Joseph Smith "A Rough Rolling Stone" Biography.

[_Seven]

Bushman remarks that
"part of my purpose in writing is to introduce the troublesome material into the standard account to prevent horrible shocks later."69

OK. So he's guilty of inoculation. Help me understand what you think he should have done instead, or help me understand what is wrong with his "warts and all" approach. Not publish the troublesome material? Or, publish the troublesome material but put it in exclamation points and in bold?

What TAK said.


I think innoculation is unethical when it's fed with the apologetic spin or leaving out important facts that could change the readers conclusions. But I do believe innoculation will work in preventing members from further exploring troubling issues that would have normally shocked them. The church is very smart to take this approach.

[_TAK]

Jason:
Don'r think he even addressed sex in polyandrous marriages.

Hello ??

[_Seven]

What things do you think he should have included that he did not. What could he have done to have been more honest?

The book was good book, a fair book..... In much of the book had gave no apologetic spin at all, in my opinion, but rather presented the facts and let readers decide........

Perhaps inoculation but little spinning.

Don'r think he even addressed sex in polyandrous marriages.

Hi Jason,
I went back and read the section on plural marriage again to see why I had such a different reaction than you. (pages 436-458)

No doubt this book would make most LDS very uncomfortable with their lack of knowledge on Nauvoo polygamy. It might cause a testimony crisis for some. I give him a lot of credit for even addressing these issues.

However, Bushman helps the reader to develop an apologetic conclusion at almost every difficult turn. Here is just an excerpt on page 439, where he leaves out significant information on polyandry. This is not accidental.

Rough Stone Rolling page 439 (emphasis mine)

"The marital status of the plural wives further complicated the issue. Within fifteen months of marrying Louisa Beaman, Joseph had married eleven other women. Eight of the eleven were married to other men. All of them went on living with their first husbands after marrying the Prophet. The reasons for choosing married women can only be surmised. Not all were married to non-Mormon men; six of the ten husbands were active Latter-day Saints. In most cases, the husband knew of the plural marriage and approved. The practice seems inexplicable today. Why would a husband consent?

The only answer seems to be the explanation Joseph gave when he asked a woman for her consent; they and their families would benefit spiritually from a close tie to the Prophet. Joseph told a prospective wife that submitting to plural marriage would “ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household. & all your kindred.” A father who gave his daughter to the Prophet as a plural wife was assured that the marriage “shall be crowned upon your heads with honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house both old and young.” The relationship would bear fruit in the afterlife. There is no certain evidence that Joseph had sexual relations with any of the wives who were married to other men. They married because Joseph’s kingdom grew with the size of his family, and those bonded to that family would be exalted with him."

Now, if I had never read the books “In Sacred Loneliness” by Todd Compton or “Mormon Polygamy” by Richard VanWagoner, I would come away from this book believing that polyandry was only practiced for dynastic ties to the Prophet. No different than sealing children to parents. Jason, I’m not sure what books you have read on Nauvoo polygamy, but if you’ve studied polyandry I don’t know how you can miss the spin and opinion all over Bushman’s pages on Joseph Smith’s polygamy.

I agree that this is the best biography out there on Joseph Smith from an LDS historian. But I can’t deny that this is also an apologetic work intending to inoculate members with the same erroneous conclusions Bushman has come to in grappling with the history. You can feel it all over this book as he mischaracterizes critics as simpletons, who apply licentious evil motives to all of Joseph’s behavior in controversial issues.

Bushman likes to ask the questions he knows the reader new to this material might be saying to themselves, and then leads the reader to believe that they will be more discerning like him while applying righteous motive to all of Joseph’s actions.

Try to imagine if you knew nothing about polygamy. How would you come away from reading Bushman’s section on polyandry? I would come away feeling that critics had distorted the dynastic platonic sealings of Joseph Smith and would feel satisfied that this issue was put to rest if I came across anti Mormon literature on it. That’s what Bushman intended to do with this section and he does it well.
I would be interested to know how TBMs that read this book come away from this section who had never been aware of polyandry.


I’ll address this quote first:

"There is no certain evidence that Joseph had sexual relations with any of the wives who were married to other men.They married because Joseph’s kingdom grew with the size of his family, and those bonded to that family would be exalted with him."

