Mormonism and polygamy

Top leaders used the examples of the polygamy of God the Father and Jesus Christ in defense of it and these teachings on God and Jesus' polygamy were widely accepted among Mormons by the late 1850s.[32][33] In 1853, Jedediah M. Grant – who later become a First Presidency member – stated that the top reason behind the persecution of Christ and his disciples was due to their practice of polygamy.[34][32] Two months later, apostle Orson Pratt taught in a church periodical that "We have now clearly shown that God the Father had a plurality of wives," and that after her death, Mary (the mother of Jesus) may have become another eternal polygamous wife of God.[35][36] He also stated that Christ had multiple wives as further evidence in defense of polygamy.[37][32] In the next two years the apostle Orson Hyde also stated during two general conference addresses that Jesus practiced polygamy[38][39][32] and repeated this in an 1857 address.[40][41] This teaching was alluded to by church president Brigham Young in 1870 and First Presidency member Joseph F. Smith in 1883.[42][43]

The 1843 polygamy revelation, published posthumously, counseled Smith's wife Emma to accept all of Smith's plural wives, and warns of destruction if the new covenant is not observed.[44] Emma Smith was publicly and privately opposed to the practice and Joseph may have married some women without Emma knowing beforehand.[45] Emma publicly denied that her husband had ever preached or practiced polygamy,[46] which later became a defining difference between the LDS Church under Brigham Young and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church; now known as the Community of Christ), led by Joseph Smith III. Emma Smith remained affiliated with the RLDS Church until her death at the age of 74. Emma Smith claimed that the very first time she ever became aware of the 1843 polygamy revelation was when she read about it in Orson Pratt's publication The Seer in 1853.[47]

There is a subtle difference between "sealing" (which is a Mormon priesthood ordinance that binds individuals together in the eternities), and "marriage" (a social tradition in which the man and woman agree to be husband and wife in this life). In the early days of Mormonism, common practices and doctrines were not yet well-defined. Even among those who accept the views of conventional historians, there is disagreement as to the precise number of wives Smith had: Fawn M. Brodie lists 48,[48] D. Michael Quinn 46,[49] and George D. Smith 38.[50] The discrepancy is created by the lack of documents to support the alleged marriages to some of the named wives.

A number of Smith's "marriages" occurred after his death, with the wife being sealed to Smith via a proxy who stood in for him.[51] One historian, Todd M. Compton, documented at least 33 plural marriages or sealings during Smith's lifetime.[52] Richard Lloyd Anderson and Scott H. Faulring came up with a list of 29 wives of Joseph Smith.[53]

It is unclear how many of the wives Smith had sexual relations with. Many contemporary accounts from Smith's time indicate that he engaged in sexual relations with several of his wives.[52][54] As of 2007, there are at least twelve early Latter Day Saints who, based on historical documents and circumstantial evidence, have been identified as potential Smith offspring stemming from plural marriages. In 2005 and 2007 studies, a geneticist with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation stated that they had shown "with 99.9 percent accuracy" that five of these individuals were in fact not Smith descendants: Mosiah Hancock (son of Clarissa Reed Hancock), Oliver Buell (son of Prescindia Huntington Buell), Moroni Llewellyn Pratt (son of Mary Ann Frost Pratt), Zebulon Jacobs (son of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith), and Orrison Smith (son of Fanny Alger).[55] The remaining seven have yet to be conclusively tested, including Josephine Lyon, for whom current DNA testing using mitochondrial DNA cannot provide conclusive evidence either way. Lyon's mother, Sylvia Sessions Lyon, left her daughter a deathbed affidavit telling her she was Smith's daughter.[55]

LDS Church president Brigham Young had 51 wives, and 56 children by 16 of those wives.

LDS Church apostle Heber C. Kimball had 43 wives, and had 65 children by 17 of those wives.

As the LDS Church settled in what became the Utah Territory, it eventually was subjected to the power and opinion of the United States. Friction first began to show in the James Buchanan administration and federal troops arrived (see Utah War). Buchanan, anticipating Mormon opposition to a newly appointed territorial governor to replace Brigham Young, dispatched 2,500 federal troops to Utah to seat the new governor, thus setting in motion a series of misunderstandings in which the Mormons felt threatened.[58]

For the most part, the rest of the United States considered plural marriage offensive. On July 8, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act into law, which forbade the practice in U.S. territories. Lincoln made a statement that he had no intentions of enforcing it if the LDS Church would not interfere with him, and so the matter was laid to rest for a time. But rhetoric continued, and polygamy became an impediment to Utah being admitted as a state. Brigham Young preached in 1866 that if Utah will not be admitted to the Union until it abandons polygamy, "we shall never be admitted."[59]

After the Civil War, immigrants to Utah who were not members of the church continued the contest for political power. They were frustrated by the consolidation of the members. Forming the Liberal Party, non-Mormons began pushing for political changes and sought to weaken the church's dominance in the territory. In September 1871, Young was indicted for adultery due to his plural marriages. On January 6, 1879, the Supreme Court upheld the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in Reynolds v. United States.

