Oaks on religious freedom

[LA Ute]

There were countless statements from church leaders pre-manifesto stating that the church would NEVER abandon polygamy, under any circumstances. That's one of the reasons WW released the statement without getting approval from the 12. They never would have agreed to it. They all found out about it by reading the newspaper.

In a way they were right. They continued to practice it secretly for several years, which is really odd if you think about it. If it was in fact God that commanded them to stop practicing polygamy as you are clearly implying here, then why did the top church leadership continue to practice it for twenty years or so?

I don't know the answer to your question, but one totally speculative answer is that it was hard for them to simply cut off loving relationships that had been in place for decades.

My great-great grandfather had several wives. One of them, my great-great grandmother, lived with my grandparents from the Manifesto until she died. Her (former) husband would come visit her occasionally at my grandparents' home. She had been orphaned at age 12 and married my great-great GP at age 17. He was 31 and had two wives already. They were married for almost 50 years before the Manifesto, when she had to leave his home.

Not much more is known about all that family history - my dad was the yougest in the family by several years, so he didn't remember anything about that period. There is a heck of a story there, I'm sure. I often think about how hard that must have been.

[TripletDaddy]

My guess (just based on reading what Wilford Woodruff said) is that the Lord mainly wanted to avoid the destruction of the church.

Why would the Church be destroyed if Utah were not granted statehood?

If you are correct (and you very well may be), then I suppose you are also saying that it is possible that God might not want the Church to eventually be destroyed over the gay marriage issue. See, you are changing your mind already.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I don't know the answer to your question, but one totally speculative answer is that it was hard for them to simply cut off loving relationships that had been in place for decades.

I am not talking about refusing to divorce wives married pre-manifesto. I am talking about new plural marriages secretly performed post-manifesto.

[LA Ute]

I am not talking about refusing to divorce wives married pre-manifesto. I am talking about new plural marriages secretly performed post-manifesto.

I cannot explain that. Can you? (Serious question.)

Why would the Church be destroyed if Utah were not granted statehood?

Read all about it here:

I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me. Let me bring your minds to what is termed the manifesto. …

The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question, and He also told me that if they would listen to what I said to them and answer the question put to them, by the Spirit and power of God, they would all answer alike, and they would all believe alike with regard to this matter.

The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue—to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?

The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. If we had not stopped it, you would have had no use for … any of the men in this temple at Logan; for all ordinances would be stopped throughout the land of Zion. Confusion would reign throughout Israel, and many men would be made prisoners. This trouble would have come upon the whole Church, and we should have been compelled to stop the practice. Now, the question is, whether it should be stopped in this manner, or in the way the Lord has manifested to us, and leave our Prophets and Apostles and fathers free men, and the temples in the hands of the people, so that the dead may be redeemed. A large number has already been delivered from the prison house in the spirit world by this people, and shall the work go on or stop? This is the question I lay before the Latter-day Saints. You have to judge for yourselves. I want you to answer it for yourselves. I shall not answer it; but I say to you that that is exactly the condition we as a people would have been in had we not taken the course we have.

… I saw exactly what would come to pass if there was not something done. I have had this spirit upon me for a long time. But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out 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. …

I leave this with you, for you to contemplate and consider. The Lord is at work with us. (Cache Stake Conference, Logan, Utah, Sunday, November 1, 1891. Reported in Deseret Weekly, November 14, 1891.)

So it was about more than statehood.

[UtahDan]

Do you really think that's how the church operates? Is that why we're in the middle of the nth dispensation over the last several thousand years?

You make a good point. I don't think that is how it operates. I'm no so cynical that I believe that the brethren sit around and say "I guess the gig is up on this one, time to cave." Well, maybe on polygamy. But on other issues when the culture shifts, members of the church who become leaders also shift or at least become much more sensitive to certain issues. When the membership begins to be pained by the disconnect between church teaching/policy and their own views of right and wrong and when the good men at the top see this, understand why people feel this way, feel that way themselves, and begin to say "surely the Lord has something more to tell us"...that is when things sometimes change. Whether one thinks it is revelation or not, that is more or less how the priesthood ban was lifted and how the temple ceremony came to undergo major recent (late 80s) revisions.

I don't think neither the "cave to pressure" view nor the "God just decided to change his mind one day unbidden" view represent how things in fact work.

[Jarid in Cedar]

I cannot explain that. Can you? (Serious question.)

.

The answer lies in how modern polygamy groups view the Manifesto. They believe that WW was not inspired by God to deliver it. They feel that it was only politically motivated for statehood and did not raise to the level of true prophetic utterance. Many of those groups view WW as a fallen prophet over this issue because of the contradiction to JS and BY's teachings(among many others). I am guessing that many of WW's contemporaries viewed it similarly and continued the polgamist ways.

[TripletDaddy]

I cannot explain that. Can you? (Serious question.)



Read all about it here:



So it was about more than statehood.

I've read that before numerous times, but thanks for posting again. it is an interesting piece.

It does seem to entirely cut the legs out from under Maximus's statement:

The church does not operate according to what the world.believes.

In the case of WW, he made it clear that the seachange was the direct result of what the world believed....the opposition of sixty millions of people.

