A Brief History of Mormon Polygamy

Bryan    00:00:00    All right. Today, Ross, we’re going to tackle, we’re gonna go into greater depth on a topic we’ve already covered a little bit, because I think when a lot of people hear about Mormonism these days, their first thought is probably polygamy, right? People are probably watching the shows. Uh, there’s all kinds of stuff out there in, in, uh, in popular culture. And it probably sort of bugs the average mainstream Mormon because the mainstream Mormons, you know, the people that are our neighbors in Utah, they don’t think of polygamy when they think of l their LDS faith. And I’m sure it kind of bugs them that the rest of the world, that’s what they think of. So let’s talk a little bit about the, uh, sort of a short history of polygamy, where it started for the Mormons, and even really where it ended, at least for the mainline Mormons.  

Ross    00:00:51    Yeah, true. Because, um, even though it’s a big part of the LDS history in their historical heritage, the current church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I think tries to downplay, uh, their polygamous roots. And certainly it’s not authorized within the LDS church today, but it’s certainly part of their history and their culture. Going all the way back to Joseph Smith and the origins of polygamy really start with Joseph Smith himself.  

Bryan    00:01:20    Okay. So let’s, let’s, before we get into his, his part in the whole thing, Ross, let’s just clarify that for people who are listening who might not understand what you just said. So when the average person out there hears the word Mormon, they think that all Mormons are the same. But really there are, there’s sort of a spectrum when it comes to Mormons, right? There’s what we would call today the sort of the mainline Mormons. These are the, the people that, uh, again, our neighbors here in Utah. But then there’s what, what, what even, even those Mormons would call fundamentalist Mormons. Why don’t we start with that, because we’re gonna end with that as well, but why don’t we start with that? What’s the difference and what kind of numbers are we talking when we’re talking about Mormons, who are fundamentalists and Mormons who are mainline?  

Ross    00:02:04    Yeah. The, the, uh, idea is that the mainstream Mormon church has a number of offshoot groups, uh, that have spun off at different points in time, in history, over various reasons. And a number of them spun off over the practice of polygamy. And so they’re, again, as you mentioned, they’re known as the fundamentalist Mormons, um, because they’re the ones who really think, they see themselves as really upholding everything Joseph Smith taught. They see themselves as really the true, uh, successors of Joseph Smith. It’s hard to gauge how many there are, because they tend to live in secrecy. There might be 40 or 50,000, and I’ve heard estimates higher than that around, um, the Western, uh, north American continent. Most of them live in the West, in the us, some in Canada, some in Mexico. But they all go back to or find their, uh, their roots in Joseph Smith in the original practice of polygamy, which the mainstream church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints today has, um, largely moved away from.  

Bryan    00:03:13    So we’re talking, yeah. Just to be clear, we’re talking thousands or tens of thousands at the most when we’re talking about fundamentalists today versus the mainline Mormon church, which is, you know, what they, they claim the numbers they claim are what, 10 million, 11 millions support  

Ross    00:03:30    That like, uh, approaching Well, in the US it’s, uh, they’re probably approaching in, uh, 16 or 17 million globally.  

Bryan    00:03:40    Yeah. So, so this is, right. So the, the mainline Mormons would call this kind of like a splinter group, right? Is this, is this how they would see, you know, the polygamists now is they would say, no, that’s not the real Mormonism anymore. Right? Whereas the fundamentalists, the smaller group, they would say, no, this is the real Mormonism. Right?  

Ross    00:04:00    Exactly. Exactly. So the mainstream church, which everybody’s most familiar with, the Church of mit Romney and, and, and, and so forth, um, they don’t even like the term Mormon fundamentalists because in their mind it applies that there’s some kind of a, a link. Um, well, you can deny it all day long, but there is a link. The link is Joseph Smith.  

Bryan    00:04:22    Yeah. And I think it’ll be good to, for people who are listening, you know, even Mormons who are listening, who might be interested in this, to really take a hard look at the facts and just honestly say like, which one is more faithful to original Mormonism? And we’ll let, we’ll let the listeners decide for themselves. So Ross, let’s start with Joseph Smith and the origins of polygamy. So where did this whole, where did this whole concept of polygamy start for the Mormons, and how does Joseph Smith tie into it?  

Ross    00:04:55    Well, it started with Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith saw himself understood himself as being the prophet of the restoration, the restoration of original Christianity. And so he, he would go back. Um, restoration is a theme throughout all of the, his, his activity, theological and practical activity. He would go back and seek to restore what he felt like were biblical practices. And so he would, but he did it. He did it without discernment and really without, um, any clear cut interpretive basis. It is hermeneutical basis, we would call it. And without really looking at the context of the things that he, so he sees in the Old Testament, ah, Abraham, he has Sarah, and then he, then he brings on Hagar as a concubine. Oh, David, David had all these wives and concubine Solomon even more. And so Joseph Smith is, is thinking through his restoration, and he’s asking questions like, well, why don’t we do that today? And so framed in terms of a faithful latter day saint perspective, they would say, Joseph Smith began asking God, why we don’t practice, uh, polygamy or plural marriage as they call it, also, why we don’t practice that today. And so it began by his, him thinking about things like that, um, and began beginning to move into an openness, um, and, and beyond an openness to an outright, uh, practice, and almost in some senses, a, um, a mandate for plural marriage.  

