Greg Smith examines the anti-Mormon charge raised against Joseph Smith that he was lecherous from an early age and that this is somehow the psychological or psychiatric or pathological background to plural marriage.

The text of Dr. Smith’s address can be found at Fairlds.org. The listener should be aware that there are helpful notes in the written version that help provide clarifications and corrections to some comments that appear in the oral presentation. For example, a question from the audience stated that Richard Bushman believes polygamy was a faulty revelation. However, FAIR contacted Dr. Bushman and he clarified that, while he believes that section 132 is complex and difficult to interpret in our time, he has never said that it was a faulty revelation. Similarly, Todd Compton denied that he would have used the word “mistake” to describe the practice of polygamy.

Greg Smith studied physiology and English at the University of Alberta, but escaped into medical school before earning his degree. He then did his medical residency in Montréal, Québec, learning all the medical vocabulary and all the French Canadian slang that he didn’t learn during his LDS mission to Paris, France. He is now an old-style country doctor in rural Alberta with interests in internal medicine and psychiatry. A clinical preceptor for residents and medical students, he has been repeatedly honored for excellence in clinical teaching.

A member of FAIR since 2005, Greg helps manage the FAIR wiki. Due to his research interest in plural marriage, he has spoken to the Miller-Eccles study group and been published in the FARMS Review on this and other topics. With twelve years of classical piano training, he is a life-long audiophile and owns far too many MP3 files. He lives happily with his one indulgent wife, three children, and four cats.

On a popular level, the folk apologetic has been accompanied by misleading statistics that downplay the rates at which plural marriage was practiced. A corrected ballpark figure has 15-20% of married Mormon men engaged in the practice during the Deseret era. Speculation runs rampant that a shortage of males was created by persecution caused deaths. However, such casualties were more likely to because of forced winter marches and hence not skewed towards one of the genders.

Despite these shortcomings and dismissal by many who consider themselves properly informed, it turns out that the original assertion is correct. There was a shortage of Mormon men! I will not only establish that below, but I will also advance two solid hypotheses on why the shortage existed.

In an earlier essay, I took a shot at explaining the lack of a “lost boys” phenomenon in 19^th century Utah. Looking at the 1880 Census data, I found that Utah women were being married much more efficiently than their US peers, while Utah men eventually married at about the same rate as their US peers. Utah demographics were found to support high rates of plural marriage for men because 1) Utah women were married efficiently, 2) Utah had a relatively high rate of natural increase creating a wide population pyramid, and 3) under these Utah conditions, increasing the age gap between spouses created an artificial surplus of women.

That analysis likewise presents a rationale for suspending plural marriage. In today’s world we observe increased life expectancies, delayed entry into marriage to pursue educational opportunities, greater economic independence for women, large age gaps between couples becoming less acceptable, and less importance placed on having large families. Of course, whether in 19^th century or now, it is necessary for a polygamous community to isolate itself from the dominant values of its ambient society.  However, inasmuch as Mormon fundamentalists practice arranged marriages and outcast young single men to sustain plural marriage, they appear be addressing a shortage of female marriage partners on levels that their Deseret era predecessors did not.

In my zeal to refute old anti-Mormon accusations that Deseret era missionaries specifically targeted female converts to bring them captive to polygamous harems in Utah, I resisted the notion that missionary work facilitated polygamy. I reasoned that converts would be equally male and female and that older couples would not contribute to natural increase as much as, say, a second generation Mormon. Subsequent investigation of statistics such as those tabulated below shows that a significant surplus of women emigrated to Utah as the fruits of missionary, but their presence is masked the presence of non-Mormons (a small ~20% of the population with a large marriage-aged male disparity [4]) and the rising second generation of Mormons (birth rates make a large % of the population and slightly favor males).

Anti-Mormon Propaganda

Table 1. Sex Ratios and Marriage Statistics [5]

In the first column of the table, overall sex ratios SR are reported. For example, there were roughly 104 males for every 100 females in the US in 1880. The sex ratio at birth has historically ranged from 102-106 [6]. However, other factors besides native births contribute to the overall sex ratio. For regions in the US, migration played a significant role. Horace Greeley’s admonish “Go west, young man” appropriately captures the demographic of a migrating individual. There was more than 2:1 male to female ratio in the frontier mountain states (NM had been settled a while longer and was thus more family friendly).

The second column uses Kathryn Daynes’s range for prime marrying age sex ratio (PMASR) of 15-29. She found that PMASR was generally more favorable towards women in 1860, 1870, and 1880 census years (93, 100, 105) than the overall sex ratio (101, 99, 107) [7]. As a slight refinement, I calculated a staggered prime marrying age sex ratio (SPMASR) as well: (86, 86, 90). SPMASR compares the number of males aged 20-34 to females aged 15-29 [8]. This helps capture the five year difference in male and female ages at first marriage (estimated in the 4^th and 5^th column by the singulate mean age at marriage (SMAM )). Finally I calculated the SR (96, 97, 101) and PMASR (87, 94, 100) for foreign borns [9] in Utah for comparison with my classification of almost 90,000 names in the Mormon Immigration Index CD.

The adoption of plural marriage prevented a disaster.  As seen above, a moderate surplus of Mormon women and an overwhelming surplus of non-Mormon men would have made large numbers of inter-religious marriages virtually inevitable. For some Mormon females, plural marriage was a much better option than remaining single for life (like many of their west European peers did) or marrying outside her faith.  Interfaith marriages, like other assimilating influences, were important to avoid while young Mormon religious community tried to establish its own identity.

Two Hypotheses

The surplus of Mormon women was the fruits of missionary work, especially in western Europe. The pre-dominance of women in the Mormon Immigration Index can be explained by a combination of two hypotheses.

1.      The demographics of converts will match the demographics of their ambient society.

2.      Women join new, charismatic religious movements in disproportionate numbers.

While the 1^st hypothesis is a default assumption, the 2^nd hypothesis was presented by none other than Rodney Stark [10]. He wrote:

The ancient sources and modern historians agree that primary conversion to Christianity was far more prevalent among females than among males. Moreover, this appears to be typical of new religious movements in recent times. By examining manuscript census returns for the latter half of the nineteenth century, Bainbridge (1982) found that approximately two-thirds of the Shakers were female. Data on religious movements included in the 1926 census of religious bodies show that 75 percent of Christian Scientists were women, as were more than 60 percent of Theosophists, Swedenborgians, and Spiritualists (Stark and Bainbridge 1985). The same is true of the immense wave of Protestant conversions taking place in Latin America.

As judged by Mormon Immigration Index results, western Europe convert sex ratios take on an intermediate value between their ambient countries (represented by Sweden and England in the table above) and the lofty numbers Stark collected for other religious movements. Mormon missionaries were instructed to let God select the elect and warned about specifically targeting attractive on at least one occasion. One might speculate that plural marriage diminished some enthusiasm among European women to convert to Mormonism.   If greater numbers of women had converted without plural marriage, it would have been very difficult to accommodate them in harsh, frontier Utah.

In conclusion, a Mormon male shortage in Utah in consistent with the 1) the assumption that non-Mormon demographics in Utah follow that found in other frontier western states and 2) foreign converts contributed a significant amount to Mormon demographics and were moderately stacked towards women. The Deseret Saints believed that plural marriage was commanded by God, while not fully comprehending the reasons why. Even if it is stretch to argue that divine foresight anticipated and prepared for frontier conditions in the Kirtland era, providing for the spiritual and physical welfare of the surplus female converts at least seems like a positive side effect.

