- Stephen Fleming on The Framework of My Historical Argument about Polygamy: “Again, I do not see JS marrying single women as deviation from shared marriage, and note the claim to Nancy Rigdon. The details we have on Alger are pretty foggy, but Benjamin Johnson presents Alger marrying another guy soon after JS as not a rejection of JS. “She did not turn from the Church nor from her friendship for the Prophet while she lived.” But who knows? That was a short lived relationship that we don’t know a lot about, and Johnson’s statement comes much later. So I look for clues about what I see as JS’s larger purposes in sources both before and after Alger.” Oct 22, 09:25
- on The Framework of My Historical Argument about Polygamy: “Stephen, thank you. If the span of time is 1829-1843, then I hope you’ll take plenty of time to address Fanny Alger as that relationship appears to complicate the argument. I will point out that John C. Bennett’s defense of his serial adultery (what he called spiritual wifery) as being learned from Joseph (albeit a very corrupted version of it and practiced for rather different reasons) would seem to support your theory.” Oct 22, 09:06
- on The Framework of My Historical Argument about Polygamy: “My argument is that shared marriage was the plan from the beginning, or c. 1829. Yes, Smith married some single women, but he was reported telling Nancy Rigdon that his proposed marriage “would not prevent her from marrying any other person.” That is, the wives didn’t HAVE to be married when Smith married them, and the report to Nancy is interesting. One such case is Hannah Dubois who Smith was reported marrying early in Nauvoo, who then LATER married Philo Dibble and Smith performed the wedding. Lots of Mormon scholars simply leave Hannah out of Smith’s list of wives under the belief that such an action didn’t fit Mormon theology. I argue it did. (See Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness, 631). So I argue the time frame of shared marriage being the plan was 1829 to 1843. That is, shared marriage was the concept even if Smith didn’t marry his first married wife until later. Women could be single and allowed to marry another husband under shared marriage, like the instruction to Nancy. ” Oct 22, 08:40
- on The Framework of My Historical Argument about Polygamy: ““As I’ve said a lot, I argue that’s what JS originally had in mind. He attempted to proceed cautiously, with a few individual marriages, which allowed for women have multiple spouses also (DC 132:41). Smith changed the policy to polygyny in c. 1843 and DC 132 was about that policy change.” Stephen, when you say “originally,” I hope you’ll clarify in a future post what months or years you believe fit into that “original” timeframe. Louisa Beaman, generally recognized as the first woman sealed to Joseph, was single when she they were sealed in April 1841 (the first of “a few individual marriages), and she did not marry anyone else during Joseph’s lifetime. Maybe that was simply a first step toward shared marriage (i.e., perhaps it was intended that Louisa also marry someone else and it just never happened for unknown reasons), but, if so, it would seem to be an errant first step if shared marriage was the plan all along. Also, while you haven’t had time to flesh out your theory yet, your argument would seem to ignore Joseph’s earlier relationship with Fanny Alger circa 1835-1836 as well as his 1831 statement later recalled by W.W. Phelps in an 1861 letter about eventually marrying “Lamanite” women (presumably as plural wives given that the men present on the mission were already married). Maybe shared marriage really was Joseph’s intended plan at some point, but, if so, the lifespan of that plan only seemed to last about a year from 1842 to 1843. Moreover, Joseph was sealed to single women during that time too which would seem to undercut the shared marriage argument Regardless, I’m looking forward to your future posts!” Oct 22, 07:44
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “Not a Cougar, I’ve heard that too. I think the idea behind that speculation was that the Law of Adoption has been portrayed as male-to-male sealings, which is the way that it sets the precedent. It’s not really a good precedent, though, since it was parent-to-child sealings, even if it was father-to-son sealings, and we still see incest as morally abhorrent (which is unlikely to change). In the hypothetical situation that the Church, as an institution, starts accepting same-sex marriages as legitimate and acceptable to be sealed in the temple, the marriage sealing is going to be a better precedent, even if the language would need to be adapted. I actually think the idea you brought up was what Stapley was getting at when he talked about it being a sealing to both a man and a woman as parents in the FtD interview: “Two persistent errors still appear today, even in scholarly literature. The first is the claim that only men were adopted. This is just plain false. Men and women together functioned as adoptive parents, and both men and women were adopted as children. Everyone needed to be sealed to parents.”” Oct 21, 14:52
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “Chad, I forgot to add that I’ve seen speculation on LDS-themed blogs in the past that, if same-sex marriages were ever to be accepted by the Church, Law of Adoption sealings would serve as the precedent justifying same-sex sealings. To be clear, I don’t think Law of Adoption sealings had anything to do with same sex attraction, and I certainly don’t foresee that happening in my lifetime surely, but, it’s interesting to ponder how past practices can be made to serve as unwitting springboards for future practices.” Oct 21, 12:53
- on Creative and Cultural Self-Reliance: “I struggled in reading this to distinguish between how you are using the word culture and the word creativity. As I read along, they at times seemed interchangeable and at other not…? I wonder at the narrowing of the idea of ‘creative’ to ‘professional creatives’ only. I’m not seeing that as being true. Over the last 20+ years what I’ve seen is an exponential growth of easy art (using the word art broadly). Meaning it’s become so easy to become mediocre at pretty much anything with the help of Youtube, etc, that everybody and their brother is now a painter, writer, musician, etc. (Personally, I find things like cooking, mechanics, sports, etc, also fall under this idea of creativity.) This growth has been s a terrible thing for the artistic markets, and AI is making it so much worse. (10,000 new books published on Amazon every day, or something like that.) But is it a terrible thing for the human soul? I am waffling. GenAI without the human effort definitely does nothing for the human soul, but for the individual who decides to try their hand at a LitRPG book using Brandon Sanderson’s BYU class and a few How-to-Novels, I’m not entirely convinced it is for the reasons you went over. The person is creating and creating is good for the soul. At the same time, 99.99% of these people tend to give up long before the 10 books/1 million words that Brandon says is needed to reach mastery level, which has created this sludge of mediocrity. Is there then a benefit for the try, but-it’s-hard, give-up cycle of creativity? Does the individual gain something even if they stop when it gets hard? Does collective creativity and humanity gain anything from their attempts? Is that fact that so many consumers are perfectly happy with MVP (minimally viable product) as their favorite artists’ goals (quick-release authors openly discuss MVP as the goal) rather than Excellence a problem? Is MVP a reflection on the state of our culture? Does a creative person focusing on MVP receive a creative benefit to their soul? Does God care about pursuit of Excellence and reward accordingly with a strengthened soul? I’ll stop there. I have no answers, just more interesting questions as this is what I’ve been wrestling with lately after listening to too much Arthur Brooks.” Oct 21, 08:26
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “Mark, thank you for the comment. That explains why my memory of the cornerstones there doesn’t match up with the map here. The original cornerstone was uncovered during excavations in the early 1909s. So, at least on cornerstone should be in the location of the original. I’m not sure if the others were found. As far as multiple temples go, it’s not that dissimilar from modern temple square with a building for church headquarters, the old office building, Relief Society headquarters, tabernacle, assembly hall, and so on. Quite a bit there depending how many blocks you want to include” Oct 20, 14:03
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “That’s a really cool article, thanks Mark!” Oct 20, 13:00
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “P.S. The temple footprint that is marked immediately south of the Church of Christ Temple Lot meetinghouse is for their own temple, which was a new design and would be much larger than the JS original(s). It is possible that their “SECT [South East Corner Stone?]” stone dates back to 1831 (or 1833) or that it was placed later based on some memory of where it was supposed to be as per 1831 (or 1833). All of this, however, is quite uncertain.” Oct 20, 10:55
