creek and the Platte River along the Oxbow Trail. (This event that was commemorated in 1997 during the sesquicentennial celebration of the Mormon Trail.John McBride Belnap Memorial Program, April 1997) Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Belnap was sent to settle in Fort Buenaventura built by Miles Goodyear in Weber County, Utah. In 1852 he was sealed to his first wife's first cousin, Henrietta McBride, in plural marriage.
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San Mateo Daily Journal, Police briefs , May 24, 2002 In 2003, a radio caller to George Noory's Coast to Coast AM reported seeing bin Laden in Florida. Several dozen people had reported seeing bin Laden in Utah; driving a Volkswagen Beetle on I-80, in the mall, at McDonald's, or in a Provo 7-Eleven purchasing a Big Gulp by January 2002.Lakeland Ledger, "If you're looking for Osama, he's in Salt Lake City", January 18, 2002 Predominantly a Mormon state, this urban legend relies on the tenuous permittance of plural marriage in Utah, and its generally arid climate, to justify why the leader of al-Qaeda would choose it as his hiding place.Harding, Nick.
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The Council of Friends membership desired a remote location where they could practice plural marriage, which had been publicly abandoned by the LDS Church in 1890. On July 26, 1953, Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle sent troops into the settlement to stop polygamy in what became known as the Short Creek raid. The two-year legal battle that followed became a public relations disaster that damaged Pyle's political career and set a hands-off tone toward the town in Arizona for the next 50 years. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) later developed in the same geographical region and changed the name to Colorado City and Hildale to eliminate any ties to the Short Creek raids.
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As for Blakeslee, he, like Gurley, eventually defected to the lure of Strangism and apostatized from the church. Baptized as Elijah Abel was, in 1832, Blakeslee went on to organize, ten years later, a branch of the church in Utica, New York, where he helped to shelter the Saints fleeing from the dangerous chaos and civil strife born of the Upper Canada Rebellion. And just as Gurley had done, Blakeslee ended up renouncing the Prophet of the Restoration — in May 1844 — after the esoteric Latter-day Saint doctrine of "plural marriage" had begun to show a more public face. Along with Francis Higbee, Charles Ivins, and Austin Cowles, who all embraced, as it were, the same spirit of disillusionment and apostasy, Blakeslee was excommunicated.
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Bachman, Danel W., Esplin, Ronald K. (1992) "Plural Marriage", in Ludlow, Daniel H, Encyclopedia of Mormonism 3:1095. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Polygamy was gradually discontinued after the 1904 Second Manifesto as no new plural marriages were allowed and older polygamists eventually died, with polygamous LDS families cohabitating into the 1940s and 1950s. Since the Second Manifesto, the policy of the LDS Church has been to excommunicate members who practice, officiate, or openly encourage the practice of plural marriages. However, LDS leaders even in the late 20th century, such Joseph Fielding Smith have acknowledged the belief in polygamy in the afterlife, in the case of a widower becoming sealed in eternal marriage to a second wife after the death of the first wife.
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The Community of Christ does not recognize Smith's 1831 revelation or the 1843 revelation on polygamy as canonical, and some members regard them as inauthentic. Although some past leaders of the RLDS Church—most notably Joseph Smith III and others who were descendants of Joseph Smith—have strenuously denied that Smith taught or practiced polygamy, the Community of Christ today states that it "does not legislate or mandate positions on issues of history"."Community of Christ: Frequently Asked Questions". The church acknowledges that research into the early Latter Day Saint movement "seem[s] to increasingly point to Joseph Smith Jr. as a significant source for plural marriage teaching and practice", but the church argues that it must be recognized that Smith was not infallible in his teachings.
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In 1849, the Mormons of the Salt Lake Valley organized the extralegal State of Deseret, claiming the entire Great Basin and all lands drained by the rivers Green, Grand, and Colorado. The federal government of the U.S. flatly refused to recognize the new Mormon government, because it was theocratic and sanctioned plural marriage. Instead, the Compromise of 1850 divided the Mexican Cession and the northwestern claims of Texas into a new state and two new territories, the state of California, the Territory of New Mexico, and the Territory of Utah. On April 9, 1851, Mexican American settlers from the area of Taos settled the village of San Luis, then in the New Mexico Territory, later to become Colorado's first permanent Euro- American settlement.
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In one highly publicized case, a man and one of his polygamist wives lost custody of all but one of their children until the wife separated herself from her husband. The largest government effort to crack down on the practices of fundamentalist Mormons was carried out in 1953 in what is today Colorado City, Arizona, which became known as the Short Creek Raid. Other fundamental doctrines of the Latter Day Saint movement besides polygamy, notably the United Order (communalism), while equally important in the practices of some fundamentalist sects, have not come under the same scrutiny or approbation as has plural marriage, and the mainline LDS Church has mostly ignored this aspect of fundamentalism; in any case, no revelation or statement condemning it has ever been issued.