Bryan    00:06:33    Now, we’ll get into all of that, and we’ll actually get into a biblical response to this, by the way, at the very end. So, listeners, hang on till the very end, because Ross, I think it’s only fair that we address those questions that Joseph Smith had. Like, why, why do we not practice polygamy if polygamy was a thing in the Old Testament? So we’ll save that. That’ll be sort of, uh, that’ll be the, the cherry on top at the end. But before we do that, I think we should talk about how it actually played out in Joseph Smith’s life. We talked a little bit about this in an earlier episode, but I think we could get into greater detail now. So Joseph Smith, let’s just start with this question. How many wives did Joseph Smith have then at the end, by, by the time of his death,  

Ross    00:07:16    Right? It’s a little hard to figure out because it was being done in secret. And so some of them, there are, there’s not always documentation, there’s not like a wedding certificate for any of them, but there were, there are journal accounts, and there are, you know, what people, um, wrote down and so forth in over time. And so given the, there’s sometimes a lack of evidence. Um, different scholars put the number at somewhere up to from 40 to 49. So somewhere in the forties in terms of the number of, of, of women that Joseph Smith was, um, to use the LDS language that he was sealed to.  

Bryan    00:07:57    Is this true that Fannie Alger was the first, was the first supposed, um, multi second wife that he took?  

Ross    00:08:05    Yeah. The fir uh, of course he married Emma Smith in the 20, correct?  

Bryan    00:08:08    That was his  

Ross    00:08:09    First wife, but that was his first wife, his legal wife, and, um, right Fannie Alger in 1833. Um, there’s two perspectives on that. Um, she, she was a 16 year old maid, uh, living with the Smiths, kind of helping them take care of their household and kids and stuff like that. But there’s two perspectives on this. Some people, including a number of prominent latter day Saints who are contemporaries of Joseph Smith, just looked at it and thought as simply an adulterous affair. Hmm. But others have seen it as the actual first plural wife of Joseph Smith. Um, there’s different debates about the quality of the evidence, uh, regarding that. So, so the question it raises the larger question with Joseph Smith is, um, to what extent was he actually trying to implement this new principle, or to what extent was he, you know, like many, uh, religious leaders throughout history? Was he, to what extent was he using his influence in his teaching authority and so forth, um, you know, to have sex with women? That, that’s a fair question that is being asked right now. So, so that, that relates to the question, was his relationship with Fannie Alger just an adulterous affair, or was it the first, uh, plural marriage in this new system that God was reintroducing?  

Bryan    00:09:36    Now now let’s talk about dates for a second. So, um, Emma and Joseph got married in what year, roughly?  

Ross    00:09:45    Yeah. Uh, late 1820s, um, 26 78 in there. I’m not quite sure the exact date  

Bryan    00:09:53    In the Fanny Alger incident was 1833 and s and yet polygamy, or as Joseph called it, plural, marriage, plural. Marriage wasn’t officially a thing yet until what year?  

Ross    00:10:10    Well, again, this is debated depends on your perspective. So there is a, it became official when a revelation, which is now known as Section 1 32 of the Doctrine and Covenants, was, was, um, made public and included in their canon in this, in this scriptural book, as they see it called the Doctrine in Covenants. Now, some people believe that the doctrine in Covenants was written as early as 1831. Hmm. Others believe that it was written in the 1840s when Joseph Smith was marrying, um, many women over a course of p of three or four years. He’s really, uh, he, that’s when he did most of his, his ceilings to these other women. And it, it was written at that point in time, in part, to convince his wife to permit the, um, or to look the other way, at least on these plural marriages. But that revelation wasn’t made public until 1852. And so there’s some vagueness about, um, really when and under what circumstances this revelation was given. And, um, and so its relationship to, to his practices, that’s not, that’s an open question,  

Bryan    00:11:30    But for sure, the Fanny Alger incident in 1833, uh, again, Joseph might have in, this might have been a little bit redacted, but Joseph certainly maybe said that this was God’s will. But some of the people closest, closest to him, like you said, Ross just saw it as adultery. And these are some names that some Mormons would probably even understand. Names like Emma Smith, everyone would know that name. Yeah. His wife, she, she saw it originally as adultery, Oliver Cowy and Martin Harris, who were those two guys? Because they, they were guys that you would say were on Joseph’s side. Right? They would, they thought of Joseph as a prophet, but yet they saw this as adultery.  