While it's a true statement that there is no CERTAIN evidence, there also isn’t any certain evidence I’ve had sex with my husband if I use apologetic arguments. It would take DNA evidence of my children to meet their standard. They would even dismiss how our children closely resemble my spouse as evidence. Josephine Sessions looks strikingly like Joseph Smith if you’ve seen her picture. But is there evidence? Yes, and it's very strong evidence. Some of it is as close to certain as we can get without witnessing the act ourselves.
Bushman obviously knows there is very good evidence of sexual relations, but leaves it out.

*I realize this is not a polygamy book and do not expect him to cover every wife and detail that Compton meticulously documents in his work on Joseph Smith. However, if Bushman is going to bring up an issue like polyandry, it is not honest to leave out the wives testimony of having sexual relations with the Prophet and the doctrinal basis for it.
There were two wives in particular who believed their child could have been Joseph’s biological offspring. Sylvia Sessions and Prescindia Buell.

- Faithful Mormon and wife of Joseph Smith, Sylvia Sessions (Lyon), on her deathbed told her daughter, Josephine, that she (Josephine) was the daughter of Joseph Smith. Josephine testified: "She (Sylvia) then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church." (Affidavit to Church Historian Andrew Jenson, 24 Feb. 1915)

Prescindia, who was Normal Buell's wife and simultaneously a "plural wife" of the Prophet Joseph Smith, said that she did not know whether her husband Norman "or the Prophet was the father of her son, Oliver." And a glance at a photo of Oliver shows a strong resemblance to Emma Smith's boys.
(Mary Ettie V. Smith, "Fifteen Years Among the Mormons", page 34; Fawn Brodie "No Man Knows My History" pages 301-302, 437-39)

Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, a polyandrous wife to Joseph Smith, stated in 1905: "I know he [Joseph Smith] had six wives and I have known some of them from childhood up. I knew he had three children. They told me. I think two of them are living today but they are not known as his children as they go by other names." If true (and there is no reason to think it is not), this strongly suggests that Joseph sired children by women legally married to someone else (i.e., Joseph's children were raised bearing the legal husband's name). (see Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History, p. 49 n.3; Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, p. 12).

Bushman also leaves out that these women only cohabited with their first husbands to protect the church and Prophet. Once they were safely isolated in Utah, these women were able to leave the first husband, as we saw Zina do when she left Henry for Brigham Young. Some faithful LDS husbands such as Henry Jacobs only consented because he sincerely believed it was God speaking through the Prophets. He was quoted as calling Joseph "Our God."

All contracts made between husband and wife that were not sealed by the Priesthood were null and void to those who were taught Celestial marriage by Joseph.

"It was the rule rather than the exception for Smith to encourage a polyandrous wife to remain with her legal husband."
Faithful Mormon Joseph Kingsbury even wrote that he served as a surrogate husband for Joseph Smith:
"I according to Pres. Joseph Smith & council & others, I agreed to stand by Sarah Ann Whitney [sealed to Smith 27 July 1843] as though I was supposed to be her husband and a pretended marriage for the purpose of shielding them from the enemy and for the purpose of bringing out the purposes of God." (Elder Joseph Kingsbury, "History of Joseph Kingsbury Written by His Own Hand," page 5, Utah State Historical Society)

Notice how Bushman also misleads the reader on why a woman would marry Joseph without obtaining a divorce. There is doctrinal support for this not only in this speech below but in section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. (verse 41,42)

1861 speech by Brigham Young:

"The Second Way in which a wife can be seperated from her husband, while he continues to be faithful to his God and his preisthood, I have not revealed, except to a few persons in this Church; and a few have received it from Joseph the prophet as well as myself. If a woman can find a man holding the keys of the preisthood with higher power and authority than her husband, and he is disposed to take her he can do so, otherwise she has got to remain where she is ... there is no need for a bill of divorcement ... To recapitulate. First if a man forfiets his covenants with a wife, or wives, becoming unfaithful to his God, and his preisthood, that wife or wives are free from him without a bill of divorcement. Second. If a woman claimes protection at the hands of a man, possessing more power in the preisthood and higher keys, if he is disposed to rescue her and has obtained the consent of her husband to make her his wife he can do so without a bill of divorcement."