The passage you quoted should be enough to make even the most enthusiastic apologist stop and give pause in re: the church's stance on gay marriage. Sixty millions of people is now almost a hundred million people or more.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I cannot explain that. Can you? (Serious question.)

I think the most likely explanation is that at the time the church had a long history of saying one thing publicly and doing another in private with respect to polygamy. Old habits die hard.

Parenthetically, that has always been one of the most troubling things about polygamy for me. I just can't imagine the Lord commanding someone to do something and then commanding them to lie about it. Strange times.

[Moliere]

Yes, all He had to do is let the mormons create their zion in Texas instead of letting a good number of them die pushing handcarts through the snow...

The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God

I see you attended stake conference this weekend. After this was mentioned, I immediately thought about how the prophecy in Isaiah would have been fulfilled about the temple of the Lord being established in the tops of the mountains if the saints had settled in Midland.

[happyone]

There were countless statements from church leaders pre-manifesto stating that the church would NEVER abandon polygamy, under any circumstances. That's one of the reasons WW released the statement without getting approval from the 12. They never would have agreed to it. They all found out about it by reading the newspaper.
In a way they were right. They continued to practice it secretly for several years, which is really odd if you think about it. If it was in fact God that commanded them to stop practicing polygamy as you are clearly implying here, then why did the top church leadership continue to practice it for twenty years or so?

IIRC a couple of apostles were eventually excommuctated over it - Mathias Cowely and John W. Taylor

[Jeff Lebowski]

IIRC a couple of apostles were eventually excommuctated over it - Mathias Cowely and John W. Taylor

Not until much later. WW himself approved numerous post-manifesto marriages in Mexico and on ships in the Pacific ocean and on the Great Lakes. There is strong circumstantial evidence that he was married to an additional wife in 1897 on a ship in the Pacific.

[UtahDan]

There were countless statements from church leaders pre-manifesto stating that the church would NEVER abandon polygamy, under any circumstances. That's one of the reasons WW released the statement without getting approval from the 12. They never would have agreed to it. They all found out about it by reading the newspaper.

In a way they were right. They continued to practice it secretly for several years, which is really odd if you think about it. If it was in fact God that commanded them to stop practicing polygamy as you are clearly implying here, then why did the top church leadership continue to practice it for twenty years or so?

In fact (as I assume you and many others know) John Taylor apparently hand wrote a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1886_Revelation"]1886 Revelation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Joseph_F._Smith_family.png" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Joseph_F._Smith_family.png/250px-Joseph_F._Smith_family.png"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/4/4e/Joseph_F._Smith_family.png/250px-Joseph_F._Smith_family.png[/ame] to this affect that his son later confronted the other brethren with after his father had died and before he himself was released from the Quorum of the 12 and excommunicated. This document forms the basis for the belief of the fundamentalist/polygamist groups that the church is in apostasy.

1886 Revelation
Given to President John Taylor September 27, 1886
My son John, you have asked me concerning the New and Everlasting Covenant how far it is binding upon my people.
Thus saith the Lord: All commandments that I give must be obeyed by those calling themselves by my name unless they are revoked by me or by my authority, and how can I revoke an everlasting covenant, for I the Lord am everlasting and my everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated nor done away with, but they stand forever.
Have I not given my word in great plainness on this subject? Yet have not great numbers of my people been negligent in the observance of my law and the keeping of my commandments, and yet have I borne with them these many years; and this because of their weakness—because of the perilous times, and furthermore, it is more pleasing to me that men should use their free agency in regard to these matters. Nevertheless, I the Lord do not change and my word and my covenants and my law do not, and as I have heretofore said by my servant Joseph: All those who would enter into my glory must and shall obey my law. And have I not commanded men that if they were Abraham’s seed and would enter into my glory, they must do the works of Abraham. I have not revoked this law, nor will I, for it is everlasting, and those who will enter into my glory must obey the conditions thereof; even so, Amen.

[Indy Coug]

Apparently, Elder Oaks was on Hugh Hewitt's show last week.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/60e...2-f30ee3256ac9

[statman]

Before you get too hyperbolic, the only case where a preacher was arrested for describing homosexual sex as a sin, that I know of, was in Great Britain, not Canada.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ch-battle.html

There have actually been several in Canada. The most famous was one in Alberta in 2002. Originally convicted and sentenced to a fine and jail time, the sentence was lowered to a $7000 fine in 2007. that ruling was upheld in 2008, and then in 2009, all charges were dismissed by canada's supreme court. There are numerous other cases in Canada. Arrest, and then ultimate conviction with large fines and cease and desist orders. those have pretty much stopped with the 2009 ruling. But Mark Steyn's case went through last year - and cost him almost a quarter million dollars to defend himself.

Also - a 2-minute Google search shows that convictions with jail time have been made re: hate speech by preachers in Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. I'm sur there are more. Some of those have ultimately been overturned, but the Swedish guy did serve jail time.

[YOhio]

Apparently, Elder Oaks was on Hugh Hewitt's show last week.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/60e...2-f30ee3256ac9

lol.

HH: On the line now we have Dallin from Salt Lake City. Caller you're on.

DO: Hey, Hugh. First time, long time. I'm a big fan of yours. What I wanted to talk about is religious freedom...