Plural Marriage in Primary

Ian and Jim greet the New Year with a discussion about plural marriage being included in this year's Primary manual. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Hello and Happy New Year! My name is Jim Bennett and I am joining Ian Wilkes for another year of Inside Out Podcasts. Ian concluded last year with a podcast where he was in charge, flying solo, but not solo, because James Burnham joined him for another magnificent visit. Ian, well done. What was that experience like, just you and James?

SPEAKER_01: 0:45

Yeah. Happy New Year, Jim. Hope you had a great time over the holidays, you and your family. The conversation, the podcast we did with James Burnham end of last year was excellent. He is a wonderful man. He has a big heart. He's living in Hiroshima in Japan, writing a new album. As you know, he served his mission in Japan and he's there for a year or so on this new adventure. It was a wonderful conversation. He led us into the podcast with a great song that is written and he had one at the end. So I really enjoyed it. He's got a great story. And yeah, it was wonderful and very spiritual. There was a great spirit in the conversation. So yeah, great to have him back on.

SPEAKER_02: 1:28

Well, yeah, I agree. I thought his songs, it would be nice. He sent us actually studio recordings of the songs. And so I'm wondering if maybe I should tack those on either to that podcast or to this podcast, because it's really difficult to get the audio effect of just how good they were. from what we're doing here. But we're moving on to a different topic here. This is a new year, which means it's a new subject for Come Follow Me. And the church has standardized its lessons, not just in Sunday school, but just across the board. And the Come Follow Me subject this year, every year, it's a different volume of scripture. Last year, it was the Book of Mormon. This year, it's the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History. And one of the things that's been very interesting about this is that the Come Follow Me topics are not just covered in Sunday School, in Priesthood, in Relief Society. They are also covered in Primary as well. And the Primary releases a manual, a children's manual that's illustrated. And it's been a long time since I cracked open a physical manual of any kind. They used to, at the beginning of the year, they would pass out. I remember during the whole teachings of the prophets, you'd have a different manual every year for priesthood with a different prophet on the cover because you were covering the teachings of Wilford Woodruff or the teachings of David O. McKay. But very quickly, that became sort of an online thing. I stopped picking up those physical manuals because I could read the manuals online, and pretty much everything has moved online. And so has the children's manual, the primary manual for church history. And one of the things that has attracted a great deal of attention is the fact that this year's church history primary manual includes an article or a section about plural marriage, which is not something... I know, Ian, you never went to primary. You joined the church... past your primary years, but your children went to primary, did they not?

SPEAKER_01: 3:54

They did. Yes, they went through the whole primary program. I joined at 16, you know, but they went through the entire church primary youth curriculum.

SPEAKER_02: 4:04

And how many times did they come back and say, hey, dad, today we learned about plural marriage in primary?

SPEAKER_01: 4:11

Big fat zero.