Here is the section on Zina in Rough Stone Rolling pages 439, 440:

"In October 1841, Joseph married Zina Huntington Jacobs, wife of Henry Jacobs. Zina was a pious young woman of twenty who had spoken in tongues and heard angels singing. Joseph and Emma had cared for Zina and her siblings for three months in 1839-40 after their mother died. When Joseph explained plural marriage to her the following year, her first response was to resist. Accepting Henry, who was courting her at the time, meant saying no to Joseph. Zina changed her mind after her brother told her about the angel threatening Joseph’s “position and his life.” That image plus her own inquiries convinced her.
“I searched the scripture & buy humble prayer to my Heavenly Father I obtained a testimony for my self that God had required that order to be established in this church.” Even after this assurance, she despaired of the consequences. “I mad[e] a greater sacrifice than to give my life for I never anticipated a gain to be looked upon as an honorable woman by those I dearly loved.” On October 27, 1841, her brother Dimick performed the marriage on the banks of the Mississipi. Little more is known of Zina’s relationship with Joseph. Her diary says nothing about visits. In 1843 while Henry was away on a mission, she, “being lonely,” opened a school in her house. The records don’t reveal how much Henry knew about the marriage at first, but in 1846 he stood by in the temple when Zina was sealed posthumously to Joseph Smith for eternity.

No mention of the doctrine that Zina could choose to leave her husband in favor of a higher priesthood holder, no mention of Joseph Smith aggressively pursuing her, or Brigham Young sending Henry on a mission for the church while he “rescued” Zina. No mention of the anguish Henry felt and heartwrenching letters at losing his wife and children.


Earlier in the chapter he tries to make the reader believe that Joseph struggled for years to practice the principle because of the span between Fanny Alger and his next plural wife Louisa Beaman. But curiously he leaves out that Joseph didn’t even have the sealing keys to marry Fanny Alger in this new and everlasting covenant.


I’m surprised Bushman didn’t conclude that Joseph’s pre sealing romp in the barn with Fanny Alger was just practice.... the Lord’s way of preparing him to live the restored principle. Just as treasure hunting prepared Joseph to translate.

[_cinepro]

I’m surprised Bushman didn’t conclude that Joseph’s pre sealing romp in the barn with Fanny Alger was just practice.... the Lord’s way of preparing him to live the restored principle. Just as treasure hunting prepared Joseph to translate.

Oh snap!

[_TAK]

Nice post Seven, Thanks!

[_Jason Bourne]

Jason:
Don'r think he even addressed sex in polyandrous marriages.

Hello ??

I do not think he said it did or did not happen. Do you know if it did or did not? It may have. But he discussed it in terms of marriage.

How much of the book have you read tak?

10 pages?

[_Jason Bourne]

Nice post Seven, Thanks!

Oh hip hip hooray. Woopie poopie.

Again I bet Tak has not read 10% of this book.

If you have forgive me.

If not shut the hell up.

All this proves is the nobody can satisfy some of you loopsided overly biased critics.

Bushmans book was a good one. But does it satisfy tak and seven? nope. Seven might be happy if Bushman painted Smith as a pervert and tak wants Bushman to shut the hell up because there is nothing new under the sun.

Yes Seven I had read two books on polygamy before I read Bushman-Mormon Enigma (not all on polygamy and Mormon Polygamy.

The issue is not cut and dry. Bushmans discussion was fair and not overly apologetic. There seemed to be dynastic motivations for it, at least many followers saw it that way. And unless you can read Smith's mind you really don't know now do you.

And for the record I personally think Polygamy and polyandry a debacle and certainly not of God. Do I know why Smith did it? No. Nor do any of you. It may have been power and sex, it may have had other motivations or a combination.

But as Crockett said, Bushman takes a stab at a fairly decent book-and by the way nobody is not biased some, nobody can write a history without inserting some of themselves into it. But you damn Bushman for writing a great book and then you damn the Church and active members for not writing open history. Wow. Did you expect Bushman to write in such a way to totally destroy faith?

