19th Century Nuptiality and Propaganda II

Some recent volleys have been fired in the on-going culture wars between the faithful Mormon community and their anti- and ex-Mormon counterparts. It is not quite fair to contrast a general authority’s polished speech and some off-hand message board remarks backed by shoddy research. Bruce C. Hafen’s remarks were summarized in this Mormon Times article, but I take responsibility for applying them to my recent experiences in researching marital ages of 19^th century wives alongside those of Joseph Smith and the Deseret era saints. Some excerpts from MT:

“Readers have no way of knowing which critical claims have already been discredited, and the anti-Mormon sponsors are certainly not going to tell them right there on the site,” he said.

The democratization of ideas sometimes confuses the reader as to what is true and what is not, as all ideas are presented horizontally and as fact, thus positioning the blogger’s flippant opinion alongside the scholar’s well-researched dissertation.

Last week on a message board someone took note of Dr. Gregory Smith’s article that reports statistics from the 1850 Census and from pre-exodus Nauvoo that shows that age differences between spouses were substantial back then. There was some thoughtful discussion taking issue with GLS’s plea to avoid presentism and some brought up aspects of Joseph’s plural marriages that would have been unacceptable even for that time (like bigamy, which I have actually blogged on recently.)

Then the discussion went backwards, when one poster, despite the statistics to the contrary claimed “”the age of marriage in 19th Century America was probably later than it is now and teenage girls that did marry usually did so to boys more their own age and not men 20+ plus years older.” Even though this forum does not allow any defense of the Church I thought that posting some objective numbers would be helpful.

As far as average age, 1980 was close to 1840, but there has been a lot of movement since.
1840 SMAM 22.4
1980 SMAM 22.9
2008 SMAM 26.6
SMAM = Singulate Mean Age At (first) Marriage [1]

10% of 2008 brides were teens compared to 43% in 1840. [2]

1850 grooms aged 34-38: wife averaged 10.1 years younger, 19% were teens
Joseph Smith: wives averaged 6.7 years younger, 30% were teens.

USA Long Term Age Dependent Cumulative Marriage Rates

The poster making the claims I addressed, helpfully linked to some items thought to call the statistics I presented in question. Otherwise, the ad hominem reaction I received brought Hafen’s remarks into focus for me.  In a sense, it doesn’t matter how well I research and publish statistics in forthcoming scholarly venues on 19^th century nuptiality. Anti-Mormon sponsors will hardly ever acknowledge that a criticism has been addressed or seriously engage empirical that does not support their paradigm. Wanting to not reciprocate, below I will address one of the statistical claims made in my interlocuter’s supporting links.

Claim: “ In Utah (1850s to 1890s), the average age of a 2nd wife was 17 (husband average age early 30s) and the average age of a third wife was 19 (husband average age mid to late 30s). The average age in the USA for a first marriage in the late 19th century was about 22.”

I want to be the first to acknowledge when an ex-mormon researcher gets something right. The numbers given for USA average is in the right ballpark for female first marriages. The given typical ages for husbands depending on marriage scenario are also probably defensible, even if they lack context. For example they could have addressed how serial monogamists or older single men in their 30s married back then. To return to my earlier point, using 1850 “marrinyr” data from IPUMS, men aged 34-38 married women 10+/-6 years younger than themselves. Using all men lessens the gap to 5+/-6. I am reporting mean and standard deviation to the nearest integer. Men in their 40s were 13+/-10 years older than their wives (11% teens).

Let’s move on to testing the claims about wives’ mean ages being 5 years below the national average during the plural marriage era. The table below analyzes the 1880 census. It shows that Utah’s overall average and its Coale-McNeil minimum age was very close to that of the West.