In February 1882, George Q. Cannon, a prominent leader in the church, was denied a non-voting seat in the U.S. House of Representatives due to his polygamous relations. This revived the issue of polygamy in national politics. One month later, the Edmunds Act was passed by Congress, amending the Morrill Act and made polygamy a felony punishable by a $500 fine and five years in prison. "Unlawful cohabitation," in which the prosecution did not need to prove that a marriage ceremony had taken place (only that a couple had lived together), was a misdemeanor punishable by a $300 fine and six months imprisonment.[3] It also revoked the right of polygamists to vote or hold office and allowed them to be punished without due process. Even if people did not practice polygamy, they would have their rights revoked if they confessed a belief in it. In August, Rudger Clawson was imprisoned for continuing to cohabit with wives that he married before the 1862 Morrill Act.

Portrait of polygamists in prison, at the Utah Penitentiary, including George Q. Cannon in 1889, arrested under the Edmunds–Tucker Act.

In 1887, the Edmunds–Tucker Act allowed the disincorporation of the LDS Church and the seizure of church property; it also further extended the punishments of the Edmunds Act. In July of the same year, the U.S. Attorney General filed suit to seize all church assets.

The church was losing control of the territorial government, and many members and leaders were being actively pursued as fugitives. Without being able to appear publicly, the leadership was left to navigate "underground."

Following the passage of the Edmunds–Tucker Act, the church found it difficult to operate as a viable institution. After visiting priesthood leaders in many settlements, church president Wilford Woodruff left for San Francisco on September 3, 1890, to meet with prominent businessmen and politicians. He returned to Salt Lake City on September 21, determined to obtain divine confirmation to pursue a course that seemed to be agonizingly more and more clear. As he explained to church members a year later, the choice was between, on the one hand, continuing to practice plural marriage and thereby losing the temples, "stopping all the ordinances therein," and, on the other, ceasing plural marriage in order to continue performing the essential ordinances for the living and the dead. Woodruff hastened to add that he had acted only as the Lord directed:

I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me.[60]

It was not until 1904, under the leadership of church president Joseph F. Smith, that the church completely banned new plural marriages worldwide.[63] Not surprisingly, rumors persisted of marriages performed after the 1890 Manifesto, and beginning in January 1904, testimony given in the Smoot hearings made it clear that plural marriage had not been completely extinguished.

The ambiguity was ended in the General Conference of April 1904, when Smith issued the "Second Manifesto," an emphatic declaration that prohibited plural marriage and proclaimed that offenders would be subject to church discipline. It declared that any who participated in additional plural marriages, and those officiating, would be excommunicated from the church. Those disagreeing with the Second Manifesto included apostles Matthias F. Cowley and John W. Taylor, who both resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve. Cowley retained his membership in the church, but Taylor was later excommunicated.

Although the Second Manifesto ended the official practice of new plural marriages, existing plural marriages were not automatically dissolved. Many Mormons, including prominent church leaders, maintained existing plural marriages into the 1940s and 1950s.[64]

In 1943, the First Presidency learned that apostle Richard R. Lyman was cohabitating with a woman other than his legal wife. As it turned out, in 1925 Lyman had begun a relationship which he defined as a polygamous marriage. Unable to trust anyone else to officiate, Lyman and the woman exchanged vows secretly. By 1943, both were in their seventies. Lyman was excommunicated on November 12, 1943, at age 73. The Quorum of the Twelve provided the newspapers with a one-sentence announcement, stating that the ground for excommunication was violation of the law of chastity.

As early as the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, Latter Day Saint doctrine maintained that polygamy was allowable only if it was commanded by God. The Book of Jacob condemned polygamy as adultery,[72] but left open the proviso that "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise, they shall hearken unto these things."[73] Thus, the LDS Church today teaches that plural marriage can only be practiced when specifically authorized by God. According to this view, the 1890 Manifesto and Second Manifesto rescinded God's prior authorization given to Joseph Smith.