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The "Runaway Officials of 1851" were a group of three federal officers, Judge Perry Brocchus, Judge Lemuel Brandenbury, and Territorial Secretary Broughton Harris, who were appointed to Utah Territory by President Millard Fillmore in 1851. These men arrived in Utah in the summer of that year, and though they were cordially welcomed, they soon came into conflict with the Latter-day Saint settlers of the territory. The confrontation centered on Mormon social practices such as plural marriage, which the appointees vocally and publicly denigrated, and disagreements over territorial administration with newly appointed Governor Brigham Young. By the end of September 1851, each of these officers left his Utah appointment for the east and their posts remained unfilled for the next two years.
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As the result of a November 2012 court decision, much of the UEP land is to be sold to those who live on it. In January 2004, Jeffs expelled a group of twenty men from the Short Creek Community, including the mayor, and reassigned their wives and children to other men in the community. Jeffs, like his predecessors, continued the standard FLDS and Mormon fundamentalist tenet that faithful men must follow what is known as the doctrine of plural marriage in order to attain exaltation in the afterlife. Jeffs specifically taught that a devoted church member is expected to have at least three wives in order to get into heaven, and the more wives a man has, the closer he is to heaven.
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The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ, rejected polygamy and declared themselves an independent church in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III, the eldest son of the founding leader. The practice of polygamy led to opposition to the LDS Church and the enacting of anti-polygamy laws in the United States. (The U.S. Congress made the practice illegal in U.S. territories in 1862.) Many members of the church fled to Canada or Mexico in an attempt to set up communities free from prosecution. Although Latter-day Saints believed that plural marriage was protected by the United States Constitution as a religious practice, opponents used it to delay Utah statehood until 1896.
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Young and the majority of the Quorum of the Twelve, Quinn asserts, feared that Marks would end plural marriage and other ordinances that they saw as crucial to exaltation in the afterlife. Quinn states that despite Emma's support, and despite receiving his endowments and anointings before any other successor claimants (including every member of the Quorum of Twelve), Marks did not advance his own claims to church leadership. Instead, Marks sympathized with Sidney Rigdon and supported his bid to become "guardian" of the church. Because of this and because he did not support the Twelve Apostles, Marks was removed from the High Council at the October General Conference in 1844, and also rejected as president of the Nauvoo Stake of Zion.
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The Community of Christ, known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church) prior to 2001, has never sanctioned polygamy since its foundation in 1860. Joseph Smith III, the first Prophet-President of the RLDS Church following the reorganization of the Church, was an ardent opponent of the practice of plural marriage throughout his life. For most of his career, Smith denied that his father had been involved in the practice and insisted that it had originated with Brigham Young. Smith served many missions to the western United States, where he met with and interviewed associates and women claiming to be widows of his father, who attempted to present him with evidence to the contrary.
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Grave marker of George A. Smith Like many other 19th-century Mormon leaders, Smith practiced plural marriage. Known for his somewhat bombastic speaking style, Smith once said, "We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if [non-Mormons] envy us our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow-minded, pinch-backed race of men, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy, and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. They ought to be ashamed of such conduct, and the still fouler channel which flows from their practices; and it is not to be wondered at that they should envy those who so much better understand the social relations."Journal of Discourses, vol.
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The act targeted the Mormon practice of plural marriage and the property dominance of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in the Utah Territory. The measure had no funds allocated for enforcement, and Lincoln chose not to enforce this law; instead Lincoln gave Brigham Young tacit permission to ignore the Morrill Act in exchange for not becoming involved with the Civil War. General Patrick Edward Connor, commanding officer of the federal forces garrisoned at Fort Douglas, Utah beginning in 1862, was explicitly instructed not to confront the Mormons over this or any other issue. The Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act was amended in 1882 by the Edmunds Act, and then again in 1887 by the Edmunds–Tucker Act.
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After Smith's martyrdom in 1844 precipitated a succession crisis in the church, Post initially demurred from affiliating with any of the resulting sects, instead continuing to preach as an independent believer. In 1850, he briefly joined James Strang's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, within which his younger brother Warren became an apostle, but he soon became disenchanted with Strang's practice of plural marriage and left the church.. In January 1856, Post wrote to Sidney Rigdon, Smith's former counselor, about the disordered state of Mormonism. Rigdon had briefly led his own church following Smith's martyrdom, but it had collapsed in 1848. In March, Rigdon responded to Post's letter with a revelation commanding him to assist in reestablishing the Rigdonite organization.
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After the death of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, in 1844, rebaptism became a more important ordinance in the LDS Church, as led by Brigham Young. Young led his group to the Great Basin in what is now Utah, and most of his followers were rebaptised soon after arriving as a sign that they would rededicate their lives to Christ. During the "Mormon Reformation" of 1856–57, rebaptism became an extremely important ordinance, signifying that the church member confessed their sins and would live a life of a Latter-day Saint. Church members were rebaptized prior to new covenants and ordinances, such as ordination to a new office of the priesthood, receiving temple ordinances, getting married, or entering plural marriage.