SPEAKER_02: 4:12

Yeah. Yeah. I did not learn about plural marriage in primary growing up. Back in my day, primary, you had all these cutesy little names. I remember being a targeteer and being a blazer. All the classes had their own names. The blazers, we even had a song. Light the torch, light the torch, blaze the way to the priesthood of God. Because the blazers were blazing the trail to the Aaronic priesthood. So I still have goofy memories of all of that. What I don't have are any memories of plural marriage even coming up? And in fact, every time, even in the adult curriculum, every time we get to section 132, the instructions in the manual, because I taught seminary for three years and I taught church history in seminary for three years. No, I taught church history. I taught the Old Testament. I taught the New Testament. I taught church history. I never taught a year of the Book of Mormon when I was a seminary teacher. But in all of the manuals where I've taught church history, there was always a disclaimer, always a, please don't focus on plural marriage. If plural marriage comes up, here's how you might want to deal with it. But it always struck me as disingenuous and somewhat misleading to discuss section 132 and presume it was about anything other than plural marriage. And in fact, There are elements of it that I think are wonderful and beautiful. And the whole idea of bringing, binding the whole human family together through the sealing ordinance, that's all in section 132. And that becomes the focus of the lesson. And there's usually a great deal to talk about there. So it's not hard to do to sort of sidestep plural marriage. But I really... This I... The idea of putting it in the primary manual is getting a lot of criticism. And I want to say at the outset that I think this is a good thing, or at least the impulse behind it is good. Because throughout my life, the strategy with regard to plural marriage has been to pretend it didn't happen. Or if it did happen, to pretend it was this tiny little aberration. I remember... Did you read, it was part of the missionary library. Do you remember the book Truth Restored by Gordon B. Hinckley? I do. It has a chapter on plural marriage, but it just says, oh, this was just something that was done very temporarily. It really, it very quickly dismisses it. It says this was done as a religious principle and it was gone fairly quickly and let's not talk about it anymore. And that really was the extent to which plural marriage was addressed in official church materials for years and years and years. But here we have the primary plural marriage. It's short enough. Would you mind if I were just to read the whole thing? It's not very long. Go ahead. All right. It says, and there are pictures, and the pictures are really kind of fun. While the prophet Joseph... I want to stop there. Because the Lord didn't say that. I mean, the Lord did say that to some degree in the Book of Mormon. But in section 132... Well, actually, okay, I'm going to give that a little more... If you go back and look at it, it talks about the fact that David and Solomon were not justified in the plural wives they took beyond the ones that were authorized. So I guess you could... Right there, I have a problem with that statement. All right, but I'm going to keep going. The Lord said that usually a man should have only one wife, but sometimes the Lord commanded his people to be in marriages of one man and more than one woman. This was called plural marriage. The Lord told Joseph that his people should only be in plural marriages if he commands it. Again, that's a little skittish, but okay. A few years later, the Lord told Joseph to marry other women. Joseph didn't want to marry other wives, but he knew it was a commandment from the Lord. When Joseph asked a woman to marry him, he told her to pray about it. He wanted her to know from the Lord that it was right. The picture on this is just so much fun. It's just Joseph with his face and his hands like, oh no, all is lost. I'm so miserable. I have to have sex with so many other women. Anyway, sorry. This commandment was also hard for Joseph's first wife, Emma. Sometimes Emma helped Joseph decide who he should ask to marry him. Other times, Emma did not want Joseph to marry other women. That's... That's as big an understatement as you can possibly make. I mean, there was a very narrow window in which Emma was open to plural marriage and said, okay, fine, you can marry the Partridge sisters. But the problem was Joseph had already married the Partridge sisters without telling Emma. And so he staged a second wedding ceremony. where he married the Parker sisters all over again and said, please don't tell Emma that this is the second time we've done this. So there's really a whole lot of finessing is the kindest word I can use. Sweeping things under the carpet, understating. I mean, just saying other times Emma did not want Joseph to marry other women. Yeah, all other times and including the entire rest of her life where she denied that Joseph ever practiced polygamy. I mean, she was just a vehement opponent to plural marriage from the outset. When Doctrine and Covenants section 132 was written, it was first written to give to Hiram so that Hiram could go, because Hiram said, hey, if you give me a revelation, I can take it to Emma. And I can convince her. And Joseph says, yeah, you don't know Emma like I do. But he dictated the revelation. Hiram wrote it down, took it into Emma. Emma threw it on the fireplace and burned it. And so the version we have now later was dictated later. And there's debate as to— Whether or not it was actually dictated or whether it's a forgery by Brigham Young, I don't know that we want to get into that here. We've talked about that before. Anyway, finishing this article. So Joseph taught the 12 apostles about plural marriage. It was a hard commandment for them too. Okay, again, this is not telling the full story. Joseph taught the 12 apostles, but he taught them onesie twosie. There were some apostles that knew, there were some apostles that did not. And there was a lot of contention behind the scenes as to whether Joseph was really authorizing plural marriage. I think eventually all 12 apostles found out about it. I'm not sure if they found out about it directly from Joseph. It may have been after Joseph died. But anyway, and to say it was a hard commandment for them to, again, that's finessing things because I think Certainly, Brigham Young, I mean, Brigham Young is on record as saying that he envied the dead when he first heard about it. But Brigham Young clearly, throughout the course of his life, came to embrace it to the point where saying it was a hard commandment for him really did not describe Brigham Young's experience. Anyway, Brigham Young and his wife, Marianne, prayed a lot. Okay, Marianne was his second wife, but his first wife had died. Anyway. Okay. Okay. In 1890, the Lord told Wilford Woodruff, the president of the church, that men should not marry more than one wife anymore. Okay, I want to stop there because that, I think, is just not accurate. Because the manifesto now, in hindsight, we look at it and we say, yeah, okay. The Lord told that was a revelation. When you read the language of the manifesto in Official Declaration 2, and there is no hint of a revelation in it. It is, I've just told everybody to stop performing marriages that are contrary to the laws of the land. And the idea that this was the end of plural marriage because the Lord revealed to Wilford Woodruff that plural marriage had to end in 1890 is belied by the facts, facts that got D. Michael Quinn excommunicated, because the legacy of post-manifesto polygamy is very well documented. And the manifesto essentially just ended polygamy in the United States, and leaders sent... members of the church to Mexico. That's where the Mexican colonies began because you had people saying, okay, if we can't do this in the United States, we'll continue practicing plural marriage elsewhere. A number of members, a number of apostles entered into plural marriage after 1890. So if there had been a revelation to Wilford Woodruff ending plural marriage, we wouldn't have had to have the second manifesto which took place, I mean, you could even argue there was a third manifesto. It wasn't until 1910, 20 years after 1890, you can do the math, that plural marriage became an excommunicable offense, that the church no longer tolerated plural marriage. If you entered into plural marriage after 1910, you could be excommunicated. But if you entered into plural marriage for a full 20 years, between 1890 and 1910, There was no revelation from Wilford Woodruff that denied that. Or if there was, we've never seen it. Anyway, so it then says, the leaders of the church shared these commandments with the saints. This is still the Lord's commandment today. A man should be married to only one wife. Now, all of these have links. That's the end of the article. They all have links to not only scriptures, but to pages in saints. which is the new church history, which I think is a very good church history, that does, I really think, a very good job of confronting difficult, hard facts. And I think the way polygamy is described in Saints is fairly consistent with this, but I think Saints also obviously gets into more detail and gets into some of the nuances that I brought up here. So there's the article. This is what we're now teaching our children in primary. You don't have children in primary. I don't have children in primary anymore. But I'd be very interested to hear your reaction to this. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01: 16:30

It's quite an extraordinary development, I think. You said at the outset that you thought, I think you said you thought this generally was a positive thing. Yeah. in respect to bringing this to primary children and youth. And broadly, very broadly, I agree. You've gone through the article. I have real issues with the article. Before I get into some specifics here, because I want to touch on some of the specific points in that, I just want to remind us and our listeners of a... An important lesson, which was in the old gospel principles manual that we used to teach from, if you remember those, when our investigators would join the church, when they'd just been baptized, they would get a copy of the gospel principles. These are the fundamental principles that the church taught going back. These books were written in the 70s, and we gave them out in the 80s. The church has still got this material. His lesson is still on its website. I just want to share something that I think is really, really important. So the lesson is chapter 31, the old gospel principles book, and it's titled Honesty. And in the lesson, it says here that lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is a form of lying. The Lord gave this commandment to the children of Israel. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Jesus also taught this when he was on the earth. There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look or by silence or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest. And the lesson does not pull any punches in regards to the importance and the value of being honest. It's also in the 13th article of faith, which says we believe in being honest. There's many references in that lesson to the Book of Mormon. There's a number of other materials which were written by General authorities are referenced by general authorities. There's also a talk by Neal A. Maxwell, which talks extensively about the importance of being honest, which he makes references to that lesson, I understand. So going back to the article here, whilst I agree with your comment that the decision by the church to include this in the children's material is broadly a positive thing. The church, in my opinion, falls well short, frankly, and I want to give some examples there that you've kind of touched upon them, of still, even now, can't be completely honest, still withholding some important elements of the facts. And just for context, we know why they're doing this. It's a very intelligent decision, again, by the church in terms of retaining primary and, you know, dealing with these issues early on in the life of a child. And I would call that, it's like a form, or it actually is inoculation. You know, when we inoculate ourselves, we're preparing ourselves for a potential risk of, you know, virus or disease. You know, when I was young, I got the measles jab. I got the chicken pox jab. I don't think I got measles, I think, when I was younger. I still had the jab. You

SPEAKER_02: 20:25

didn't have a chicken pox vaccine when you were younger. I don't think. I think that's fairly recent.