Ross    00:12:11    Right. Those are two pretty prominent names. In the early history of the church, Oliver Cowdry was Joseph Smith’s scribe. For most of the, um, recording of the Book of Mormon, Martin Harris mortgaged his farm to fund the Book of Mormon, and both of them are included among the initial witnesses of the Book of Mormon. So they’re, they’re in the, kinda the Mount Rushmore of early Mormonism. Now, Oliver Cowdry was ultimately, um, dismissed from the church. Now, he made a comeback later on, but scholars believed that a big part of his leaving, uh, um, the, of the Mormon Church at that time was his, um, opposition to Joseph Smith on this, on the matter of Fannie Alger.  

Bryan    00:12:56    Hmm. Okay. So we’ve got up, up until this point, where are we now? In Kirtland, Ohio In 1833.  

Ross    00:13:03    Yeah, Kirtland, Ohio. And, um, soon after that, they go to Missouri,  

Bryan    00:13:09    Then they moved to Missouri, then they moved to Navu. And now let’s pick it up again in nav Vu. And this is in, this would be in the years of 1841. In 1844. And I think the thing that’s interesting here is that plural marriage in nav vu was practiced entirely in secrecy. So this still wasn’t a thing that, that, uh, the public would’ve understood as polygamy, but probably even some of the rank and file Mormons wouldn’t have been read into this entirely.  

Ross    00:13:42    Some estimates believe that there was probably maybe a hundred people who were initiated into the secret of polygamy during those years. By the way, there’s some, a couple of scholars who, who would include one woman in 1838 as a plural wife of Joseph Smith. But again, the, the documentation is lacking. So that’s not definitive, but it starts in earnest, in the nav ou years in the early half of the 1840s, where, where most of these, roughly 45 or so, uh, plural, marriages took place during that time.  

Bryan    00:14:17    Okay. So let’s, let’s list out, list list off some of Joseph Smith’s wives that we know now. And, and these are even the, even Mormon scholars would admit that this is true. Would even, because I, I know that if, yeah, up until somewhat recently, the Mormons, the, the official stance of the mainline Mormon church was that Joseph Smith didn’t have multiple ri wives. Do I have that right?  

Ross    00:14:41    Well, when I was growing up in the LDS church, um, that was years and years and years ago. But at that point in time, it, it was denied. It was disavowed.  

Bryan    00:14:50    So it was, was disavowed, let’s say 30, 40 years ago, we’re talk, it’s disavowed among mainline Mormons, but today they won’t disavow. Right. Today the Mormon church admits there’s ample evidence, this is true, that Smith really did have these secret wives, and plural marriage was a thing in the 1840s.  

Ross    00:15:08    Right. And in the past episodes, we’ve, we’ve referred to the gospel topics essays, and there is a gospel topics essay that deals specifically with the practice of polygamy in the Navajo period. And so that’s, so the, the Ilias church has, has said, yeah, and then they try to explain it from their point of view in that, in that essay, but they don’t know any longer deny it.  

Bryan    00:15:33    Okay. So here were some of Smith’s wives. We know that two of them were under 14 years  

Ross    00:15:39    Of age, and that, and that, that seems kind of, that seems to us like it seems predatory, right? It seems like now legally in the state of Illinois, a woman, uh, could be married at age 14. So pract marriage practices are different. But from our perspective, that that seems like, um, you know, something that, Hmm, we, we wouldn’t really look kindly on in today. And so it raises a lot of questions about, um, about what’s going on with Joseph Smith in, in his mind. The interesting thing is, okay, yeah. Uh, yeah, and let me just, let me just add, I mean, moving on, I guess from that, um, the interesting, really interesting thing to me about, um, Joseph Smith polygamy is that eight of the women that he was, uh, sealed to as plural wives were already married to other men. So that’s a, that’s an odd kind of a phenomenon.  

Bryan    00:16:36    I think it’s also interesting that some of these wives were pairs of sisters, and in some cases, even a mother and a daughter, and this is where we’re starting to, it’s starting to hit close to home with some of the fundamentalist practices today that exist for which some of these leaders are in prison, right? Is that they’re doing things that we would clearly say, this isn’t right. Right. This isn’t, this isn’t appropriate. This isn’t Right. This is predatory more than anything else.  

Ross    00:17:08    Right, exactly. And, um, yeah. And so these are practices, again, we see, um, in the, in the fundamentalist community nowadays of, of young women, um, at early age being married off to older men, and we see some of these, uh, str, you know, uh, family type relationships, sisters and et cetera. And it, yeah, it just, it’s, uh, it seems strange and and wrong from our perspective today. For sure.  