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The church teaches that the Latter Day Saints must return to the practices of the United Order in preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus. The church uses the same scriptures that are used by the LDS Church, with the exception of section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which sets out the doctrines of plural marriage and celestial marriage. The church is composed of one congregation of approximately 30 people and are governed by a First Presidency, a presiding bishop, and a presiding patriarch. In the early 1950s, Theron Drew, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), identified Kilgore as the "One Mighty and Strong" that was prophesied by Joseph Smith to come forward to put the church in order.
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Heinlein became one of the first American science-fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was one of the best-selling science-fiction novelists for many decades, and he, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke are often considered the "Big Three" of English-language science fiction authors. Notable Heinlein works include Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers (which helped mold the space marine and mecha archetypes) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His work sometimes had controversial aspects, such as plural marriage in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, militarism in Starship Troopers and technologically competent women characters that were formidable, yet often stereotypically feminine – such as Friday.
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In 1911, she was elected to be president of an all-women board of council in Kanab; this position was equivalent to mayor. She was elected under the name Mary W. Howard, as she had married Thomas Chamberlain as his sixth wife when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was ending the practice of plural marriage. Chamberlain wrote in 1936 that they were not actively seeking office and their candidacy was a practical joke as their ticket was formed on the day of the elections, as nobody in the town was concerned with who was elected in the positions. They were visited by Susa Young Gates who was excited about their work and wanted to learn more about what they were doing.
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The private practice of polygamy was instituted in the 1830s by founder Joseph Smith. The public practice of plural marriage by the church was announced and defended in 1852 by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Orson Pratt, by the request of church president Brigham Young. For over 60 years, the LDS Church and the United States were at odds over the issue: the church defended the practice as a matter of religious freedom, while the federal government aggressively sought to eradicate it, consistent with prevailing public opinion. Polygamy was probably a significant factor in the Utah War of 1857 and 1858, given the Republican attempts to paint Democratic President James Buchanan as weak in his opposition to both polygamy and slavery.
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Under the placement marriage system, young members of the FLDS Church are not allowed to court or date before marriage and are discouraged to fall in love until after they are married. They are permitted to become acquainted with one another through the community, church, school, or family ties, but they are not allowed to be more than just friends with anyone until the Priesthood Council arranges a spouse for them. When a young man, generally around the age of twenty-one, feels ready to be married he approaches the Priesthood Council and then they decide who he will marry.Quinn, Michael. “Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism.” Dialogue 31, (1998) :1-68 They select a wife for the young man through a process of inspiration and revelation.
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A community event in Centennial Park The Centennial Park group's claims of authority are based around the accounts of John Wickersham Woolley, Lorin Calvin Woolley and others of a meeting in September 1886 between LDS Church President John Taylor, the Woolleys, and others. Prior to the meeting, Taylor is said to have met with Jesus Christ and the deceased church founder Joseph Smith and to have received a revelation commanding that plural marriage should not cease, but be kept alive by a group separate from the LDS Church. The following day, the Woolleys, and others, were said to have been set apart to keep "the principle" alive. Members of the Centennial Park group see their history as going back to Joseph Smith and to the beliefs he espoused and practices he established.
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This version is sometimes mistaken as being the original. A significantly longer, extended revision of the creed, which contains twenty-five articles and is known as the Articles of Faith and Practice, is used by the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), the Church of Christ (Fettingite), the Church of Christ with the Elijah Message and the Church of Christ with the Elijah Message (Assured Way). The Word of the Lord, regarded as scriptural by the Fettingites and by both Elijah Message groups, declares these articles to be inspired and forbids changing their wording. The version currently published by the Temple Lot group has a different version of Article 20 to the version used by the other groups, denouncing cohabitation and same- sex marriage in addition to plural marriage.
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Colorado City, formerly known as Short Creek (or the Short Creek Community), was founded in 1913 by members of the Council of Friends, a breakaway group from the Salt Lake City- based The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The Council of Friends membership desired a remote location where they could practice plural marriage, which had been publicly abandoned by the LDS Church in 1890. On July 26, 1953, Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle sent troops into the settlement to stop polygamy in what became known as the Short Creek raid. The two-year legal battle that followed became a public relations disaster that damaged Pyle's political career and set a hands-off tone toward the town in Arizona for the next 50 years.
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Authorized Plural Marriage 1835-1904 MormonFundamentalism.com Lorin C. Woolley (1882) Known as the father of Mormon fundamentalism amongst most fundamentalists sects Some fundamentalists have argued that the 1890 Manifesto was not a real revelation of the kind given by God to Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, and others, but that it was rather a politically expedient document intended by Woodruff to be a temporary measure until Utah Territory gained statehood. They make their argument based upon textual evidence and the fact that the "Manifesto" is not worded in accordance with similar revelations in the LDS scriptures. This argument further holds that after joining the Union, Utah would have had the authority to enact its own laws with respect to marriage, rather than being bound by U.S. territorial laws that prohibited polygamy.