SPEAKER_01: 20:30

Is it? Right. Well, I remember getting two jabs as a kid in school way back now, and it was to inoculate you for these things. That's right. And so it's a very smart move by the church to address these issues early on in a child's life, because when a child gets to 10, 12, has got the internet, et cetera, and will discover all these issues online. And so the church is trying to inoculate the primary. So when they do have When these issues come up, they know that they were taught these things to an extent, you know, early on in primary. So I understand that. The churches, someone told me over the holidays, somebody very senior that we hope to get on the podcast. They're very high up in the church. They're at the temple presidency level. We'll talk about this later. The church has a strategy to inoculate. youth and primary, which makes sense, to deal with these issues and slowly kind of open up these issues early on in order to retain and hang on to the primary and hang on to the youth. You said several times that the church is hemorrhaging significant numbers of youth who are not bothered about religion, not just about whether it's true or not. And so the church has to contend with all these different challenges. How does it hold on to its future? Well, you invest in the primary. So just getting into the children's material here, I agree with you. I couldn't find anything where God... He read about prophets like Abraham and Moses who had been married to more than one wife. Joseph wondered about that. And then where the Lord said that usually a man should have only one wife. I couldn't find anything that... was explicit in respect to that. So that is not true. Where I'm going with this is that the church is still falling short on the facts and the context in teaching the children here. And I find that if we go by that standard that we just read, by that logic, by that principle, those lessons on honesty, by not telling the... the full truth, you know, withholding a little, actually quite a lot, that's, by definition, dishonest. And the other point as well, we talked about this, if you're teaching, if you're not, by that definition, if you're not being honest when you're teaching this lesson, you know, to children or youth or whoever, is the Holy Ghost present? If you're deliberately withholding information, withholding the facts, we taught that the Holy Ghost teaches truth and if you speak a lie it won't confirm that lie as a truth that was fundamental that's the bedrock of the gospel that's the fundamental principle of the gospel that the holy ghost testifies of truth it doesn't testify of lies or deception um so and then the other thing which i find very disturbing in this material is um you know he says here that uh Joseph decided to ask the Lord, which is fine. The Lord said that usually a man should only have one wife, etc. And he talked about plural marriage there. The Lord told Joseph that people should only be in plural marriage if he commands it. And then a few years later, he told Joseph to marry other women. Joseph didn't want to marry other women. There's so much missing there. There's other relationships that Joseph had with other women that Emma didn't know about. And you've mentioned that as well. There's no reference to that anywhere in this material. You know, when Joseph asked to marry, she says, but a few years later, the Lord told Joseph to marry other women. Joseph didn't want to marry otherwise, but he knew it was a commandment from the Lord. When Joseph asked a woman to marry him, he told her to pray about it. Which woman are we talking about? Which woman are they referring to here? The details are so important. You know, children like stories. They like detail. And when my kids were growing up, I was pretty good at telling stories. In fact, I was too good. I used to inadvertently, one time, one story got a little bit scary. And Debbie said, oh, that's a bit too much because the kids are probably a little bit scared of that story. I was pretty good at storytelling. Kids love stories. They like the details. So, you know, when he says here, when Joseph asked a woman to marry him, who is that, Jim? He told her to pray about it. Is that... No, let's get specific here. Who is the material talking about? We don't know that, do we? He wanted her to know from the Lord that it was right.

SPEAKER_02: 25:40

Well, I mean, if you look at the timing of plural marriage... Joseph had his relationship with Fanny Alger long before plural marriage became what it became in Nauvoo. So Fanny Alger, we're looking at about 1835 or 1836, probably before the Kirtland Temple, and then no other plural marriages for another five years. So critics generally say, okay, Joseph had an affair with in 1835 with Fanny Alger. Oliver Cowdery called it an affair. It's one of the reasons Oliver Cowdery left the church. And it's one of the reasons I don't have a lot of patience for people who say, oh, geez, Joseph never practiced plural marriage. I mean, I think the fact that Oliver Cowdery was concerned enough about what happened with Fanny Alger suggests that. So, I mean, in this article, that doesn't seem to be a reference to Fanny Alger. because the revelation on plural marriage as we have it wasn't dictated until Nauvoo, until very late in Joseph Smith's life. So anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 26:55

So, yeah, I was thinking of Fanny Alger when I was reading this, but there's no specific reference to who this person is. But he knew it was a commandment from the Lord. Joseph asked a woman to marry him. Did Emma know about that? I suspect she didn't. She didn't know about Fanny Alger. We know that. No, I don't know if I know the analogy, but whoever this woman is that is referencing the material, did Emma know about that? And probably she did not know about that. And again, by that logic, by that church same standard, is that honest? How do you reconcile that whole secret marrying, having these physical relationships, et cetera? How do you reconcile that with not telling Emma? I just can't get past that. Okay, plural marriage, let's give him a little bit of benefit here. Let's say he didn't want a practical plural marriage. He couldn't stand the thought of it, let's say, for argument's sake. And why not go to your wife and say, look, God has commanded me, as soon as the revelation happens, you and I would do this. If we got a revelation from God who told us to, right now, we're married, he told us to have more than one wife, the revelation was clear, And what would we do? We would go to our wives and we would share the experience, explain the revelation, describe what happened, and we would lay it all out in front of our wives, wouldn't we? We would do that, wouldn't we? Whether it's 2024 or 1835 or 1832, it doesn't matter. Principles of honesty and decency and integrity never change. The fundamental principles of the gospel, like Christ taught, And the prophets taught have never changed. Honesty has been an internal principle, has it not? From the very beginning, the very foundations of the church, from the time of the war in heaven, from the very beginning, it's the thing that holds up the universe, right? Is integrity and honesty and laws of physics and laws of these fundamental principles, which are eternal, are they not? They are. And so... We can't argue that this was a different time. It was different back then, so we could be dishonest back then. But why not, after the revelation, go to your wife and sit down and say, have I done a revelation? It's disturbing. It's making me sick and ill. I don't want to do it. This is what happened. This is what the Lord said. Why not involve Emma from the outset? Why go to a woman, whoever she is, and ask her to marry him and tell her to pray about it without talking to Emma? It just doesn't make sense. Where's the honesty in that? To me, that's the act of behavior of a very dishonest person that's trying to conceal. It's trying to hide. Where's the transparency and accountability? Where's the principles in that lesson, 31, on honesty, which is a great, great lesson, by the way? And then it goes on to say, and you talked about this, you read this, this commandment was also hard for Joseph's first wife, Emma. Sometimes Emma helped Joseph decide who he should marry, asked to marry him. Other times Emma did not want Joseph to marry the women. So your knowledge of this history is better than mine. Again, getting specifics here, who did Emma help Joseph decide to marry?

