In the first instance, Joseph Smith issued statements denying the allegations he was practicing plural marriage. Additionally, section 101 of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants explicitly denied allegations that Church members were practicing polygamy and stated the only type of marriage sanctioned by the Church was monogamy.
In the second instance, Joseph F. Smith issued statements (under oath at Senate confirmation hearings) that the Church was no longer practicing plural marriage.
See if you can tell the similar apologetic used in both articles to defend these untrue statements made by Church leaders.
In the essay dealing with plural marriage in Nauvoo, the subject is the rumors that were circulating regarding the fact Joseph Smith was practicing plural marriage.
The essay defends this by saying:
The rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated “celestial” plural marriage. The statements emphasized that the Church practiced no marital law other than monogamy while implicitly leaving open the possibility that individuals, under direction of God’s living prophet, might do so.
https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marri ... o?lang=eng
So when Joseph Smith said that the Church (and he) were not practicing “spiritual wifery” and “polygamy,” it did not mean the Church was not practicing “plural marriage.” It apparently depends on what the definition of “is” is.
Worse than that, the essay proposes an alternative defense; that even though “the Church practiced no marital law other than monogamy,” it didn’t mean that individuals Church members were not. (What is the Church if not its members?)
Even worse than that, the essay says that Joseph Smith’s emphatic denials that he was practicing “polygamy” were “implicitly leaving open this very possibility—“that individuals, under direction of God’s living prophet, might do so.”
Now, really. This is too much.
Joseph Smith’s assertion that the Church was practicing only monogamy implicitly meant that individual Church members were practicing polygamy?
So when I repeatedly asseverate that I did not pick your pocket and steal your money, it implicitly leaves open the possibility that I picked your pocket and took your money?
A similar tack is taken in the second essay dealing with Joseph F. Smith’s testimony regarding the cessation of polygamy:
The Senate called on many witnesses to testify. Church President Joseph F. Smith took the stand in the Senate chamber in March 1904. When asked, he defended his family relationships, telling the committee that he had cohabited with his wives and fathered children with them since 1890. He said it would be dishonorable of him to break the sacred covenants he had made with his wives and with God. When questioned about new plural marriages performed since 1890, President Smith carefully distinguished (there's that phrase again! Note it appears elsewhere in this same essay--"The Manifesto was carefully worded to address the immediate conflict with the U.S. government.") between actions sanctioned by the Church and ratified in Church councils and conferences, and the actions undertaken by individual members of the Church. “There never has been a plural marriage by the consent or sanction or knowledge or approval of the church since the manifesto,” he testified.
In this legal setting, President Smith sought to protect the Church while stating the truth. (I.e, President Smith sought to protect the Church by lying.) His testimony conveyed a distinction Church leaders had long understood (but which President Smith hoped the U.S. Senate would not catch): the Manifesto removed the divine command for the Church collectively to sustain and defend plural marriage; it had not, up to this time, prohibited individuals from continuing to practice or perform plural marriage as a matter of religious conscience.
https://www.lds.org/topics/the-manifest ... e?lang=eng
So once again the distinction between the Church and its members is used as a way to defend a Church leader from making false and misleading statements.
I am surprised to read this re-writing of history regarding the purpose of the first Manifesto. Here I thought it was a declaration that the LDS Church would no longer practice polygamy. Now I understand that is not what it meant at all--rather it was simply a removal of the "divine command for the Church to sustain and defend plural marriage."
The members could still practice it--they just couldn't sustain it or defend it. (I.e., they could practice it but only in secret.)
The essay slips in the phrase "religious conscience" at the end of the above quote, saying that the first Manifesto didn't prohibit "individuals from continuing to practice or perform plural marriage as a matter of religious conscience."
But this contradicts another part of the essay which states that the US Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. United States expressly (not implicitly) held as follows:
The Church mounted a vigorous legal defense all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. United States (1879), the Supreme Court ruled against the Latter-day Saints: religious belief was protected by law, religious practice was not.
So the essay states that in 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court held "religious belief was protected by law, religious practice was not."
But in 1890, the first Manifesto didn't prohibit "individuals from continuing to practice or perform plural marriage as a matter of religious conscience."
But I thought the First Manifesto set forth President Woodruff's intention to submit to the laws of the land. Oh, that's right, it did.
And this part of the Manifesto is quoted in the essay, as well:
“Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.”
This statement seems to run into a flaming train wreck with footnote 36 of the essay:
36.Marriages and Sealings Performed Outside the Temple, 1853–1857, 1873–1903, Church History Library, Salt Lake City. The ledger does not record plural and monogamous marriages known to have been performed by Anthony W. Ivins, Matthias F. Cowley, and Abraham O. Woodruff during the 1890s and early 1900s. In all, 8 of 19 members of the Quorum of the Twelve who served between 1890 and 1904 married new plural wives during those years, and these marriages are not represented on the ledger. These members include Brigham Young Jr., George Teasdale, John W. Taylor, Abraham H. Cannon, Marriner W. Merrill, Matthias F. Cowley, Abraham Owen Woodruff, and Rudger Clawson. It is alleged that President Wilford Woodruff married an additional plural wife in 1897, but the historical record makes this unclear (see Thomas G. Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991], 326–28).
I am beginning to see why these essays are issued anonymously . . .
All the Best!
--Consiglieri