The distortion is there to protect Zina. She did not get a divorce, she moved in with Brigham Young (which she felt she had a right to do since she was sealed to him) and she left her legal husband and took his children. Her first husband was left to pine after her the rest of his life. It's not a pretty tale and puts her in a bad light.
Do you know this or are you guessing?
How does lying "protect" Zina? She is not the only woman who was married to multiple men and there were other women who were traded or who moved up by attaching to a higher lever man.
Lying doesn't do anything but keep people believing the church isn't always honest.
:-(
I think the days of purposely misleading are over now that the Internet is here.
~td~
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
truth dancer wrote:I think the days of purposely misleading are over now that the Internet is here.
~td~
I hope so. I wish so. Unfortunately, I don't think so.
If the church really cared about the truth, there would be no lies. That which was incorrect would have no manipulative intent behind it. As it is now, and as it will be in the foreseeable future, that which is incorrect might very well be because of manipulative intent.
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
Scottie wrote:Like I said on MAD, I'm willing to give LDS.org the benefit of the doubt. It is entirely possible that whoever wrote this article simply got their facts wrong. This article may or may not have been reviewed by someone else who didn't catch the mistake.
Honestly, if they had their facts straight, they could have written it like this:
"She raised two sons from her first marriage to Henry Jacobs, one daughter from her later marriage to Brigham Young, and four of Brigham Young’s other children."
Simple. Why even mention where Henry was at all? The church is still just fine and it is factually accurate.
It really looks like a mistake, not a coverup.
I agree--I think it was a mistake, not an intentional desire to mislead.
Since the distortion protects Zina, I suspect it could have been an explanation she used or even some of her descendants; perpetuating the myth that her first husband had died (since he was not around) and the actual facts don't paint her in a very good light. This is pretty common when you look back at family stories.
Every man is a moon and has a [dark] side which he turns toward nobody; you have to slip around behind if you want to see it. ---Mark Twain
The distortion is there to protect Zina. She did not get a divorce, she moved in with Brigham Young (which she felt she had a right to do since she was sealed to him) and she left her legal husband and took his children. Her first husband was left to pine after her the rest of his life. It's not a pretty tale and puts her in a bad light.
Do you know this or are you guessing?
How does lying "protect" Zina? She is not the only woman who was married to multiple men and there were other women who were traded or who moved up by attaching to a higher lever man.
Lying doesn't do anything but keep people believing the church isn't always honest.
:-(
I think the days of purposely misleading are over now that the Internet is here.
~td~
No, I'm guessing. This is my observation after reading the story on FAIR about her life and I'm just figuring out how someone could have thought she was a widow when she wasn't. As I said in my post above, I wouldn't be surprised if she herself perpetuated the myth that she was a widow.
Every man is a moon and has a [dark] side which he turns toward nobody; you have to slip around behind if you want to see it. ---Mark Twain
Since the distortion protects Zina, I suspect it could have been an explanation she used or even some of her descendants; perpetuating the myth that her first husband had died (since he was not around) and the actual facts don't paint her in a very good light. This is pretty common when you look back at family stories.
No historical source bears this out. Even a simple check of Wiki would have averted any potential mistake. Compton covered this in his 1997 In Sacred Lonliness too.
Since the distortion protects Zina, I suspect it could have been an explanation she used or even some of her descendants; perpetuating the myth that her first husband had died (since he was not around) and the actual facts don't paint her in a very good light. This is pretty common when you look back at family stories.
No historical source bears this out. Even a simple check of Wiki would have averted any potential mistake. Compton covered this in his 1997 In Sacred Lonliness too.
I don't buy this one.
The whole thing either paints the church as dishonest or incompetent. Which is worse depends on the individual, I guess.
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism has nothing about Zina being "widowed". So where did they get that idea? You'd think that Church writing committees would at least check the EOM, wouldn't you?
Allen Wyatt actually wrote a good article on this, Zina and Her Men
The article was updated August 31, 2006. That is, two years ago. Apparently Church writing committees don't read FAIR, Wiki, Compton, nor the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.
John Larsen wrote:The difference between this and most of the LDS Church's distortions is they usually choose to selectively leave out key pieces of information that reflect poorly on the history of the Church. However, in this case you have something that is factually incorrect. But it is something that is key to the history of Zina. It is inconceivable that the Church would employ someone to write the biography of a key figure in LDS leadership and not know the simplist facts. As Ray has pointed out, that is not how they work at the COB.
The problem as I see it is why they would choose to distort the facts by saying she was widowed?? You could sketch her life just fine without any mention at all of where Henry was.
Precisely why it is most likely to be a distortion. If it were merely a mistake, this is not how they would make it.
Bottom line: Zina chose to be sealed to Joseph after being married to Henry. After that she chose to be married to Brigham. She maintained contact with Henry until his death years later. There was no skulduggery involved, no misuse of authority, no "kicking out" of Henry. Zina made a choice. Henry agreed with that choice. And both lived with the consequences of those choices. We may not agree with those choices, but to deny those choices based on polemics or in an effort to somehow bludgeon the Church is to avoid the simple truth: they chose.
Wow, that makes all the difference. How could anyone have a problem with a married woman dumping her husband to marry someone with a higher calling?
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.