SPEAKER_02: 30:26

Yeah, that was the Partridge sisters. Okay, so the Partridge sisters were essentially Joseph's foster children. They've been described that way, although I don't know that that's entirely accurate. I don't know if their parents were dead or what it was, but they were living in the Smith household. And the Smiths, but they were also sort of, just like Fanny Alger, they were also sort of servants to some degree. I mean, they... helped take care of the house. They helped Emma. So Emma had a relationship with them. And so the way I've always envisioned it is, okay, well, fine. If you have to marry somebody, you can marry the Partridge sisters. I know them. I like them. They already live in our house. I mean, I think that was a huge concession on Emma's part. I mean, if I went to my wife and said, you know, pick who my next wife is going to be. We don't have anybody living in the house, but I can't imagine her saying, well, I like so-and-so. I wouldn't mind if she were around. So that's who I think that's a reference to. I don't know of any other specific marriage that Emma would have approved. I think there's some evidence that she knew of some of the others, but there's a great deal of evidence that she didn't know about the vast majority of them. And when you talk about honesty, if you read the Gospel Topics essays on polygamy, they talk about the idea that many of these marriages happened. I think that's the word they use. Without Emma's knowledge, many is understating it. Yeah. Overwhelming. I mean, Joseph married nearly 40 women. And Emma may have known about the number Emma knew about was in the single digits.

UNKNOWN: 32:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:27

So you've said this is a good move on the church. And again, I said generally that's, again, very broadly, that's probably strategically it's a good move. And generally it's good that they're talking about this. But it's clear Joseph Smith lied about his relationships to Emma. He lied. He didn't tell her. He didn't involve her. He didn't involve her right from the outset. He did things behind her back, Jim. Agreed? Agreed. Well,