Notes

[1] John Widtsoe wrote in Evidences and Reconciliations: “Plural marriage has been a subject of wide and frequent comment. Members of the Church unfamiliar with its history, and many non-members, have set up fallacious reasons for the origin of this system of marriage among the Latter-day Saints.

“The most common of these conjectures is that the Church, through plural marriage, sought to provide husbands for its large surplus of female members. The implied assumption in this theory, that there have been more female than male members in the Church, is not supported by existing evidence. On the contrary, there seem always to have been more males than females in the Church. Families — father, mother, and children — have most commonly joined the Church. Of course, many single women have become converts, but also many single men.

“The United States census records from 1850 to 1940, and all available Church records, uniformly show a preponderance of males in Utah, and in the Church. Indeed, the excess in Utah has usually been larger than for the whole United States, as would be expected in a pioneer state. The births within the Church obey the usual population law — a slight excess of males. Orson Pratt, writing in 1853 from direct knowledge of Utah conditions, when the excess of females was supposedly the highest, declares against the opinion that females outnumbered the males in Utah. (The Seer, p. 110) The theory that plural marriage was a consequence of a surplus of female Church members fails from lack of evidence.”

[2] I am looking in your direction, i4m.com

[3] I highly recommend Hales’s website http://www.josephsmithspolygamy.com/ to my readers.

[4] Dean May estimated 21% of Utah’s 1880 census population was non-Mormon Dean L. May, “A Demographic Portrait of the Mormons, 1830-1980,” in After 150 Years: The Latter-day Saints in Sesquicentennial Perspective, edited by Thomas G.”Alexander and Jessie L. Embry, Charles Redd Monographs in Western History No.”13 (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books for Charles Redd Center for Western Studies) p. 51, 67 cited in Kathryn Daynes, “Single Men in Polygamous Society: Male Marriage Patterns in Manti, Utah” in Journal of Mormon History 24 (Spring 1998), p. 89-111

[5] The tabulated values for US, Utah, and Mountain States sex ratios come from Volume 1. Statistics of the Population of the United States available at http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1880.html . For the same areas SMAM and never married % come from IPUMS. For Sweden sex ratios come from data provided by http://www.scb.se/Pages/ProductTables____25809.aspx, while ancestry.com was used to extract the same for England. SMAMs for the two countries provided by Michael R. Haines, “Long Term Marriage Patterns in the United States from Colonial Times to the Present,” National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA), NBER Working Paper Series, (Historical Paper No. 80. 1996):15-39.  Guinanne, Timothy W., 1997, The Vanishing Irish: Household Migration and the rural Economy in Ireland,1850-1914. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ. p. 96. Sex ratios for Mormon immigrants used the Mormon Immigration Index CD and relied on sites like nordicnames.com to classify gender.

[6] by Lee L. Bean, Geraldine P. Mineau, Douglas L. Anderton , Fertility Change on the American Frontier: Adaptation and Innovation p. 79 This fact suggests caution against the folk wisdom that women will out-number men in the Celestial Kingdom thus justifying a rationale for widespread polygamy in the afterlife. For a more devastating critique, see Valerie Hudson Cassler, “Polygamy” SquareTwo 3:1 (2010)

[7] Daynes also finds evidence for a surplus of Mormon women in the predominantly Mormon community of Manti PMASR (84, 81, 89) and in endowment records (77, 73, 83)

[8] The idea to use a staggered range for men and women occurred to me after reading Joshua Angrist, “How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage andLabor Markets? Evidence from America’s Second Generation” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002, v107(3,Aug) . Angrist uses a more appropriate range for the early 20^th Century with a smaller SMAM gap (men: 20-35, female: 18-33). I used ancestry.com’s census search capabilities to break down Utah’s population by sex and age.

[9] I again used ancestry.com and estimated the number of foreign-born by subtract US-born from the total. However this classifies unrecorded birthplaces as foreign which makes my estimates on the conservative side. In 1860, Utah territory included counties that were later annexed to Nevada (Carson, St. Mary’s, and Humboldt) and Wyoming (Green River) that I eliminated. However, I did not eliminate counties that straddled later state boundaries. This means that Utah’s actual sex ratios are slightly lower than the figures I provide, but probably not more than 1%.

[10] Rodney Stark, “Reconstructing the rise of Christianity: The role of women” Sociology of Religion.  Fall 1995.  Vol. 56,  Iss. 3,  p. 229

William Schryver’s presentation on the Kirtland Egyptian Papers received some press before the conference, and did not disappoint. You can view it here. (A browser plug-in may be required.)

There have been articles about many of the presentations published in Mormon Times, Deseret News, and LDS Church News:

• FAIR conference: Same-sex marriage and the role of religion
• FAIR conference: Secret Mormon codes and Egyptian papers
• FAIR conference: LDS doctrine clear on divinity of one God
• FAIR conference: ‘Gender equality is the brick of Zion,’ speaker says
• FAIR conference: What if the U.S. president were a Mormon?
• FAIR conference: Joseph Smith’s discovery of ancient patterns
• FAIR Conference: Roper’s take on Book of Mormon geography
• Mormons need to work to increase favor
• FAIR conference: Defend the Book of Mormon by studying names, origins
• Nibley editor says scholar was bolstered by research
• ‘Be Ready’ to Defend Faith

Transcripts will be posted at http://www.fairlds.org when they are ready. MP3s and DVDs will be made available for purchase at the FAIR bookstore.

People outside of Utah, upon hearing about it, immediately began wondering when (or even if) they would have a chance to see the series. It was quickly ascertained that KJZZ would not be providing it for viewing on their web site as some hoped, but eventually BYUTV picked it up. Today, season 1 can be watched on BYUTV and Utah viewers can see season 2 (now in reruns) on KJZZ. And now (as of 2009), season 1 is available on a 7 disc DVD set from Deseret Book.

The set contains 52 episodes, numbered from 0 to 51, which are about one half hour each, except for number 0 which was the longer pilot that was aired ahead of time. A booklet is included that gives a brief summary of each episode and lists the contributing scholars, along with an index. Unfortunately, it does not state which DVDs contain which episodes, so I ended up noting that myself in my copy. Each DVD contains a message at the beginning apologizing that the sound and video quality are not always perfect, but the one big drawback of this set is a total lack of closed captions. Anyone that can’t hear will not be able to watch it, and even for those of us who are able to hear, it would have been nice to be able to read what is being said at times, particularly when trying to take notes.

Season 1 is filmed at historic sites as well as in a studio, using visual aids ranging from photographs, to paintings, to the actual writings of Joseph Smith and others. It includes interviews with scholars such as Ronald Barney, Richard Bushman, Steven Harper, Richard Turley, Richard Anderson, Larry Porter, Milton Backman, Robin Jensen, Jeffrey Walker, Jill Derr, Royal Skousen, Mark Staker, Dean Jessee, Carol Madsen, and many others.

In the pilot episode, Ronald Esplin (managing editor of The Joseph Smith Papers) said, “I think in today’s world, every Latter-day Saint will encounter things about Joseph Smith they didn’t know before. We have an informational overload – informational access – that has never been available before, and to the degree that Latter-day Saints are left only with what they learn at Pioneer Day, they are going to be vulnerable, because there is so much more to learn. And I think it’s very important that we come to a true understanding of our history, and of our people, that involves dealing with all the issues, and dealing with all the personalities, and doing it broadly so that we understand our own heritage, and then we will not be overturned by some new little fact that we didn’t have room for in our scheme, because we prepared ourselves to look at the whole picture.”

