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Dont have a source for this but I copied it from somewhere

DAMAGE CONTROL

In 1997, the First Presidency of the Mormon Church and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles decided to publish a manual entitled: “Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young.” This manual has generated a good deal of controversy. As noted above, Vern Anderson wrote an interesting article that demonstrated the church’s attempt to suppress information regarding Brigham Young’s plural wives.

Anderson reported that a young woman who had recently married a Mormon came to the home of Valeen Tippetts Avery, a noted Mormon writer, seeking to know why the new manual overlooked Brigham Young’s practice of polygamy. Vern Anderson wrote: “She was confused now, and someone had suggested she talk to Avery.

” ‘Dr. Avery,’ “ she said, ‘I just got the new Relief Society manual, which is about Brigham Young, and he only has one wife.’

“Avery, a Mormon who knew the pioneer leader had 55 wives, couldn’t explain why the lesson manual being used since January by male and female church members in 22 languages paints America’s most famous polygamist as a monogamist.

“But she had some advice.

” ‘The Mormon church is trying to say to the new people coming into the church, as well as to the larger American society, that there was nothing questionable in the Mormon past,’ Avery told the woman. ‘And if you want answers to these kinds of sticky questions, you’re not going to find them inside accepted Mormon manuals and doctrines’.

“The absence of any mention of polygamy is just one of the criticisms being leveled at the manual…

” ‘Whoever compiled the manual is extraordinarily embarrassed by the church’s second president,’ says Ron Priddis of Signature Books.

” ‘It’s a religious tract, not history,’ scoffs historian Nancy J. Taniguchi….

“Within months of assuming the church presidency in March 1995, Gordon B. Hinckley told the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to begin updating the curriculum of the adult male priesthood quorums and the Relief Society, both of which had always been separate... Soon, a writing committee was formed, using Discourses of Brigham Young, a 1954 compilation of Young’s teachings by Apostle John A. Widtsoe, as the primary source for a new priesthood manual…

“Widtsoe’s work, narrowly windowed from the hundreds of Young speeches contained in the multivolume Journal of Discourses, had served to spruce up and sanitize the rough-and-ready frontier prophet for modern audiences. Widtsoe eliminated many of the cantankerous, contradictory, hyperbolic rantings for which Young was known…

“Polygamy, which church founder Joseph Smith secretly practiced… and which Young publicly championed, was dropped 13 years after his death… and appears nowhere in the Widtsoe index or the new manual.

“Also missing from the manual are Young’s theories that Adam was God the Father and that Eve was just one of God’s wives, the rest having been left on other worlds. Blood atonement was another casualty.

“Worse than a glaring lack of context, though, say critics who have closely compared statements in the manual of Young’s sermons, are the resulting misrepresentations of his ideas.

” ‘I’d say that about 10 percent of the quotes are overtly lifted out of context, with about another 10 percent that are more subtly altered. In addition, about 5 percent have been abbreviated to avoid offense regarding race, nationality, gender and so on,’ Priddis said.”