Some more thoughts on polygamy

[_Runtu]

Runtu, could you expouind on #3?

Also, I am both intrigued and alarmed at the notion of bagaining away wives and daughters in exchange for familial exaltation. I wonder if Charity or someone else has a take on this.

Well, that's not what I was referring to in #3, but you are correct in suggesting that Joseph made a family's exaltation contingent on giving up a wife or daughter on several occasions.

Without having an intervening sentence muck up the question (sorry), could you tell more about #3?

Sure. According to Mosiah Hancock, Levi Hancock approached Joseph Smith asking his permission to marry Clarissa Reed, who was a servant in the Smith home. Joseph told Levi that he would approve the marriage if Levi convinced Fanny Alger (his niece) to marry Joseph as a plural wife. Levi then approached his brother and sister-in-law to ask them permission for Joseph to marry Fanny. Fanny agreed and became his plural wife. Levi subsequently married Clarissa, who according to her son was disappointed that Joseph had not wanted her as a plural wife.

[_Phaedrus Ut]

Well said Runtu.

You've highlighted many of the troubling aspects of polygamy. The apparent coercion of charisma that Joseph used to manipulate those around him for his own that I find distasteful and abusive.


Phaedrus

[_moksha]

Clarissa, who according to her son was disappointed that Joseph had not wanted her as a plural wife.

This may have helped "Take a load off Fanny". Bob Dylan jokes not allowed. ~mods

So back to this question,

Also, I am both intrigued and alarmed at the notion of bagaining away wives and daughters in exchange for familial exaltation. I wonder if Charity or someone else has a take on this

.

[_Runtu]

Clarissa, who according to her son was disappointed that Joseph had not wanted her as a plural wife.

This may have helped "Take a load off Fanny". Bob Dylan jokes not allowed. ~mods

So back to this question,

Also, I am both intrigued and alarmed at the notion of bagaining away wives and daughters in exchange for familial exaltation. I wonder if Charity or someone else has a take on this

.

I'm not charity (nor charitable, according to some), but I find this highly disturbing. It wasn't enough to say that he was commanded to do this (at the point of a sword, no less), but he tells these young girls they are jeopardizing their families' exaltation if they refuse.

Utterly reprehensible.

[_gramps]

Clarissa, who according to her son was disappointed that Joseph had not wanted her as a plural wife.

This may have helped "Take a load off Fanny". Bob Dylan jokes not allowed. ~mods

So back to this question,

Also, I am both intrigued and alarmed at the notion of bagaining away wives and daughters in exchange for familial exaltation. I wonder if Charity or someone else has a take on this

.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and sorry for the minor diversion on this thread, but...wasn't that The Band's tune, rather than Dylan's?

[_truth dancer]

Hi Runtu...

Maybe I'm mentally defective, but I don't see anything godly in any of this.

I hope I can be forgiven for finding this disturbingly similar to the procurers who scour bus stations to find new recruits to prostitution rings.

I think it is sad that the church created a dynamic where we think there is something wrong with goodness, and that which seems horrific and disgusting to one's deepest sense of holiness, is actually a wonderful Godly law instituted by Christ himself.

This is what was difficult for me as a believer. The idea that what was considered holy, peaceful, loving, kind, and good in my heart should be elimated and replaced by what, in the most tender areas of my soul is dispicable and cruel.

It is crazy making.

~dancer~

[_Sethbag]

I'm not charity (nor charitable, according to some), but I find this highly disturbing. It wasn't enough to say that he was commanded to do this (at the point of a sword, no less), but he tells these young girls they are jeopardizing their families' exaltation if they refuse.

There's an obvious corrolary that's in play when Joseph says "an angel will kill me if I don't marry you", and that is "an angel will kill me if you don't marry me". Basically he's telling the girls that if they don't agree to marry him, he's going to be killed. What young teenage girl wants to get the Prophet killed due to her own "selfishness"? If that's not coercive in the extreme, then I don't know what is. It's obscenely coercive.

Charity, if you're still here, what do you think about Joseph Smith telling a young girl that she'll get him killed if she doesn't marry him? Just another day in the life of a true prophet of God? Maybe we can't understand it because we weren't there, but if we were, you're sure we would have seen that it was just Fine? That maybe we're just presentists, and that in back in the 1830s/40s it would have been just fine for a 38 year old man to tell an 18 year old girl that God will have his angel kill him if she won't marry him in a secret ceremony behind his wife's back?

To me this stuff with Joseph's practice of polygamy and polyandry is one of the most obvious tip-offs that there is something fundementally wrong with the whole picture of Joseph Smith as true Prophet of God. A person who can learn about all of these things and still choose to believe that Joseph Smith was a righteous, humble, Prophet of God has truly given their minds over to the church in abject surrender, and I can only shake my head in wonder.

[_harmony]

... I can only shake my head in wonder.

Not in wonder. In sorrow, maybe. In disgust, or in horror. But definitely not in wonder.

One of the ways I've heard this mess explained is that God only told Joseph to restore polygamy. He didn't tell him how. So all these mistakes are just stuttersteps, with Joseph trying to figure out how to make this come about. I don't buy it, but that's how an apologist explained it once to me.

[_Ray A]

It's worth considering some excerpts from Van Wagoner's Mormon Polygamy: A History (which I also read twice):

Rigdon began to publicly denounce polygamy in his Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate shortly after he left Nauvoo. Referring to the Quorum of the Twelve as the "Spiritual Wife Fraternity," he reasoned in the 15 October 1844 issue that "it would seem almost impossible that there could be found a set of men and women, in this age of the world, with the revelations of God in their hands, who could invent and propagate doctrines so ruinous to society, so debasing and demoralising as the doctrine of a man having a plurality of wives." Decrying the "transactions of the secret chambers," he announced that "the Twelve and their adherents have endeavored to carry on this spiritual wife business in secret." Moreover, he added, they "have gone to the most shameful and desperate lengths to keep it from the public. First, insulting innocent females, and when they resented the insult … would assail their characters by lying." Rigdon vented his dismay at the deceptive practices of church leaders: "How often these men and their accomplices stood up before the congregation, and called God and all the holy Angels to witness, that there was no such doctrine taught in the church; and it has now come to light."

Former Nauvoo stake president William Marks, a close friend of Emma, wrote in a July 1853 letter to the Zion's Harbinger and Baneemy's Organ that he met with the prophet a short time before his death. "We are a ruined people," Marks quoted Smith; "this doctrine of polygamy, or Spiritual-wife System, that has been taught and practiced among us, will prove our destruction and overthrow. I have been deceived … it is wrong; it is a curse to mankind, and we shall have to leave the United States soon, unless it can be put down, and its practice stopped in the Church." Marks said that Smith ordered him "to go into the high council, and I will have charges preferred against all who practice this doctrine; and I want you to try them by the laws of the Church, and cut them off, if they will not repent, and cease the practice of this doctrine … I will go into the stand and preach against it with all my might, and in this way, we may rid the Church of this damnable heresy." But Smith was killed shortly after this conversation, and when Marks related what Smith had said, his testimony "was pronounced false by the Twelve and disbelieved." (Emphasis added)

http://www.signaturebooks.com/excerpts/mp.htm

[_harmony]

I have been deceived …

Even then, Joseph was shrugging off any personal responsibility.Not "I was wrong". Not "I led people down the wrong path." But "I have been deceived." The man had no honor.