Posted on 04/25/2015 5:09:20 AM PDT by Colofornian
This is the third and final post on B. Carmon Hardy’s Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice and Demise (Arthur H. Clark Co., 2007). The simple story of the end of LDS polygamy is that it ended in 1890 with the Manifesto. The not-so-simple story involves a Second Manifesto in 1904, which raises the obvious question, “If the First Manifesto ended polygamy, why the need for a Second Manifesto?” The First Manifesto did not end the officially sanctioned LDS practice of polygamy. In fact, it took twenty years to fully execute that momentous institutional change of course.
While most are familiar with the increasingly aggressive federal legislation during the 1880s that eventually forced LDS President Wilford Woodruff to act, the Utah Commission also played an active role in attempting to force change on the Church. The 1890 report of the Commission was sent to Washington on August 22, 1890, alarming LDS leaders. Hardy comments, “Contrary to what churchmen had told the public, the report alleged that more than forty polygamous sealings had occurred in the previous year. To bring an end to such relationships, the commissioners urged that Congress impose additional punishments, including disenfranchisement. A measure of this kind had already been enacted in Idaho and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court” (p. 342). I will quote just a short paragraph from the report.
A large proportion of the twelve apostles and the high dignitaries of the church are polygamists, and all are reputed to be open believers in the doctrine. Indeed, it is believed that no one can be promoted to office in the church unless he professes a belief in it as a fundamental doctrine ….” (p. 343; ellipsis in original)
That last line makes me wonder whether one can be promoted to high office in the Church of 2015 without supporting polygamy as a fundamental (if non-practiced) doctrine. Maybe not that much has changed.
The Manifesto of 1890
So it came to pass that President Woodruff acted. As he recorded in his journal, “I arived at a point in the History of my life as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints whare I am under the necessity of acting for the Temporal Salvation of the Church” (p. 344, unredacted). Hardy notes, “the Manifesto appears to be overwhelmingly the work of the church president himself” (p. 344). In the document that became known as the Manifesto, sent to Washington via a press release, Woodruff recognized federal law prohibiting plural marriage and states (the text here is taken from Woodruff’s journal), “I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws and to use my influence with members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise …. And I now publicly declair that my advice to the Latter Day Saints is to refrain from Contracting any Marriage forbidden by the Law of the land” (p. 347, unredacted).
These statements appear to state the intention of Woodruff and, presumably, other LDS leaders to stop performing plural marriages and to prohibit other Latter-day Saints from doing so, at least with the approval of the Church. The course of post-Manifesto LDS polygamy shows otherwise. Hardy thinks the Manifesto “gave the impression of being little more than private opinion publicly expressed” (p. 348). Indeed, public reaction and comment to the Manifesto was all over the map, with official commentary printed in the Deseret News denying it was a revelation and local anti-Mormons suggesting the Manifesto was intended to fool the rest of the nation.
This mixed reaction to the Manifesto prompted a couple of responses. First, in subsequent court proceedings in Utah, Pres. Woodruff provided clairfying remarks, perhaps even going farther in his clarifications than intended. As one contemporary Mormon living in Southern Utah recorded in his journal about Woodruff’s statements in that proceeding: “Among other replies Pres Woodruff declared that the doctrine of Plural Marriage was not taught nor entered into and it was his intention to obey the Laws of the US regarding Polygamy and he counseled the saints to do so, and if any man entered into Polygamy it would be contrary to his views expressed in the Manifesto and would be liable to be excommunicated from the Church. This announcement by him as Pres. of the Church has caused an uneasy feeling among the People …” (p. 354).
Further, to bolster the statements he made in the Manifesto, Woodruff in 1891 publicly declared that it was a revelation. To a stake conference in Logan, he declared, “The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. … I should have let all the temples go out of of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do, and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write” (p. 356).
The Aftermath
In the wake of the Manifesto came a general amnesty for Mormon polygamists in 1893 and, in 1896, Utah statehood. The following decade brought the election of LDS apostle Reed Smoot to the US Senate, the embarrassing Senate hearings about whether he could take his seat, the Second Manifesto in 1904, and later the resignations of apostles Taylor and Cowley from the Quorum of the Twelve. The last actions, coupled with disciplinary actions taken from that point forward against members who pursued new polygamous unions, made it clear the Church had definitively turned away from the practice. Given the extent to which the Church and its leadership were committed to the practice before 1890, it is not surprising it took twenty years to effect the change in direction.
Any Latter-day Saint reading this post should also read the essay now available at LDS.org, “The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage.” Of the three detailed polygamy essays now posted at LDS.org (paralleling the three posts in this series), this last essay does the best job of presenting contemporaneous LDS views and covering the historical details without engaging in questionable justifications and apologetic arguments. Ironically, and despite how it was presented to outsiders, the essay essentially admits that the Manifesto of 1890 was neither intended nor implemented to end the officially sanctioned LDS practice of polygamy. As the essay acknowledges, “The Manifesto [of 1890] marked the beginning of the return to monogamy, which is the standard of the Church today.” The real change came in 1904, when LDS leaders finally committed to terminating the practice (or at least ceasing to perform new plural marriages) within the Church: “The Second Manifesto was a watershed event.”