1880 10% Census Sample [3]

Many scholarly papers [4] have made use of the massive Utah Population Database. Regarding marital ages depending on wife order, it has been found that the mean of the ages of the first and second wife of a polygamous man is roughly the same as that as the average age of all monogamous wives. Put more simply, in a mixed polygynous/monogamous the society the ages of each sub-group track each other. Over time, first wives can be up to a year younger than monogamous wives and second wives up to a year or so older than monogamous wives. Contrary to the claim above, third wives were typically older than 23. In short, the 1880 census numbers above support the average ages being around 20.5 and not 17. On the other hand, Kathryn Daynes [5] estimates that during the Mormon Reformation in Manti average marital ages got much lower (~16.5 years). However the situation soon corrected itself and returned to above 20.

Bean and Mineau [6] divided Utah men into 3 birth cohorts. The last one (1840-1859) is of the most interest since it was the most active group around 1880.

[1] SMAM calculated using Hajnal’s method on raw data extracted from IPUMS. 1840 SMAM estimated using procedure outlined in previous blog entry and comments.

[2] % take into account age structure. More information about my methodology can be found in the link immediately above. Some adjustments have been made. 1) I assume a more conservative Coale-McNeil minimum age for 1800-1840 of 13.8. 2) I have added constraints in my numerical optimization routine to not overestimate the marriage rate at 14.5 years (to prevent minimum age from being underestimated). This sometimes results in an increase of about 0.3 years. 3) After 1940 I use a general log-gamma distribution on the first pass to get a tighter fit than the Coale-McNeil distribution. The result is that teen percentage in 2008 is actually closer to 8.5% rather than 10% as reported above.

[3] Census Division Map at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/us_regdiv.pdf

Min Age = Coale-McNeil minimum age of eligibility. Equal to AI Mean – 1.73 X standard deviation

AD Mean = Age Dependent average (takes population pyramid into account, closer match to marriage year cohort, county records )

% are cumulative percentages of brides in marriage cohort married by the end of the designated age. For instance 21.5% were married as teens in New England.

I should note that the chart shows a worst case comparison for Utah by not allowing the optimization routine to underestimate Min Age. If Utah had been processed like the other regions its Min Age increases to 14.0.

[4] Some papers I have found to be useful are:

G. P. Mineau, L. L. Bean, M. Skolnick, “Mormon Demographic History II: The Family Life Cycle and Natural Fertility,” Population Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Nov., 1979), pp. 429-446

Lee L. Bean, Geraldine Mineau, Douglas Anderton, “ Residence and Religious Effects on Declining Family Size: An Historical Analysis of the Utah Population,”  Review of Religious Research, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Dec., 1983), pp. 91-101

[5] Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840–1910 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 107.

[6]  L. L. Bean and G. P. Mineau , “The Polygyny-Fertility Hypothesis: a Re-evaluation,”   Population Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 67-81 see the table on p. 72. The other birth cohorts had higher age differences as plural marriage was phased in.

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Mormon Thought vs. Open Theism

[ed. note: The following was written by George Cobabe and posted here with his permission.]

I surely accept the idea that the general statement about Open Theism is one that we would all want to accept and is consistent with Mormon Thought. Clark Pinnock describes open theism as a situation where there”… is genuine interaction between God and his creations, where God enters into reciprocal give-and-take relations with this creations, and where God responds to what his creations do.” It is an attempt to “…bring out the personal nature of God and [the participants] want, in their own distinctive ways, to lift up the conviction that God is “open” and that he exists in a significant relationship with the creature.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Interfaith Dialogue, Philosophy | 13 Comments »

Louis Midgley on Open Theism

[ed. note: This was originally written by Louis Midgley and posted with permission.]

The discussion [on Open Theism] always ends up focused on whether God knows and must know everything in fine detail that ever has or will ever happen. Some insist that this has to be the case.