However, Bruce R. McConkie controversially stated in his 1958 book, Mormon Doctrine, that God will "obviously" re-institute the practice of polygamy after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.[74][75] This echoes earlier teachings by Brigham Young that the primary purpose of polygamy was to bring about the Millennium.[76] Current official church materials do not make any mention of the future re-institution of plural marriage.

In the case where a man's first wife dies, and the man remarries, and both of the marriages involve a sealing, LDS authorities teach that in the afterlife, the man will enter a polygamous relationship with both wives.[77] Current apostles Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks are examples of such a case.[78]

Under LDS Church policy, a man whose sealed wife has died does not have to request any permission beyond having a current temple recommend and an interview with his bishop to get final permission for a living ordinance, to be married in the temple and sealed to another woman, unless the new wife's circumstance requires a cancellation of sealing. However, a woman whose sealed husband has died is still bound by the original sealing and must request a cancellation of sealing to be sealed to another man (see next paragraph for exception to this after she dies). In some cases, women in this situation who wish to remarry choose to be married to subsequent husbands in the temple "for time only," and are not sealed to them, leaving them sealed to their first husband for eternity.

As of 1998, however, women who have died may be sealed to more than one man. In 1998, the LDS Church created a new policy that a woman may also be sealed to more than one man. A woman, however, may not be sealed to more than one man while she is alive. She may only be sealed to subsequent partners after both she and her husband(s) have died.[79] Thus, if a widow who was sealed to her first husband remarries, she may be sealed by proxy to all of her subsequent husband(s), but only after both she and the subsequent husbands have died. Proxy sealings, like proxy baptisms, are merely offered to the person in the afterlife, indicating that the purpose is to allow the woman to choose the right man to be sealed to.

A man who is sealed to a woman but later divorced must apply for a "sealing clearance" from the First Presidency in order to be sealed to another woman. Receiving clearance does not void or invalidate the first sealing. A woman in the same circumstances would apply to the First Presidency for a "cancellation of sealing" (sometimes called a "temple divorce"), allowing her to be sealed to another man. This approval voids the original sealing as far as the woman is concerned. Divorced women who have not applied for a sealing cancellation are considered sealed to the original husband. However, it is generally believed that even in the afterlife the marriage relationship is voluntary, so no person could be forced into an eternal relationship through temple sealing that they do not wish to be in. Divorced women may also be granted a cancellation of sealing, even though they do not intend to marry someone else. In this case, they are no longer regarded as being sealed to anyone and are presumed to have the same eternal status as unwed women.

According to church policy, after a man has died, he may be sealed by proxy to all of the women to whom he was legally married while he was alive. The same is true for women; however, if a woman was sealed to a man while she was alive, all of her husbands must be deceased before she can be sealed by proxy to them.[79][80]

Church doctrine is not entirely specific on the status of men or women who are sealed by proxy to multiple spouses. There are at least two possibilities:

1. Regardless of how many people a man or woman is sealed to by proxy, they will only remain with one of them in the afterlife, and that the remaining spouses, who might still merit the full benefits of exaltation that come from being sealed, would then marry another person in order to ensure each has an eternal marriage.
2. These sealings create effective plural marriages that will continue after death. There are no church teachings clarifying whether polyandrous relationships can exist in the afterlife, so some church members doubt whether this possibility would apply to women who are sealed by proxy to multiple spouses. The possibility for women to be sealed to multiple men is a recent policy change enacted in 1998. Church leaders have neither explained this change, nor its doctrinal implications.

Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that plural marriages produced unhappiness in some wives.[81] LDS historian Todd Compton, in his book In Sacred Loneliness, described various instances where some wives in polygamous marriages were unhappy with polygamy.[52]

Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that church leaders established the practice of polygamy in order to further their immoral desires for sexual gratification with multiple sexual partners.[82] Critics point to the fact that church leaders practiced polygamy in secret from 1833 to 1852, despite a written church doctrine (Doctrine and Covenants 101, 1835 edition) renouncing polygamy and stating that only monogamous marriages were permitted.[83] Critics also cite several first-person accounts of early church leaders attempting to use the polygamy doctrine to enter into illicit relationships with women.[84][85] Critics also assert that Joseph Smith instituted polygamy in order to cover up an 1835 adulterous affair with a neighbor's daughter, Fanny Alger, by taking Alger as his second wife.[86] Compton dates this marriage to March or April 1833, well before Joseph was accused of an affair.[87] However, historian Lawrence Foster dismisses the marriage of Alger to Joseph Smith as "debatable supposition" rather than "established fact."[88]