Conclusion
LDS polygamy went from being a secret practice by a small group of insiders close to Joseph, to a publicly acknowledged widespread practice among the general membership of the Church, then back to a nonpublic unacknowledged practice, and finally to an underground practice that was eventually pushed entirely out of the mainstream LDS Church. Taking the long view, polygamy is still with us: while the Church studiously avoids the practice (by quickly excommunicating any Latter-day Saint involved with polygamy), the Church still affirms the doctrine and retains in its scriptures the revelation of July 1843. The recent polygamy essays at LDS.org have, if nothing else, legitimized the substantive public discussion within the Church of the doctrine and practice of LDS polygamy. We are obviously at the beginning, not the end, of that discussion.
Coming up next week: a review of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding (Greg Kofford Books, 2015) by Brian and Laura Hales.
B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992,)
Between 1890-1910: LDS leaders solemnized at least 262 known plural marriages in the post-manifesto years when the church was pretending to be 100% against polygamy (source: Hardy, A Solemn Covenant, 1992)-- most of whom by either apostles like Taylor & Cowley (later ex-communicated) or by Ivins in Mexico, who was rewarded for this & made a general authority in the early 1900s, or by others who became general authorities after solemnizing such plural marriage vows.
Hardy lists the specific people involved in these plural unions in his appendix of the book, and is able to provide specific years these plural unions took place in most cases, along with a list of plural wives for each man.
Mormon leaders did not break up most of the polygamous arrangements that were already intact in 1890 & thereafter. B. Carmon Hardy shows in his book's appendix that some of those polygamous unions lasted into the early 1960s...some of those who were secretly solemnized in the early 1900s.
So when Mormons say polygamy "ended" in 1890 among mainstream Mormons, there's "no way" when there wasn't even a Mormon monogamous "prophet" at the helm until the mid-1940s!
Btw, Hardy devotes a full chapter in that 1992 book to how LDS regarded polygamy as sexually superior to monogamy--not for erotic or "orgy-like" reasons--but for what they regarded was the "opposite"--associating prostitution and the resulting ill-health with monogamy, etc.
IoW, some Lds 19th century leaders were openly attacking monogamy.
Does anyone doubt, for a second, that if the right case went in front of the Supreme Court, that Mormon polygamy would be restored?
Polygamy is practiced today and is more widespread than people realize. It’s practiced by blacks. Many black males have several ‘baby mamas’, but since they don’t get a license this practice is condoned and the government picks up the tab for raising the kids.
Though there are elite professional sport figures that do the same thing.
Lds "apostle" Bruce R. McConkie, who wrote the mid 1960s book Mormon Doctrine, a book later picked up and published by the Mormon Church in the 1970s and quoted THOUSANDS of times in official Lds curricula, wrote on this subject, as mentioned in this April 20, 2008 Salt Lake Trib article:
In his quasi-official 1966 book Mormon Doctrine, which remains in print, the late LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie wrote that ‘the holy practice will commence again after the Second Coming and the ushering in of the millennium.’ And by policy, men can be ‘sealed’ for eternity in LDS temple rites to more than one wife, though women are permitted only a single sealing. Three of the church's current apostles, for example, were widowed and remarried. Each will have two wives in the eternities” (“Modern-day Mormons disavow polygamy”).
Source: What is "Celestial Polygamy"?
(Note: McConkie's book, still in print in 2008, is now no longer republished by the Church...though his citations are en masse!)
By the way, the linked article above, mentions:
Note carefully the last sentence, “Three of the church’s current apostles, for example, were widowed and remarried. Each will have two wives in the eternities.” The three Mormon Apostles referred to in this article are Dallin H. Oaks, L. Tom Perry, and Russell M. Nelson. All three men are widowers, and all three men have been “sealed” to a second wife.
Perry, a current Mormon "apostle," has been in the news of late: Elder Perry to undergo cancer treatments; Elder Scott hospitalized
Perry is 92.
Hence, once Perry dies, he would -- if Mormon theology is right -- be with his first wife (who died)...while his second wife remains on earth.
Since he was married supposedly "for eternity" in the Mormon temple to both, Perry, if he dies first...would, upon his second wife's death, become an eternal polygamist.
All from the church that supposedly frowns on current polygamy.
Meant to ping you. I really enjoyed playing the part of Thomas Chamberlain in this production.
And for the rest of my FReeper friends. It’s my heritage, not my religion. Always be a good neighbor. Since we live in Orderville we really enjoy the history here.