[_TAK]

Jason:

Bushmans discussion was fair and not overly apologetic.

Oh .. So now its just a little apologetic??

Lame Jason.. very very lame..
don't you have a tithing check to write or something?

[_Jason Bourne]

Jason:

Bushmans discussion was fair and not overly apologetic.

Oh .. So now its just a little apologetic??

Lame Jason.. very very lame..
don't you have a tithing check to write or something?

I take it you have read little of the book,

How typical.

You are as irrational as you think a TBM is.

So once again, if you have not read the book shut the hell up.

[_Seven]

quote "Jason Bourne"

Bushmans book was a good one. But does it satisfy tak and seven? nope. Seven might be happy if Bushman painted Smith as a pervert and tak wants Bushman to shut the hell up because there is nothing new under the sun.

Good grief.

The issue is not cut and dry. Bushmans discussion was fair and not overly apologetic. There seemed to be dynastic motivations for it, at least many followers saw it that way. And unless you can read Smith's mind you really don't know now do you.

I didn't say there wasn't dynastic motivations in the marriages. The problem is that Bushman uses that motive in proving there wasn't sexual relations in polyandry. That's where I disagree. Earlier you said he didn't spin anything in the book on that section. Are you now agreeing that he did?

And for the record I personally think Polygamy and polyandry a debacle and certainly not of God. Do I know why Smith did it? No. Nor do any of you. It may have been power and sex, it may have had other motivations or a combination.

Exactly.
I'm not attributing any motive to Joseph Smith. For all I know God may have commanded him to marry those women. My problem is that Bushman DOES attribute motive- all of his actions were driven by righteous obedience to God in the polygamy section.
He misleads the reader to believe that there was no sex in polyandry. He should have shown the facts and "let the chips fall where they may."

But you damn Bushman for writing a great book and then you damn the Church and active members for not writing open history. Wow. Did you expect Bushman to write in such a way to totally destroy faith?

What an exaggeration. No, I did not expect Bushman to write a faith destroying book. I expected him to write the section on polyandry as a historian and not an apologist.
As you well know, there are many internet Mormons who do know all the facts and did not have their faith destroyed by Joseph's polyandry. They come away with the same conclusions that Bushman does. My issue is that Bushman leaves out very significant information to understanding doctrinally why polyandry was practiced and why the wife continued to live with the first husband. The women only stayed with their first husband in order to protect the Prophet and church while they were secretly married.
The LDS husbands who consented viewed Joseph as infallible. Look at the story of Heber C. Kimball giving Joseph Vilate as a test? He believed sacrificing Vilate was more than a platonic sealing. They fasted and prayed for days before consenting and came before Joseph in tears. Luckily for him, "Joseph didn't want every wife he asked for."


Todd Compton explains the dynastic motive in the polyandry and puts it into context.
Here are some excerpts on polyandry in the prologue of Todd Compton's book "In Sacred Loneliness." Note the differences between the two books. Compton did not write the book to destroy testimonies and he is an active believing Mormon. Unlike Bushman, he doesn't omit important facts to make a fair conclusion or at least give the reader a better understanding of polyandry.

to read the prologue section in full on polyandry click here:
http://www.signaturebooks.com/excerpts/insacred.htm

Having rejected the theories that Smith married polyandrously when the marriages involved non-member husbands or were unhappy, we turn to statements in the historical record that do supply a convincing rationale for polyandry. First, Smith regarded marriages performed without Mormon priesthood authority as invalid (see D&C 132:7), just as he regarded baptisms performed without Mormon priesthood authority as invalid. Thus all couples in Nauvoo who accepted Mormonism were suddenly unmarried, granted Joseph's absolutist, exclusivist claims to divine authority. John D. Lee wrote:

About the same time the doctrine of "sealing" for an eternal state was introduced, and the Saints were given to understand that their marriage relations with each other were not valid. That those who had solemnized the rites of matrimony had no authority of God to do so. That the true priesthood was taken from the earth with the death of the Apostles ... They were married to each other only by their own covenants, and that if their marriage relations had not been productive of blessings and peace, and they felt it oppressive to remain together, they were at liberty to make their own choice, as much as if they had not been married. That it was a sin for people to live together, and raise or beget children in a!ienation from each other. There should be an affinity between each other, not a lustful one, as that can never cement that love and affection that should exist between a man and his wife.
This is a radical, almost utopian rejection of civil, secular, sectarian, non-Mormon marriage. Civil marriage was even a "sin," unless a higher "affinity" "cemented" spouses together.