Bryan    00:17:41    Yeah. We’re trying to be measured here because we don’t want to offend, um, Mormons who see Joseph Smith as their prophet. But I, you know, if I, I, if I were to be completely honest like this, is, this would anger me as a father, as a man, as a follower of Jesus, like this, this angers me because it does. See, I don’t see any other way really to view this. In fact, I always invite my Mormon friends to help me understand this differently. You know, if I absolutely, if I’m, if I’m seeing this wrong, help me to see this in the appropriate way. I have a good friend who’s in the Mormon church whose wife was abused, sexually abused by her dad, who was a bishop, and I’m helping him think this through and praying with him about this and giving him some counsel, and he didn’t, he didn’t see the connection, sort of the legacy. I feel like that this part of the story leaves for modern day Mormonism, and not, not just the fundamentalists clearly that’s involved there, but I, I, I even think that there’s some, sadly there’s a legacy that’s left behind because of the way Mormon’s view this and somehow spin this to justify what was going on back then.  

Ross    00:18:55    Yeah. I think you can, I think, don’t think it’s unfair to connect the dots in that way. I think that’s at least a reasonable question that has to be asked about. What is the legacy, um, with, in the relationship between men and women, you know, and sexual relationships in general mm-hmm. <affirmative> from that, those early practices. That’s a great question.  

Bryan    00:19:15    Okay. So in either case, Ross, so some key leaders, as you said, were initiated into this practice. It was kind of a loyalty test for some of them. They were initiated into sort of a higher level. I, I’m presuming of higher level of leadership. Maybe some of these are, you know, the quorum and people like that, the apostles in the quorum. And so we’re, we’re estimating about a hundred people. A hundred men of course, were initiated into this before Smith’s death, death, even though he was actually still, it was still a secretive thing at this point.  

Ross    00:19:47    Yeah. Maybe a hundred include, would include men and women. Hard to tell. We don’t really know. We do have some, again, some journal records and other, other, um, documentation that describes as some of it after the fact. Of course, looking back from Le LDS leaders, looking back at how, uh, Joseph Smith comes to, um, he Kimball, for example, who was an apostle and says, you know, um, you need to, you need to let me be sealed to your wife, violet. And he didn’t want to, and she didn’t want to. And Joseph Smith, you know, kind of really in, in, in modern terms, we would say that he put on this spiritual manipulation and used his, his, uh, spiritual authority in power to say, well, you know, if you don’t do it, then, then God’s not gonna bless you, and if you do it, you’ll be blessed and just trust me because I’m speaking for God and do it. And, um, that was that sort of thing where he, he used that to fortify the loyalty of his close followers and to kind of include them into this inner circle, which, you know, the inner circle idea in human affairs has always been a powerful drawing force for people to say, yeah, I will do what I need to do to be in the inner circle. And I think that psychology’s at play here a little bit too.  

Bryan    00:21:06    Hmm. Okay. So what kind of a reaction then did, did Joseph Smith and some of these other leaders of Mormons, what kind of reaction did they get in nav vu? Because ultimately, this is one of the things that really led to his, his death, right?  

Ross    00:21:22    Yeah, it, it absolutely directly to it. So word starts to get out. We know from, you know, human nature, we know from politics and everything, you can’t keep everything a secret forever. And so, you know, word starts to leak out, and there’s some opposition, interesting things happen in Navu. So, number one, there’s a leader who’s the mayor of, uh, of, of nav vu for a, at a time, at a certain time. Um, John C. Bennett, he starts to, the best I can understand the evidence, he starts to tell people that Joseph Smith is creating this, this system that was, they would call in those days, spiritual wifery. And apparently Bennett was, um, taking advantage of that to try to seduce women into relationships with him. So kind of independent of Joe Smith and, and his authority. And so that became scandalous. And Bennett was a big critic of, he, he was excommunicated, left Nav was a big critic of Joe Smith.  

Ross    00:22:20    But then there was another guy named William Law, who I, I find him actually to be a heroic figure because he, he was loyal to Joseph Smith. He really believed that this was the restoration of original Christianity and as a leader. But, but when he found out about polygamy, he went to Joseph Smith, and he, and he, and he told him to stop. And of course, Joseph Smith didn’t. So William Law and a couple of others started a newspaper called the Navajo Expository, as you can imagine from the title, their goal was to expose the, these secret practices and call Joseph Smith to account for them. Well, they only published one edition as soon as it hit the streets. The, the city of Nav with Joseph Smith as the leader, um, declared that the paper was a public nuisance, and that it ought to be destroyed. So it was destroyed. And that is what really led to the uproar that ultimately resulted in Joseph Smith being arrested and, and hauled off for trial. But as he was being taken away to trial, that’s when he was attacked by the mob and, and was killed. So there’s a definite chain of events there.  

Bryan    00:23:32    Okay. So Smith dies in Avu, and then Brigham Young is gonna be the next leader. And, and in some ways a more suitable leader. I think for the next part of the story of Mormonism, really, I think he was a, I, I guess you could probably say he was a, he was a better leader, right? In a sense, depending on how you define leadership,  

Ross    00:23:54    He was a good organizer. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, um, you know, he was able to accomplish what a really difficult task of keeping these, these, this believing community together and finding a new home for them as they could really no longer live in Illinois.  

