An Introduction to Mormon Polygamy w/ LDS Discussions – 24

Introduction to the Polygamy Series

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host John Dehlin. It's September 7, 2022 and we are continuing our epic series from Mike of LDS discussions focusing in as balanced of a way as we can on Mormon truth claims. The topic for today is an introduction and timeline of or to Mormon polygamy and and what this is going to be kicking off is a multi part series on Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy and today's kind of an overview. I just want to take 20 seconds to remind you all that this series from LDS discussions number one. The website is LDSdiscussions.com where you can read so many essays and so much good content focusing on thoughtful, balanced, evidence based responses to Mormon truth claims to help you and all of us understand that the basis for understanding Mormonism and its history better. We are something like 23, 24 episodes in these episodes build on each other and so we encourage you to start at the beginning. If you're finding this for the first time, watch the other 22, 23 episodes and then come back to this one. You'll have a much better foundation to understand it. Even though this podcast is released as part of the Mormon Stories podcast series on the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel and in the podcast stream, we've also shared these LDS discussions episodes in isolation on Spotify, both in video and audio format, also on a YouTube playlist for LDS discussions under the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. And also you can find the LDS discussions podcast in isolation wherever you get your podcasts. So we want to encourage you to do that. And without any further ado, let's bring on Mike. Hey, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53 Hey everybody. How's it going?

John Dehlin 1:54 You ready to talk polygamy?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56 Yeah. You know what, this one's gonna be kind of like we talked about with the race and the priesthood kind of episodes. These are tough and I know these are ones that still, for what, you know, for different reasons get me, you know, still kind of bother me in ways that maybe the other historical stuff doesn't. So we're gonna do our best to present the data as we have it. And obviously as we've said with the other episodes, people are going to do with it what they want and we'll reference a lot of good resources as we go and hopefully it gives everybody at least a good overview of the different areas of polygamy, not just how it started, but also as we get to the end of this kind of group of episodes, how it impacts the church today and what the implications are because of the fact that it's still doctrine. And we'll go through it as gently as we can without trying to sugarcoat it. And hopefully, if you're listening and you're a believing member, it's going to be difficult because there are a lot of things that are going to come up that you probably haven't heard. At the same time, it's going to be okay because there's a lot of stuff I think that we'll go over that kind of explains how you can know about these things and kind of how to incorporate them into what we've been talking about in the previous episodes. And, you know, it gets better. It's just these episodes get, get a little rough and we'll do our best.