Many of the other episodes in the series are spent giving us this understanding, beginning with familiarizing us with early 19th century America and Joseph Smith’s heritage and local environment, and then going through many of the events in Joseph’s life and the history of the church, and then his death and the aftermath. A good job was done in many areas where the church has been accused by critics of hiding information. For example, the different versions of the First Vision are discussed, and there is a very good history and explanation given of the Book of Abraham and associated papyri.

However, one weakness that stuck out to me was that the discussion of plural marriage was not as thorough as it might have been. The host, Glenn Rawson, was kind enough to answer my question about that: “Our discussion of Plural marriage was limited of necessity. We could only say what we could prove by reliable documentation and only a small portion of that. It was the first in-depth broadcast statement on the subject of plural marriage that had been done under Church auspices. We tried to be careful and circumspect.” Indeed, it is significant that plural marriage was discussed to the depth that it was.

There are a couple of episodes devoted to a roundtable discussion featuring members of the Papers staff explaining what the project is all about, and the significance for members and nonmembers alike. There is an episode about the medical aspects of Joseph’s leg operation. Separate episodes are devoted to the revelations and sermons of Joseph Smith, respectively. There are also episodes covering Joseph’s encounters with the law.

To give an example of some interesting points covered in a typical episode, in episode 7 (“The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon”) we are told that in the early 20th century, a farmer filled in the depression on the hill where the plates had been stored, because he was tired of people coming on his land to see it. It is pointed out that those who knew Joseph best believed him the most. And we are told that Joseph said he could see anything through seer stones.

There is much to learn about the history of the Church up through the 1840s, and this DVD set does a good job of helping to provide a foundation for more in-depth learning, and “to look at the whole picture.” It also helps the viewer have a better understanding of some of what is being published as part of the Joseph Smith Papers. This set would be excellent for use in Family Home Evening, as well as for personal study. Season 2 will also be out on DVD shortly, which Rawson told me covers some of the potentially troubling issues more thoroughly, and he also mentioned that season 3, entitled “History of the Saints: Gathering to the West” will begin airing on KSL and KIDK (Idaho Falls) TV the weekend of General Conference in October.

Smith received a medical degree (after also studying physiology and English) at the University of Alberta. He completed his medical residency in Montréal, Québec before becoming an “old-style country doctor” in rural Alberta. His interests include internal medicine and psychiatry.

Previously, Smith has spoken to the Miller-Eccles study group on the topic of plural marriage. He’s also published several articles in the FARMS Review and edited countless FAIRwiki pages. His 2009 FAIR Conference presentation, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Plural Marriage* (*but were afraid to ask),” can be read here.

Questions about this episode and ideas for future episodes can be emailed to podcast@fairlds.org.

Download:

To download, right click this link and select “Save link as.” The episode is also now available on iTunes.

Runtime:

38:45

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As a reminder, “If you have been called to teach a quorum or class using [the Gospel Principles] book, do not substitute outside materials, however interesting they may be. Stay true to the scriptures and the words in the book. As appropriate, use personal experiences and articles from Church magazines to supplement the lessons.” (“Introduction,” Gospel Principles, (2009), pg. 3.) The resources provided here are not meant to replace or supplement the prescribed lesson material, but are for use in personal study and to help provide background knowledge for answering any issues that may arise in class.

The Scriptures Are Available to Us Today
Open canon vs. closed canon
Supposed contradictions in the scriptures
The Mistakes of Men: Can the Scriptures be Error-Free?

The Bible
The Corruption of Scripture in the Second Century
As Far as it is Translated Correctly: The Problem of Tampering with the Word of God in the Transmission and Translation of the New Testament
FAIR wiki
FAIR Topical Guide

The Book of Mormon
Joseph the Seer—or Why Did He Translate With a Rock in His Hat?
Science and the Book of Mormon
Mormon’s Editorial Method and Meta-Message
A Real People, Time, and Place: Contextualizing the Book of Mormon
A Social History of the Early Nephites
The Gadianton Robbers in Mormon’s Theological History: Their Structural Role and Plausible Identification
Changes in the Book of Mormon
Nephi’s Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations
The Children of Lehi: DNA and the Book of Mormon
DNA and the Book of Mormon
Monotheism, Messiah, and Mormon’s Book
The Case for Historicity: Discerning the Book of Mormon’s Production Culture
Explaining Away the Book of Mormon Witnesses
Debating the Foundations of Mormonism: The Book of Mormon and Archaeology
The Protean Joseph Smith
Arabia and the Book of Mormon
FAIR wiki
FAIR Topical Guide

The Doctrine and Covenants
I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church
Dispelling the Black Myth
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Plural Marriage* (*but were afraid to ask)
The Reliability of Mormon History Produced by the LDS Church
FAIR Topical Guide – Blacks and the Priesthood
FAIR wiki – Blacks and the Priesthood
FAIR wiki – Polygamy
FAIR Topical Guide – Polygamy
FAIR wiki – Doctrine and Covenants
FAIR Topical Guide – Doctrine and Covenants

The Pearl of Great Price
Revised or Unaltered? Joseph Smith’s Foundational Stories
Book of Abraham 201: Papyri, Revelation, and Modern Egyptology
The Larger Issue
The Message of the Joseph Smith Translation: A Walk in the Garden
Adam in Ancient Texts and the Restoration
FAIR wiki – First Vision
FAIR Topical Guide – First Vision
FAIR wiki – Pearl of Great Price
FAIR Topical Guide – Pearl of Great Price

Words of Our Living Prophets
Statements by Church leaders
Revelation after Joseph Smith
Journal of Discourses
FAIR Topical Guide

Studying the Scriptures
The Impact of Mormon Critics on LDS Scholarship
The Fallacy of Fundamentalist Assumptions
“Uh oh!” to “Ah ha!” in Apologetics: 20/20 Foresight for a Faithful Future in Defending the Church
Spiritual Experiences as the Basis for Belief and Commitment
“Believest thou…?”: Faith, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Psychology of Religious Experience
What I Learned about Life, the Church, and the Cosmos from Hugh Nibley

In his paper titled “LDS Historical Rhetoric & Praxis Regarding Marriage Between Whites and Blacks,” Connell O’Donovan asserts that Brigham Young’s fear of black sexuality was the reason he prohibited black-white marriage and instigated the priesthood-temple ban, and that Young’s resistance to black-white marriage must be seen within the context of his own marital experimentation which at that time was receiving scrutiny via the press and the Massachusetts State Supreme Court. He then lists several topics of discussion, such as, examples of inter-racial marriages in LDS history, the fruition of anti-miscegenation laws under BY, statements about black-white marriage from the Deseret News, and eventually how LDS leaders abandoned their restrictions against black-white marriage. Or, as O’Donovan puts it, “unnecessary restrictions on the boundaries of love and marriage.”

His paper also demonstrates that LDS feelings at one time were deeply hostile to black-white marriage and that many Latter-day Saints believed black-white marriages would never be permitted, etc.

With that in mind, he doesn’t explicitly state the purpose of his paper. If it is to parade prejudicial attitudes once held by many Mormons, and Mormon leaders, then why talk about gay marriage? Though he doesn’t come out and say it explicitly, his paper is principally, though indirectly, about gay marriage.

His declamations about LDS attitudes toward black-white marriage ultimately serve his beliefs about Mormonism and gay marriage. In the past (and not-so-distant past) many Mormons believed black-white marriages were really bad and held rather racist attitudes towards blacks. But eventually the LDS Church abandoned their antiquated beliefs. He then draws on those former attitudes to create parallels with current attitudes about homosexuals and homosexual marriage. By building on those parallels O’Donovan takes those feelings of shame and embarrassment about the past and attaches them to present-day negative attitudes about homosexuality, gays, and gay marriage. From there he creates a sense that the past changed for the better and hopefully the present situation will too.