But the fact is that Latter-day Saints are strictly Open Theists, if any group of believer fit that label. Why? The reason is that creedal Christians, and this includes everyone who is locked into what is often called classical theism, ends up picturing God with attributes that Latter-day Saints from day one flatly reject. One is an Open Theist or can be described as such, if one is uncomfortable with or rejects classical theism. What do I mean by classical theism? Read the rest of this entry »

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Revelations and Translations I

Review
======
Title: The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations: Manuscript
Revelation Books
Editors: Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, Steven C. Harper
Publisher: The Church Historian’s Press
Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 2009
Number of Pages: 752
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 1570088500
ISBN-13: 978-1570088506
Price: $99.95

Reviewed by Trevor Holyoak

This is the second book to be released in the Joseph Smith Papers
project, and the first volume of the Revelations and Translations
series. It is a “facsimile edition” of Revelation Book 1 (also known as
“Book of Commandments and Revelations”) and Revelation Book 2 (“Book of
Revelation” or “Kirtland Revelation Book”). It is quite large, measuring
approximately 9.25 by 12.25 inches and weighing nearly 8 pounds. This
means it won’t quite match the previously released Journals volume on
your shelf (which it effectively dwarfs), but apparently there will be a
few other volumes of the same size to go along with it, so the finished
set of 30+ volumes should end up looking quite nice together, in spite
of the two sizes. And there is a very good reason for the larger size –
the body of the book consists of photographs of each page of the two
books, with the photos on the left side, and a transcription running
parallel on the right. Read the rest of this entry »

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Parallelomania

Parallelomania was a term perhaps coined in 1830, coincidently (or is it?) the same year the Book of Mormon was published.
I put some  notes  together a few months ago on evaluating parallels. I would like to hear some of your methods for discerning the significance of a proposed parallel and some examples as well. Read the rest of this entry »

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Brigham Young on Interracial Marriage

Recently I have been gathering notes to do some rewrites on the FAIR wiki regarding Brigham Young’s views on race mixing. Then I ran across Connell O’Donovan’s 2009 Sunstone West article [1].  O’Donovan has uncovered many Mormon specific sources on attitudes and reactions to interracial unions. When I read his earlier article on Walker Lewis, I wished for more of an attempt to contextualize Brigham Young’s thoughts with those of his contemporaries. In the Sunstone article,  O’Donovan delivers. He gives an overview of anti-miscegenation laws and attempts to repeal them over a long stretch of times. He also places Brigham’s views that “mulattos are like mules” and hence could not (or should not [2]) reproduce very well was within the norm of the scientific thought of his day. Needless to say, none of these attitudes belong in today’s more enlightened society or the LDS Church. Read the rest of this entry »

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D’Sousa and wish fulfillment

Conservative author Dinesh D’Sousa has written a new book to follow up on his best-seller, What’s so great about Christianity?–called, Life After Death: The Evidence [http://townhall.com/columnists/DrPaulKengor/2009/12/09/qa_dinesh_dsouza_on_life_after_death?page=1]. I have a copy of the former, as well as others of D’Sousa’s books, including The End of Racism. For those who don’t know about him, D’Sousa immigrated from India as a teen during the 1970’s, and became a senior domestic policy analyst for the Reagan Administration. His analysis is typical of people who immigrated from Asia and attended American schools; the quality is better than anything about 90% of native-born Americans can produce.

There is, however, one issue in his last two books, where D’Sousa’s analysis fails–utterly. One claim made by atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Hatrris, etc., is that Heaven is a wish fulfillment concept, and thus, so is religion. That is, earth life is so bad, we dream up a place that is wonderful beyond imagination to console us.

D’Sousa’s answer is that he can certainly understand why somebody whose life isn’t that nice might imagine a place waiting for us that is. He has problems, however, understanding hell as a wish-fulfillment. Hell, of course is WORSE than any place that exists temporally, and worse than what humans can imagine–even a Nazi concentration camp is paradise compared to hell.