SPEAKER_02: 32:59

the reason I say it's a good thing, and I want to qualify this, because polygamy, I think, other than perhaps race and the priesthood, polygamy is the biggest obstacle for people who join the church and for people who discover it who are in the church to be able to reconcile it with the idea that Joseph was a prophet. and that this is in fact God's church, because there really is no way to look at the historical record and conclude that Joseph entirely conducted himself honorably in this, which is what essentially apologists try to do. Or you have the Michelle Brady Stone approach, which is, no, Joseph didn't practice polygamy. It was entirely an invention of Brigham Young. And for some people that solves it. For me, I think that makes it far worse because that means that Brigham Young completely and fraudulently, Brigham Young's lies, Joseph lied to Emma, Brigham Young in that scenario would have lied to the entire church. and would have lied to all of the apostles and said, okay, yeah, Joseph invented this, even though I'm inventing this. I don't think people who believe that should be kicked out of the church. I mean, that's the conversation that Michelle Brady Stone and I had on her podcast that got a little bit heated. But I also don't see, in my mind, how anyone would be able to reconcile that. If I believe that... I don't know how I would be able to stay in the church. So yeah, you have to confront the reality that for all of Joseph Smith's accomplishments, all of Joseph Smith's clear inspiration, which I think evidence for is plentiful. I think the Book of Mormon is plentiful evidence that Joseph had contact with the divine. and that was an instrument in God's hands to bring about all kinds of wonderful stuff. For all of the good of Joseph Smith, you also have a Joseph Smith who lied to his wife. And you also have a Joseph Smith that handled polygamy. I mean, the way this article tries to massage, I mean, the Joseph's approach to women that he would marry. It says, okay, he'd ask them to pray about it. Well, yeah, he would. But the power differential in all of those conversations was enormous. And it was, here I have a prophet of God telling me I need to marry him. And he would, the critics, I think, very often go too far because they say, oh, he would say, okay, if you don't marry me, an angel's going to cut off my head. And that's really not what he did. But he did say things like, if I don't enter into plural marriage, not if I don't marry you specifically, but if I don't enter into plural marriage, there's an angel that's going to cut off my head. I mean, he would, the amount of pressure that he applied either intentionally or unintentionally, and I think it's the unintentional pressure, just the fact of Joseph, of a prophet of God walking into you, That's an interesting choice of words. Prophet God walking in to talk to you and say, hey, God wants you to marry me. Even if he does that in the most, and please, please, you know, go ask yourself, even if he does that in the most gracious and unpressured way possible, which I think he did in several of these circumstances, not all of them. I think in others he applied more pressure than that. But even if that's all he does, the amount of power this man has and the amount of pressure the woman would feel is just enormous. It's just overwhelming. And it's impossible to look at that and not be troubled by it, I think. Intellectually, honestly, to look at that and say, well, there's really nothing wrong with that. And really God's hand is in all of this. I think the only way you can land in a way that preserves your faith is to accept, again, and this is the overwhelming theme of everything that I've ever said on this podcast, but you have to accept the reality of prophetic fallibility. You have to accept that, okay, there may have been some sort of divine core to what Joseph was doing, but he did it very badly, that he botched it. that he did not implement polygamy in a way that kept faith with Emma, that was honest to the world. I do think a lot of the criticism about polygamy, it's easy to overstate it, but that's only because at its core, it's so troubling. It's so troubling to have a man like this marrying multiple women. Now, and I'm aware and I have made a lot of the apologetic arguments for this, and some of them, I think, do hold water. For instance, I think the evidence is overwhelming that Joseph Smith was a believer, that he believed in his own revelations, that by the time polygamy was implemented, that whatever experiences he was having with the divine, they had convinced him that he was a prophet and that this was a religious principle. Even if you read Fawn Brody, for instance, No Man Knows My History, which was the definitive biography of Joseph Smith up until Richard Bushman wrote Rough Stone Rolling. She introduces what Dan Vogel has come to call the pious fraud model. That is that Joseph Smith began as a fraud and fraudulently wrote the Book of Mormon, but at some point, sort of was transformed, at least in his own mind, into a prophet. That at some point he started to believe, yes, he is a prophet. Now, the difficulty with that model is that you don't have any sort of historical document where that took place. You don't even have historical documents that show that kind of an evolution. We don't have any historical documents where Joseph isn't completely and totally sincere about in his announcements, even in his private writings. Joseph clearly, if he was a fraud, he had convinced himself. He had defrauded himself. And so I begin with the idea that Joseph Smith is a believer. And so Joseph Smith goes forward with plural marriage, believing it is a religious principle. If plural marriage were solely an excuse for Joseph Smith to bed as many women as he could, it was a really poor mechanism for doing that. The guy who did that really well was a guy I am not related to, but I share his last name, John C. Bennett, who was a member of the first presidency who went about convincing women that they were his spiritual wives. And so they could have sex. and they didn't have to tell their mortal wives because spiritually they were married. This was a different thing than from what Joseph Smith was doing. And I think Joseph Smith justified a lot of his public statements against polygamy by framing them as condemnations of John C. Bennett's spiritual wifery. And so he would get people who were married to him, who were entered into plural marriage, to sign affidavits saying spiritual wifery is an abomination. And historians now look at that or just lay members look at that and go, he was lying. And I say, well, it's not quite that simple because in his mind, he was condemning a practice that was different from what he was doing. But those distinctions are lost on most people who look at plural marriage and say, really, what's the difference? And part of the difference, too, is that, yes, Joseph was married to, the estimates vary, they always say up to 40 wives. He was married to that many women. Most of these women, the vast majority of these women, got a marriage ceremony and little else, and nothing else, really. Joseph did have sexual relations with his plural wives, but only a handful of them. not 40 women. He was not, uh, in doing what John C. Bennett was doing, which is just trying to find any woman he could and using some spiritual pretext to convince them to go to bed with him. Uh, so I look at that and I, I look at plural marriage and I, the, the grace I can give to plural marriage is grace that comes from the idea that, um, I try to put myself in the mind of the people who were asked to practice this principle. And for many of them, it was hard. It was difficult. And it was difficult for the women more than the men, obviously, on an exponential scale. But the family dynamic of plural marriage, in some ways... was, well, no, I don't want to sugarcoat this. I don't want to soft coat it. It was a huge burden on women. It was hugely anti-feminist in most ways. And I don't want to say anything that would undermine that idea. Where it was difficult for men was in the idea that they were strangers in their own homes. And if you look at plural marriage as it was practiced after Nauvoo, because Richard Bushman makes the distinction. He says, Joseph Smith did not practice domestic polygamy the same way Brigham Young did. He practiced sealing polygamy. He had all these wives sealed to him and felt no obligation to take care of them, no obligation to even acknowledge them after the sealing, except for the handful with whom he had sexual relations. Whereas domestic polygamy, as it was practiced in the Utah Territory, in the Deseret territory, involved men going and visiting the households in which their plural wives and children lived. And if they had more than one or two wives, they were essentially visitors in these households. They would go and visit them, and they didn't run the show, and they didn't know their children very well. I mean, Brigham Young... There's a story of Brigham Young meeting somebody on the street and him asking, who's your father? And they said, you are. I mean, he had close to 60 children and all these households, and he didn't know any of them. I mean, he knew a handful of them that were close to him, but polygamy, the dynamic of polygamy was just a mess from beginning to end. It didn't allow a certain amount of latitude to For the Relief Society, I just finished reading a book called American Zion by Dr. Benjamin Park. It's a brilliant history of the church. I think the best concise history of the church I've ever read. And it pointed out, it's something that I didn't realize, that up until really the early 20th century, the Relief Society was almost entirely autonomous. The Relief Society did not report to the first presidency. The Relief Society chose its own officers, had its own meetings, had its own agenda. And it wasn't until J. Reuben Clark in 1938 said the Relief Society needs to be a handmaid of the priesthood. Those were his exact words. That we get the Relief Society as it is now, which is really it is. It's a handmaid of the priesthood. The priesthood chooses the org. I mean, the Relief Society does not function with any degree of autonomy. compared to the way they did before. And plural marriage largely made that possible because women were able to sort of share householding with other women and so had more freedom to take on more leadership roles in these sort of plural arrangements. And the presidents of the Relief Society, Emmeline B. Wells, for instance, is probably the most famous one. She was married to the plural wife of Daniel H. Wells. And she was a woman of considerable influence and power in the Utah Territory. And plural marriage gave her a little more autonomy to be able to do that. So the dynamics of polygamy are messy. They're difficult. And there's no way to reconcile it unless you can allow for the possibility that the Joseph Smith who lied to his wife, the Joseph Smith that entered into this messy, difficult practice whose legacy continues to haunt us today, is also the Joseph Smith that was chosen by the Lord to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you can't do that, then you end up having to leave the church. And a lot of people do. I have made that sort of reconciliation in my own mind. Does that hold any water with you? I mean, am I copping out by making that reconciliation?

SPEAKER_01: 47:35

That's a question obviously for you. It's hard to, you know, you understand your thoughts and feelings about polygamy. You've reconciled it to an extent. You've acknowledged that, Joseph Smith. I mean, the two questions. Well, listen to you. I've got two questions for you. Is it true that Joseph put pressure on some women to marry him or have a relationship with him in return for extending blessings to that woman's parents? Because I've read that somewhere.