As far as BY’s involvement in a rather embarrassing divorce—BY had married a plural wife, Augusta Cobb, who had not yet divorced her first husband—I don’t see the relevance. Why must BY’s resistance to black-white marriage be “seen within the context of his own marital experimentation”? One would think O’Donovan would build a solid case that very strong assertion. But instead, he chickens out by posing and then answering the question, “Did Young then turn and take out his frustrations on a group of ‘inferiors’?…it would certainly seem so.” Though he doesn’t build a much of case for his assertion as to why BY’s opposition to black-white marriage “must also be seen within the context of his own marital experimentation” (italics mine), as a parallel device it works. BY took out his fear on those who were an easy target and today the LDS Church takes out its fear on homosexuals who are also an easy target.

O’Donovan’s paper fails as serious historical inquiry. As an exhibition of dirty laundry he succeeds, but ends up with a rather confused paper. As polemics creating a connection between abandoned, embarrassing attitudes about race and soon to be abandoned (he hopes) attitudes about homosexuals and gay marriage, he succeeds.

In other words, his paper is a nice piece of propaganda.

Drawing on the past

O’Donovan’s paper is a variation on the theme, “The patterns of the past are the patterns of the future.”

BY’s fear about black male sexuality prompted a ban on black-white marriage (an attitude the church eventually abandoned); the Church’s ban on homosexual marriage comes from its attitudes about homosexual sex (an perhaps that too will be abandoned). The church abandoned plural marriage and will eventually abandon opposition to gay marriage. The church dropped its priesthood ban and eventually will drop its own ban on gay marriage. In the past Mormons had racist attitudes against blacks, but that changed; Mormons will eventually abandon their attitudes against homosexuality. At one time laws prohibited black-white marriage; and one day laws prohibiting gay-marriage will also be history. The push for gay marriage is a continuation of the civil rights movement which overturned many discriminatory laws and attitudes. It will continue and eventually overturn laws and attitudes against gay marriage. Since Mormons find some aspects of their past embarrassing; one day they will feel embarrassment about present-day opposition to gay marriage…But why wait. Start change now!

That is how the usual polemic goes. I’ll write more in another post, but this will do for now.

Clark Braden’s account is hopelessly garbled, but that doesn’t deter many critics from Fawn Brodie to Grant Palmer from using him as a source to tar Joseph Smith’s character. Braden’s family lived in the right area at the time of the incident, but Clark himself was just an infant. As will be seen, it is likely that his informant was not Eli Johnson. Furthermore, as Dale Broadhurst, one who sympathizes with Braden’s promotion of the Spalding theory, observed from his numerous published errors that “Clark Braden was prone to exaggeration and ‘loose’ quotations of others assertions, comments, etc. The allegations and proofs offered in his speeches should be read with that fact in mind.”

The moderator at the Braden-Kelley debate was Arthur Deming, the son of a Jack Mormon sheriff. Minor Deming had made many enemies for the protection he gave the Saints after Joseph Smith’s martyrdom and died shortly after. Young Arthur became bitter against the Mormons, essentially blaming them for having to serve an apprenticeship (as orphaned or fatherless teens were often made to do) to learn a trade that turned out to be useless for him.  Arthur Deming also prefaces his collection of anti-Mormon affidavits as being a consequence of the debate. “Mr. Braden, the opponent of Mormonism, was unable to satisfactorily prove some points he claimed, and he engaged a party to collect evidence to sustain his position. The party did not accomplish much and I undertook the business.”

So a year later Deming followed up on the tar and feathering account with Newell K. Whitney’s hostile brother who had never embraced Mormonism and who had remained in the Kirtland area. Deming received a very different story from the Rev. Whitney, one that presents a more plausible motivation.

He stated that one of the party who tarred and feathered Sydney Rigdon and Jo Smith at John Johnson’s, in Hiram, O., informed him that Rigdon said to their assailants he presumed they were gentlemen, but Jo Smith fought until overpowered. A doctor present offered to castrate Jo and said he would warrant him to live. It was not done. Several of Johnson’s sons were of the party. They were angry because their father was urged by Jo and Rigdon to let them have his property. He finally did give them some of it, and moved to Kirtland and kept tavern, and his son Luke became one of the first Mormon Twelve Apostles.

By any historical methodology for weighing sources, Deming’s account trumps Braden’s. While both are extremely late. the latter is of unknown provenance and hence even less reliable. The former is third hand ( Johnson brother -> unidentified mobber ->S. F. Whitney -> Deming) unless the unnamed mob snitch was John Johnson Jr. The falsifiable errors Deming makes are less severe. Contra Braden, Marinda had no brother named Eli. Working against Deming, is that at most only one of Johnson’s son’s (not several as claimed) could have been in the mob. However it will take some argumentation to establish that fact. Let’s look at each of the relevant members of the immediate Johnson family to see where their sympathies were at.

Marinda Nancy Johnson

While she (much) later became a plural wife of Joseph Smith, she wrote unsolicited in her diary that Joseph never behaved improperly towards her. “Here I feel like bearing my testimony that during the whole year that Joseph was an inmate of my father’s house I never saw aught in his daily life or conversation to make me doubt his divine mission.”

John Johnson Sr.

John Sr. came to Joseph’s rescue when he heard the commotion, but got clocked when mistaken as a mobber by a fellow rescuer. David Whitmer miraculously healed his broken bone.  Later John Sr. faithfully served on the high council, which is inconsistent if he suspected Joseph behaved in an untoward manner with his daughter.

Elsa Johnson

Earlier Joseph had healed her arm, an act that ironically helped convert one of the mob’s leaders Ezra Booth for the time being. She helped clean the tar off of Joseph Smith and hence can not have been sympathetic to the mob’s aims.

Lyman Johnson

Whitney failed to note that Lyman was also called to be an apostle, in addition to Luke. This is in itself makes it highly unlikely that either Lyman or Luke harbored any ill feelings towards Joseph Smith. Lyman also has an alibi, he was on an eastern mission for much of 1832. According to the Saints without Halos website’s chronology, he was with Orson Pratt continuously from Feb. 3 to Nov. 8. More importantly a source that trumps either Braden or Deming by being earlier and only second hand and having no (as yet) falsified information likely stems from this mission, but I have yet to see any Braden apologist adequately deal with it. From Orson Pratt we have:

At a meeting held in Piano, Illinois,  Sept. 12,1878, Apostle Orson Pratt explained the circumstances connected with the coming forth of the revelation on plural marriage. He refuted the statement and belief of those present that Brigham Young was the author of that revelation [Section 132 in the Utah Doctrine and Covenants]; showed that Joseph Smith, the Prophet, had not only commenced the practice of that principle himself, and further taught it to others, before President Young and the Twelve had returned from their missions in Europe, in 1841, but that Joseph actually received revelation upon that principle as early as 1831. He said, “Lyman Johnson, who was very familiar with Joseph at this early date, Joseph living at his father’s house [near Hiram, Ohio, beginning in September 1831], and [Lyman] who was also very intimate with me [Orson], we having traveled on several missions together, told me himself that Joseph had made known to him as early as 1831, that plural marriage was a correct principle. Joseph declared to Lyman that God had revealed it to him, but that the time had not come to teach or practice it in the Church, but that the time would come.” To this statement Elder Pratt bore his testimony.  (Historical Record 6:230 cited disapprovingly in Price)

If Orson Pratt’s recollection is correct, than it isn’t possible to claim that Joseph was accused of being a womanizer (specifically in the cases of Fanny Alger and Marinda Johnson. Eliza Winters is another story, but it also falls flat.) before he received a revelation on plural marriage. Like Braden and Deming, Pratt can be dismissed as being late and agenda driven. But why should we reject Pratt, but accept the weaker Braden source? I hope that the historians who take the minority, contrarian view, championed by Signature will one day coherently address that question.

