dblagent007 wrote:I ran across that quote, but there is a FAIR article about that analyzes the quote in the greater context of BY's speech. It makes a decent case that only belief in polygamy is required. I'm looking for something for unequivocal.
If someone doesn't want to believe something, then there is always room to equivocate.
The key (and intentional) point is the ambiguous words used, so statements can have a double meaning. "Celestial Marriage" in Nauvoo and Utah was polygamy. Just because modern LDS understand "Celestial Marriage" to encompass monogamy as well doesn't mean the 19th century church wasn't teaching that polygamy was required for exaltation.
Here are some explanatory references:
Plural wives, like their husbands, viewed polygamy as a practical and honorable means for providing marriage and motherhood to thousands of women who may have otherwise remained unmarried in a monogamous world. Church leaders pronounced over and over that plural marriage countered various social evils. Above all they stressed that the principle was commanded by God to raise a righteous generation. Mormons nearly always entered polygamy because they believed it was essential to their salvation, that God required it of them. "Maney may think it verry strainge that I would consent for my dear husband[,] whome I loved as I did my own life and lived with him for years[,] to take more wives," wrote Sarah D. Rich, wife of Apostle Charles C. Rich. "This I could not have done if I had not believed it to be right in the Sight of god, and believed it to be one principal of his gospel once again restored to earth, that those holding the preasthood of heaven might by obeying this order attain to a higher glory in the eternal world" (Arrington 1974, 288). Annie Clark Tanner was similarly certain that [p.91] "women would never have accepted polygamy had it not been for their religion. The principle of Celestial Marriage was considered the capstone of the Mormon religion. Only by practicing it would the highest exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom of God be obtained" (Tanner 1976, 1-2).
Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, p.90
While Solicitor General Jenks was in Utah in early July, he suggested to Mormon authorities that all references to polygamy in their public addresses should cease. As evidence that this policy was quickly implemented, Abraham Cannon's journal entry at that time stated that "public talk on polygamy and against government is forbidden for the present, and only wise, discreet men are asked to speak publicly."37 Such a course certainly did not mean that the private views of L.D.S. leaders had been [p.53] altered. Speaking at a small private gathering on July 31, the day before the Utah constitution was approved, President Joseph F. Smith said that God honored those women who entered plural marriage and "the men who obeyed it occupied a higher plane than those who disregarded it." He did make a slight distinction, which was becoming a more marked difference from earlier preachings, when he stated that "this celestial law is permissive, just as other laws of the gospel are." This meant that entering into plural marriage was more voluntary than mandatory. But, Smith continued, "those who reject it would be damned," and those who rendered obedience to it should be saved and rewarded. The church leader meant those who rejected the opportunity to enter plural marriage were depriving themselves of exaltation in the highest realm of the Celestial Kingdom—the heaven of Mormon theology. Although it did not entirely preclude lesser Celestial glories to non-polygamists, they could not expect the rewards to be anticipated by those who had complied with the higher law.
Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance, p. 53
As has been repeatedly mentioned, the Mormons living in Mexico had been so thoroughly indoctrinated in the concept that plural marriage was an absolute pre-requisite to the highest exaltation in the celestial kingdom, a glory toward which every Church member should aspire, that it was understandably next to impossible for them to adjust to the idea that the Church itself, had now prohibited the practice. That the Church should abandon a "doctrine" for which the great majority of the older members of the Mormon communities had left the United States and moved to a "foreign country" was a stunning blow to old and young alike. A universal struggle went on within the minds of these colonists. They had to choose, as it appeared to them, between their most cherished and most often proclaimed idea of how to obtain exaltation and a desire to acknowledge the divine source of President Smith's proclamation doing away with the practice of polygamy throughout the entire Church. It is little wonder that the acceptance of this pronouncement was not universal.