John Dehlin 3:16 Yeah, I'll, I'll say once upon a time, Lindsay Anson park and I were on, on a trip to Europe and she made this point that you can't understand Mormonism without understanding polygamy. And it's, it's her view that, you know, everything from the temple ceremony to garments to, you know, even the way that the church sometimes handles reports of sexual abuse today, that there are tie ins in almost every aspect of Mormonism somehow back to polygamy. And so I'll just agree with you that it's so fundamental. Before we jump in, Mike, I just wanted to say a couple quick things. Number one is I have a dear friend or a good friend named Brian who's actually been heavily involved in Mormon history over the years. And something he told me, he, he corrected me on a thing. And afterwards I said, brian, man, you should be doing this podcast, not me. And what he said was he really liked our dynamic because when academics are just talking, sometimes it's harder for people to understand. But when there's kind of like this teacher, learner model where kind of Mike's the teacher and John's the learner, sometimes for some people, it makes it more engaging. I know that there are some of our viewers and listeners that just want to hear Mike and they just want to hear the facts. But there's a large number of viewers and listeners that have also said that they appreciate our exchanges and they appreciate my restatements. So there's, there's literally no way to create a podcast that makes everybody happy. So I'm just going to acknowledge we're not going to make everybody happy. But the position I'm going to try and take is just as the learner. And I kind of like this idea of like a convert to Mormonism teaches A sixth generation, a lifelong Mormon about his own religion. There's something a little bit clever and profound about the fact that you know more about Mormonism than me, Mike. And you were a convert, an adult convert at that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:11 Well, the funny thing is, like, you know, I don't even think about it that way because I think for me, the. A lot of the resources I'm pulling from could run circles around me all day long. And so for me, this whole project was about trying to get below the surface of kind of those common arguments you hear from both, like, from a critical standpoint and then also from an apologetic standpoint. Because a lot of the focus on what you see in the battle, especially online, but even when the church holds face to face events, is those topics you see in the CES letter. Those are the ones that everyone's starting to know about, whether it's polygamy, first vision, priesthood, restoration, race of the priesthood. And so this was about trying to get below that surface. So for me, I am relying heavily on those historians that can run circles around me, and I've referenced them throughout and in these next five episodes, like Lindsay Hansen, Park's work has been massive. And I obviously would recommend anyone who's listening to this to check out her Year of Polygamy series, because that goes through every single one of the wives of Joseph Smith. And it does it. She does it in a way that I would argue is as gentle and comforting as you can get. She does not make fun of it. She doesn't. She doesn't use a lot of, like, loaded language. She's very calm. And I think she presents it in a straightforward way as you can. And I'm not going to speak for her in any way, but I think one of the cool things for me listening to her series was I think you could kind of tell as her series went on that it became more and more difficult for her to kind of like, allow for polygamy, maybe to not be from God, but also for Joseph Smith, be a prophet. I can't speak to where she is with her spiritual journey any, you know, at all, but I do feel like it's really cool because you could tell that she's doing the series, at least from my perspective, that the more she got into it, I think the more it weighed on her. And I think that's how it was for me too, where it's with the church, they always want to give you apologetics to keep you from getting that second or third or fourth layer deep, but that's where you start to really get to the point where you can find the patterns, where you can find that these problems are not isolated. And that's what we've tried to do in this series, is to show that these are not isolated problems. And so to what you were saying earlier, I don't feel like I'm an academic, but I do feel like one of the things we're doing that's really cool is me kind of trying to synthesize this information and then presenting it to you. And then when there's areas either you haven't heard of or maybe you've heard of them differently or. Or if there's something that you've heard of that I don't have in the presentation, that we can kind of work into it to show that. Yeah, there's this, too. And I think that's why there's a lot more value in having you there than just me talking. Because being able to get that feedback from you, to either know to expand on something or to tie it back to something else, I think is huge. And when someone's listening or watching, I think for them to be able to see that would be a lot more valuable than just going to like ldsdiscussions.com and reading it, because that is much more dry and it doesn't have the benefit of having someone else there to say, hey, can you explain this a little better? Or doesn't that tie into this? Or what about this? And I think those are where you get a lot more beneficial conversations to these topics.

John Dehlin 8:20 Yeah, perfect. Okay. So that's going to be my posture. I'm Lerner, you're master teacher. And I say that tongue in cheek. But no, I know. You do know a lot. Okay. And I'm just going to very quickly, I. At least as far as what I've said, there's at least a couple things that some of our viewers and listeners have expressed concern over. And I'm just going to own a couple things. Misstatements I made. I'm totally comfortable saying that I don't know everything and that sometimes I mess up and make mistakes. And two mistakes that I made. I think I indicated in a past episode that the word this is during the. The priesthood restoration episode. I think. I think I indicated that the word Melchizedek, it doesn't show up anywhere in the Book of Mormon. And if I gave that impression, that's actually wrong. The word Melchizedek does appear in the Book of Mormon. I believe it's an Alma Alma 13. And I believe that it talks about, even mentions high priesthood. And all I'm gonna say there is. What I think I meant to say was that the priesthood that we have now, which is Melchizedek priesthood, is a higher priesthood with. With elder and high priest, and then Aaronic priesthood, which is a lower priesthood with deacon teacher. You know, that level of structure doesn't appear. And I think it's even a stretch to say that having the character of Melchizedek, which is really just a Bible reference, to have the character Melchizedek and to say that just referring to a generic high priesthood in some way is really a statement of how Joseph's priesthood ends up evolving by 1835. I think I was trying to say that's a stretch, but I made him a statement, so I'm gonna own that. Okay. And, Mike, you can add to that if you want, or we can just