Luke Johnson

Luke was called on a mission at the same time as his brother in section 75. His first companion, William McClellin, fizzled out after a short while so he returned and was reassigned with Seymour Brunson. Luke was also gone during the tarring according to Saints without Halos’ chronology. Luke ‘s 1858 account is thus second hand, but over 25 years earlier than Deming and Braden. It is clear that his loyalties lie with Joseph Smith and his parents and not the mob in his account. He makes an error in dating it to Fall of 1831, but offers information not found in Joseph Smith’s history. Noticeably telling is the absence of any mention of his brothers being involved or a motive behind the attack. However, I don’t want to make too much of an argument from silence.

Olmsted Johnson

Olmstead also does not seem to be a mob participant. In Joseph Smith’s history he was just visiting the Johnson farm. Olmstead failed to convert to Mormonism and soon went traveling. “He went to the southern states and Mexico, and on his return, he took sick, and died in Virginia.”  Although, the history is vague about the timing of the visit, Olmsted is out of the narrative before the tarring incident is covered.

John Johnson Jr.

There is really only two reasons I am aware of that may point to John Jr. being a member of the mob. The first  is that he is included in a list of apostates that has other known members of the mob. That list is sandwiched in between Olmsted’s visit and the tarring incident. The second is that Deming’s theory of motive regarding  property becomes tenuous if at least one son wasn’t worried about his inheritance. Other apostates would not feel as threatened that a plot was afoot to deprive them of their property. As I allude to earlier, the property motive is much more plausible for the mob’s extra-legal maneuvers than accusations of sexual misconduct. Attempts to harmonize the two extremely post-hoc justifications run the risk of Occam’s wrath. However, I believe an even more plausible explanation, if one had to just pick one, is religious bigotry. To do this, I will now look at some Johnsons who were uncles rather than brothers of Marinda.

Uncle Edward Johnson

An Edward Johnson also appears on list of apostates, but beyond that, there may be no reason to connect him to the mob’s activities.  Looking at John Johnson Sr.’s genealogy, he had a brother named Edward who moved to  Portage Co., Ohio around 1831 and he may be the apostatizing Edward. John Sr. had moved there (in Hiram) around 1820, but the rest his brothers and sisters appear to have maintained residency in New Hampshire.

Uncle Eli Johnson

It is clear that there was an Eli Johnson at the tarring who was in charge of the tar bucket. It may be that a second uncle, Eli, tagged along with Edward on his move to Ohio for awhile.  He was also known for his religious persecution of those differing from his Calvinist/Presbyterianism worldview. He hated Universalists with their idea of no Hell, so it is real possibility that Joseph and Sidney’s vision of the Degrees of Glory set him off. So he does fit a mobber profile, if this is our man.

Eli was partially blind, fond of drink, disgruntled, the village tale-bearer, and lived in outhouses (apparently not a big property owner). He is known to have lived his last 50 years in Battleboro, NH (1809-1859), posing further difficulty for him being in Ohio for long and being Clark Braden’s source. He would have been around 50 when Joseph was tarred and feathered and not easily mistaken for Marinda’s brother.

Let us just say if this Eli Johnson is your star witness, your Joseph Smith history has major credibility problems. If this isn’t your Eli, than Eli is not a relative and it is even less likely that he would be aware of a sexual impropriety that apparently didn’t bother the Johnson family and was denied by Marinda herself.

We were then able to have rye bread and soon the potatoes came on so we fared well again. By fall we had some apples and peaches. I went to live with Solomon for awhile to help him boil his sorghum. By this time it was spring and I helped Father drive his team and get the ground ready to plant corn, beans, and potatoes and wheat. After the crops were in I went to live with Samuel Alger in 1815. I stayed there through the fall and winter. My sister, Clarrisa was at mothers with her young baby, Fanny. She stayed through part of the summer, sometimes her boy, Eli, was with her and at times he stayed with his Father or his uncle Solomon. Samuel Alger went to stay with his wife and children and hauled wood with a man by the name of Adams. In the spring they returned home. He gave me twenty-five cents to bare my expenses and I started home in March, 1816.

Check it out:

http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2008/05/hilarious-anti-mormon-attack-from.html

A simple polygamous example involves 6 people:
one man has 3 wives
two men have none

In this model, one man’s gain is another man’s loss. I would like to explore, through some preliminary statistical analysis, why this isn’t an adequate model for 19th century Mormonism, but it may be relevant to contemporary FLDS. I say “may” because I do not have enough data about the FLDS to make a judgment. I can, however, address whether the criticisms lobbied at them apply to 19th century Mormonism.

I can identify a number of modern sensibilities and assumptions underlying the above scenario.

1. A husband and wife marry close to the same age. On average, a husband is 2.3 years older than his wife.
2. If you form an age demographic pyramid by stacking blocks each with a length proportional to the population in each age range, then the US pyramid currently looks more like a column (see Table A-1).
3. Assuming that 1. and 2. persist for some time, it follows that the marriage pool has the same number of men as women, therefore one man’s gain is another’s loss.

We could find a solution to this dilemma using modern statistical numbers. Here is an example that models the current US marriage market that involves 100 men and 100 women selected at random between ages 40 through 44. In that sample you can expect to find 18 men and 13 women that have never married. Now suppose you had a time machine and the ability to arrange consensual plural marriages. You could arrange 7 two-wife arrangements and 3 three-wife arrangements before creating more “lost boys” than the 18 created without your interference. While this example is somewhat contrived, it illustrates a couple of points. First more men choose not to ever marry than do women in their age group. Second, the modern marriage market operates at nowhere near 100% efficiency for marrying off all its females.

The commenter cited above concludes her simple example with “I don’t want to live in a society where 2/3 of the men are unmarried and not invested in community life.” This is ironic because she already lives in a society that is 2/3 of the way there already with 44% of males aged 20-45 being menaces to society.

Of course 19th century Mormonism operated and the FLDS operates at much closer to that 100% efficiency. According to Kathryn Daynes in More Wives than One (p. 93-94), 99% of Manti Mormon women born mid 19th century eventually married while only 89 to 93% of their US peers did. Missionary work brought in a steady supply of converts and emigrants. Daynes showed that spikes in new marriages closely followed incoming waves of newly arriving emigrants. That is one advantage 19th century Mormons had over the FLDS who do not actively proselyte. The 19th century practice seemed to regulate itself after a rough, overzealous start during the Mormon Reformation in 1857. The percentage of polygamists declined with time to meet long term sustainable levels.

There were two other 19th century monogamous strategies (besides increasing efficiency) that were available to alleviate the zero-sum, simplistic example above. The first was to increase the age difference between husbands and wives from 2 to 5 years on average. That doesn’t help by itself; but if each mother raises an average of, say, 8 children (typical for 19th century) instead of less than 2 like they do now days, then the age demographic pyramid will truly be a pyramid instead of a column (or worse considering the baby boom retirees coming up). Let us see how this worked in Utah for marriage market broken down by age from the 1880 census from Ancestry.com.