SPEAKER_02: 48:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 48:11

Is that true?

SPEAKER_02: 48:13

Yes. That, well... That is essentially the, not Fanny Alger, the Helen Mark Kimball story. Right. I thought so. It was criticized for brides, and it was actually Heber Kimball, Helen's father, who proposed the idea as a sort of dynastic ceiling. I think the evidence is fairly strong that this was not a sexual relationship. This was a dynastic ceiling that was going to give Heber Kimball and his family great blessings by being sealed to the prophet. And in fact, for generations, even after Joseph's death, the model was women were sealed to Joseph, to Brigham, even after Brigham's death, up until the manifesto, that the sealing to prophets, the law of adoption, as it was called, would give you great blessings in the afterlife. So yes, that is absolutely true. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 49:17

I heard and I've read that he did put pressure on some women to have a physical relationship or some kind of spiritual marriage sealing slash physical relationship in return for extending or promising blessings to the woman's parents and also referencing or saying that there will be potential penalties or that the woman's parents or relatives could be at risk if she doesn't accept. The second question I've got, is it true that Joe Smith denied practicing polygamy at any time, publicly?

SPEAKER_02: 49:58

Again, this is the way Richard Bushman describes it. I mean, the answer is yes. The way Richard Bushman describes it is they are carefully worded denials, which doesn't necessarily excuse anything. What it does is demonstrate, I think, that in Joseph's mind, he was justifying himself. I mean, if Joseph's purpose and intent with polygamy, again, was entirely sexual adventurism, there would be no need for carefully worded denials. There would just be the, no, I'm not doing this, forget it. I mean, you read them. He says things like, what a thing to be accused of I was having seven legal wives and I can only find one.

SPEAKER_01: 50:46

Yes, I remember that

SPEAKER_02: 50:46

quote. Well, that's kind of true in that Emma is his only legal wife. And it's not even a denial that you have seven wives. It's just saying what a thing. I mean, this is the thing is that Joseph tried very hard to just, you can see, I think, the sort of mental gymnastics Joseph himself was doing. to try to justify it in his own mind. So he did not overtly, flatly deny polygamy so much as try to change the subject, try to pin it on John C. Bennett's spiritual wifery, which he insisted was not the same thing as plural marriage. But, I mean, the short answer to your question is yes, absolutely. The longer answer, I think, at least allows me to give Joseph a bit more grace.

SPEAKER_01: 51:39

And my third question is, if we look at, you know, by all accounts, all reliable accounts, based on what we know, what the church has said, what it hasn't said, other reliable sources, Richard Bushman, the other materials that are out there on the church, including the website, is it safe and honest and reliable for us to surmise that, again, by the standards of the church, the definition of honesty and the logic behind that, that the church teaches very clearly, is it accurate, reliable to say that Joseph Smith actually lied about practicing polygamy and the relationships he had behind his wife's back?

SPEAKER_02: 52:27

Yes, and it's also, I think, safe to say, to go even much further beyond that, to say that the church institutionally since the time of Joseph Smith, has not been honest about polygamy.

SPEAKER_01: 52:48

Yeah, and again, I'm applying the same standards in Lesson 31, right? If we're going to use that lesson as it's intended, I think, partly to criticize the world and dishonesty out in the world, which is fair criticism, sure. we should apply that same standard and those same definitions to us. Yes? To the other. I mean, the only true church upon the face of the earth, right? We've talked about the role of the Holy Ghost briefly, you know, in teaching truth. Joseph Smith, it's clear, again, that he lied about polygamy. It was a complete mess. I agree with you. I think he set out maybe he didn't say this. I think he set out to create something, a movement, a religion. He had questions about himself, repentance. There's all this religious activity going on. He had his own spiritual experience. I believe that. I believe he prayed in a grove of trees. He had a, in his mind, a profound spiritual experience. Some vision in his mind, whether Christ or Heavenly Father appeared to him in person is, in my mind, up for question. But he had a profound spiritual experience. He took pieces of other aspects of the religious revival at the time, etc., had his own Christian upbringing with his parents, pieces there, created this organization, this church, Well, this organization looks very different now than when it did back then, by the way, as you know, right? This is a very different organization to when Joe Smith set this up. Nevertheless, he set this up, organization, he had some objectives, probably financial, spiritual for sure, political probably as well. He had political aspirations. There was the sexual desire, I think, that existed in him. I can't, I don't, I'm not where you are. I believe there were other selfish objectives that Joseph had, certainly Brigham Young had. And I think he thought that the polygamy was one way, not the only way, but one way of achieving those selfish objectives. There were other objectives with polygamy, I get that. But I think there was definitely a selfish... gratification objective that he had in those thoughts that he had of how does he achieve that and polygamy he thought helped achieve that amongst other objectives for sure. The whole thing turned out to be a disaster. I mean that question bringing up somebody who's your father and they said you is just extraordinary. I think there's two more thoughts as we kind of roll this up here. I think This decision by the church to address this in the primary material is, again, broadly positive because it brings it to light. However, it's a missed opportunity to get into some of the detail, but therein lies the problem. Once you start getting into the detail, Jim, that's where the problems arise, and that's what generates more questions. And so this is a limited window, and the reason why I say that is that the church... can only go so far on this with this audience, with these children. Because if it goes into too much detail, it generates confusion. I mean, the kids who are in traditional conventional families, you know, mom and dad, right? Siblings, that's the traditional model. To them, they'll find this just peculiar and odd. And then the other principle is the articles of faith, which talks about in point number 12, we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, and being in honoring and sustaining the law. Polygamy back then, plural marriage, having physical relationships, I don't think adultery was illegal, but having plural marriages back in the 1830s was illegal. And even more so when the authorities got more details of this, they really came down pretty hard on the church and actually forced the church, let's face it, forced the church to change its position on plural marriage, which it did. Privately, I think some, well, you've said this before, they were practicing plural marriage. Even now today, I believe the church still believes in plural marriage and actually practices plural marriage. Elder Oaks is married to Seald, the two women. And I think if the church could have its way and the law allowed it, the church would be practicing plural marriage today. Nevertheless, I think this is the best that the church can do to inoculate the children. What they've got here, it's the best. I mean, great minds will have poured over this. Every word, every sentence, every line. They'll have thought about this for two years before they put this together and put this out. And I agree with them. This is a strategic move. This is the best they can do given the complexity of and the darkness, and keeping in mind the pain and suffering, Jim, that these wives like Emma will have gone through. Let's not forget that, in my opinion, they were victims of this awful dishonesty. And we've said, I asked the question earlier, trying to ask it in a very balanced way, was George Smith honest about it? Did he lie about this? He lied about this. And it caused immense pain and suffering for these women. And we must highlight that because these lives were broken, they were damaged. Can you imagine how they felt, the tears and the heartbreak, having found out that the husband has been having these relationships and not told them? Why on earth didn't he just tell them about this revelation and say, hey, look, this is the situation. I want to involve you in the conversation and where's the respect for Emma? Zero respect. And is that the quality of a prophet? I mean, we're talking basic, but you're talking about infallibility. I'm talking about the basics of human decency, honesty with your wife, with your family members. And if you haven't got that, are you really a prophet of God? And the other thing as well, if this is an eternal principle, And God's laws are higher than men's laws. Has God acquiesced? Has he given in to man-made laws? If this is such an eternal principle in section 132, a principle that we need to practice in order to achieve the highest level of eternal life, polygamy, again, there's lots of doctrines and references on that, that we achieve that level of eternal life and be with the Heavenly Father if we except the fullness of the gospel. Presumably plural marriage is an important part of the fullness of the gospel. Why has God given in to man-made laws? Aren't God's laws higher than ours? I mean, that's another conversation. But the problem I've got with this is it's not... It's deliberately missing out important information. Then again, the church... can't get into that detail and I understand that I get that but it's not honest it's deliberately say missing really important information now the kids aren't stupid you know there's some smart kids out there the youth are smart they'll look at this they'll research it will it inoculate them some of them for sure but Just as a closing experience here, when I was set apart on a state presidency, going back a bit now, this was at the Mitt Romney. Was it 2010? I think it was.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:00