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:15 leave it at that. And the problem is. So we're recording a lot of these episodes a little bit in advance, so that one just aired. So we'd gotten some feedback on that. And I need to go back and listen to the episode. But I think what would happen was we had a slide. We were going through the fair Mormon response on the priesthood restoration, and they had mentioned that Alma 13 shows that Joseph Smith was. Was aware of the Melchizedek priesthood and was already, you know, had that idea in his head. And what I believe we. Where we screwed up is I was saying, I think I need to listen to it. But I think we were saying that the. The Melchizedek priesthood isn't in the Book of Mormon. And what we're saying is Alma 13 is pulling from Hebrews 7. It's pulling from Hebrews chapter 7. And that's where the ideas of Melchizedek come in, where, you know, he paid tithes to Abraham. And we had talked about this a lot during the episode, but Melchizedek, the name is King of righteousness, right? So it's not necessarily a person. And it's. Hebrews 7 is kind of saying that Jesus has this priesthood of, like, the King of righteousness, which means that we don't, because Jesus doesn't need a priesthood like we would have, you know, and so I think what happened was, when we got to that slide, I was kind of conflating the fact that there's no development of the Melchizedek priesthood as the church has it in the Book of Mormon, but there are references to Melchizedek in Alma 13 because he's pulling from Hebrews 7 at that time. And so it's. Yeah, that's a little bit where apologists will say, of course he was thinking about it, it's in the Book of Mormon. But then you'd also say that's where he's pulling from Hebrews 7. This is not unique content to the Book of Mormon. And furthermore, as we talked about in the episode a lot, the fact is, if he was truly thinking about the Melchizedek priesthood when the Book of Mormon was written, he would not have been ordained to the high priesthood two years later. It would have happened as the church now claims it does. But that being said, I think we did kind of conflate those two things when we were doing that slide. And so it came off as if we were saying there is no mention of Melchizedek in the Book of Mormon. And so we are wrong on that because I think we were conflating the fact that we were saying he's pulling from Hebrews 7 there and that he's not developing the Melchizedek priesthood in the Book of Mormon as it appears in the church today in any way. And so we were kind of wrong because we. I think we were at that point, we're a couple hours in, and I think we're kind of like, almost relying on our earlier stuff, but then it came off wrong. So for that, I wish I'd worded it better because it was on the slide. I just kind of screwed up when I was talking about it.

John Dehlin 12:35 Okay, is there any other correction we need to make that comes to your mind right now? Because I'm. I'm happy to. For this to be a dialogue, and. And so I'm not embarrassed or ashamed when we make a mistake, we'll own it. We'll have a conversation, and that'll be just part of the fun of the series. Is there anything else that comes to mind, a criticism that we've received of something we got wrong?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:55 That was the big one so far. You get some comments on YouTube and stuff, and they're not ones where. I mean, I usually try to reply when I see them or if someone points them out to me to explain where I'm coming from. But if someone does have them email them to us, it's a lot easier sometimes to get them by email. And then we can go through it because if we screw up, we want to note that. And like, in this episode today, there's some areas where I was making changes because I was trying to talk to some people to clarify some things. And it was helpful because there were some things where it gave me some new data that I didn't have before. So we obviously want to get it right and we're happy to go back and correct it, even though it might be a few episodes later, just because of the way we're recording them. But we absolutely will own up to it because the whole point of this series is to get the info out there and to do it in the most straightforward way we can. So if we get it wrong, we want to correct it.

John Dehlin 13:47 Yeah. And we also want to model the behavior that we want to see in institutions, which is when you make a mistake, you own up to it, you admit it, you repent, and you forsake the sin and you confess and then you try not to do it again. All right, so today let's jump in to the topic at hand. Let's talk about polygamy.