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The findings specifically cited certain beliefs held by members of the LDS Church, including the doctrines of celestial marriage and plural marriage as well as the so-called Adam-God doctrine, as being "contrary to the laws and constitution of said original Church". While their attempt to clear the title was ultimately dismissed, the RLDS Church began maintaining the temple on the basis of the court's opinion that it was the lawful successor of the original church. Although the 1880 case had no legal bearing, the church secured clear title to the temple through adverse possession by 1901. In dire need of repair from the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, without a restoration of the building as undertaken by RLDS Church caretakers it is unlikely the building would be standing today.
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The LeBaron family, led by Alma Dayer LeBaron Sr., affiliated with the leadership of Mormon fundamentalist leader Joseph White Musser beginning in 1936. In June 1944, five of Dayer LeBaron's sons, Alma Jr., Benjamin T., Ervil, Ross Wesley, and Joel, were excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) for teaching and practicing plural marriage. For the next 11 years, a number of LeBarons associated themselves to various degrees with Rulon C. Allred's Apostolic United Brethren. On December 9, 1957, Dayer's son Ben T. LeBaron said, wrote Samuel W. Taylor a letter saying that Ben believed himself to have received the birthright from his father and also believed Ben was to be the One Mighty and Strong of Joseph Smith's 1832 prophesy, sent to redeem LDS people from spiritual bondage.
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Paul Elden Kingston is an accountant and attorney who has served as the Trustee-in-Trust of the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS or Co-op), a sect which broke off from the American Latter Day Saint movement, since 1987. Kingston succeeded his father John Ortell Kingston as the Trustee-in-Trust of the DCCS upon his father's death in 1987. During his tenure, Kingston has followed his father's practice of plural, and intra-family marriage, Late Edition - Final Section A, page 1, column 2 although neither is practiced by the majority of members and the practice is not required to gain status in the group. Plural marriage is practiced by some members of the DCCS, and according to the group's website, members make their own choice in who they marry.
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Even after Mormons established a community hundreds of miles away in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, anti-Mormon activists in Utah Territory convinced U.S. President James Buchanan that the Mormons in the territory were rebelling against the United States; critics pointed to plural marriage as a sign of the rebellion. In response, President Buchanan sent one-third of the American standing army in 1857 to Utah in what is known as the Utah War. More recent persecution against Mormons in the U.S. has occasionally taken the shape of acts of vandalism against church property (see Protests against Proposition 8 supporters).Cf. At an LDS Church building in Orangevale, Sacramento County, vandals spray painted "No on 8" and "No on Prop 8" on the front sign and sidewalk.
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Since many of his early disciples viewed him as a monogamous counterweight to Brigham Young's polygamous version of Mormonism, Strang's decision to embrace plural marriage proved costly both to him and his organization. Strang defended his new tenet by claiming that, far from enslaving or demeaning women, polygamy would liberate and "elevate" them by allowing them to choose the best possible mate based upon any factors which were deemed important by them. Rather than being forced to wed "corrupt and degraded sires" due to the scarcity of more suitable men, a woman could marry the man who she believed was most compatible to her, the best candidate to father her children and give her the finest possible life, even if he had multiple wives.Strang 1856, pp. 318–28.
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Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane (12 May 1836 – 25 May 1909) was a British- American physician, writer, philanthropist, and women's rights activist. She was one of the first students to attend the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. Her writing supported the part her husband, Thomas Kane, played in the lobbying efforts to prevent the Poland Bill from persecuting members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were practicing plural marriage at the time. She wrote two travel accounts, Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona and A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, published from her letters to home and her personal diaries that recounted the time she spent in Utah with Thomas Kane, associating with the Mormons.
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These various groups are sometimes referred to under two geographical headings: "Prairie Saints" (those that remained in the Midwest United States); and "Rocky Mountain Saints" (those who followed Young to what would later become the state of Utah). Today, the vast majority (over 98 percent) of Latter Day Saints belong to the LDS Church, which reports over 16 million members worldwide. The second-largest denomination is the Missouri-based Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) which reports 252,000 members. Small denominations that trace their origins to Rigdon, James Strang, or other associates of Smith's still exist, and several fundamentalist sects which separated from the Utah LDS Church after it rejected plural marriage in 1890 claim tens of thousands of members.
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His first-hand account reports that Smith prophesied the settlements of the Mormon people in Utah and Arizona.Prophecy, Key to the Future by Duane S. Crowther His vision of the pre-earth life is recorded in many books and is one of the most complete visions on the pre-earth life in LDS theology. Although not accepted as official LDS Church doctrine, it has been a primary resource for some writers.Trailing Clouds of Glory: First Person Glimpses Into Premortality by Harold A Widdison, Ph.D.Life everlasting: a definitive study of life after death by Duane S. Crowther Mosiah's other journal writings also provide insight into early LDS culture and beliefs touching such topics as plural marriage, Mormon life in Kirtland, early dealings with the Utah natives, and early establishment of Mormon settlements in Arizona.