Well, Mitt Romney was the nominee in 2012. 2012. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:05

So 2012, it was, I remember leaders in British Columbia, church leaders, senior leaders, area authority 70s, talking about a new initiative that Elder Oaks was behind that he introduced in our stake. He called it hastening the work. There was no question that the work is true. The cause was great. Our focus now was hastening it, advancing it, and accelerating it with the words. We've got the truth. We've got the gospel. We've got this amazing organization. The foundation is there. How do we scale it? That was the message. And how do we scale it in 2012 at what they call the Mormon moment, which was the Mitt Romney component. And they talked about, and I've got it here, they talked about bringing the church out of obscurity. Another lesson that Neely Maxwell talked about where the Lord in the Doctrine and Covenants He says, among other things, the past obscurity of the church is giving away to visibility. Obscurity, do you notice that? Which is generally unknown and withdrawn from the centers of activity. Hence, the obscure is often misunderstood. It's nearly Maxwell's talk titled Out of Obscurity. The Lord describes how he will bring his latter-day work, quote, forth out of obscurity and out of darkness. These were the scriptures that were shared with us as a new presidency in when Mitt Romney was running for the US presidency, it was the Marvin moment. We were accelerating and advancing the work. We were, quote, hastening the work. Elder Oaks was behind it. The internet was a tool to be able to advance the work. And now I think all this out of obscurity has not entirely backfired, but they've got... The church has got this big problem now with all this material on the internet, the internet that has been a major problem for the church. And the youth and the primary, certainly the youth, will go online. They will research it. They'll come across this podcast, many, many of the podcasts. They'll dig into the details. Actually, I think I'm wrong. I think I'm wrong. They probably won't do that. They're probably not going to do that. It's going to your point about whether they want religion in their life or not. But if they do research this and investigate this, and some will, they will find the dark side, if you like, of polygamy. And there is a deep, dark underbelly of polygamy that destroyed many lives and disrupted many lives. And the discerning youth, if you like, will discover this. And they will see that this material exists. Missed it. Because this material will be evidence also. Yes, evidence that the church has tried to address it. You know, if we fast forward now 20 years, and this is still around on the internet, this children material, we'll see the church will use that and say, hey, we talked about this 20 years ago. It's not new. This is old stuff. But on the other side, you can argue, well, let's look at it. They will have the same conversation that you and I are having right now. They say, well, you missed this, and you missed that, and you missed that. And there's probably other stuff 20 years from now that will come to light that we don't know about right now in regards to polygamy, which is a big issue, a constant, big, major, major problem that has never disappeared, ever-present, and always been one of the major issues impacting people the ability of the church to advance and accelerate and scale this tiny, tiny church, the only true church in the tiny, tiny church in the context of the global population. Right? So, yes, broadly, it's a good move. To summarize my thoughts here, a good move. Yes, it brings the big, one of the big issues, raising the priesthood of the one, you know, there's other big ones, but this is probably the biggest one of them for sure. It brings it to the surface here in front of the children. It is designed to inoculate the kids. I think it will be used against the church like we're doing right now in criticizing the church for not being completely open and honest about the details behind this. And I think the church, Jim, will continue to struggle and wrestle with polygamy for decades. It's going to be a problem for decades. People will not accept it. And I think the church has to, at some point, and I'll finish on this, accept that, like racing the priesthood, prohibiting black people from having temple blessings and having the priesthood, that it was a downright mistake. Now, the church is not ready to say that, as blunt as that. But I predict, if I can put my prophet hat on here, I think in the next five to 10 years, I think the church will come out in some way and say, polygamy was a mistake. And somehow, some way, it will disavow it. It's disavowed, in the Race and the Priesthood essay, disavowed any behavior of individuals who were racist in the church. Don't make specific references. Where I believe there'll be further material coming out to disavow the church from this awful practice of polygamy that destroyed so many lives and impacted so many. So yeah, they're my thoughts. Any concluding thoughts from your end?