Some valuable information can be extracted from this table. For one, it helps bust the myth that polygamy was needed to compensate for Utah having a higher women population than men. Men had higher life expectancies than women, especially on the frontier, and especially considering that many women died in child birth before the advent of modern medicine. Clearly men are not being invited to leave Utah to ease tension in the marriage market, outside of serving temporary missions, of course. The table also helps visualize what happens to unmarried pool for men who married on average 5 years younger than themselves. The most active age ranges for marrying off is the 15-19 range for women who had first pick of men moving into the age where they could comfortably support a wife between.the 20-24 age range for men.

According to L. L. Bean and G. P. Mineau in The Polygyny-Fertility Hypothesis: a Re-evaluation, the polygamists of the birth cohort (1840-1859) most relevant to the 1880 census married a second wife that was, on average.one year younger than a monogamist Mormon’s first wife. This suggest that single men had an advantage in the marriage market over their already married peers. Furthermore, the widening age difference between a polygamist male and his subsequent wives moved reality even further away from the zero-sum example above.

Now I am sure that some of those numbers add fuel to the fire of critics who decry the youth of some of these brides. I have also compared the 1880 census results for Utah and the rest of the nation. The national percentage for married 13-14 year old females was 3-4 times higher than it was for Utah. For age 15 the trend reversed as the nation’s 1.3% compared to Utah’s 2.0% For age 16, Utah was within 50% of the national rate and at age 17 Utah was still less than double the nation. Before anyone makes a big deal of this, the nation’s 1850 teenage marriage rates are higher (at least preliminarily) than Utah’s 1880 rates. Like Seth said (paraphrase), we will apologize for our ancestor’s polygamy when the critics apologize for their ancestor’s monogamy.

So where did the 19th century lost boys go? Perhaps they went to Neverland, as my research has failed to find any evidence of them. For males aged 20-35 leaving Mormonism would have made their prospects for marriage substantially worse.

[Mitt Romney's] faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr., an itinerant treasure-seeker from upstate New York who used a set of magic glasses to translate a lost scripture from God. His personality was infectious, the religion very approachable.

It would have been just another Christian faith had not Smith let his libido lead him into trouble. Before he died at the hands of a mob, he married at least 33 women and girls; the youngest was 14, and was told she had to become Smith’s bedmate or risk eternal damnation.

Smith was fortunate to find a religious cover for his desire. His polygamy “revelation” was put into The Doctrine and Covenants, one of three sacred texts of Mormonism. It’s still there – the word of God. And that’s why, to the people in the compound at Eldorado, [Texas,] the real heretics are in Salt Lake City.

As his biographer, Fawn Brodie, wrote, Joseph Smith “could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage.”

It is hard for me to imagine more factual errors and loaded language that could be squeezed into four short paragraphs.

It’s clear that Mr. Egan has done little research to prepare himself to opine on Latter-day Saint history. His two sources of information, by his own admission, are Fawn Brodie’s 1945 psychobiography of Joseph Smith and Jon Krakauer’s 2003 examination of the religious murders committed by the Lafferty brothers. As one observant commenter noted:

Having read Brodie and Krakauer [Mr. Egan] believes he knows what there is to know about Mormonism. If he had cited Mark Twain’s line about the Book of Mormon being “chloroform in print,” the piece would have then qualified as carbon copy to 10 or 12 others that have run during the last year.

Nothing seems to indicate that Mr. Egan is aware of scholarship that questions Brodie and Krakauer’s methodology and conclusions (for example, here and here). It’s also quite clear that Egan isn’t aware of the differences between the 19th-century LDS practice of polygamy and the 21st-century FLDS practice of polygamy. (To say nothing of the differences between the FLDS practice today and just 50 years ago.)

Mr. Egan’s use of Fawn Brodie to understand Joseph Smith speaks volumes. Ms. Brodie’s book, despite its enduring popularity, is seriously dated. An enormous amount of research into Joseph Smith’s life has been done in the last 62 years, and her book has long been superseded, especially by the recent biography by Richard Bushman.

But what I believe attracts Mr. Egan to Brodie is not so much her research, but her conclusions. Brodie, the thoroughgoing naturalist, simply dismissed any statements made by contemporary believers, chalking them up to delusions or Joseph Smith’s powers of hypnotism. Having eliminated faithful witnesses, she was able to substitute her own theory for the existence of Mormonism — lust, greed, and accidental chance. It is no wonder that Brodie remains so popular among sectarian and secular critics of Mormonism, for it provides the only possible explanation for the miracle of Joseph Smith, no matter how ham-handed. (I’m still trying to understand Mosiah 3, Alma 36, and D&C 88 as the products of mind solely fixated on bedding young girls.)

Unfortunately many otherwise intelligent readers will be exposed to Joseph Smith only through the eyes of Timothy Egan, and that is a tragedy.

Since Mike Parker’s blog post on plural marriage has garnered more comments than all our other threads combined, my keen market research skills have told me that polygamy posts are traffic gold.

One of my research interests at FAIR is plural marriage, and I’ve been reading as much of the primary and secondary literature as I can get my hands on.

I thought our readers might be interested in a periodic look at a few of the things that I’ve found interesting, weird, or different from the common portrayals of plural marriage. In particular, primary sources that may have been misread or misrepresented, are also worth looking at. I hope that readers will spot things that I haven’t, or correct some of my own blind spots.

I’ll try to post at least once or twice a week, until people get bored, I run out of material, or FAIR tells me to stop so this doesn’t become the All Plural Marriage, All the Time blog.

The RLDS/CoC and Jacob 2:30

A key difference (arguably the key difference) between the LDS and RLDS churches is the issue of plural marriage. The “Brighamites” insisted that Joseph had both taught and practiced plural marriage, and that God endorsed the practice. The “Reorganites” tended (following Joseph Smith III) to insist that Joseph had never taught the practice. A few (such as Austin Cowles, formerly of the Nauvoo Stake leadership) argued that Joseph had taught or practiced plural marriage, but that Joseph was wrong to do so–he was a fallen prophet who either repented or didn’t.

Both groups did, at least, claim the Book of Mormon as scripture. Anti-Mormon (and even some ostensibly “objective” accounts, such as Richard Van Wagoner’s Mormon Polygamy: A history) always point to the general prohibition of plural marriage in Jacob 2. Usually unmentioned is verse 30, which LDS readers have seen as indicating that God may (under some circumstances) endorse plural marriage.

I recently encountered an alternate RLDS reading. It is by Richard Price, who “is a Reorganization conservative who interprets redirection in the church’s policy and doctrine as evidence of apostacy from the truths of the Restoration. He has become the chief spokesman for Reorganization fundamentalists, and a rival church organization is now developing around him.” [1]

Despite a tacit or overt admission by many RLDS members, leaders, and scholars that Joseph taught and practiced plural marriage in Nauvoo, Price and wife Pamela continue to insist that (in the words of their book and series of articles) Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy.

[Given that the Prices sometimes engage in anti-LDS polemic, accusing LDS leaders of fraud and the possible destruction or alteration of documents, I've not linked to their site as per FAIR policy. Anyone who is interested can certainly find it, though. I found some stuff I hadn't seen before in their research.]

As probably goes without saying, I consider this stance historically untenable. The Prices have done some good research, however. Their analysis of difficulties which the physical layout of Joseph’s home presents for the folklore about Emma Smith reportedly pushing a pregnant Eliza R. Snow down the stairs adds to Beecher, Newell, and Avery’s analysis of the dubious textual and chronological evidence for this story. [2]

At other times, I think the Prices’ ideological commitment to absolving Joseph of plural marriage and blaming it all on the Brighamites trips them up. This brings me to the example I want to discuss today.