While hell-as-wish-fulfillment is certainly incongruous with those for whom hell’s existence serves as incentive toward holiness, like, say, Mother Teresa, for most of us, hell’s existence serves as a wish fulfillment as a tool of cosmic justice, which doesn’t exist here on earth. That is, in our worst moments, we might wish hell upon our enemies–those we don’t like. Thus, liberal Democrats wish hell upon former President Bush–and his supporters, “birthers” wish hell upon that “African Muslim Socialist,” President Obama (He isn’t–at least the former two; I’ll explain in a later post.)–and his supporters, and anti-Mormons like Bill Keller (http://www.votingforsatan.com/) wish it for the Latter-day Saints–and those like the late Governor Lilburn Boggs [D-MO] actually attempt to send us there.

Thus, for most of us, hell is indeed a wish-fulfillment concept, and for the rest of us, it is evidence that we are nuts.

Personally, I think a better response–though less dramatic than D’Sousa’s–is Daniel Peterson’s rule of comparative religions: If a person who is undoubtedly sane and intelligent in other subjects adheres to a religion that an observer thinks crazy or stupid, the problem is more likely with the observer’s view than with the religionist’s beliefs [http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/040315respecting.html].

What do you all think?

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Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament

Lightning Strikes Twice: Review of Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament[1] by TB Spackman

In 2006, Deseret Book published Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament to widespread approval.[2] Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (or WOT), a sequel of sorts, has appeared recently, a few fortuitous months before the Gospel Doctrine calendar changes over to the Old Testament as the course of study. WOT is clearly meant to parallel World of the New Testament, from the title to the layout and organization. However, the Old Testament is not the New, and the three authors of WOT faced a much tougher assignment. Read the rest of this entry »

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19th century nuptiality and anti-Mormon propaganda

At the annual John Whitmer Historical Association meeting in September, Craig Foster announced that he and Newell Bringhurst will be editing an anthology on polygamy. Two  of the 15 or so essays will take opposing views on whether teen marriage was normal in the 19th century. Squaring off will be an extended version of Todd Compton’s Sunstone West presentation and a paper co-authored by Craig Foster, Greg Smith, and myself. My role is to be the stat man, while Greg is an expert on Nauvoo plural marriage, and Craig is a accomplished historian and has mastered the literature on marriage trends. Craig and Greg are more prolific authors than myself and I summarized some of their work at the height of the Romney campaign here on the FAIR blog. I think this gave an early  picture of what might happen if the three of us combined skills.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Review: BYU Studies 48:3 (2009)

The latest BYU Studies is a phenomenal a “special feature” issue with a series of articles discussing the latest Joseph Smith Papers volume. In September, the first volume of the “Revelations and Translations” series of the Joseph Smith Papers was published. This landmark volume contains the Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR) which includes the earliest surviving manuscript versions of many of Joseph Smith’s revelations and the only prepublication manuscript copies of some of them. Seven of these revelations were never canonized.

John W. Welch, the issue’s editor, can hardly contain his enthusiasm:

Imagine!…having the BCR is something akin to uncovering a discarded draft of the Declaration of Independence or some of the missing records used by Luke in preparing his gospel (p. 5).

This issue of BYU Studies includes four enjoyable papers on BCR that were presented in a plenary session of the 2009 Mormon History Association meeting in May 2009. These articles, written by members of the Joseph Smith Papers editorial team, provide details not included in the Revelations and Translations volume itself.

Robert J. Woodford, “Introducing A Book of Commandments and Revelations, A Major New Documentary ‘Discovery,’” (pp. 7-17).

Woodford gives a brief overview BCR and its provenance, and identifies those (including himself) who worked on its publication preparation. He describes how researchers identified the way BCR was referenced for publishing the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. He concludes with some suggestions for future research based on BCR. For example, analyzing alterations in the revelations raises historical and theological implications. The so-called Book of Mormon copyright revelation and a piece on the “pure language” are of interest. The dates revelations were received and the historical setting can be reevaluated. “Each researcher will find his own area of particular interest” now that the BCR has been published and made available (p. 16).