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According to an account given by his son Lorin C. Woolley in 1929, when John Taylor was in hiding there were very few homes in which he felt his safety was secure, and very few people in whom he placed his confidence, Woolley was one of these men. His son Lorin acted as a messenger and sometimes a bodyguard for Taylor. It was in John Woolley's home that Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith allegedly visited Taylor on the night of September 26, 1886, and where the following day Taylor allegedly set apart five men (including John, Lorin, and George Q. Cannon) as apostles, with a special commission to keep alive celestial plural marriage by granting them the authority to set apart others in perpetuity. This account is disputed by LDS Church apologists.
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He then studied law; he was admitted to the bar in 1875, and he commenced practice in Salt Lake City. Raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), young Rawlins disliked the practice of plural marriage and was grateful that his father, Joseph Sharp Rawlins, resisted the pressure of the church to take a second wife. However, when the elder Rawlins did succumb to the wishes of the authorities, his son began questioning the principles and practices of the Latter-day Saints. By the time Rawlins returned to Utah after his first year at college, he was well on the way toward apostasy in his views, and by the time he became Salt Lake's city attorney, he considered himself no longer a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Besides the doctrinal reasons for plural marriage, the practice made some economic sense, as many of the plural wives were single women who arrived in Utah without brothers or fathers to offer them societal support. ("The close study of the marriages in one nineteenth- century Utah community revealed that a disproportionate number of plural wives were women who arrived in Utah without fathers or brothers to care for them...Since better-off men more frequently married plurally, the practice distributed wealth to the poor and disconnected"). Mormon pioneers crossing the Mississippi on the ice By 1857, tensions had again escalated between Mormons and other Americans, largely as a result of accusations involving polygamy and the theocratic rule of the Utah Territory by Brigham Young. In 1857, U.S. President James Buchanan sent an army to Utah, which Mormons interpreted as open aggression against them.
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Today, the term Mormon is most often used to refer to members of the LDS Church. However, the term is also adopted by other adherents of Mormonism, including adherents of Mormon fundamentalism. The term Mormon is generally disfavored by other denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement, such as the Community of Christ, which have distinct histories from that of the LDS Church since Smith's death in 1844. The term is particularly embraced by adherents of Mormon fundamentalism, who continue to believe in and practice plural marriage,The term Mormon fundamentalist appears to have been coined in the 1940s by LDS Church Apostle Mark E. Petersen: Ken Driggs, "'This Will Someday Be the Head and Not the Tail of the Church': A History of the Mormon Fundamentalists at Short Creek", Journal of Church and State 43:49 (2001) at p. 51.
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The Apostolic United Brethren (AUB), a fundamentalist Mormon group, accepts the Adam–God teaching, and their leader Joseph W. Musser wrote a book on it in the 1930s. In the book, Musser contended that the rejection of the doctrine by the LDS Church can be linked to its rejection of plural marriage, which occurred around the same time: > And let us here remind the reader that as long as belief in the Patriarchal > order of marriage and other advanced principles of the Gospel was > maintained, the minds of the Saints were open and receptive. ... But with > the surrender of the glorious principle of Celestial Marriage—a union for > time and eternity—came darkness, mental drowsiness, a detour from the Gospel > path, until all sorts of speculation pertaining to the plan of Salvation was > indulged in.Musser, Joseph W. Michael, Our Father and Our God.
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590, 55 So.2d 228) treat bigamy as a strict liability crime: in some jurisdictions, a person can be convicted of a felony even if he or she reasonably believed he or she had only one legal spouse. For example, a person who mistakenly believes that their spouse is dead or that their divorce is final can still be convicted of bigamy if they marry a different person. Polygamy became a significant social and political issue in the United States in 1852, when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) made it known that a form of the practice, called plural marriage, was part of its doctrine. Opposition to the practice by the United States government resulted in an intense legal conflict, and resulted in it being outlawed federally by the Edmunds Act in 1882.
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The AUB's claims to authority are based around the accounts of John Wickersham Woolley, Lorin Calvin Woolley and others, of a meeting in September 1886 between LDS Church president John Taylor, the Woolleys, and others. Prior to the meeting, Taylor is said to have met with Jesus Christ and the deceased church founder, Joseph Smith, and to have received a revelation commanding that plural marriage should not cease, but be kept alive by a group separate from the LDS Church. The following day, the Woolleys, as well as Taylor's counselor, George Q. Cannon, and others, were said to have been set apart to keep "the principle" alive, including sufficient priesthood authority to perform marriage sealings and pass on that authority. Members of the AUB see their history as going back to Joseph Smith and to the beliefs he espoused and practices he established.