Bryan    00:24:10    And Brigham Young learned from the errors of Joseph Smith, and he joins William Law and, and says that, that plural marriage is wrong. And we’re, and now we have, uh, modern day Mormons. But now, actually, that’s not what  

Ross    00:24:25    Happens. Yeah, not exactly. Brigham Young was initiated into polygamy while Joseph Smith was alive.  

Bryan    00:24:31    So he was a believer, he was a true believer in plural marriage, and in, if anything, he brought it to a whole new level. Right? Joseph Smith, what Joseph Smith started in secret, we’re gonna see under Brigham Young eventually, for various reasons. Um, Brigham Young is actually able to bring it out into the open, and that’s really, we’re gonna come into the heyday of polygamy, but really it’s Utah polygamy.  

Ross    00:24:55    Yeah. Because once they moved to Utah, then they were isolated from the rest of America living, you know, sort of, they had people passing through on their way west, but by and large, they became a pretty self autonomous, uh, self-governing within limits. But, you know, out there in Utah now far, far away from the east, where the most Americans lived, um, they could do what kind of whatever they wanted to do. And so they had the freedom to come out into the open with polygamy, uh, after they had been in Utah for about five years. Then they ran it up the flagpole, and it became known that many of these leaders had been, uh, initiated into polygamy. And it began to become, you know, really a thing out in the open, uh, for the next probably about 40 years.  

Bryan    00:25:46    Okay. So let’s do some dates here. Let’s talk about some dates. So we have, um, Joseph Smith dies in 1844 in Navu. Brigham Young didn’t lead, lead them to Utah until 1846, a couple years later. So 46 to 47 is when they, they head out to Utah. Polygamy is publicly announced in 1852, and as you mentioned, that section 1 32 of the document in covenants, anyone who wants to check up on it, that was when it was the written revelation was published. Okay. So 18 50, 52 is when it’s publicly announced. So again, if you just, if we go, just go back and look at the dates, 1833 is when Fannie Alger comes into the picture, 1852. So we’re talking a good almost 20 years that essentially it was practiced in private, in secret. And then finally, probably in part Ross, becau not to, you know, take away from the spiritual answer that the Mormons would give, but probably in part because they’re in Utah, they’re actually not in Ameri in the US anymore. Utah wasn’t a part of the United States, so they could kind of do what they wanted at this point in history  

Ross    00:27:00    Right now, Utah became a territory of the United States about a year after the Mormons moved in. So that was ironic. Um, but they were trying to flee America, and suddenly, boom, they find themselves back in America, in a sense, at least as a territory. But it was isolated. And Joseph and, uh, a Brigham Young, uh, had a lot of authority as the governor of the territory. And, um, you know, again, they’re far, far away from, uh, American authorities. So they could, they were, they had freedom to practice. And, and honestly, um, it became pretty normative for the higher up leaders of Mormonism, although it was never a majority that practiced polygamy in Utah in those years.  

Bryan    00:27:44    Now, we’ll get into all this, but you know, this is really where, okay, so when Utah becomes a territory of the US essentially, now Brigham Young and his polygamous friends are sort of on the clock, because at some point, at some point, this is gonna lead to the end of the pol of polygamy, because, because the US government steps in, we’ll get to that. But before we do, Ross, let’s, let’s take a snapshot of Brigham Young’s polygamy practice, right? So Joseph Smith had, what did we say? He had, um, 30 ish 40th  

Ross    00:28:18    Up to up to 49. Up to 49, depends on up  

Bryan    00:28:22    To 49 wives. Brigham Young didn’t have to be so secretive, so I think we can, we can nail that down a little bit better. He had 51 to 56 wives and 56 children,  

Ross    00:28:33    Right? And so, because he was able to live in the open on, now, many of these wives, to be honest, to be fair, many of them never lived with him as a wife. Some were sealed only for eternity, and, and others were married to him, sort of, uh, in a sense, kinda like welfare case. So he would, there’d maybe an elderly widow that he would marry to bring under her, under his care and protection of his household, and she would maybe live with the other wives, or some of them didn’t even live. Some of them lived in different places. 20 of them ended up divorcing him over time. Um, but so there, so not all of them did he live with in a husband, wife, traditional husband, wife type relationship, but many of them, many of them, he did, as you see, he had 56 children. So he’s consummating, uh, many of these marriage relationships.  

Bryan    00:29:28    And if you visit Salt Lake City today, you can see Brigham Young’s historic home right next door to the, to the Salt Lake Temple. And I, Ross, that’s just always so interesting to me that that’s such a landmark for them. And it really is a sort of a tribute to polygamy, isn’t it?  

Ross    00:29:47    It really is. I mean, there’s two homes there, one’s called the Lion House, one’s called the Beehive House. So imagine the implications of the beehive house. You’ve got, you know, um, all kinds of people living there. And you have, you have one, in this case, not a queen, but a king, and, uh, and not a bunch of drones, but instead a bunch of women and children who were living there in that place, um, as Brigham Young’s family.  

