discussing polyandry with the missionaries

[Pheidippides]

To be FAIR it is unclear if that is the way it happened completely. Even though her divorce was not legal it may have been somehow implied. What is clear is there is no record of it.

What is interesting to me is that Zina Huntington went along with all of this. First, Smith tells her, shortly after being married, that he was visited with an angel with a drawn sword that is forcing him to take her as his spiritual wife. That seems to go against a very basic principle called agency. (Also, why didn't the angel with the sword visit Zina?) Second, her husband is called on a mission to England. While her husband is serving the Lord she decides that he isn't that good of a husband and to move into Brigham Young's tents for his wives. It seems that she decided that she was done with being poor and without a husband (even a "spiritually husband" whatever that means). Therefore, she moves into Brigham Young's tents. Maybe Henry wasn't a very good husband even though he was good enough to be sent on a mission. It seems BY sending him on a mission was a very "David-like (i.e. Bathsheba)" move, however.

Being one of Brigham Young's wives may have had its benefits. It came out in the divorce of "wife no. 19" that he may have been worth as much as $8M and had an income of $40K per month. Of course, he claimed to have been worth less and made less than that... Still, to support all the wives and kids he had he must have had to make some serious money, even back in his time.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Eliza_Young

One has to wonder if sending Zina's husband off on a mission (while she had two small children in her care) may have given her a financial reason to move into BY's tents.

He may have been worth $8M, but a lot of that was Church funds. One of the great difficulties when he dies was figuring out what was his and what belonged to the church - the exact same issue that caused a wedge (at least in part) between him and Emma, as it related to Joseph.

[Uncle Ted]

Thomas Lewis. The story's a little sketchy. A high ranking church dude in the Manti area wanted a young hottie who was in love with a fellow named Thomas Lewis. She spurned his advances. The guy called Thomas Lewis on a mission. He refused. They castrated him as punishment. But the castration may or may not have been directly due to the love triangle and might have been over other sins/crimes. And Brigham Young may or may not have approved of all this. D Michael Quinn wrote about it.

Clearly folks back in that time were very motivated to go on missions even without "purse or scrip".

If we have learned anything from the mountain meadows massacre is that the folks in Salt Lake City had no idea on what the crazies in Southern Utah were doing. I am sure that BY, once learning about what happened, took appropriate action with the bishop involved. Oh, wait...

Brigham did not think Warren Snow did what was right, but felt Warren was “trying to do right” and that he should be sustained in his calling as Bishop.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Here's FAIR's treatment:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Utah/Crime_...the_1800's

Those FAIR articles always crack me up. Take this line for example:

When Brigham Young heard about Lewis' sex crime and the punishment, he reiterated his stance that the time for such measures was still in the future, and not to be implemented in the here-and-now.

See folks? BY didn't support castration. Well ... not yet, anyway.

Brigham did not think Warren Snow did what was right, but felt Warren was “trying to do right” and that he should be sustained in his calling as Bishop.

Warren wanted Brigham to write a letter to members in Sanpete county to explain Warren’s action. Brigham declined to do, indicating that that would make matters worse. “Just let the matter drop, and say no more about it and it will soon die away amongst the people,” Brigham counseled.

And this is proof that BY didn't support the castration? Bloody hell.

[FMCoug]

Those FAIR articles always crack me up.

Pure comedy. Clearly they are Covey disciples. Begin with the end in mind.

[Paperback Writer]

Those FAIR articles always crack me up. Take this line for example:



See folks? BY didn't support castration. Well ... not yet, anyway.



And this is proof that BY didn't support the castration? Bloody hell.

Appears to be an early form of non-denial denial.

[Northwestcoug]

Not trusting FAIR for anything, I went to one of their primary sources:

http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/com.../MTNZ/id/10570

Warren Snow seems like a most pleasant fellow. He is quoted as saying he would "come as near cutting his throat as any man if Brigham Young told him to". So when Young preached mosaic retribution for sins, he took it literally. In what was probably one of the most unusual bishopric meetings, he and the entire Manti bishopric ambushed Lewis as he was headed to the penitentiary, castrated him, and left him for dead.

Brigham apparently approved of Snow's worship of him. Although Joseph Young was incensed by the ordeal, Brigham wanted to let the matter drop. "I will tell you that when a man is trying to do right & does some thing that is not exactly in order I feel to sustain him".

And although FAIR does get the 'Brigham didn't support castration now' argument. But he certainly supported the idea. Church leaders could not "cleanse the platter because the people will not bear it".

Brigham was a prophet...

[Northwestcoug]

If nothing else, that link above is a fascinating glimpse of rural Utah during the Reformation period.
Warren Snow's name was discussed to fill a vacancy in the quorum of the 12. In the end, he was passed over.
Brigham was cool with castration, but not with alleged misuse of tithing funds. He approved of an investigation into Snow's handling of tithing funds. It seems like nothing concrete was resolved, but a few thousand dollars remained unaccounted for. In the end, Snow was asked to step down. He was called on a mission to England. Then Brigham married his 5 polygamous wives.


(OK, I made that last part up. But it sounded plausible didn't it?)

[mofo]

The trick about teaching about the more "problematic" aspects of church history is what exactly do and don't you include in that curriculum? What is reliable information and what isn't? How do you adequately caveat areas with such considerable gray area?