Another relevant doctrinal statement comes from an 1861 speech by Brigham Young:
The Second Way in which a wife can be seperated from her husband, while he continues to be faithful to his God and his preisthood, I have not revealed, except to a few persons in this Church; and a few have received it from Joseph the prophet as well as myself. If a woman can find a man holding the keys of the preisthood with higher power and authority than her husband, and he is disposed to take her he can do so, otherwise she has got to remain where she is ... there is no need for a bill of divorcement ... To recapitulate. First if a man forfiets his covenants with a wife, or wives, becoming unfaithful to his God, and his preisthood, that wife or wives are free from him without a bill of divorcement. Second. If a woman claimes protection at the hands of a man, possessing more power in the preisthood and higher keys, if he is disposed to rescue her and has obtained the consent of her husband to make her his wife he can do so without a bill of divorcement.


This allows for two options: (1) if a man apostatized, his wife could leave him without a formal divorce; (2) if a woman desired to be married to a man with greater priesthood authority than her current husband, and if both men agreed, she could be sealed to the second man without a formal divorce. In some ways this principle can be applied directly to Smith's polyandrous marriages, for clearly he was regarded as having more priesthood authority than any other living man. The emphasis on the desire of the woman is notable. In nineteenth-century Utah there are well-documented cases in which married women asked to be joined to a prominent church leader. In Nauvoo, however, such cases would not be frequent, as polygamy was secret. In Young's statement the husband is granted his own volition, which would be consistent with the suggestion made above that the first husbands in Smith's polyandrous marriages may have known about the marriages and permitted them.

Jedediah Grant's 1854 statement already referred to can now be quoted more fully:
When the family organization was revealed from heaven—the patriarchal order of God, and Joseph began, on the right and the left, to add to his family, what a quaking there was in Israel. Says one brother to another, "Joseph says all covenants [previous marriages] are done away, and none are binding but the new covenants [marriage by priesthood sealing power]; now suppose Joseph should come and say he wanted your wife, what would you say to that?" "I would tell him to go to hell." This was the spirit of many in the early days of this Church [i.e., unwillingness to consecrate everything to Smith as the mouthpiece of God] ... What would a man of God say, who felt aright, when Joseph asked him for his money? [he would give it all willingly] Or if he came and said, "I want your wife?" "O yes," he would say, "here she is, there are plenty more." ... Did the Prophet Joseph want every man's wife he asked for? He did not ... the grand object in view was to try the people of God, to see what was in them. If such a man of God should come to me and say, "I want your gold and silver, or your wives," I should say, "Here they are, I wish I had more to give you, take all I have got." A man who has got the Spirit of God, and the light of eternity in him, has no trouble about such matters.

This remarkable sympathetic testimony to Smith's polyandrous marriages touches on many areas of interest. First, Grant sees the practice in terms of extended "family organization." Polyandry would obviously be useful in linking families to Smith. "Joseph says all covenants are done away, and none are binding but the new covenants." Here we have the doctrine that previous marriages are of no effect, "illegal," in Orson Pratt's words. Grant disapproves of those who were asked to give up their wives and refused. The proper response, according to Grant, would have been instant, unquestioning consecration of all "possessions" to the prophet. He states that Smith did not want every wife he asked for, which implies that he wanted some of them. The emphasis here is on Smith's testing his followers, as when Smith demanded Vilate Kimball from Heber Kimball. Yet the fact that at least eleven women were married to Joseph polyandrously, including the wife of prominent apostle Orson Hyde, shows that in many cases Joseph was not simply asking for wives as a test of loyalty; sometimes the test included giving up the wife.