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:23

Yeah, I appreciate your concluding thoughts. I don't share the, what's the word I'm looking for? Well, let me just back up. There is no question that polygamy looms large in the public imagination, and it continues to haunt the church to this day. And you are correct. To some degree, it is still practiced in the church to this day. Carolyn Pearson wrote a beautiful, heartbreaking book about a few years back called The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, where she talks about the fact that it's a mistake to think of polygamy as a historical mistake, that we need to think of polygamy as a current and enduring mistake, because women in the church are haunted by the idea that if they were to die as President Nelson and President Oaks' wives died, first wives died, that their husbands will be free to be sealed to another woman and that they will be expected to share their husband with that woman in the next life. My uncle, his wife died. He remarried one of her best friends. And the conversation was all about, oh, it'll be great because Aunt Theda will love Betty. And they were already friends, so this won't be a problem. Betty ended up dying, and my Uncle Wally ended up marrying a third woman who was already sealed to somebody else. And he tried to get sealed to her after she died. And the church told him no, because she was already sealed to her first husband. So, you know, this is still with us. This is not... Just a historical relic. I want to return, however, to where we began, which is with this article and my statement that this article is a good thing. Because for all of the flaws in it, I mean, you pointed out where it hasn't been entirely honest. I pointed out where it hasn't been entirely honest, where it's leaving out really important information. For all of its weaknesses... for all of the problems that we have wrestling with, confronting the legacy of this practice, this is the church moving in the right direction. This is the church moving towards the kind of honesty, the kind of transparency that we demand from it, and that the church has taught us needs to be a part of our own individual lives. The church of my childhood would not have even dreamed of anything like this. And the church even of my young adulthood was excommunicating in the September 6th in 1994, excommunicating D. Michael Quinn for pointing out that the church continued to practice polygamy after the manifesto. It's not that Michael Quinn did anything that was contrary to the principles of the church. It was that Michael Quinn told the truth and the church, particularly Elder Packer, wasn't having it and just did not want the truth to be out there. And so the church of 1994 was a church that would have said, We just don't talk about this. This just didn't happen. We're just not going to acknowledge it. The Church of 2024 or 2025, we were recording this in the new year, and this is going to be introduced to children in this year. The Church of 2025 has come far enough that not only are we willing to acknowledge the reality of polygamy, in the Gospel Topics Essays and in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, where all of the documents about polygamy are being made public. I mean, the church has done so many good things in terms of moving towards transparency that they're now even willing to acknowledge this with our youngest and most vulnerable members. Now, have they done a good job in that? I mean, I think it's a half measure. I think there's actually part, this tells more than I thought the church would, but doesn't tell nearly enough to be able to say it's fully honest. So yeah, we can talk about that. I want to embrace and applaud the church's efforts To move towards the transparency that it has no choice but to provide, I think. I mean, I think there are still leaders in the church. I believe there are really—the fact that this exists, that this thing exists, it's, I believe, the product of a great deal of behind-the-scenes tension, I am sure. that there were brethren who said, you can't do this. We can't do this. You can't put this in the primary manual. And there were other brethren who said, not only can we do this, we should go further than this. And then what eventually ended up was some kind of a compromise. But there are still leaders in the church who think we have a choice, who think we can still sort of sweep polygamy under the rug. We can still sort of pretend it doesn't exist. And they're the ones, I think, that are in the way of the kind of transparency and honesty and accountability that the church needs to take for plural marriage. If there is a good side to plural marriage, and I think that argument can be made that there is a good side to it. I mean, I think the autonomy of the Relief Society in the early 20th century, in the late 19th century, I mean, I think that there are stories that can be told that can make plural marriage less of the absolute disaster it appears to be to most people who look at it. But you can't tell those stories unless you tell all the stories. You can't make an argument that polygamy wasn't that bad if you don't address the arguments that it was, if you don't address the realities and the heartbreak, if you don't address... The dynamic between Joseph and Emma that split the church and that created the community of Christ, which for a century or so refused to acknowledge that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. Until you address all of the truth, you cannot highlight the truth that makes the church look good. And so the church is in a position where really it has no choice but to address polygamy. And this is its first sort of, not first, but first with children, one of the first sort of halting efforts to do that, to be transparent. And it's not entirely successful. I don't think the Gospel Topics essays were entirely successful. I think they were half measures, and half measures never satisfy anybody. But it's a step in the right direction. We're going the right way. If the church has a future, it's a future that has to somehow come to terms with the legacy of plural marriage. If there is a way to do that, if there is a way to reconcile all the goodness of the restored gospel with all of the messiness of plural marriage and how Joseph Smith is at the heart and the center of both of those things, If there is a way to reconcile that, we won't be able to find it until we are fully honest and we are fully transparent. And so I want to conclude this episode by applauding the church, applauding the church for taking steps in the right direction. We've got a whole lot. I mean, I say you to the church, but I'm in the church. This is my church. We as a church have a long way to go. We have a whole lot more we have to do. But when we go in the right direction, I think that should be applauded. And hopefully that will encourage the church to continue to move in that direction and get to where we need to be. So those are my final thoughts. Any rebuttal?

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:42

No, no, Rupert. I thought it was really good. You know, we have a balanced approach on the podcast. You've got your side, I've got mine. A lot of stuff we agree, some things we don't. And I think that that yin-yang balance is just really healthy, really good. I'll say one last thing. The polygamy issue will never go away. It's part of the church history. It happened. We can't deny it. It was a mess. I don't know anything good came from it. I can't think of that. We won't get into that right now, but it will never go away. And somehow the church has to come to terms with it. Yes, I agree. It's a step in the right move. And I appreciate you highlighting that. That's an important point, I think, to finish on. So that was my final, final comment.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:30

All right. Well, that concludes this episode then. I hope it doesn't conclude the church's efforts to be transparent and accountable for plural marriage. But we will be here throughout the coming new year to be able to discuss these sorts of things. And Ian, I'm very, very grateful that you are my partner in crime in this. And I can't think of anybody I would rather be discussing this with than with you. So... And I want very much our listeners to know how grateful both of us are that you are joining us in this journey and that we can have these conversations with you. And we look forward very much to talking with you next week on the next episode of Inside Out. Thank you very much, Ian. Thank you, Jim.