What lies did the Nauvoo Expositor print?

[_Analytics]

The criticism of Smith was focused on three main points: The opinion that Smith had once been a true prophet, but had become a fallen prophet in the last few years because of his introduction of plural marriage, exaltation and other controversial doctrines; the opinion that as church president and Nauvoo mayor, Smith held too much power; and the belief that Smith was corrupting young women by forcing, coercing or introducing them to the practice of plural marriage.

Read it for yourself here: http://solomonspalding.com/docs/exposit1.htm

That’s an excellent summary of what the paper said. It’s important to understand that William Law et. al. weren’t trying to destroy the Church, they were trying to reform the Church. They believed that in order to embrace the Church’s original message, not to mention in order to ensure the prosperity of the Saints, the Church need to embrace the following truths:

• The leaders and members of the Church shouldn’t practice polygamy, neither openly nor secretly.
  
• The doctrines needed to focus on the original Christian doctrines taught in the Book of Mormon and not the “new’ doctrines such as God being once an man, etc.
  
• That the there should be a separation of Church and State, where the president of the Church wasn’t also the political leader.

Interestingly enough, the church eventually reformed itself in exactly the way that the Nauvoo Expositor recommended. As soon as it did so, it started to get along swimmingly with society.

Go figure.

[_Analytics]

I'm afraid that is too simplistic for me. The relationships were understood to be marriages by all parties involved. You, of course, are free to continue insisting that plural marriage never existed because it wasn't legally recognized under nineteenth-century US state and federal laws. I disagree.

The church doesn't recognize a monogamous marriage if it isn't legal. And Joseph's first "marriages" were done without even the sealing power, so they were neither legal on earth or in heaven.

The Church's official position on polygamy, as taught in its scriptures and believed by its rank-and-file members, was this:

Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in the case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again. ~D&C 101:4

These "marriages" weren't even recognized by the Church. That's why there are no church records that indicate to whom Joseph Smith was "married".

[_why me]

You will never find the quote because it never existed. Wish all you want. However, I'm confident that if you asked, many of us can reference the instances where Smith condemned what he was secretly practicing.

I know that I read it somewhere but where I don't know. I was hoping the Nevo could help me but....I don't think that he can. However, I did provide testimony from william law's son. He seems pretty convinced that Joseph Smith was on the up and up when William's son witnessed the exchange between his father and Joseph. See my above post.

I think that there is more to this story than what the critics are saying now. I also can see the internal struggle with Joseph Smith over polygamy. It certainly wasn't easy for him. He seems to be convinced that it came from god and it also seems true that he put it off for as long as possible. And I don't believe that while in Nauvoo he suddenly got horny toad syndrome.

[_Nevo]

There are similarities to Koresh, true, but I don't think we'll see many people 200 years from now devoting a significant portion of their lives to thinking and arguing about his life and legacy.

You never know. But that really isn't the benchmark of legitimacy you hew to is it?

I guess that depends how you define legitimacy. Clearly, some religious figures are more historically significant than others. Whereas David Koresh's movement withered and died on the branch (pardon the pun), Joseph Smith founded an emergent global faith. I think that places him closer to Moses and Jesus and Muhammad than to David Koresh—or any of the other myriad largely forgotten failed prophets/messiahs.

[_why me]

That’s an excellent summary of what the paper said. It’s important to understand that William Law et. al. weren’t trying to destroy the Church, they were trying to reform the Church.


Go figure.

Go figure is right. William Law wanted to destroy the LDS church by any means necessary and most likely declare himself leader of the new church when Joseph Smith and the leadership were disposed. His paper was a paper of vengance and bitterness. And the first issue was a reflectiion of it.

[_beefcalf]

That’s an excellent summary of what the paper said. It’s important to understand that William Law et. al. weren’t trying to destroy the Church, they were trying to reform the Church.


Go figure.

Go figure is right. William Law wanted to destroy the LDS church by any means necessary and most likely declare himself leader of the new church when Joseph Smith and the leadership were disposed. His paper was a paper of vengance and bitterness. And the first issue was a reflectiion of it.

It's like... you see non-existant things simply because your belief system demands that they be there.

[_Darth J]

Nevo, let me simplify this for you:

Joseph Smith had a total of one legally recognized wife. He entered into numerous adulterous relationships with other females.

I'm afraid that is too simplistic for me. The relationships were understood to be marriages by all parties involved. You, of course, are free to continue insisting that plural marriage never existed because it wasn't legally recognized under nineteenth-century US state and federal laws. I disagree.

You do think that Joseph Smith's marriages were legally valid? In what jurisdiction of the United States would they have been legally valid?

Is it your considered opinion that mutual belief is sufficient to give legal sanction to a relationship between two or more persons?

He was engaging in secret sexual relations mainly unknown to his legal wife and unknown to the majority of his followers....He lied about engaging in secret sexual liaisons in violation of his legally-recognized marriage to Emma.

Reducing Joseph Smith's polygamous relationships—which were typically all about forging bonds of loyalty and creating "fictive kin" and involved little, if any, intimacy—to mere "secret sexual liaisons" is another gross oversimplication.

You are not seriously going to start arguing that he never had sex with his plural "wives," are you?

How about if we take the Partridge sisters for an example? Was he secretive about what he was doing with them? Did they confirm--under oath---that there was sexuality in their relationship with Joseph? Did Joseph deceive Emma about the parameters of his relationship with the Partridge sisters?