How do we balance that with an overarching goal of building testimonies?

Does discussing various aspects of LDS history at a high level suffice? If not, how granular does the level of detail need to be?

It's much easier said than done.

Obviously the church knows what information is reliable - modern day revelation? . My problem is that many of the "problematic" aspects of church history are found in the same journals or from the same authors where the "spiritual uplifting" history is found. If the church finds those journals reliable enough to use to publish the uplifting things then the church should be alright with using the same documents to publish the problematic history. If the church feels that the journal or author is unreliable for the problematic aspects than that author should also be considered unreliable for the uplifting parts as well.
It appears that the church never questions the author's credibility for something uplifting, but will question the same person's credibility for something that is problematic.

[ERCougar]

Personally, this all is really besides the point. Over the years I have developed a knowledge of the truthfulness of the Gospel re-introduced by Joseph Smith but which is now completely independent of Joseph Smith. I took Physics from Stephen Jones at BYU. He showed me how to conduct experiments that proved scientific principles. Once I applied those principles and learned of their validity in a laboratory, I no longer relied on Dr. Jones' opinion of whether or not they existed. The fact that Stephen Jones had connections with Pons and Fleischman's fusion in a fish bowl and went off the deep end with WTC #7 conspiracy theories has absolutely no bearing on the knowledge that he imparted to me and that I independently verified for myself.

So what if someone came along from Stephen Jones' lab with some new idea that sounded crazy to you, but asked you to trust him, based on his connections to Stephen Jones?

[Uncle Ted]

As I've posted before, I am far from an expert on these subjects. As a personal matter, I am not terribly interested in historical Church controversies at a granular level. On many of those issues, it's too hard to know what actually happened in a particular case (and yes, my professional training and experience has left me with a definite skeptical orientation about many kinds of evidence, particularly conflicting eyewitness accounts composed long after the fact). But I do not begrudge anyone's approach that puts more faith in the historical record and in our ability to sort out such evidence in a way that allows definitive "factual" judgments.

So it's no surprise that on Joseph Smith's polyandry, I am relatively ill-informed. I do remember reading this book review of Todd Compton's book, "In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith," from a while ago, and I dug it up tonight. Here are a couple of paragraphs that support my brand of historical agnosticism:

What is left to our imaginations, and Compton's speculations, is the nature of these "polyandrous" marriages. Were these unions simply dynastic sealings—the practice of sealing women to certain senior priesthood leaders for eternity only, with little or no temporal relationship—or were they relationships including intimacy and offspring? Compton points to about a half-dozen marriages to single women where physical intimacy is documented. But arguing parallels does not establish such relationships. There is a logical chasm between single and married sealings, and, for the latter, there is no responsible report of sexual intercourse except for Sylvia Sessions Lyon. In 1915, her daughter, Josephine Lyon Fisher, signed a statement that in 1882 Sylvia "told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church" (quoted on p. 183). The Fisher document is somewhat supported by Angus Cannon's recollection of hearing that Patty Sessions said the Prophet fathered Sylvia's child (see p. 637). Compton acknowledges Sylvia may have meant that her 1844 child was conceived during Windsor's four years out of the church, from 1842 to 1846 (see p. 183). Though he thinks it "unlikely" that Sylvia denied her husband cohabitation during this period (p. 183), that is a serious possibility. This is implied in the family tradition of her daughter some three decades later.

Reliable evidence indicates that Joseph Smith fathered some children through his plural marriages with single women, but that evidence does not necessarily support intimacy with polyandrous wives. Compton's own discussion of "Sexuality in Joseph Smith's Plural Marriages" (pp. 12—15) is muddled. He generalizes without specifying which category (single, widowed, divorced, separated, married) of plural wives supposedly took part in this most private aspect of plural marriage. For example, Compton concludes this discussion: "Though it is possible that Joseph had some marriages in which there were no sexual relations, there is no explicit or convincing evidence for this. . . . And in a significant number of marriages, there is evidence for sexual relations" (p. 15). Which marriages? Compton does not specify or quantify or document his generalized conclusion that "in a significant number" of these plural marriages Joseph Smith had sexual contact with his partner. If by "significant" Compton implies that a majority of these marriages had what he terms the "sexual dimension," his statement is not supported by the data he presents. But Compton several times extrapolates with unwarranted confidence, as in the case of Zina Huntington Jacobs: "Nothing specific is known about sexuality in their marriage, though judging from Smith's other marriages, sexuality was probably included" (p. 82). This is an example of many questionable conclusions in this book that are overly broad, nonspecific, or undocumented.

All that discussion tells me is that the record is murky. Maybe someone who's spent time on the issue will tell me that there's new information clarifying the record, or that the book reviewers are wrong, or something else along those lines. If so, I'm all ears. But for me, such matters are not the kinds of things on which I am going to hang either my faith or my lack of faith.

I also don't think these unresolvable debates are something we need to share with unsuspecting 19 year-old missionaries, but that's a topic for another time.

Just my opinion and my approach.

Apparently there are a couple of new GoFundMe efforts to get to the bottom of this using science...

http://mormongenomeproject.com

and

http://www.gofundme.com/JosephSmithDNA