Jacob 2:30

Jacob 2:30 can be defanged, from the Prices’ point of view, if it excludes plural marriage. They attempt to do it thusly:

The Mormon Church leaders and missionaries still use the above passage to claim that God commanded them to practice polygamy to “raise up a righteous seed”—with the theory that children born of polygamy are more righteous than children born of monogamy, and that when God decides to establish an especially righteous people, He will command that they must practice polygamy.

They interpret this passage:

For if I will, saith the Lord of hosts, raise up [righteous] seed [or people] unto me, I will command my people [to practice polygamy]: otherwise [if the Lord does not give the commandment to practice polygamy], they shall hearken unto these things [Jacob’s instruction to not practice it].

This interpretation makes this passage completely out of harmony with all the rest of Jacob’s revelation against polygamy, and all of Joseph Smith’s writings which were printed before his death.

The true interpretation of the passage shows that it is definitely monogamous, and that it is in harmony with all the rest of the revelation which the Lord gave through Jacob. The true interpretation is:

For if I will, saith the Lord of hosts, raise up [righteous] seed unto me, I will command my people [the Lord will be their commander—He will give them commandments to obey]: otherwise [if the Lord is not their commander; or they do not obey His commandments], they shall hearken unto these things [they shall practice the sins of polygamy].

This is the true meaning of this passage—and therefore it condemns polygamy, rather than justifying it as the Mormon Church leaders claim.

This is certainly a creative reading. I see a few problems, however:

1. The reading requires the “shall hearken” to be read as predictive (what will happen), not imperative (what should happen). Yet, in Joseph’s day, shall is typically an imperative when applied in the second and third person, not a future tense. [See Webster’s 1828 dictionary, “shall,” definition #2.]
2. It seems strange for the Lord to say simply that He will be “their comamnder,”–the verse is clearly talking about commanding SOMETHING. And, it involves the Lord “will”[ing] something that He might not will in other situations.
3. It ignores the fact that Jacob is almost certainly commenting on Deuteronomic (or Deuteronomy-like) writing about plural marriage in Judaic kings, some of whom clearly had wives given them by God. (e.g., 2 Sam 11:8) See here for analysis on these lines by FAIR.

I also wonder if the Prices’ reading of shall is idiosyncratic or typical for how the Book of Mormon uses it. Or the KJV?

So: is this a possible or probable reading of Jacob 2:30? Or has zeal lead the Prices’ astray? If so, what can LDS apologists do to avoid similar errors in their own efforts to read their own texts and articulate their own beliefs?

Discuss.

Important Note: I do not believe that anyone is currently authorized to practice plural marriage. Any comments arguing that plural marriage should be taught or practiced by the LDS Church (or anyone else) will be deleted without further warning. Get your own blog.

Notes

[1] Roger D. Launius,” An Ambivalent Rejection: Baptism for the Dead and the Reorganized Church Experience,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 23/2 (Summer 1990): 61n1.] (For more on Price, see William D. Russell, “Richard Price: Leading Publicist of the Reorganized Church’s Schismatics,” in Roger D. Launius and Linda Thatcher, eds., Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History (University of Illinois Press, 1994), 319–340.)

[2] See Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Linda King Newell, and Valeen Tippetts Avery, “Emma and Eliza and the Stairs,” Brigham Young University Studies 22/1 (Fall 1982): 86–96.

We are caught between the Scylla of our long history of practicing — and strongly defending — plural marriage, and the Charybdis of having given up that practice and now having to disassociate ourselves from modern polygamous groups.

From the standpoint of defending the Church, how should we navigate that strait?

The Church has clearly taken the position that they aren’t going discuss it, except to say “yes, we did practice it; no, we don’t practice it anymore.” Here are some of the few statements that can be found on the Church web site and in recent Church publications:

The brief primer “Polygamy: Latter-day Saints and the Practice of Plural Marriage” in the Newsroom section is probably the most comprehensive statement available. (You have to use the search feature to find it; the “Polygamy” link under “Background Information: History of the Church” is broken.) This document is as interesting for what it says as for what it does not say:

Plural marriage is described as “an important part of the teachings of [the Church] for a half-century” and the Church members today “honor and respect the sacrifices made by those who practiced polygamy in the early days of the Church.” With reference to modern polygamous groups, it offers President Hinckley’s October 1998 General Conference statement.

It explains that “the practice [of plural marriage] began during the lifetime of Joseph Smith,” without mentioning that Joseph himself entered into the practice with nearly 40 women, some of whom were already married, and a few of whom were quite young by modern marriage age standards.

It mentions the discomfort and foreignness that most early converts must have felt about the practice, but avoids discussing what percentage of Church members entered the practice, or how how common it was to have two or three wives (as it was among the general membership) versus five or more (as it was among general authorities).

It (correctly) separates the revelation to end plural marriage from Wilford Woodruff’s 1890 Manifesto, which was more of a political/public relations document. It does not mention post-Manifesto plural marriages or Joseph F. Smith’s 1904 “Little Manifesto.”

The only lesson in the four-year Gospel Doctrine curriculum cycle that mentions polygamy is Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 31. The lesson plan covers only the parts of D&C 132 that relate to eternal marriage; polygamy is relegated to a supplemental section that may be used “if class members have questions.” The instructor is admonished, “It should not be the focus of the lesson.”

This year’s Priesthood/Relief Society study is Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. The manual focuses on “teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith that have application to our day” (p. xii). It briefly mentions Joseph teaching plural marriage, but does not mention his own participation in the practice or the extent thereof.

I don’t bring this up to be critical of the Church. We clearly have a public relations problem, and the Church is doing their best to deal with it. A 2007 Gallup survey asked Americans, “What comes to mind when you think about [the Mormon] religion?” The number one response — among those who view us unfavorably and those who view us favorably — is “polygamy.” That response was given by nearly three times as many people who said “good people” or “strong morals,” and nearly four times as many who said “family-oriented.” No matter how we think of ourselves, the fact is that many non-Mormons think of polygamy when they think of us. The Church’s public relations arm is trying to change that.

But the problem with downplaying polygamy is that many faithful Church members don’t hear about the more difficult issues — Joseph Smith’s involvement in particular — in a faithful Church setting where it can be put into context with the rest of Church history.

FAIR solicits questions about criticisms of the Church; FAIR volunteers try to respond to all of them. In 2007 we received more questions about polygamy than any other topic. Many of these people were just finding out about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, polyandry, and marriages to young women. We don’t talk about it in church, so they usually end up finding out about it on unfriendly web sites.

How do we solve this problem? We’re not likely to see Sunday School lessons on polygamy anytime soon. Outside of that, what can Latter-day Saints who know about these things do to “inoculate” your average Mormon in the pews?

FAIR volunteers have some ideas. We’d like to hear yours.

As a disclaimer, I realize that this blog entry is not in good taste, especially from a feminist perspective. Some of the quantitative analysis that follows will no doubt feed into Mormon stereotypes that we like to keep our women barefoot and pregnant.

There has been much consternation over the years between the various branches of the restoration on whether Jacob 2 allows polygamy or not. Utah saints often interpreted verse 30, “For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things” as allowing an exception to the general prohibition. I am tempted to further this argument along by showing that polygamy facilitated the raising up of seed both qualitatively and quantitatively. My treatment is only a sideshow to the bigger debates about Jacob 2 and polygamy, which are covered elsewhere by FAIR volunteers (see link1 link2 link3).