Bryan    00:30:13    Okay? Now, it wasn’t just Brigham Young at this point, so this is now in that kind of the, kind of the heyday of Mormonism or of of polygamy in Mormonism. So this was about 30 or 40 years, right? From the time they got to, well, you’ll see the time they got there to Utah till the, you know, 1882 ish. And we’ll, we’ll save that for just a second, but let’s just take a little snapshot, Ross, at some of the others. Then. What, what, like, was this a majority practice then in Utah? Like if you were a Mormon guy, a Mormon man at this point in history, living in Utah, did that mean that, that you probably had multiple wives?  

Ross    00:30:53    Well, probably not. Um, it vary from pace to place. Couple things, couple of misconceptions. Not everybody practiced it. And so, for example, near where I live in Weber County in 1880, at the heyday of polygamy, only less than 10% of of families were polygamous. Now in southern Utah, in St. George, in that time, same timeframe, more like 40% were practicing polygamy. And then we think of polygamy. We think of Brigham Young with these 50 plus wives, but most men who practiced polygamy had two wives. It’s probably an economic burden to sustain a large family, even though there a lot of that might be agricultural labor for you or whatever, but it is also a status issue. And so if you were a higher up leader, you had, you were higher up in the pecking order of being able to dictate, you know, um, the women who were available to you to marry.  

Bryan    00:31:56    Hmm. Okay. So this is, things are going great. If you have multiple wives, if, especially if you’re in a key leadership position, you have multiple wives, probably the wealthier you are, you probably tend to have mo more wives mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then all of a sudden the end of polygamy is near. And let’s kind of back up to, we’re, we’re gonna talk a little bit about what ha there were some, there was some important acts of the US government in the 18 hun 1880s. But before we even talk about that, Ross, how did the rest of the US view this? Like, what, what did the average American think about the ones who knew about this? What did they think about this?  

Ross    00:32:37    Yeah, scandalous. Um, you know, so here you have the announcement in 1852, and then in the very next general election of 1856, for example, the Republican party ran on a platform of opposition to what they call the twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery. And so there’s a huge popular sentiment against polygamy. And as early as 1862, uh, Congress is trying to, um, make it prohibited, make it illegal, put penalties in place that would, um, shut down polygamy. Well, the Civil War got in the way. So, you know, the, uh, government was preoccupied with fighting a, a war and then, and then reconstituting the nation after the war. So it wasn’t until quite a bit later that some of the government actions against polygamy began to, uh, ramp up and began to take effect.  

Bryan    00:33:42    Okay, so there are two, two acts, and let me read ’em off to you. People can go research these on your own, but Ross explained these, in 1882, there was the Edmunds Act, and then in 1887, there was the Edmunds Tucker Act.  

Ross    00:33:57    Uh, all the way back in 1862, polygamy had been declared illegal, but the problem was enforcing it. And so in the 1882, the Edmunds Act probably had the most teeth in it so far, over all the, these years of trying to do something about it. And if a person was convicted of polygamy, they were ta the, their right to vote was taken away. They could not serve in any kind of a public office, you know, so they were trying to undermine the influence of polygamists in the Utah government and, and take it down. Well, there was a lot of loopholes in that. So five years later, the Edmunds Tucker Act was passed to try to close some of the loopholes. Years ago, one of the earlier bills had already, um, dis incorporated the LDS church, but that didn’t have any teeth. The Edmunds Tucker Act, why that one made a big difference in 1887 was it froze the church’s assets.  

Ross    00:34:54    And so, kind of like, uh, the government does with terrorist organizations or whatever around the world now, that just their assets, and so they don’t have access to their, to their funds. And so the LDS church did not have the means to survive as an institution from that point on. Now, along the way, other things that were happening too, that these, these government, um, provisions were providing for the arrest, um, of Polygamists or, uh, wives could be forced to be witnesses in the court of law against their husband, uh, polygamous wives. And so everybody goes underground. Uh, polygamists by and large, uh, go into hiding or leave the country to other places, to Mexico, to Canada to try to avoid arrest or to try to avoid being forced to testify  

Bryan    00:35:43    Until finally in 1890, we have something called the Manifesto. And this was, uh, the new LDS president at the time, Wilford Woodruff. This is where he comes out with a new, again, what they called a manifesto, but explain, explain what this really was, how they viewed this at the time in 1890, and what exactly did it say?  

Ross    00:36:07    Yeah, to set that up. John Taylor, who was the successor to Brigham Young, John Taylor, actually died while he was in hiding. Um, he was a polygamist. So he’s in hiding, and he was very much in favor of a standing firm to the end. And, and, and re uh, keeping polygamy the principle, as it’s called, uh, hanging onto that as a church. Well, he, he, he died in, shortly after that, Wells Wilford Woodruff comes into power. The church’s policy change, the, the, the manifesto. There’s two different perspectives on the manifesto. Faithful Latterday Saints will look at that and say that Wilford Woodruff is praying for God to reveal to him what he’s supposed to do in this crisis. And so they will look at the manifesto as a revelation, even though it doesn’t carry the form of other, other kinds of LDS scripture. Um, it doesn’t, it doesn’t say thus says the Lord, or it doesn’t put it into, uh, the words of God into first person.  