Very interesting
Amen!
You've been a good neighbor to me; even though I'm 1,698 miles away from you.
Here's what Lds “prophet” John Taylor said about the "United Order" communism of late 19th century Utah in Orderville: "We had NO EXAMPLE OF THE 'UNITED ORDER' IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WORD OF GOD ON THE SUBJECT... (Lds author George W. Givens, 500 More Little-Known Facts in Mormon History, p. 169)
Taylor was the third Lds "prophet." He realized no scriptural basis for United Orders & dismantled the one in Orderville (he also cited other reasons such as "Our relations with the world and our own imperfections prevent the establishment of this system at the present time, as was stated by Joseph in an early day, it cannot yet be carried out."
Lorenzo Snow, before becoming an Lds "prophet" in 1898, founded the United Order community of Brigham City.
A Utopian author (Bellamy) then visited Brigham City in 1886. It reinforces his ideas in his book.
Lenin gets ahold of his book; and further injected utopian Marxism into Soviet Russia.
In the interim (back in Utah), a ballad crops up about Orderville after it appears that one of the sons of the Lds presiding elder of that town (Alvin Heaton), murders a pregnant girl (Mary Steavens) he refused to marry in 1890. Apparently, he was convicted & sent to prison. (see Givens, p. 190)
(So much for Mormon "Utopia")
Yup...and here the United Order was supposed to be "everlasting," was it not? That was Joseph Smith's "revelations" in D&C 82:18-19 and 104:1, 48, 53
Even George Givens, a Mormon author, described Brigham Young’s communist-built community of Orderville, Utah as “pure communism”: "When Brigham Young established Orderville and similar United Orders, John Taylor was less than enthusiastic. He realized that enterprises such as Orderville were pure communism and not the law of consecration. He made this plain after he became President, when in 1882 he sent an epistle to all authorities of the Church in which he bluntly stated: 'We had no example of the 'United Order' in accordance with the word of God on the subject...Our relations with the world and our own imperfections prevent the establishment of this system [i.e. the system of consecration and stewardship spoken of at times as the 'United Order'] at the present time, as was stated by Joseph in an early day, it cannot yet be carried out.'" (George W. Givens, 500 More Little-Known Facts in Mormon History, 2004, p. 169)
The truly unfortunate thing for world history is that John Taylor didn’t go far enough, for while he dismantled Orderville, he left another “United Order” community (Brigham City, Utah) alone.
Here is Givens again (a faithful Mormon author):
"One of the most famous utopian books ever written was Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, published in 1889. Some scholars believe Looking Backward had considerable influence in the making of Lenin's Soviet Russia. If this is true, then [ensuing Lds "prophet"] Lorenzo Snow and the Latter-day Saints must receive some of the credit--or blame. Hearing of the success of the United Order in Brigham City, Edward Bellamy made a special trip to Utah in 1886 to study its operation. There he spent three days with Lorenzo Snow, Brigham City's founder and forty-year resident. Impressed with the thirty to forty industries run by its 2,000 inhabitants and the vitality at that time of one of the most successful United Orders, Bellamy returned home and wrote his influential book." (500 More Little-Known Facts in Mormon History, p. 185).
Way to go, 19th century Mormon leader-“prophets” of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor & Lorenzo Snow!!! They all unwittingly fueled Soviet Communism!
It was…
… Smith’s original idea of a United Order, something he falsely prophesied would be everlasting- see Doctrine & Covenants 82:20; 104:1 – I mean you haven’t taken scissors to those verses yet, have you Rip? So that must mean you still embrace these concepts as “Mormon truth”
…followed by Young’s implementation of these communistic ideas into Utah communities like Orderville & Brigham City…
…with Lds “prophet” Snow being the founder & long-term dictator of Brigham City, which in turn, influenced Bellamy, who in turn influenced Lenin!!!
…and while Taylor didn’t like the orders, he only did a half-mast job of taking apart Orderville, but leaving Brigham City untouched.
A smart person wonder wonder about more than this!!
"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned;
and I will go still further and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that the Lord has given,
and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned.
Brigham Young - JoD 3:266 (July 14, 1855)
Perhaps some of our FR Mormons can tell us whether BY was REALLY a prophet of not.
(Kind of a stark admission, eh?)
Eh, Stormprepper, eh?
Thank you for posting this photo. I am a descendant of Thomas Chamberlain and have been looking for a high quality electronic copy of this photo online. Yours is the best I could find. Do you happen to have a copy of the photo only? If so, would you be willing to email it to me? Thank you.
According to Mitt Romney’s ancestor, the LDS church officially frowned on public polygamy while “allowing” it among members who lived outside the US. They were still considered church members and had access to Temples.
Anyone in the US was excommunicated which is why there was a rift.
Oddly, many men went on their mission after they had wives and kids. Can you imagine?
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