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Barb eventually confronts Margie about her relationship with Ben, saying that it is "inappropriate", referencing the obvious one-sided attraction Ben has for his third mother. An important theme of Season Two is Barb's realization that the polygamous religion that she is involved in is unsatisfactory in many ways; she sees conflict break out between the polygamous compounds, and observes the abusive behavior of other polygamous units (Bill's parents and Roman and his many wives). She also begins to realize that, despite she, Nicki, and Margene being off the compound, their situation is still similar to that of those women who are fighting within the compound. She also fears that her only son Ben Henrickson believes in polygamy and asks her mother to take him and introduce him to non-polygamist Mormons, hoping to erase his interest in plural marriage.
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Fundamentalists (and many scholars of Mormon history) also believe that a primary impetus for the 1890 Manifesto was the Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887, a stringent federal law that legally dissolved the LDS Church, disenfranchised women (who had been given the vote in Utah in 1870), and required voters to take an anti-polygamy oath before being permitted to vote in an election. With the selection of Latter-day Saint Reed Smoot to be one of Utah's representatives to the U.S. Senate in 1903, national attention was again focused on the continuation of plural marriage in Utah, which culminated in the Reed Smoot hearings. In 1904, church president Joseph F. Smith issued a "Second Manifesto", after which time it became LDS Church policy to excommunicate those church members who entered into or solemnized new polygamous marriages.Church Educational System.
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Some sects that practice or at least sanction polygamy are the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the Latter-day Church of Christ and the Apostolic United Brethren. Polygamy among these groups persists today in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Canada, and some neighboring states, as well as up to 15,000 isolated individuals with no organized church affiliation.Brooke Adams, Fundamentalists: Most espouse polygamy as a tenet, but fewer actually practice it as their lifestyle , Salt Lake Tribune, 11 August 2005, as quoted at principlevoices.org, Accessed 8 June 2007 Polygamist churches of Latter Day Saint origin are often referred to as "Mormon fundamentalist"; however, the main LDS Church has rejected polygamy since the early 20th century. Mormon fundamentalists often use an ambiguous September 27, 1886 revelation to John Taylor as the basis for continuing the practice of plural marriage.
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According to Kimball, her father wanted to improve his standing by making a link between his family and the family of Joseph Smith .Kimball explains that her father took the initiative to arrange the marriage: "Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet Joseph, he offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet's own mouth." In the late 20th century, Todd Compton described the reason for the marriage as follows: > The prophet's marriage to her seems to have been largely dynastic—a union > arranged by Joseph and Heber to seal the Kimball family to a seer, church > president, and presiding patriarchal figure of the dispensation of the > fullness of times . In the spring of 1843, when Helen was 14 years old, her father described the doctrine of plural marriage to her.
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IRS Rev. Rul. 71-580 The Revenue Ruling noted that "[a]s part of the discipline of the Church, the members are encouraged to create family groups to study the genealogy of the family back to Adam and Eve. This is part of a broader program of the Church, apparent in its doctrine to record the names of all deceased persons and to perform baptism and other temple ordinances upon them." Given their extensive documentation of lineages connecting many thousands of living individuals to a single common ancestor, their relatively larger extended family size (attributable in part to the early Mormon practice of plural marriage), relatively larger immediate family size, religious emphasis on "clean" or healthy living, and relative longevity, the genealogical data maintained by many Mormon ancestral family organizations have also been instrumental in medical research of genetic disorders.
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Changes in the way marriage partners were selected was one of the major issues that ultimately led to divisions of the fundamentalists Mormon community in the early 1950s. Some leaders encouraged younger girls and women to marry without their parents' knowledge or consent if their parents were considered "out of harmony" with priesthood leaders; such girls and women were instead encouraged to be placed in a marriage under the direction of priesthood leaders. Placement marriage became the common practice in Short Creek during the presidency of Leroy Johnson. This was primarily due to a belief that obedience to priesthood was necessary for salvation, that the Priesthood Council leaders were the ones entitled to revelation regarding marriage—especially plural marriage, and the fact that the members believed that placement marriage was a more divine observance than when they chose their own spouse.
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In April 1889, Wilford Woodruff, president of the church, began privately refusing the permission that was required to contract new plural marriages. In October 1889, Woodruff publicly admitted that he was no longer approving new polygamous marriages, and in answer to a reporter's question of what the LDS Church's attitude was toward the law against polygamy, Woodruff stated, "we mean to obey it. We have no thought of evading it or ignoring it."Salt Lake Herald, 1889-10-27, quoted in Because it had been Mormon practice for over 25 years to either evade or ignore anti-polygamy laws, Woodruff's statement was a signal that a change in church policy was developing. By September 1890, federal officials were preparing to seize the church's four temples and the U.S. Congress had debated whether to extend the 1882 Edmunds Act so that all Mormons would be disenfranchised, not just those practicing plural marriage.