Ross    00:37:09    In instead, Wilford Woodruff, he specifically says that he advises the Latter Day Saints to refrain from contracting any marriages forbidden by the law of the land. So it comes across, not as an authoritative end of polygamy, but it comes across, um, as a pragmatic approach to say, well, I’m going to kind of give you, I’m gonna give you enough to get the government off our back. So that’s the, so the perspective of the faithful would be this is, this is a revelation from God. Now, less looking back, the perspective of the skeptics might be able to say, well, Wilford Woodruff was just trying to survive. And so he took some half measures. In fact, the reality was, is that polygamists, after the manifesto continued to practice polygamy. And, and the church did not do anything for quite some time to, um, to stop them from doing that  

Bryan    00:38:10    Until the second manifesto. Okay, so the first manifesto, or just the manifesto was 18 90, 14 years later, 1904 comes the second manifesto. And this really was kind of, kind of the, the end of the matter, right? As far as mainstream Mormons are concerned.  

Ross    00:38:29    Yeah. This is the end because, so, you know, first of all, all the LDS leaders who were polygamists at the, when the manifesto came, they continued to live with their wives in polygamous relationships for the rest of their lives. Even after the second manifesto, they continued to, to live. But, but, and, and we have evidence that even new plural marriages we’re still being, um, solemnized after the manifesto. The second manifesto, I guess, you know, there’s other trouble, there’s other problems there. There was a senator from Utah that the, that the Senate refused to seat him because polygamy was still being practiced, even though that particular senator, his name is Reed Smoot, was a monogamist, but polygamist was, polygamy was still being practiced. And, and, and the nation was going like, wow, what’s up with that? And so eventually it comes to the point where the church says, we’ve gotta make a break. And so they began e excommunicating people who did not comply in two, including two members of the quorum of the 12 apostles. One was Disfellowship, one was excommunicated because they continued to advocate for polygamy. Um, and so that really is a turning point that changed the practice churchwide.  

Bryan    00:39:46    Well, yeah. And it’s also interesting to note that the first LDS president who was not a polygamist was George Albert Smith. And that was in 1945. That’s pretty crazy. In 1945, that was the first time that the LDS president wasn’t actually a polygamous,  

Ross    00:40:02    Right? So that, that’s, that is not that long ago that polygamy was still really a thing in mainstream Mormonism in some form or another.  

Bryan    00:40:11    But really where polygamy survived was in what, again, what we called at the beginning, the fundamentalist movement. So Ross explained that because really once they sort of, once the second manifesto came out, that’s really where the second or the, the fundamentalist movement really kind of got its legs,  

Ross    00:40:30    Right? Right. So there were a lot of people who, who felt like this is given by God for, from God by revelation. It’s still Section 1 32 is still in the LDS scriptures. And so they’re feeling like, well, the church has caved, they capitulated to government pressure. Uh, and, and so they, the church has become, uh, unfaithful or apostate because it gave up on this important revealed principles. So they, we gotta keep doing it no matter what it costs. And so it continued, the practice continued in secret in isolation. Now, the mainstream LDS church will excommunicate anybody now who they find practicing polygamy, who’s a member. So it goes back to John Taylor and John Taylor, who as a staunch advocate, these polygamist groups and leaders, they banded together at around 1930s to kind of create a new that’s polygamous network. And, and they would, they’d argued that John Taylor had actually ordained in secret one of their leaders to continue polygamy, cuz John Taylor could see it all going down. And as the president of the church, he said, we’re gonna make an alternative way for polygamy to survive. Now, whether that’s true or not, who knows, it’s part of the lore of the fundamentalist groups. And it’s where they look to, for the authorization to say that, look, the, the third president of the church, the prophet John Taylor, is, is our source of authority. And the rest of the mainstream church has gone astray.  

Bryan    00:42:00    So now in essence, Ross, do I have this right? That there are essentially kind of some splinter groups, sort of fundamentalist splinter groups. They have some of those, some of these leaders that they would say, this is the real prophet, right? So yeah. So at John Taylor, the, the, you know, the, the mainline church took this, was it Wood Woodruff? Is that who the prophet was at that point? Wood,  

Ross    00:42:23    Uh, Wilford Woodruff came after John Taylor and the sort of traditional succession process, right?  

