I suggest that you read Brian Hales’ Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, Volume 3: Theology. He also hosts an excellent website which will give you some quick answers.
http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/

But please, read the book soon.

I read your comment. You’re understood. No further comment.

I’m sorry to have distracted from the original post. Honestly, the link in #5 is the first time I read the seminary lessons. I tried to post in the comment section there, and my comment was deleted. So, I’m afraid my full disdain was posted here.

My position is simply that I’m one guy in Idaho who is unwilling to rationalize or justify D&C 132. And, I’m willing to stand up and say as much, for what it’s worth.

I’ve said my fair share on this thread, so I’ll be quiet for the remainder of the discussion and read other’s thoughts.

Have any of the above commentators who claim that plural marriage was NOT commanded by God really thought through the ramifications of their positions? Joseph, Brigham and many others taught that plural marriage was of God. Many of the truly great men and women in LDS history had a testimony of it, with some admitting the extraordinary difficulties involved in the practice. Plural marriage is intricately connected with celestial/eternal marriage. The revelations for the two are intertwined. I see no rational method for disavowing one without destroying the other. You can create a Mormonism without a history of God-sanctioned plural marriage if you wish, but you cannot be faithful to the figures of the past, nor can you really keep faith in prophecy, eternal marriage and temple ordinances intact.

I view plural marriage as an Abrahamic sacrifice. I am thrilled I don’t have to live it. Honestly, most men are. Teaching teens and adults about sealings for eternity, sealings for time and eternity and plural marriage is NOT going to increase child or spousal abuse. Given Joseph Smith’s teachings on chastity and the treatment of women, the history of plural marriage only makes sense in a theological context. Joseph taught that sealings are vehicles for exaltation. In protecting the youth, we have a ready-made comparison to discuss, the comparison between plural marriage and John C. Bennett’s spiritual wifery. I hope that further discussions also include references to Brian Hales (especially his third volume) and Newell Bringhurst. Their work and ideas are a necessary addition to Hardy’s work.

People across the board seem to be grappling with pedagogical questions: What should we teach LDS youth about polygamy? What should LDS adults be taught about polygamy in the curriculum, in Sunday School, or at the pulpit? But logically prior to these important questions is getting the historical narrative right: What actually happened? What are the facts? My sense is that the more one understands about the historical practice of polygamy, the harder it is to come up with an adequate proposal for what to teach the youth or the adults in the Church. Which wasn’t much of a problem when the official LDS position on polygamy was “we don’t talk about that.” But now that the Church is talking (and so is everyone else) it has to face up to the historical questions (the essays are a start but there is a lot left to address) and the pedagogical issues. I just hope the rocky response to the polygamy essays does not dissuade the leadership from continuing the effort.

That’s a piece of language we can do something with. I’m interested in digging into the idea of a prophetic utterance being “improperly implemented.” That might be the ticket for some of us.

I’m concerned about your second paragraph. No doubt the world becomes a bit more complex when prophets have bad ideas. One might have to consider rewriting some of the primary songs (i.e. “Follow the Prophet”). But, I can’t help thinking that God really wants us to exercise our moral muscles a bit, even if we sometimes have to conclude that a prophet was dead wrong, on some things. My hunch is that people can still live moral, good lives and completely reject a prophet’s teaching on some things. In fact, I think a moral life sometimes requires just such action.

Saints have believed many things which we no longer accept as true today. Adam God, blood atonement, racist priesthood doctrine, etc. There will continue to be an evolution of thought on a multitude of church doctrines. We need to be humble enough to realize that greater truth and understanding will come our way and challenge our assumptions and paradigms. There is nothing worth holding up as divinely inspired about the polygamy doctrine. We need to accept it as a mistake and acknowledge that our early church leaders were committed to following what they believed was divinely inspired.

The church has rejected the teaching that polygamy was a requirement for celestial exaltation, even though that was the original understanding of the principle. Why not just reject polygamy officially in its entirety. President Hinckley seemed to be moving in this direction in his Larry King interview. The Hales are trying to pull us back the other direction and retrench.

It’s a more dangerous road to travel, in my mind, to instruct our children to ignore “inconvenient” or “hard to understand” scriptural ideas as it is to tell them to just go do whatever they want. Our children should and MUST learn how to consider these ideas and take them to God to find out His will for themselves. The church, our church, accepted the practice of polygamy as from God and binding upon the children of the covenant, at least for the space of a time. To teach our children otherwise is to mislead them.

J Town,

I absolutely appreciate your sentiment. I’ve been LDS for as long as I can remember, and no doubt I’ve said exactly what you’ve said (in my own words) at some point in my life. Trouble is, I became a father of daughters. When I read the new seminary lessons, my still small voice–my trusted still small voice–becomes a blaring alarm. It says, “Josh, this is a very bad thing to teach kids! Trust me Josh. This is a bad idea.”

Here’s the sticky wicket, as I see it:

With the youth polygamy lessons (isn’t that what we’re really dealing with here? “Polygamy Is a Good Idea, for Youth”), members are being asked to accept that Joseph’s version of polygamy was commanded of God. My conscience will not allow me to do that. I would literally have to have a brain aneurysm before I would teach my kids that God was behind Joseph’s polygamy ideas.

I’m not a theologian by any stretch, but it seems to me we have a lot of ways of dealing with things Joseph said. There are books and books that contain basically this sentence, “Joseph said that God said ____________.” We don’t treat all of these statements equally, no? I mean, as LDS don’t we have different methods for dealing with prophets saying “God said ________”?

We also have David and Solomon. Does it do irreparable damage to your understanding of Joseph Smith to lump his polygamy with David? Kind of a leader-who-went-off-the-reservation interpretation?

In short, I’m not going to teach my children Joseph’s version of polygamy was from God. Nope. Can’t go there. We need another plan.

Is anyone else upset about seminary lessons that justify calling Joseph Smith a prophet of God? Because whether comfortable with the practice or not (I have my reservations, to be sure) and whether understanding exactly why God would allow the practice or not (also difficult), if you accept Joseph as a prophet, the practice of polygamy was given to the church by Joseph Smith and cannot easily be dismissed. So it is not and cannot be out of bounds for the manuals of the church, in whatever format, to “justify” it.

It was given, at the time, as a commandment. We aren’t told to live it now and I’m very happy about that, (I have 3 daughters myself), but I’m also happy I haven’t been asked to sacrifice my only son, as Abraham was. That doesn’t make me doubt the Bible or the prophet Abraham. Or the Father, for that matter, who did in fact sacrifice His own Son. Uncomfortable topics, such as polygamy, must be studied, pondered, and prayed about. Vilifying or ignoring that which we do not fully understand risks dismissing or avoiding potential truth, simply because it’s not comfortable for us. That is like damning one’s own spiritual progress, in a sense.

I almost feel that this topic should only be discussed one on one, in a very sacred environment, to avoid pollution by the world’s ideas and philosophies. Discussing it online usually only results in people sharing their doubts and outright disgust on the topic, which I don’t feel is very useful at all and perhaps is actively harmful. That won’t change what people do, of course, but it is wiser, I feel.