discussing polyandry with the missionaries

[Danimal]

Marsupial is out tonight and one of my home teachers dropped by tonight with the missionaries. Apparently he was on splits with them and they had no appointments, so he thought he'd get in some home teaching. So while the kids ran around wild, I decided to ask them what they thought about Joseph's polyandry. Here are the highlights:
- None of them had believed that he was involved in polyandry and all stated that it was just a "rumor" and that there was no good evidence of this.
- One missionary admitted that he just recently found out that JS was a polygamist of any kind.
- The other missionary stated that JS's polyandry, if it did occur, was most likely because the womens' other husbands were sterile (the best comment o the night).
- One missionary stated that it was OK because Abraham was a polygamist but didn't have an answer for whether Abraham was into polyandry.
- They insisted that I shouldn't be so "hung up about this" because JS was a prophet and thus it must have been inspired. When asked if there was any behavior that a prophet would do that would make them question him, they could not identify one.

I'm sure I wouldn't have done any better when I was their age though. The notion that there is nothing a prophet could do that would be questionable was a scary level of kool-aid drinking.

[UtahDan]

You probably just became their project. I hope the entertainment was worth it (that is funny stuff).

[LA Ute]

I'm not sure many people in the church know anything about that subject. Did they seem to take it all right?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Which did you enjoy more, danimal: the brutality or the honesty?

[marsupial]

There I was, innocently enjoying Julie & Julia with a couple of girlfriends while danimal is leading our missionaries astray.

I am no longer worried that danimal will be called as ward mission leader.

[UtahDan]

Which did you enjoy more, danimal: the brutality or the honesty?

I'm going to stop sharing my clever cliches if you are going to mock me Jeff.

[Danimal]

I'm not sure many people in the church know anything about that subject. Did they seem to take it all right?

They were pretty defensive about it, but I think they would have been the same with any possible faith demoting possibility. I wouldn't be surprised if they talk with their MP about it. Hopefully he'll at least know something about it.

[CardiacCoug]

I've thought about getting into discussions like this with the missionaries.

Then I remember how depressed I was as a missionary and rather than adding to their misery by bringing up these tricky historical issues, I just convince them to watch some sports or play video games with me.

[Jarid in Cedar]

There I was, innocently enjoying Julie & Julia with a couple of girlfriends while danimal is leading our missionaries astray.

I am no longer worried that danimal will be called as ward mission leader.

That may have been part of his plan....

[falafel]

Very interesting Danimal. How, may I ask, did you broach the subject? I'm guessing it wasn't like this:

Danimal: "Hey Elders, come on in, have a seat."

Elder: "Thanks Brother Danimal, you have a lovely home."

Danimal "Oh, thank you. (Sitting down). Slow night?"

Elder:"Yeah, we got tubed on a few appointments. Really great guy we're teaching. He doesn't believe in the Book of Mormon, and he's been hit pretty hard by the antis regarding Joseph Smith, but we're pretty sure he's coming around."

Danimal: "Speaking of Joseph Smith, what percentage of the other dudes' wives that he was marrying do you think were hot? I'm bettin' it was 80%+. (Standing up) Something to drink?"

Elders: "......."

[LA Ute]

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.

[Taq Man]

For me the polyandry was the single biggest issue. Particulary with Josephs attempt to seduce Orson Pratts wife while he was away on a mission.

Orson eventually forgave him but I have a hard time understanding how.

Conflict in the Quoram is a great read on the subject.

[Art Vandelay]

I'm curious what the back story of this conversation is. I can see correcting an elder if he was teaching false doctrine or expounding on a subject if the conversation was about polygamy. However, to bring it up just for the sake of eliciting a reaction seems a little harsh. I had enough people trying to tell me what an idiot I was on my mission I didn't need members joining the mob.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I'm going to stop sharing my clever cliches if you are going to mock me Jeff.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

[wuapinmon]

For me the polyandry was the single biggest issue. Particulary with Josephs attempt to seduce Orson Pratts wife while he was away on a mission.

Orson eventually forgave him but I have a hard time understanding how.

Conflict in the Quoram is a great read on the subject.

Who are you? Introduce yourself properly.