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The authority of the Council of Friends pertained to the Priesthood and not to the church, early Mormon fundamentalists, most of whom had been excommunicated from the LDS Church, felt that its existence gave them the right to continue solemnizing plural marriages even after LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto discountenancing the practice. Indeed, Woolley claimed to have been ordained to the Council for precisely that purpose by President John Taylor in 1886, along with his father John W. Woolley and four others. In order to ensure that "no year passed by without children being born in the principle of plural marriage." Woolley, who had ostensibly become the last member of the Council after his father's death in December 1928, ordained six more men to the same calling between 1929 and 1933: J. Leslie Broadbent, John Y. Barlow, Joseph White Musser, Charles Zitting, LeGrande Woolley, and Louis A. Kelsch.
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12, p194: Brigham Young stated, "let every man in the land over eighteen years of age take a wife, and then go to work with your hands and cultivate the earth, or labor at some mechanical business, or some honest trade to provide an honest living for yourselves and those who depend upon you for their subsistence; observing temperance, and loving truth and virtue; then would the women be cared for, be nourished, honored and blest, becoming honorable mothers of a race of men and women farther advanced in physical and mental perfection than their fathers. This would create a revolution in our country, and would produce results that would be of incalculable good. If they would do this, the Elders of this Church would not be under the necessity of taking so many wives." The precise number who participated in plural marriage is not known, but studies indicate a maximum of 20–25 percent of adults in the church were members of polygamist households.
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In the earliest years of its existence, the Mormon fundamentalist Short Creek Community regarded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as "the only true and living church," viewing itself merely as a "body of Priesthood" set apart to perpetuate plural marriage and other "crowning ordinances" of the Gospel, such as the United Order. Hence, they tended to express a degree of admiration for contemporary LDS Church Presidents, while simultaneously insisting that they had compromised on serious matters and did not truly hold the "keys of the Presidency of the Church," which had allegedly been returned to the spirit world at the death of Joseph F. Smith in 1918. Thus, they generally valued Church direction less than direct pronouncements from their own Priesthood Council. This "Council of Friends" consisted of seven "High Priest Apostles" or "Presiding High Priests," the seniormost of whom was considered "President of the Priesthood" or Prophet.
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Mark A. Perigard of the Boston Herald criticized Kody Brown for opening himself and his family up to potential criminal prosecution by appearing in the series, describing him as "a lawbreaker who is risking himself and the family he claims is so precious just to star in his own TV show". Elizabeth Tenety of The Washington Post called the series "one part domestic drudgery, another part sensationalism" and claimed it relied on a "familiar reality TV recipe" shared by other TLC series such as 19 Kids and Counting and Kate Plus 8. Religion Dispatches writer Joanna Brooks shared Tenety's perspective, criticizing the show for presenting polygamy in a manner that "is about as interesting to me as Kate Gosselin's latest makeover." In this vein Brooks criticized the show for not engaging the theology of plural marriage and for letting Kody Brown's superficial comments about the dissimilarity of Fundamentalist and mainstream Mormonism pass onto the viewers without any critical scrutiny or added nuance.
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" Having heard of the Mormons' accusations against the government on Pioneer Day, he took on this later visage and loudly reprimanded the Saints for their lack of patriotism and morality, and making an unmistakable inference to the Mormon practice of plural marriage, proceeded to lecture the women in the audience on the importance of virtue. The Latter-day Saint crowd now in an uproar, Brigham Young calmed the audience but issued a blistering diatribe against Brocchus in which he stated that he could have "loosed the congregation upon Brocchus with a gesture of his little finger, but he satisfied himself with a tongue- lashing." In fact, Brocchus' aversion to polygamy and other Mormon social practices was general among the non-Mormon officials. Furniss states that Secretary Harris and his wife in particular "were prepared to treat the Mormons as they would a tribe of Arapahoe Indians - not as animals, exactly, but certainly not as civilized people.
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In 2013, a critical review by Gregory L. Smith of Snuffer's Passing Up the Heavenly Gift was published in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. Smith responds to Snuffer's belief that "the Latter-day Saint church was predicted to fail, and in all likelihood has failed to secure the fullness of the priesthood" by Smith's contention that the book contains various "false statements and conclusions, contains errors, and makes mistakes in history." In 2013, Snuffer was informed by his Sandy Utah Crescent Stake president in a letter that the thesis of Passing the Heavenly Gift, soon to be published, was "in direct conflict with LDS Church doctrine" and unless Snuffer would withdraw it from publication he could be subject to church discipline for "apostasy." After the book's publication, Snuffer was excommunicated from the LDS Church. In 2015, "A Response to Denver Snuffer’s Essay on Plural Marriage, Adoption, and the Supposed Falling Away of the Church," by Brian C. Hales was published in Interpreter.
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Church president Joseph F. Smith helped raise the First Vision to its modern status as a pillar of church theology. Largely through Joseph F. Smith's influence, Smith's 1838 account of the First Vision became part of the canon of the church in 1880 when the faith canonized Smith's early history as part of the Pearl of Great Price. as quoted in After plural marriage ended at the turn of the 20th century, Joseph F. Smith heavily promoted the First Vision, and it soon replaced polygamy in the minds of adherents as the main defining element of Mormonism and the source of the faith's perception of persecution by outsiders.. From 1905 to 1912, the story of the First Vision began to be incorporated into church histories, missionary tracts, and Sunday school lesson manuals. As a result, belief in the First Vision is now considered fundamental to the faith, second in importance only to belief in the divinity of Jesus..
