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Are you asking “what’s the difference between Snuffer and Palmer”? I’m not clear exactly what your question is. Since many of you haven’t read the book, I thought I’d give you 2 of my reviews. The first one was generally positive:
http://www.wheatandtares.org/12877/snuffers-take-on-polygamy/ The second one explained why I think he got Exe’d:
http://www.wheatandtares.org/13160/why-snuffer-got-exed/ This is a pretty impressive statement by the church, especially this part Quote:There is no evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime.
In 1852, President Brigham Young publicly announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood
I’ve been saying this for years, but some have tried to pin it on Joseph. They’re definitely blaming it on Brigham now.
Quote:Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.23
They threw Randy Bott under the bus with this statement. I’m also encouraged that the church disavows that mixed-race marriages are a sin, though I think that sentence is a bit clumsy.
I remember the penalties, but as a 19-year old, I just thought they were weird hand signals that made absolutely no sense to me. I guess I was a bit dense. But now that I understand that they were masonic symbols, and were more literal than I had any idea, yes, I’m glad they are no longer there. But once again, at the time, I was pretty oblivious to what they meant. (Frankly, much of the symbolism in the temple still goes over my head.) Brian, In a previous comment, I compared biblical polygamy with D&C 132, and I stated that they didn’t appear very similar. What’s your take on that perspective?
Brian, First of all, thanks for joining in the discussion. I know we’ve talked about you here before–you might want to do a search of your name here and see all the threads we’ve discussed. And thanks for correcting me where I mis-spoke. I’m glad to hear a nice introduction into the theology of polygamy.
Roy,
I recorded one of Richard Bennett’s presentations to the Sons of Utah Pioneers a few years ago, but haven’t had time to write up a transcript. I’ll see what I can do there. I did a quick Google search, and here is a link to one of his articles, and it touches on the Manifesto a bit, but not in the detail that I remember from his presentation. See
http://rsc.byu.edu/es/archived/banner-gospel-wilford-woodruff/7-wilford-woodruff-and-rise-temple-consciousness-among-latte Roy, I’m not very far into the theology book to comment on Brian’s take on it. However, what you’ve said regarding polygamy is my recollection and understanding of it as well. I know that Richard Bushman talks about Joseph wanting to create a dynastic sealing. Even though I’ve read Bushman, I still can’t get my head around the concept very well, but I think the idea is to seal everyone to everyone else, and we’ll help save each other together. Following the Manifesto in 1890, Wilford Woodruff changed the focus of temple work from everyone trying to be sealed to general authorities to everyone being sealed to their parents. It was a pretty dramatic change, and BYU professor Richard Bennett has put together some really interesting papers and presentations on this change from the Law of Adoption to our current geneaological practices. Bennett believes that was a large motivation behind Woodruff’s concern about losing the temples to the U.S. government, and certainly the focus of temple rites changed pretty significantly under Woodruff. (Bennett is the new president of the Mormon History Association this coming year.)
I know that Ray is more comfortable with JS era polygamy, while I am more comfortable with BY era polygamy. My problems with JS era polygamy concern the fact that polygamy was secretly practiced, but under BY it was openly practiced. Under JS, there were more polyandrous sealings, but under BY, there really weren’t very many (with the Richardsons being a rare exception.) Under Brigham Young, it did seem that women did have more agency to divorce if they felt they made a bad decision (though because of the secrecy, few divorced under JS. But it could be that JS allowed Alger to leave when the heat was on.) Under BY, there were more widows that participated in polygamy, and it was a way to spread monetary wealth. (It was a form of the welfare system.) There were women that participated strictly for financial reasons, and no sex was involved.
But my biggest problems with polygamy are the sheer number of wives. There is a Jewish regulation that limited men to 4 wives. JS and BY went way beyond the limit of 4, and that does bother me. Additionally, I just don’t see biblical polygamy under the same light as shown in D&C 132. For example, D&C 132 says that David never sinned except in the case of Uriah and Bathsheba. As I’ve studied David, I can see a multitude of sins, and I think a strong case can be made that he orchestrated the assassination of Saul. (If you look closely, the circumstances are similar to Uriah.) Additionally, his mistreatment of his first wife Mikal is appalling to me. David had MANY sins. His family life with all the jealousies and infighting were less than exemplar.
Solomon also married many non-Isrealite women who worshipped many false gods, so I have a hard time saying that he did not sin in polygamy either. 700 wives and 300 concubines? Seriously? And Abraham’s mistreatment of Hagar and Ishmael? It makes my stomach turn to see him send his wife and child out into the desert to die (though an angel appeared to Hagar and Ishmael and promised them they would become a great nation.) This does not appear to have the same theology as shown in D&C 132. So I have a hard time reconciling biblical polygamy with D&C 132 polygamy. They do not at all appear the same. I can’t see how God justified Abraham or David or Solomon or anybody else.
I am certainly not here to defend polygamy. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ll do my best to try to speak for others. In answering the questions, Quote:What is the point of this distinction? Are we just trying to prove that JS didn’t have sex with every underage girl and old maid to whom he was sealed?
Yes, this is exactly what I think that Brian is doing. Not only that, but one thing about Brian is that he states that no critics of Joseph have attempted to apply the theological justification of plural wives/celestial marriage/polygamy. That is the one ground-breaking thing that Brian attempts to do is to fully detail the theology in Volume 3. Hales is arguing that the theology is a lot more than just sex, and he is using the point that sex was much more infrequent than critics have alleged.