The quantitative aspect has fallen out of favor since Stanley Ivins reported that “that 3,335 wives of polygamists bore 19,806 children, for an average of 5.9 per woman. An equal number of wives of monogamists, taken from the same general group, bore 26,780 for an average of eight. This suggests the possibility that the over-all production of children in Utah may have been less than it would have been without benefit of plurality of wives.” [1]

Kathryn Daynes [2] pointed out that Ivins’s sample is biased towards elite polygamists, those who were prominent citizens or who paid an inclusion fee to appear in Frank Esshom’s 1913 production Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah. In terms of offspring, it easy to see that the number of offspring would be biased lower. Ivins notes “There is no conclusive evidence that any of Joseph Smith’s many plural wives bore children by him. Heber C. Kimball, with his forty-five wives, was the father of sixty-five children. John D. Lee, with only eighteen ‘true wives,’ fell one short of Kimball’s record, and Brigham Young fathered fifty-six children, approximately one for each wife.”

Smith and Kunz [3] used Esshom as well, but they created a sample so they could compare monogamous and polygamous fertility patterns. Since polygamous males, according to Ivins, married two wives (70.2%) and three wives (20.7%) the majority of the time, they limited their study to those situations. The following information considers only couples for which completed fertility rates could be determined. It gives the average number of children sorted by family type, before and after infertile wives removed.

One concurrent wife
wife 1: 7.82 7.99
wife 2: 4.79 6.83
Two concurrent wives
wife 1: 9.2 9.28
wife 2: 6.96 7.3
Three concurrent wives
wife 1: 7.24 7.5
wife 2: 6.81 7.15
wife 3: 6.06 6.76

Notice that bigamist families more than double the child count of monogamous families. The rates are no longer sustained when three concurrent wives are involved. The first wife of a polygamist was married at a slightly younger age than monogamous wives were, and that accounts for increase in number of offspring. Juggling three wives eventually countered the boost from the headstart. The finally tally was monogamous first wives 7.82 children and polygamous wives 7.46 children.

With those fertility rates, if we consider a society formed from Esshom’s set except eliminate the elite polygamists and the second wives married to serial monogamists, then about 56% of the women marry monogamously and the remaining 44% marry polygamously. The overall average would be 7.67 children per married woman. Kathryn Daynes reported a 99% marriage rate for Mormon women in Manti and compared that to a national rate as low as 92%. In other words, polygamy gets females married off more efficiently. So if, counterfactually, Mormons had only practiced monogamy and enjoyed the 7.82 fertility rate and yet had to take a hit of only 92% marriage efficiency, then the efficiency adjusted rate would be 7.14 children per women compared to 7.59 for the efficiently married polygamous society. Another influence of polygamy was to drive the bride’s age below the national average by a couple of years, which in turn resulted in an increase in children.

So if one accepts the reasoning above, than the introduction of polygamy into Mormon society caused more rapid increase than if Mormonism had stayed with monogamy. Compare the figures above with that of the national average for white females:

children/woman
1850 5.42
1860 5.21
1870 4.55
1880 4.24
1890 3.87

Another metric is the ratio of children age (0-4) to 1000 white women age (15-49) provided by Thorton [4].

Year US Utah
1850 613 846
1860 627 1097
1870 562 927
1880 537 848
1890 473 691

References
[1] Stanley S. Ivins, “Notes on Mormon Polygamy,” The Western Humanities Review, X (Summer, 1956); reprinted “exactly as it appeared” upon Ivins death in Utah Historical Quarterly 35/4 (Fall 1967). See Anonymous, “Tribute to Stanley S. Ivins,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35/4 (Fall 1967): 307–309. Hat tip to Gregory L. Smith for bringing this source to my attention.
[2] Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840–1910, (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2001) p. 103.
[3] James E. Smith and Phillip R. Kunz, “Polygyny and Fertility in Nineteenth-Century America,” Population Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3. (Nov., 1976), pp. 465-480.
[4] Arland Thornton, “Religion and Fertility: The Case of Mormonism,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 41, No. 1. (Feb., 1979), pp. 131-142.

It used to be that sectarian criticism against the LDS Church dominated the anti-Mormon scene. That class of criticism has been continually recycled over the years, so the apologist’s job was fairly easy. Merely pointing to previously formed answers was generally sufficient. The new wave of secular criticisms have brought forth new challenges and the allegation that Joseph Smith and his polygamous followers were statutory rapists is one such. More research will be required to properly address this criticism which appears to have been popularized by Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven and further permeated American society by media coverage of  Warren Jeff’s trial and HBO’s Big Love, which O’Donnell plays a role in.

Shortly after Romney’s JFK speech, O’Donnell levied the charge that Joseph Smith was a rapist in three different forums, the last of which shows that he was thinking in anachronistic terms of statutory rape and extending his criticism to 19th century Mormon polygamists in general.

Dec. 7 (McLaughlin Group): “Look, Romney comes from a religion founded by a criminal who was anti-American, pro-slavery, and a rapist.”

Dec. 11 (Hugh Hewitt Radio Show ): “There’s no one in your audience who isn’t a Mormon who believes that a single Divine revelation has ever occurred to any Mormon, least of all Joseph Smith, the criminal, adulterous, rapist founder of the religion.”

Dec. 13 (The Huffington Post) “Critics also use the Church’s 70 year delight in polygamy and sex with very young girls, which also happens to be true. Critics of Mormonism have plenty to work with without inventing anything.”

Let me note four valuable resources that have addressed this accusation from a faithful Mormon perspective so far. Kaimi Wenger introduced the topic to the Bloggernacle in his Brides among the Beehives at Times and Seasons back in June. One commenter introduced the IPUMS census database from which marital ages in 1850 could be estimated. This has lead to further number crunching to compare the marriage demographics between 1850 and modern United States, Mormons before and after the effectual introduction of polygamy, and Joseph Smith’s plural wives. Other FAIR members have participated in the statistical analysis and the result has been incremental improvements to the FAIR wiki’s coverage of Joseph Smith’s marriages to young women article. The big pay off will be when FAIR affiliated author Dr. Gregory L. Smith (see Prevarication, Prophets, and Polygamy ) publishes his forthcoming book on polygamy. Dr. Smith has been so gracious to provide a rough draft of his chapter Age of wives which is definitely worth checking out. Finally, perhaps the most valuable resource is a Farms Review of Krakauer’s book. In Doing Violence to Journalistic Integrity, Craig L. Foster surveyed scholarly literature addressing young brides. He writes (I have taken the liberty of removing footnotes):

[M]arriages of younger girls were not uncommon in the past. Peter Laslett, the noted social historian, published an interesting essay concerning the age at menarche in Europe since the eighteenth century. Laslett noted that while girls in Britain and Western Europe reached menarche at a later age, girls in America and Eastern Europe started menstruating at a younger age. Indeed, according to Laslett’s research, in eighteenth-century Belgrade, Serbia, girls as young as eleven and twelve were not only marrying, but having children. In fact, at one point, eighty-seven percent of all women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen were married. On the American side of the Atlantic, between 1634 and 1662 about 220 marriageable girls were brought to Quebec to marry. These girls were called les Filles du Roi, or the king’s daughters. While most of the girls were sixteen to twenty years old and the second largest group were between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, at least seventy-six (the fourth largest grouping statistically) were between the years of twelve and fifteen. Thus it was not surprising to have women marrying and bearing children at a younger age. Indeed, it was common in newer regions of settlement and farming in both the United States and Canada for women to marry at a younger age.