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After Smith and other Mormons in Kirtland emigrated to Missouri in 1838, hostilities escalated into the 1838 Mormon War, culminating in adherents being expelled from the state under an Extermination Order signed by the governor of Missouri. Joseph Smith (pictured), founder of the church, and his brother Hyrum were killed in Carthage, Illinois, by a mob on June 27, 1844 After Missouri, Smith built the city of Nauvoo, Illinois as the new church headquarters, and served as the city's mayor and leader of the militia. As church leader, Smith also instituted the then-secret practice of plural marriage, and taught a form of Millennialism which he called "theodemocracy", to be led by a Council of Fifty which, allegedly, had secretly and symbolically anointed him as king of this Millennial theodemocracy. Partly in response to these trends, on June 7, 1844, a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor, edited by dissident Mormon William Law, issued a scathing criticism of polygamy and Nauvoo theocratic government, including a call for church reform based on earlier Mormon principles.
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On July 12, 1843, Joseph Smith is said to have received a revelation that is much more widely accepted by historians. The revelation was supposedly dictated by Smith to his scribe William Clayton, and was shared with Smith's wife Emma later that day. Clayton wrote in his journal: In the text of the revelation,The 1843 polygamy revelation was made public by Brigham Young on August 29, 1852, in the Salt Lake Tabernacle and was codified in the 1870s in the church's Doctrine and Covenants 132:1–4, 19, 20, 24, 34, 35, 38, 39, 52, 60–66.. See the Doctrine and Covenants, 132:1–4, 19, 20, 24, 34, 35, 38, 39, 52, 60–66. it also states that the first wife's consent should be sought before a man marries another wife, but also declares that Christ will "destroy" the first wife if she does not consent to the plural marriage, and that if consent is denied the husband is exempt from asking his wife's consent in the future.
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Bowen further called down rain from the heavens to save his people from drought, forgave a Mexican who brutally murdered two of his sons, and was himself miraculously saved from a rebel firing squad. Having wed four times — being among the last of the Latter Day Saints to practice plural marriage with the Church's blessing — Bowen's earthly sojourn, before his death at age 94, bridged two centuries and saw the administrations of 19 Presidents of the United States (from Abraham Lincoln to Dwight D. Eisenhower) and 8 Presidents of the LDS Church (from Brigham Young to David O. McKay). Through his indomitable love, sacrifice, and long years of devoted service (having also served a mission to the British Isles, 1895–97), Bowen Call — who in 1938 received an Apostolic promise that his 'calling and election' was sureHartley, William G., Lorna Call Alder & H. Lane Johnson, Anson Bowen Call: Bishop of Colonia Dublán, 2007, pp. 583-84. — fully lived a consecrated life of discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ and His restored gospel.
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As the type of polygamy practiced is primarily polygyny, critics of the early LDS Church argue that polygamy may have caused a shortage of brides in the early LDS community, citing quotes by church leader Heber C. Kimball who is purported to have said (addressing departing missionaries): On another occasion, he said "You are sent out as shepherds to gather sheep together; and remember that they are not your sheep ... do not make selections before they are brought home and put into the fold." The first quote above is not attested in any Mormon source, but first appeared in a derisive article in the New York Times on May 15, 1860.Hirshson's cited source of the first quote is an April 17, 1860 New York Times article: FairMormon, an LDS apologetics organization, considers the "prettiest women" statement to be apocryphal, but that it may be a paraphrase of Kimball's Journal of Discourses statement, which is authentic. In the paragraph immediately following the above quote, Kimball said: The precise number who participated in plural marriage is not known, but studies indicate a maximum of 20 to 25 percent of Latter-day Saint adults were members of polygamist households.
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They may generally be divided into roughly four periods, (1) an early period (1820–30) associated with the production of the Book of Mormon and founding of the Church of Christ, (2) a period (1830–33) associated with his effort to clarify and re-translate the teachings of the Bible, (3) a period in Kirtland, Ohio, and Missouri (1833–39) that produced the Word of Wisdom, the Book of Abraham, and the early development of the plural marriage doctrine, and (4) a late period (1839–44) in Nauvoo, Illinois, in which Smith further defined his views of the nature of God and the millennial theocracy. Smith's teachings were published during his lifetime in several books, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants (which included the Lectures on Faith), the Book of Abraham, and various essays he wrote in church newspapers. Many of his teachings were also published posthumously, including the transcription of sermons such as his King Follett Discourse, his writings in the official church history, and reminiscences of his teachings written by those who knew him. Many of these doctrines (or aspects of them) have been considered heretical by mainstream Christians (see Mormonism and Christianity), and are the cause of much controversy regarding Smith.
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