I hope that quote I gave above is in context. As I think about it, there is a rumor that Eliza Snow was pushed down the stairs by Emma and miscarried. I don’t know Brian’s position on that, but I believe Hales thinks the rumor is false. There is also another rumor that Emma was upset when Joseph married the Partridge sisters. According to the rumor, Emma was furious to learn that these sealings were more than spiritual sealings. When Emma found Joseph intimate with one of the sisters, Emma threw a fit. Once again, I don’t know how Hales handles this story. But as I read the quote again, Hales mentions a 3rd angel, so perhaps these other incidents are after this 3rd visit, or perhaps Hales discounts them as simply false rumors.
Quote:Are we trying to infer that if JS was a lech then he would have had sex with everyone?
I don’t know who “we” are, but certainly there are many critics that allege that Joseph was lecherous with an over-active libido. Certainly Hales, Bushman, and others believe that there is more to the story than simply sex. But critics try to make it all about sex.
I just want to add that in reviewing my post on the Hales volumes, I came across this passage. “As I read the evidence, prior to the angel’s third visit…the Prophet had only two, or possibly three plural wives with whom he had sexual relations: Fanny Alger in Kirtland (Chapters 4-5), Louisa Beaman (Chapter 9), and possibly Agnes Moulton Coolbrith Smith, the widow of his brother Don Carlos…”
So Hales is making the case that Joseph only had sex with 3 wives (Emma would be 4), and that sex was a much more minor aspect of polygamy than others would have you believe. I haven’t read the books, but I’m sure that Compton disagrees with Hales about there being only 3 that had sex with Joseph.
Ann, I did listen to the DBMormon interview, and I listened to the one at Mormon Stories as well. I’ve also heard Brian speak several times at Mormon History Association, Sunstone, and FAIR. I will say that DBMormon seemed to be rooting for Brian in the interview, and the interview did seem to try to put a more positive spin than the John Dehlin interview. I enjoyed both interviews, but I think I did enjoy John’s interview a bit more. John’s seems a little more objective than DBMormon’s, but I did enjoy both interviews. Having said that, I think I do agree with your overall impression. At Sunstone a few years ago, Brian made the claim that there were no polyandrous marriages. In the Q&A, I asked him about an unusual situation in Utah where a non-LDS family was travelling through Utah and converted. They had children (2 girls if memory serves), but could have no more children because the man had been injured or something like that. Many women of the day told her that she should divorce her husband since he could no longer father children. They decided to consult Brigham Young to see what they should do.
In the New Testament, if a man dies with no children, his brother is supposed to marry the wife and raise seed up to the dead brother. This is called a levirate marriage. Brigham Young said to Sister Richardson
Quote:“If I was imperfect and had a good wife I would call on some good bror. to help me that we might have increase, that a man [her husband] of this character will have a place in the Temple, receive his endowments and in eternity will be as tho nothing had happened to him in time.”76 According to Young, her husband’s sterility would not bar him from the most important temple ordinances, and his eternal reward would not be adversely affected. As for having additional children, Mary Ann could be married in a civil ceremony to another man who would father her children. By being sealed for eternity to Edmund, Mary Ann as well as all her children, would belong to him.
The couple eventually accepted the plan, but only reluctantly.
(I blogged about it in more detail at
http://mormonheretic.org/2009/11/08/surrogate-parenthoodtypes-of-polygamist-marriages-daynes-part-3/ I related the story (minus the names because I couldn’t remember them.) Hales finished the story for me and stated that he had pretty good evidence that this wasn’t true polyandry, because the Richardsons were divorced while Sister Richardson got pregnant twice with Frederick Cox as the father. After giving birth to the 2 sons, the Richardsons remarried and raised the boys as their own.
Quote:For about twenty years Cox did not see his sons. When he did, he shook their hands heartily, looked at them and listened to them unceasingly during their visit, but never mentioned the relationship between them.80
To me, this seems like a pretty good case of polyandry, but Hales insists that because they were legally divorced, it is not polyandry–in that she was sexually monogamous to consecutive men–she wasn’t having sex with both men in a three-way or anything. Well, I guess technically Hales is right, but in my mind, if the divorce was always assumed to be temporary, arguing that it was serial sexual monagamy instead of polyandry is splitting hairs a bit. It seems like he is arguing the point a bit too hard.
I purchased his 3 volume set, but have only read about 2 chapters of vol 3 so far. There seems to be a big deal about a “scrape” vs “affair” that I don’t really understand why he is making such a distinction. I even had Don Bradley stop by and give his 2 cents, but I’m not clear what the significance of the disctinction that Hales/Bradley are making. See the comments at
http://mormonheretic.org/2013/03/10/brian-hales-and-don-bradley-discuss-polygamy/ I’m starting with volume 3 because it is shortest, and also because Hales said that it was actually a good place to start. In response to the allegation that sex was not involved, Brian does not claim that. Concerning the polyandrous marriages, Hales claims that it probably only happened in 1 or 2 cases. Hales states that nearly all these polyandrous sealings were not sexual, but he does admit that sex probably was involved in a case or two. He also argues that sex was not involved in the case of 14 year old Mary Rollins Lightner, and sex was much less important than the sealings in many cases. So yes Hales is downplaying that sex happened, but he is not denying that it happened. He is also arguing that he thinks he has identified a child of Joseph with a polygamous wife, though I am sure that there is some question to support his claim. I know of no DNA evidence to support this claim. Morgan Deane just did a very interesting rebuttal on J. Reuben Clark at Wheat and Tares: http://www.wheatandtares.org/12350/j-reuben-clark-pacifist-or-pro-nazi/
