Technically, polygamy is still a mormon doctrine. Mormon scripture (D&C 132) still says polygamy is a good, divinely inspired institution. The church has never condemned the practice of polygamy. It has only told its members to temporarily stop doing it, because the US government and the federal army threatened to wipe out the church if it kept practicing it. With this threat over the church's head along with the church's hope to bolster Utah's application for statehood, the church finally promulgated a temporary ban on polygamy via the 1890 Manifesto. This ban does not repudiate polygamy as being wrong in of itself, but only says that until the prophet says otherwise that mormons should "refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land." Thus if the law of the land changes, polygamy will be ok under the wording of the manifesto. Also, all polygamous marriages contracted by members of the church up to that point in time were still allowed to stand by the church.
BTW, mormons believe in a ritual called "sealing" which joins a husband and wife in marriage for "time and all eternity." If the wife dies after being sealed to a husband, she is considered that husband's wife forever. If the husband survives his wife's decease and then gets "sealed" to another living woman, both women are considered his wives forever. Thus technically speaking, some mormons still believe they are practicing a form of celestial polygamy even today. The church approves these sealings so technically the church still approves of polygamy. Of course, the government doesn't much care about this as long as both wives are not living at the same time.
Someone upthread mentioned that polygamy still existed under the name “celestial marriage”, but I didn’t understand how. I now see what they mean. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
I have seen D&C 132 as well as Official Declaration 1 (both are readily available online at lds.org) and you can pick up a D&C at just about any book store. The whole thing is there in writing if you wish to read it.
As I said before, I don’t mind that they choose to have doctrines that change depending on the current mood of a given national government. I just wish that they would be up front about it.
If he (Mitt), were a Buddhist vs. the current president, would you vote for him?
Is it more relevant that a president,( or presidential candidate), has a Mormon religious background, or that he has Marxist political leanings, (and 3 year history of disastrous policies for our nation)?
Mitt could be a dread-locked Rastafarian and still be a better choice for our nation. Imagine what the next 4 years will be like with Obama and Co. in charge.
BTW I went to Glenn Beck's Restoring Love (AWESOME!) event in Texas.
The night before, he had a gathering of religious leaders and people, from every faith ,(thousands of people), and we were praying together, for the restoration of our religious liberty.
Our freedom to practice religion is under attack. Think about that. The democrats just openly booed God at their convention. Will things get better, or worse, for us ,(regardless of what religion we practice), if Obama gets another 4 years?