So I’m thinking about doing a series of posts on the thorny topic of the problems polygamy causes for the church. I know that’s pretty obvious and has been discussed at length, but I wanted to highlight the challenge the church has of making the problem go away.
It seems clear that the leaders would like attention on Mormon polygamy to diminish or even disappear, but that’s not happening. The issue is more than the public perception of Mormonism, it’s also a continual concern to many members. Men being able to be sealed to another wife if the first one dies brings up issues of the afterlife.
Different attempts to try to make it go away haven’t and won’t work. The standard church statements of the practice being just for a time, with monogamy as the norm, raises a number of tricky questions. Monogamy was the norm in the larger American society when the Mormons practiced polygamy so why do it at all, even if for a “short time”? No doubt many have come up with theories, but many questions remain.
Polygamy denialism, or claiming that Joseph Smith didn’t practice it, is another attempt to make the problem go away. Such claims are contrary to the evidence, but at the same time, polygamy denialism is also clearly a product of Mormonism’s polygamy problem. Claiming that Smith didn’t practice it is an appealing solution to many.
The fact that Smith did institute and practice polygamy creates a thorny theological problem for attempting what many want: getting rid of the issue altogether through some kind of revocation and denunciation of the early Mormon claims about the practice. We have a theology around Smith as the founding prophet and if our current leaders asserted that he made terrible mistakes, that would create some problems for what I call our “leadership theology”: God implementing and guiding Mormonism through prophets. I think we’re okay with Smith making some errors that we classify as natural weakness and a lack of infallibility, but polygamy was a major aberration from the society’s norms, and Smith marrying close to 40 women suggests he engaged in polygamy with considerable gusto. Every president after Smith up to Heber J. Grant practiced it (Grant had three wives, but two died before he was president), making denunciation of polygamy a challenge for our leadership theology.
Of course, we practiced the priesthood ban longer than polygamy, but the ban not being officially implemented until 1852 does give some license to blame that practice on Brigham Young (I think it’s a little more complicated than that). Blaming Young for the ban likely makes polygamy denialism all the more attractive as it suggests a similar approach.
Anyway, this first post is just an overview of topics that I’m thinking of saying more about.
Finally, guest blogger Kendall Buchanan brought up another point I’d like to discuss. I’ve posted around here my argument that Smith’s extra-monogamous plan prior to 1843 was what I call “shared marriage” or women and men being able to be sealed to more than one spouse at the same time.
In the context of ideas Kendall was presenting of things he thought the church could do to improve things generally, he proposed, “If the church would allow women to also be able to be sealed to additional husbands if a spouse dies like the church allows for men, that would considerably alleviate many of the ongoing issues the church has over polygamy.” It would probably bring up some controversial issues as well, but I thought that would also be an interesting point to discuss.
So more posts to come on these topics.
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