Does "gross oversimplification" mean "true, but not faith-promoting"? Did you forget that in the post to which you are responding, I acknowledged Joseph Smith's desire to have this extensive "family" as well?

He lied about it to Emma. He lied about it to most of the members of his church. He lied about it to his closest followers.

He also told the truth to Emma and his closest followers.

That must be why William Law was surprised to learn about polygamy, or why the Church (the Brighamite branch, that is) did not officially announce the practice of polygamy until 1852, or why Joseph re-enacted a marriage ceremony with the Partridge sisters in front of Emma even though he had already "married" them.

But I get what you are saying. We can't call Joseph Smith a liar, because sometimes he told the truth.

And as I predicted, there is a lot of talk in this thread about William Law's motives without mentioning that Joseph propositioned William Law's wife.

There's also a contemporary report that Jane Law propositioned Joseph, but predictably that has gone unacknowledged in this thread.

Are you talking about this?

Likewise, William Law's adultery.

Are you suggesting that William Law helped write the Expositor to cover up his own adultery? And if that were hypothetically his motive, that would change what Joseph Smith did in what way, exactly?

If William Law had dressed up his adultery in terms of "understanding" that he was married to someone in addition to his legal wife, would you feel better about it?

As far as I have been able to determine from the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth did not have secret, illegal sexual relations with female members of his flock.

No, he was celibate and traveled the countryside with an entourage that included single women—which was every bit as shocking to contemporary sensibilities as Joseph Smith's polygamy is to modern observers.

You can't think of an example of Jesus using his followers for his personal benefit either, huh?

He did not have God command his followers to purchase stock to build a big, nice house for him to live in.

No, he had God command them to their leave their livelihoods and families and to divest themselves of all earthly attachments. Jesus and the Twelve were supported financially by Mary Magdalene and a few others (Luke 8:3).

This relates to revelations that personally benefited Joseph Smith how, exactly?

Here, I'll help you with a scripture comparing Joseph Smith telling his followers God wanted them to pay for a big, nice house for him to what Jesus did:

And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air [have] nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay [his] head.

Matthew 8:20

When Jesus was arrested, he told his followers to put away their weapons. He did not send them an order to arm themselves and come rescue him.

Neither did Joseph Smith as far as I know. Wasn't the Dunham letter a Hofmann forgery?

Was Allen Stout's journal a forgery?

And while they were in jail, Brother Joseph wrote an official order to Jonathan Dunham to bring the Legion and reserve him from being killed, but Dunham did not let a single man or mortal know that he had received such orders, and we were kept in the city under arms, not knowing but all was well, until the mob came and forced the prison and slew Joseph and Hyrum Smith and wounded John Taylor severely.

If you want a millennial prophet to whom Joseph Smith's behavior is comparable, including the circumstances of his death, the name you are looking for is not Jesus of Nazareth. It is David Koresh.

There are similarities to Koresh, true, but I don't think we'll see many people 200 years from now devoting a significant portion of their lives to thinking and arguing about his life and legacy.

We've only had 18 years since the Waco incident, so that is impossible to know. But if you think that people are not devoting a significant amount of time to thinking and arguing about David Koresh's life and legacy, you apparently have not done an internet search on David Koresh.

Was the point of your comment that the morality of someone's actions depends on the number of followers they attract, or are you implying that there's a double standard for people who are or were LDS, but were never Branch Davidians, to talk about Joseph Smith more than they talk about David Koresh?

[_Buffalo]

I guess that depends how you define legitimacy. Clearly, some religious figures are more historically significant than others. Whereas David Koresh's movement withered and died on the branch (pardon the pun), Joseph Smith founded an emergent global faith. I think that places him closer to Moses and Jesus and Muhammad than to David Koresh—or any of the other myriad largely forgotten failed prophets/messiahs.

Much closer to L. Ron Hubbard or Reverend Moon.

Although really, the church Joseph Smith founded is mostly dead. It lives on in the small Mormon polygamy cults, but the main LDS church is not the same church Joseph started.

[Guest]

There are similarities to Koresh, true, but I don't think we'll see many people 200 years from now devoting a significant portion of their lives to thinking and arguing about his life and legacy.

You never know. But that really isn't the benchmark of legitimacy you hew to is it?

I guess that depends how you define legitimacy. Clearly, some religious figures are more historically significant than others. Whereas David Koresh's movement withered and died on the branch (pardon the pun), Joseph Smith founded an emergent global faith. I think that places him closer to Moses and Jesus and Muhammad than to David Koresh—or any of the other myriad largely forgotten failed prophets/messiahs.

Okay, I wasn't sure whether you were really going with the bandwagon fallacy. Thanks for being explicit that you are.

By the way, Nevo, just maybe possibly one reason why the membership of the Branch Davidians declined could perhaps be related to the fact that most of them were killed by the federal government in 1993.

P.S. The Branch Davidian movement is still around.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/dc_branc3.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Dav ... urch_today

[_Buffalo]

The Church's official position on polygamy, as taught in its scriptures and believed by its rank-and-file members, was this:

Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in the case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again. ~D&C 101:4

These "marriages" weren't even recognized by the Church. That's why there are no church records that indicate to whom Joseph Smith was "married".

It just goes to show, the "not official doctrine" defense is a double-edged sword.