Robin Scott Jensen, “From Manuscript to Printed Page: An Analysis of the History of the Book of Commandments and Revelations,” (pp. 19-52).

In this highly technical article Jensen more fully traces the provenance, context, and content of the BCR. He meticulously describes the physical makeup of the book as well as its significance to scholars. “When scholars approach newly discovered documents, several important questions arise. When and why was it created? Who created it? What was it used for?” (p. 21). For Jensen, reading the words on the page alone only yields half an answer to these questions. Only by studying the internal and external evidence, the manuscript words as well as the history of Mormonism and the nature of archival record keeping, can we fully appreciate the document in question. Jensen explains how “forensic paleography” helps researchers find out when a document was created, how it was used, and what it might have meant to the people involved in its creation. In other words, Jensen is asking questions about what the BCR can teach us about the very process of revelation itself.

Steven C. Harper, “Historical Headnotes and the Index of Contents in the Book of Commandments and Revelations,” (pp. 53- 66).

John Whitmer, the principle scribe for the BCR, included interesting date and header information for many of the revelations, allowing researchers to reassess the date and context of many early revelations. Clues will help reassess timing of aspects of the Book of Mormon translation, the location of the organization of the Church, the date when section 20 was revealed (calling into question speculation about Christ’s birthday being the 6th of April), the timing of the “parchment of John” revelation, the identity of James Covill, the circumstances surrounding a meeting where men were asked to testify to the truthfulness of Joseph Smith’s revelations, and how early members understood the imperfect revelations from a 24-year-old ploughboy prophet. Harper notes his essay does not finish much historical reassessment, but is meant to encourage it by describing how the BCR’s index of contents and historical headnotes can be examined by scholars.

Grant Underwood, “Revelation, Text, and Revision: Insight From the Book of Commandments and Revelations,” (pp. 67-84).

Underwood explores how textual revisions shed “important light on the process by which Joseph Smith received, recorded, and published his revelations” (p. 67). What is revelation? A direct word-for-word message from God, or the human articulation of the message? Something in between? Tracking some changes between the BCR and later published versions of the revelations allows us to see how Joseph Smith and his contemporaries understood the process. For the most part Underwood says pre-July 1833 revisions were mostly grammatical and stylistic, or clarified meaning. After that point in preparation for publishing the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants changes were made to update, amplify, and incorporate newly revealed polity or doctrine (p. 68). He tracks who made most of the corrections, surprisingly few in the hand of Joseph Smith himself, who was the one called to make such changes. Underwood explains a “latitudinarian” view of the revelations, where Joseph trusted associates to make changes so long as the general sense was not adjusted. Thus, divine communication has a human component which needs to be taken into account, or as Jeffrey R. Holland stated: “The scriptures are not the ultimate source of knowledge for Latter-day Saints. They are manifestations of the ultimate source. The ultimate source of knowledge and authority for a Latter-day Saint is the living God” (p. 81). Underwood deftly utilizes scholarship on revelation from several different faith traditions and non-LDS scholars to help readers better understand revelation and the written word.

Ronald E. Romig provides a brief response to these papers and a short historical overview from the perspective of the Community of Christ (pp. 85-91). In the Book Review section Thomas Coens, an associate editor of the Papers of Andrew Jackson series gives a non-Mormon scholar’s perspective on the landmark inaugural installment of the Joseph Smith Papers. He tips his cap to the rigorous scholarship involved in the Journals volume and provides a few personal thoughts on the volume. James B. Allen also reviews the Journals volume.

In addition to these special articles, the issue includes a piece on Eliza R. Snow’s poetry, LDS athletic tournaments from 1950-1971, and book reviews of the Twighlight series, Bushman’s Very Short Introduction to Mormonism and a few other selections. A paperback copy of this issue is available for $9.95, or a digital copy can be downloaded for $7.00. See byustudies.byu.edu for more. This is a highly recommended issue.

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