Bryan    00:42:28    But then, but the fundamentalist would say, no, we actually think the real prophet is this other guy and this other guy. And so several of these other leaders, what was it by ni the 1930s, then some of these leading polygamists come together and kind of form this loose confederation to keep polygamy grow going,  

Ross    00:42:46    Right? And, and then what has happened since in polygamy is that there have been all these splinter movements and you, there have been disputes about authority. And one guy rises up and claims to be the prophet, and if he gets some fa enough followers, then he’ll depose the previous prophet. And so now that there’s, there’s several different groups that, um, all kind of go back to the same family tree, but they pursue different pathways along the way. And at any given moment, a polygons leader might emerge and say, Hey, I had a revelation. God called me to be the successor. And he could gather people around himself, kind of like Joseph Smith did in the first place.  

Bryan    00:43:24    Well, exactly. It was really more in keeping with Joseph Smith’s original spirit. But the irony of it all, Ross, is that Joseph Smith, one of the reasons he said that Christianity was wrong was because there were so many denominations. And now we have all these in, in, in short order. We have all these splinter groups, essentially of Joseph Smith’s restoration of the true gospel in, in his words,  

Ross    00:43:49    Right? Absolutely. So, so there’s a number of groups that still maintained that they’re the true, uh, successors. The mainstream LDS church, as we’ve said before, um, they’ll excommunicate those, they don’t practice it, although they didn’t really end it in a sense. They only suspended it because again, it still authorized as an everlasting covenant in their scripture. There was no divine revelation really saying, don’t ever, don’t do this anymore. And, and actually in mainstream Mormonism, it’s still acknowledged as an eternal principle that you could be a polygamous in heaven. You could be sealed to more than one woman, not maybe for this, this life, not at the same time, but in, in eternity. They, they believe that polygamy is still a thing in the life to come.  

Bryan    00:44:41    Okay, well, we’ve covered a lot of ground, but we, we really have to end this episode, Ross, by giving a biblical response to polygamy. Right? This whole thing started because Joseph Smith said, Hey, what gives, there’s polygamy in the Old Testament. Why don’t we have polygamy today? And so he, he is, he essentially sort of restored polygamy. And what’s wrong with that from a biblical point of view? Doesn’t he have a point?  

Ross    00:45:06    Well, superficially you could say that perhaps he does. I mean, there are certainly are examples, especially in the Old Testament of prophets and leaders and so forth. We mentioned at the beginning, Abraham, um, there’s King David, there’s certainly Solomon, but part of Joseph Smith’s explanation of this, he says that sometimes it’s commanded by God and it’s commanded by God for the main purpose of raising up godly offspring. Well, in, in the Bible, it’s never commanded by God. It’s allowed by God early on as, but as, as God continues to reveal himself, over time, the idea of polygamy begins to die out cuz God never did command it. And um, actually, if you look at polygamy in the Old Testament, every single time that polygamy is practiced, it leads to something bad. It leads to bad fruit, bad results. Abraham, you see these conflict between Sarah and Hagar, and he has a child with Hagar, and there’s conflict between Ishma and Isaac and Solomon. It actually says in one King’s chapter 11, that his many wives turned his heart away from God. And so every time you see polygamy, it’s never, it’s never depicted as a good thing.  

Bryan    00:46:22    And in fact, in Deuteronomy 17, 17, it’s strictly forbidden for Israel’s kings, which is different from, uh, sort of the way it worked practically in the heyday of Mormonism, right? That the, that the, all the top leaders were really, were encouraged to have multiple wives, and they’re the ones that really practiced it the most. But, but Ross really, I think the biggest thing around all this is, it’s, it’s contrary to the order of creation in Genesis two, one man, one woman united. That’s really the commandment when God tells them to be fruitful and multiply, it’s in the context of one man, one woman, united, uh, till death do them part right in mm-hmm. <affirmative> in this world. Mm-hmm.  

Ross    00:47:07    <affirmative>. Yeah. And then building on that fundamental concept, you see that played out in the New Testament considerably, where that becomes the norm of, of human marriage. One man, one woman, and, and that he said, he’ll, he’ll be united to his wife. I don’t know how, I don’t know how a man, one man is united fully to a, a number of different women. He’d ha he could only only be partially united. He, he can’t give ultimate loyalty to any one of them. But so, and even in the Old Testament, you still see this model. God presents himself as the, the husband and Israel as his spouse. And so God, God charges Israel with adultery in a sense, because they’ve gone after other gods and other idols. And the metaphor he uses to talk about that spiritual adultery is marriage. So God chose only one nation. He chose Israel. God had only one wife, so to speak. And in the New Testament, the church is seen as the bride of Christ. And now there’s only, the Christ only has one bride, the church. And so these, these different metaphors point to the ideal of, of a monogamous relationship between a man and a wife.  

Bryan    00:48:15    So that is a short history of polygamy in the LDS church. And again, if you want to learn more about this or check out our other episodes and topics to include discussion questions. So you can talk about this maybe with a Mormon friend, maybe with your family, maybe with your spouse. We know that there are listeners who are investigating their Mormon roots, and this is one of those topics probably that just hasn’t sat very well with you. We encourage you to talk about it and use the resources that we have online at pursue god.org/mormonism and we’ll see you next time.