The Awkward Conversation: My Faith and Polygamy

Recently, our group stumbled upon the topic of polygamy during a social setting. Conversation clipped along nicely until a dear sister said: "If we can steer the conversation in a different direction, that would be nice...polygamy pretty much belongs on the faith-shelf right now." Awkward silence. So right when we thought we have nicely tucked away that rather *ahem* different *cough* chapter of our history into the archives, we have that oh-so-pleasant flurry of news coverage where we see folks wearing pioneer clothes carted away in buses. Polygamy is at the fore once again.

So many writers (not all, but many) on polygamy have made quite the show about the loss of their faith in the wake of writing about their research on polygamy. The first and greatest self-proclaimed martyr in academia was D. Michael Quinn. Also note Stanley Ivins and B. Carmon Hardy. All researched polygamy--particularly post-Manifesto polygamy--and all lost their faith. They generally claim that polygamy in itself did not deal the death-blow, but an uncooperative church bureaucracy that just did not appreciate their scholarship. Is this really such a third-rail issue...a hot potato that, if touched, will either cost one his faith, his membership, or both?

The next two posts will deal with two topics...fittingly, the beginning and the end: 1) The earliest proto-polygamist marriages (as Kathryn Daynes calls them) and 2) the end of polygamy after the Manifesto and what the nature of that end says about how we view church leadership. Both deal with awkward questions of honesty that require a cool head to navigate both faithfully and with faith (an expectation that I can only hope to meet).

The primary questions relating to Joseph Smith's marriages are three: 1) Why did he do it?, 2) Why did he keep it from Emma and society?

1) Why did he do it?

His first practice of plural marriage was in 1833/5 (depending on whose chronology you accept) with the 17-year old Fanny Alger in Kirtland, OH. The age should not disturb us in the least...it's a well-established fact that marriage ages, on par, were much lower then. The accounts swirling this marriage are legion...many historians simply accept it as an extramarital affair carte blanche. Yet the evidence suggests otherwise. We have two primary accounts of Joseph's marriage to Fanny. Both are written several decades ex post facto; both are second-hand. While both disagree on the particulars, both do agree that Joseph Smith saw his involvement with Alger as a marriage. One account, that of Mosiah Hancock, even notes that his father performed the ceremony. The matter was not publicly discussed, however.

Later, Oliver Cowdery caught wind of it...and he was livid. Yet why was he? The debate rages indeed...scholars fight over whether Oliver Cowdery himself practiced polygamy. In 1838, he wrote in a letter that the Alger marriage was a "dirty, filthy affair." Other leaders such as David Patten, Thomas B. Marsh, and Brigham Young were unaware of the marriage until Cowdery himself made it public. The question of what Oliver knew and when he knew is sketchy here...for a sizable amount of evidence suggests that Oliver knew about polygamy from the days of translating the Bible in 1831. As this is more testimonial than evidence, I will save the reader from a death so awful as wading through evidentiary analysis. In any regard, during Oliver's high council hearing in 1838, Joseph insisted that Oliver acknowledge that he had never deemed the Alger incident adultery...and that Oliver, "as his bosom friend had been intrusted (sic) with many things." Oliver Cowdery most likely could not have been as morally opposed to polygamy as he claimed...he did after all insist on returning to Utah to live with the Saints. Thus, the reasons for the Alger marriage must remain murky due to lack of evidence...Oliver's scandal thesis is suspect and the other theses leave to much to question given their late receipt in polygamy-laced Utah.

Later marriages give us more clues. Joseph married something on the order of 27-33 wives (Stan Ivins numbered it much more highly, but his methodology was sloppy, associating Smith names in Nauvoo with Joseph Smith rather carelessly). Lucy Walker, my great-great aunt, claimed it was "not a love matter" but that she was called to place her life on a sacrifical alter, as it were. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner claims to have had dreams hinting at a future marriage. Others such as Emily and Elizabeth Partridge tell us very little about their thoughts in the autobiography.
The question is, however...why did Joseph marry so many women when simply marrying a few might have satisfied the practice of the ancients? I would suggest this is an important question...for if we were to place licentious motives on Joseph, then we could hardly expect the cooperation from such a large number of women. Furthermore, not all of these women were young women in their attractive years. One was Brigham Young's sister, Fanny Young...a woman preparing herself for a life of spinsterhood. If Joseph simply saw this as a way of fulfilling his libido, then it would have been an odd method indeed. In almost all cases, Joseph made no secret of the marriage to the family...indeed, he often asked these family members (such as Levi Hancock in the case of Fanny Alger or William HOlmes Walker in the case of Lucy Walker) to be intermediaries. Joseph's polygamy simply does not resemble what most of us would consider to be secret, forbidden loves. Polygamy seemed to be a family affair.

I conclude that, as an answer to 1) and to 3), Joseph did not see polygamy primarily as a method to satisfy sexual urges. We have no reason to believe that intimacy was withheld from many of these relationships (in fact, we have little evidence at all...the best Todd Compton could come up with is evidence that the marriage certificates and affidavits indicated that Joseph and wife X were married for both "time" and "eternity"...or that they were married "in very deed." Weak evidence, in myopinion). However, we might do well to actually think for a second that marriage might possibly be about something more than physical intimacy...just perhaps. As Bushman argues, we can see a thread of loneliness throughout Joseph's life...death, death, death. While Fanny Alger does not have any evidence of the "eternal marriage" doctrine associated with her, it is quite contemporaneous with the Nauvoo marriages. Joseph, who himself wishes for death on more than one occasion in his own writings, quite possibly saw himself as being more than a little alone in the world. He wishes for death to come upon him. Yet he calls the society of the Saints--there's our cooperative Spirit--"the order of the Son of God." An enduring society was divine. I have not done research into the law of adoption (adopting oneself to various prominent Church leaders) but such an application of the sealing principle even at this early stage would not surprise me. Joseph wanted to create a familial network in both ritual and reality that could last through the eons (See Bushman's chapter on "Stories of Eternity" for more on this). Plural marriages, including those to women who were already married, could be easily seen within this context (though we must be honest...Joseph also believed that he was foreordained to be their husband in the premortal life...it is interesting that only one or two confirm this detail...most are like Lucy and do not discuss the rationale much if at all). While we might not know Joseph's thoughts on these things (the comments we have from him are almost non-existent), it is not outrageous to suppose that Joseph's talk of foreordination not be seen in a Saturday's Warrior context but in the context of extending his family network to encompass as many of his trusted friends (who were few indeed) as possible. In at least one purported "rendezvous" with a plural wife, part of the meeting was to give his plural wife's father a blessing to seal him up to eternal life. Not exactly the idea of an Italian restaurant style romantic evening.

While we might view such a concept with some skepticism given the polygamy connotations, neither should we be utterly averse to it. Ultimately, we believe that we are one family and as a family, should expect to be sealed to each other at some point once we show that we can handle the joy, sorrow, pain, and triumph of the families we do have.

Stay tuned...more on Joseph's plural marriages coming up soon...btw, I'm still a believer!!