Another doctrine that apparently served as an underpinning for Smith's polyandry was his doctrine of a pre-existence, which holds that our spirits lived with God before birth and were given assignments there relating to what we would do here. According to Mary Elizabeth Lightner who was married to Adam Lightner when Joseph proposed to her, "Joseph Said I was his, before I came here. he said all the Devils in Hell should never get me from him." Elsewhere she wrote that Smith told her he had been commanded to marry her, "or Suffer condemnation—for I [Mary] was created for him before the foundation of the Earth was laid." Apparently, if Smith had a spiritual intuition that he was linked to a woman, he asserted that she had been sealed to him in the pre-existence, even though she was legally married to another man. But, as we have seen, he taught that civil marriages performed without the priesthood sealing power were not valid, even at times sinful. Therefore, the link in the pre-existence would take immediate priority over a marriage performed by invalid, secular or "sectarian ," authority in this life. John D. Lee wrote that a spiritual "affinity" took precedence over secular ceremonies. Perhaps Joseph Smith also felt, as the Brigham Young statement suggests, that men with higher priesthood had a greater aptitude for spiritual affinity.



Thus heavenly marriage in the pre-existence required earthly polyandry here. Certain spirits were "kindred," matched in heaven, were born into this life, and, because of unauthorized marriages performed without priesthood sealing power, became linked "illegally" to the wrong partners. But when the kindred spirits recognized each other, the "illegal" marriages became of no effect from a religious, eternal perspective and the "kindred" partners were free to marry each other through the priesthood sealing power for eternity as well as for time.

Some historians have proposed the interpretation that Joseph either did not have any marital relations with his "polyandrous" wives, if the husband was faithful to the church, or that the "first husband" had no marital relations with the woman. Such a theoretical relationship has been called "pseudopolyandry." However, the Josephine Lyon Fisher affidavit argues against this. According to Josephine, her mother, Sylvia, one of Smith's polyandrous wives, "told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church."

Another piece of evidence used to show that polyandrous wives were married only for eternity, not for time, is the interview with Zina Huntington Jacobs, which, as we have seen, is unsatisfactory for taking either side of the argument. In the same way, Mary Elizabeth Lightner's statement that she was married to Smith for eternity (as a polyandrous wife) has been used to show that she was not married to him for time; but she elsewhere specifically and repeatedly stated that she was married to him for time and eternity. Patty Sessions, another polyandrous wife, wrote in a genealogical record that she had been married to Joseph Smith "for Eternity," but to clarify, wrote above the line, "time and all eternity."

Therefore there is not any good evidence that Joseph Smith did not have sexual relations with any wife, previously single or polyandrous. On the other hand, there is evidence that he did have relations with at least some of these women, including one polyandrous wife, Sylvia Sessions Lyon, who bore the only polygamous offspring of Smith for whom we have affidavit evidence.

Whatever the uncertainties in documenting this aspect of Latter-day Saint practice, there is a clearly discernible outline of ideology in the historical record that explains the development and rationale for the practice of Smith's polyandry. "Gentile" (i.e., non-Mormon) marriages were "illegal," of no eternal value or even earthly validity; marriages authorized by the Mormon priesthood and prophets took precedence. Sometimes these sacred marriages were felt to fulfill pre-mortal linkings and so justified a sacred marriage superimposed over a secular one. Mormonism's intensely hierarchical nature allowed a man with the highest earthly authority—a Joseph Smith or Brigham Young—to request the wives of men holding lesser Mormon priesthood, or no priesthood. The authority of the prophet would allow him to promise higher exaltation to those involved in the triangle, both the wife and her first husband.

But with polyandry, as with the better-known polygyny, despite the elaborate doctrinal justifications, despite the reverence for a modern prophet and the unquestioning devotion to a restored biblical religion, the emotional challenges of this new marital system must have been tremendous. In the cases of most of the polyandrous wives, the human dimensions of polyandry are not recorded; it is not even openly acknowledged. However, the wives and husbands must have felt conflicted. Puritanical New England morality and attachment to the first husband or wife undoubtedly warred with devotion to Joseph Smith, viewed as an infallible oracle of God, and to a church and community that were believed to be a restoration of primitive Christianity. Only in the marriage of Zina and Henry Jacobs, as enigmatic as their relationship was, do we even have hints of the human price that Smith's polyandrous system demanded. The other polyandrous husbands and wives probably paid the same high price.