H. Grant Ivins, Poligamy in Mexico
When Apostle Lorenzo Snow was apprehended and placed on trial, the prosecuting attorney, Victor Bierbower, predicted that if Snow and others were found guilty and sent to prison church leaders would [p. 51] find it convenient to have a revelation setting aside the commandment on polygamy. Numbers of revelations were forthcoming—more, perhaps, than at any time since the death of Joseph Smith. But the messages invariably encouraged perseverance, spoke of the imminence of final things, and urged continued allegiance to the principle.83 One communication affirmed that those to whom the law was given must obey it, that it was a requirement for life in the celestial kingdom.84 In another the appointment of a new church authority was made contingent on his conforming to the law of plurality.85 And in 1886 President John Taylor was told that the tenet would not be withdrawn, for it was an eternal principle. Too many, said the revelation, were negligent in obeying the commandment, and the only way to enter God's glory was by doing "the works of Abraham."86 With a tabernacle audience intoning "amen" to his words, President John Taylor said in 1881 that God would put a hook in their oppressors' mouths and lead them away, while blessing and honoring Zion for its obedience to his holy law.87
Instruction by church authorities went beyond an acceptance of only the doctrine of plural marriage. Men were told they must actually engage in the practice. Only those willing to make the sacrifices involved in such a life-style, Joseph F. Smith said, were worthy of the highest glory.88 George Q. Cannon informed an audience in St. George that he was reluctant to lift his hand to sustain any presiding officer who had not entered the principle. Church elders were told that having a dead woman sealed to them, or living "consecutive polygamy" by taking a new wife after a former one passed away, was not enough. One must live with more wives than one at the same time.89 It was a requirement for membership in the revived School of the Prophets during the 1880s. There was, for example, question whether to admit Patriarch of the Church John Smith because he smoked and, though husband to two wives, spent all his time with only one.90
B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant, p. 51
The Pacheco interview and facts concerning Mexican law also help explain a question that has long troubled students of the Mormon experience with polygamy: why did Anthony W. Ivins never take additional wives of his own? Beyond performing the ceremony for others, including the plural marriage of his own daughter, Ivins was known to encourage some to enter the order.58 Yet he stood apart, conspicuously so, from the practice in his own life. Not only did his son and daughter recall that family members were taunted by neighbor children, saying that iheir father's monogamy would keep them out of the celestial kingdom, but they remembered that apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley were especially insistent that Ivins embrace the principle.59
Many years later, when Heber J. Grant was president of the church, he was interviewed by Raymond Taylor for a biography of his father, the former apostle John W. Taylor. Grant disparaged the project, asking why anyone would want to write a history of one who stood against the church. As an instance, Grant said he remembered that apostles Taylor and Cowley "ganged-up" on Anthony W. Ivins in an effort to intimidate him to become a polygamist, telling him he could not advance in the hereafter unless he did. And, Grant commented to [p. 178] Raymond Taylor, "you know that that is a lie!"60 Grant seemed to have forgotten that he had earlier urged Ivins to do the same thing, telling him that unless he entered the principle the two were unlikely to associate in the celestial kingdom after death.61
B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant, p. 177
Gradually plural marriage became such an important institution in the Mormon subculture that some leaders were teaching that it was essential for eternal exaltation. For example, in 1886 the Mutual Improvement Association of Hyrum, Utah, began producing weekly manuscript newspapers that were passed around the community from home to home. The first edition of the Evening Star contained a sermon by a local leader on the front page that began "no one may be saved in the celestial kingdom of God unless he enters into the practice of plural marriage." A later edition asserted that "Abraham, the friend of God, was a polygamist. We have no account of the Lord appearing to Abraham before he had taken his second wife."9 Another example of Mormon beliefs in this regard was suggested by Apostle Orson Pratt in the first official announcement and defense of polygamy in 1852. Asserting that polygamy was a sacred order that had been the practice of such biblical figures as Abraham, Jacob, and others, he then suggested "that there were several holy women that greatly loved Jesus--such as Mary, and Martha her sister, and Mary Magdalene; and Jesus greatly loved them, and associated with them much, and when he arose from the dead, instead of first showing himself to his chosen witnesses, the Apostles, he appeared first to these women, or at least to one of them, namely Mary Magdalene. Now, it would be very natural for a husband in the resurrection to appear first to his own dear wives, and afterwards show himself to his other friends."10
Although this was not official church doctrine, there was considerable pressure in Mormon communities to enter polygamy. During one of the October general conference meetings in 1875, Apostle Wilford Woodruff asserted: "We have many bishops and elders who have but one wife. They are abundantly qualified to enter the higher law and take more, but their wives will not let them. Any man who will permit a woman to lead him and bind him down is but little account in the Church and Kingdom of God. The law of Patriarchal marriage and plurality of wives is a revelation and commandment of God to us, and we should obey it."11
D. Michael Quinn, New Mormon History, Ch.11, p.184
While the Reorganized Church violently opposed the practice of plural marriage as a gross evil, there can be little doubt that it emerged in Nauvoo during the early 1840s.4 William Clayton, a confidant of Joseph Smith, Jr., recorded in his journal the circumstances surrounding the coming forth of the practice. He noted that on 12 July 1843 Joseph Smith, Jr., in the presence of two witnesses, dictated a revelation commanding the church hierarchy to enter into marriage covenants with more than one wife as a part of God's eternal plan of salvation and a necessary prerequisite for entrance into the Celestial Kingdom. Most students of Nauvoo polygamy assert that the writing down of this document was simply a formality, for Joseph Smith had married several women and had taught the concept to many of his chief associates already. Apparently, the seed of the plural marriage doctrine had germinated as early as 1831 as Smith pondered the meaning of several Old Testament statements about the subject, not recording the revelation until the late date only because he believed the Saints previously had not been capable of accepting the practice. He reportedly commented that it was time finally to give the Saints meat whereas they had only received milk before.5
Roger D. Launius, Joseph Smith III Pragmatic Prophet, p.191