Others conclude that many Latter-day Saints entered into plural marriage based on the belief that it was a religious commandment, rather than as an excuse for sexual license. For instance, many of the figures who came to be best associated with plural marriage, including church president Brigham Young and his counselor Heber C. Kimball, expressed revulsion at the system when it was first introduced to them. Young famously stated that after receiving the commandment to practice plural marriage in Nauvoo, he saw a funeral procession walking down the street and he wished he could exchange places with the corpse. He recalled that "I was not desirous of shrinking from any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time."[89] When Kimball first heard of the principle, he believed that he would marry elderly women whom he would care for and who would not be a threat to his first wife Vilate. He was later shocked to learn that he was to marry a younger woman.[90] His biographer writes that he "became sick in body, but his mental wretchedness was too great to allow of his retiring, and he would walk the floor till nearly morning, and sometimes the agony of his mind was so terrible that he would wring his hands and weep like a child."[90] While his wife Vilate had trials "grievous to bear" as a result of her acceptance of plural marriage, she supported her husband in his religious duties, and taught her children that "she could not doubt the plural order of marriage was of God, for the Lord had revealed it to her in answer to prayer."[91]

Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that church leaders sometimes used polygamy to take advantage of young girls for immoral purposes.[92] Historian George D. Smith studied 153 men who took plural wives in the early years of the Latter Day Saint movement, and found that two of the girls were thirteen years old, 13 girls were fourteen years old, 21 were fifteen years old, and 53 were sixteen years old.[93] Historian Todd Compton documented that Joseph Smith married girls of age 13 or 14.[52] Historian Stanly Hirshon documented cases of girls aged 10 and 11 being married to old men.[94]

However, it seems that Brigham Young attempted to stamp out the practice of men being sealed to excessively young girls. In 1857, he stated, "I shall not seal the people as I have done. Old Father Alread brought three young girls 12 & 13 years old. I would not seal them to him. They would not be equally yoked together . ... Many get their endowments who are not worthy and this is the way that devils are made."[95]

Bar chart showing age differences at the time of polygamous marriage between teenage brides and early Mormon church leaders.[96][97][98][99] The average age of first marriage for white US women from 1850–1880 was 23.[100]

As the type of polygamy practiced is primarily polygyny, critics of the early LDS Church argue that polygamy may have caused a shortage of brides in the early LDS community,[101] citing quotes by church leader Heber C. Kimball who is purported to have said (addressing departing missionaries):

Brethren, I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. The brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here, and bringing on the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake.[102]

On another occasion, he said "You are sent out as shepherds to gather sheep together; and remember that they are not your sheep ... do not make selections before they are brought home and put into the fold."[103]

The first quote above is not attested in any Mormon source, but first appeared in a derisive article in the New York Times on May 15, 1860.[104] FairMormon, an LDS apologetics organization, considers the "prettiest women" statement to be apocryphal, but that it may be a paraphrase of Kimball's Journal of Discourses statement, which is authentic.[105]

In the paragraph immediately following the above quote, Kimball said:

The principle of plurality of wives never will be done away. Some sisters have had revelations that when this time passes away and they go through the veil every woman will have a husband to herself. I wish more of our young men would take to themselves wives of the daughters of Zion and not wait for us old men to take them all; go-ahead upon the right principle young gentlemen and God bless you forever and ever and make you fruitful, that we may fill the mountains and then the earth with righteous inhabitants.

The precise number who participated in plural marriage is not known, but studies indicate a maximum of 20 to 25 percent of Latter-day Saint adults were members of polygamist households. One third of the women of marriageable age and nearly all of the church leadership were involved in the practice.[106]

Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church have documented several cases where deception and coercion were used to induce marriage,[107] for example citing the case of Joseph Smith who warned some potential spouses of eternal damnation if they did not consent to be his wife.[52] In 1893, married LDS Church member John D. Miles traveled to England and proposed to Caroline Owens, assuring her that he was not polygamous. She returned to Utah and participated in a wedding, only to find out after the ceremony that Miles was already married. She ran away, but Miles hunted her down and raped her. She eventually escaped, and filed a lawsuit against Miles that reached the Supreme Court and became a significant case in polygamy case law.[108] Ann Eliza Young, nineteenth wife of Brigham Young, claimed that Young coerced her to marry him by threatening financial ruin of her brother.[109]

Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that polygamy was used to justify marriage of close relatives that would otherwise be considered immoral.[101][110] In 1843, Joseph Smith's diary records the sealing of John Milton Bernhisel to his sister, Maria, in a ceremony that included the sealing of Bernhisel to multiple relatives, some of whom were deceased.[111] However, this is understood by most scholars as the collective sealing or binding of the family and not a marriage between Bernhisel and his sister. Similar family sealings are practiced in Latter-Day Saint temples today, where children of parents who were not sealed at the time of their marriage are sealed to their parents and to one another in a group ceremony.

• Bringhurst, Newell G.; Foster, Craig L., eds. (2010). The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy. Volume 1. Independence, Missouri: John Whitmer Books. ISBN 978-1934901137. OCLC 728666005.
• Bringhurst, Newell G.; Foster, Craig L.; Hardy, B Carmon, eds. (2013). The Persistence of Polygamy: from Joseph Smith's Martyrdom to the First Manifesto, 1844–1890. Volume 2. Independence, Missouri: John Whitmer Books. ISBN 978-1934901144. OCLC 874165313.
• Bringhurst, Newell G.; Hamer, John C., eds. (2007). Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism. Independence, Missouri: John Whitmer Books. ISBN 978-1934901021. OCLC 225910256.
• Jacobson, Cardell K.; Burton, Lara, eds. (2011). Modern Polygamy in the United States: Historical, Cultural, and Legal Issues. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199746378. OCLC 466084007.
• Talbot, Christine. A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013.
• Van Wagoner, Richard S. (1989) [1986]. Mormon Polygamy: A History (2nd ed.). Signature Books. ISBN 0-941214-79-6. LCCN 85063399. OCLC 19515803. Archived from the original on October 30, 2014.

• Bachman, Danel W. (1978). "New Light on an Old Hypothesis: The Ohio Origins of the Revelation on Eternal Marriage". Journal of Mormon History. 5: 19–32. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
• Beecher, Maureen Ursenbach (1982). "The 'Leading Sisters': A Female Hierarchy in Nineteenth Century Mormon Society". Journal of Mormon History. 9: 25–40. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
• Bradley, Martha Sonntag; Woodward, Mary Brown Firmage (1994). "Plurality, Patriarchy, and the Priestess: Zina D. H. Young's Nauvoo Marriages". Journal of Mormon History. 20 (1): 84–118. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
• Bradley, Martha Sonntag (2000). Four Zinas. Signature Books. ISBN 1-56085-141-4. Archived from the original on October 24, 2005.
• Daynes, Kathryn M. (1988). "Single Men in a Polygamous Society: Male Marriage Patterns in Manti, Utah". Journal of Mormon History. 24 (1): 89–112. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
• Embry, Jessie L. (1992). "Ultimate Taboos: Incest and Mormon Polygamy". Journal of Mormon History. 18 (1): 93–113. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
• Hardy, B. Carmon (2005). "That 'Same Old Question of Polygamy and Polygamous Living:' Some Recent Findings Regarding Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Polygamy" (pdf). Utah Historical Quarterly. 73 (3): 212–224.
• James, Kimberly Jensen (1981). "'Between Two Fires': Women on the 'Underground' of Mormon Polygamy". Journal of Mormon History. 8: 49–62. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
• Quinn, D. Michael (1998). "Plural marriage and Mormon fundamentalism". Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 31 (2): 1–68. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.
• Shipps, Jan (1984). "Principle Revoked: A Closer Look at the Demise of Plural Marriage". Journal of Mormon History. 11: 65–77.

• Compton, Todd M. (n.d.), The Four Major Periods of Mormon Polygamy, Signature Books Library
• "Gospel Topics: Plural Marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", lds.org, LDS Church – provides a historical overview
• "Gospel Topics: Plural marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo", lds.org, LDS Church, retrieved October 22, 2014 – about the beginnings of plural marriage in the church
• "Gospel Topics: Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah", lds.org, LDS Church  – about plural marriage in Utah
• "Gospel Topics: The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage", lds.org, LDS Church – about the gradual ending of plural marriage
• Main Street Church (2007), Lifting the Veil of Polygamy (polemic exposé video)
• Benjamin E. Park (May 14, 2020). "How An 1843 Revelation on Polygamy Poses A Serious Challenge to Modern Mormonism". Religion Dispatches.