Scope and Goals of the Series

Mike (LDS Discussions) 14:06 Yeah. So this is going to be. We think it's going to be a 5 episode series, 5 episodes group within the series. And we want to cover not just the accounts of polygamy, but where it began, how Joseph Smith was teaching about it in his proposals, and what the impacts are today because of the fact that DNC132 is still doctrine. And so there's this quote, and I have no idea where it started. I don't know if it was from someone famous, but I saw it once, I thought it was really good, especially for polygamy. It says, studying history will sometimes disturb you. Studying history will sometimes upset you. Studying history will sometimes make you furious. If studying history always makes you feel proud and happy, you probably aren't studying history. And I love that quote because for Mormon history, we often are given this super clean presentation of Joseph Smith, whether it's the first vision, the priesthood restoration, the Book of Mormon translation with the heaven sitting at the table with the gold plates, and with polygamy. As a convert, I only knew about polygamy because people made jokes about Utah and polygamy. So I was a little aware that would hear like on a sitcom or something. And when I talked about it or when I asked about it, it was always told that it was. It was kind of modeled, almost like. Yeah, it was more of a Brigham Young thing. And at the time, there was no real documentation when I joined, and this is the late 90s, that really indicated that Joseph Smith had wives. When you talk about, like the manuals you're going to see in the church building on a Sunday, they didn't really talk about it even the manual on Brigham Young, I believe, had a reference to Brigham Young's wife. So this is one of those things versus wives, versus what, 55 wives or whatever he had. So one of the things about studying church history is it's going to make you really upset if you're a believer, it's going to make you upset. Even if you end up staying in the church, even if you end up saying, I'm okay with it, if it doesn't make you upset, if it doesn't make you uncomfortable, then you're not really studying history, you're studying what the church wants you to study, or you're studying a watered down history that is so detached from the historic reality that you're not getting the full picture. And I often hear people say that I've had this happen a lot where they'll come to me. Usually they'll say, you're wrong about something. And I'll say, can you read this? Because this is where I'm coming from. They'll say, no, this stuff makes me too uncomfortable. And I always want to say, get uncomfortable. Because if you're not willing to get uncomfortable, you are never, ever going to get to the bottom of anything. Because if you truly believe in something, you're not going to get into it. And so this stuff is going to upset you as a believer. And to be honest, this stuff upsets me today as someone who I'm still a member, but I'm not a believer. And, and so it's going to be difficult to go through these episodes. But we're just trying to point out right off the top, if you want to get to the full picture, it's going to be upsetting. We'll get through it together. It won't be that bad. And I think we're all better off. Even if you stay in the church, you're better off knowing this stuff because if you have children that you're going to send off on a mission, they should know these things before they go so that they can make the most informed decision they can if they want to spend two years of their life, you know, proselytizing for this church. Because a lot of the times, and we've talked about this on previous episodes, I had two missionaries that came over here after I started doing my deep Dive and I became a Word project. And so they came over and it was so funny because I got, we just happened to be in the area and it's like, no, you weren't. But I was talking with them and I said, listen I will talk to you guys as long as you want. I said, but if you want to talk to me about why I should reconsider the church, you. You have to listen to what I have to say. And I told him, I will only talk to you about stuff that's on the church's website. I will not give you anything else. Only off the church's website. And they were so uncomfortable with just the stuff I was talking about off the church's website. They did not know almost anything. And this was three and a half years ago, four years ago. So the point is, if everyone needs to know this stuff, what you do with it, that's up to you, but everyone needs to know this stuff.

John Dehlin 18:04 Makes sense. Yeah. And I'll just add one thing. Polygamy. You know that quote, if I'm trying to be fair, that quote about history cuts both ways. Because if you are mad at the church and you hate polygamy and you're studying history, you may find journal entries of people who participated in polygamy and say they loved it. So, you know, you don't have to comment on this, but I'm just saying that can cut both ways, including sometimes reading things that are disturbing to you if you've lost your faith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:36 So, yeah. And to that point, this is actually, you're making a great point that I want. We talk a lot in our episodes about apologetics. Right. And so there are times where we'll talk about some of the apologists in the church who are trying, I think, their best to make changes from the inside, to find. To change kind of the way the church frames things. So whether it's Richard Bushman or. Or Patrick Mason, Teryl Givens, and sometimes you get frustrated because you read it and you're just like, come on. But at the same time, the fact that I can read their stuff, and even though it does make me uncomfortable sometimes I'm like, how can you spin this into a good thing? I think it's a good thing for me to read it because getting their perspective has helped me a lot in talking about this stuff. Getting the perspective of Richard Bushman, or I'm trying to think Dan McClellan. He does a lot of great videos. Getting some of his perspectives have been so helpful, even though sometimes I'm like, oh, that's so frustrating. So it does cut both ways. And if you are a critic, there is a lot of value in finding somebody that you disagree with, but that can present it in a way that's respectful, and that at least backs up what they're saying, whether or not you agree with it. Because even if it makes you uncomfortable, it is so helpful to have the perspectives of both sides.

John Dehlin 19:52 Yeah, yeah. I interviewed Patrick Mason, who's probably the preeminent Mormon scholar right now in the Mormon studies field, and I asked him about polygamy yesterday and he's just like, I don't believe it. And I believe that scripture can be wrong. And so for me, DNC 1 32, at least a good chunk of it isn't even scripture. And this guy is a faithful, active, devout member who's one of the most well respected, faithful Mormon scholars in the world. And that was surprising. Anyway, let's jump onto the next slide. The devil is in the details with polygamy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:24 Yeah, and so this is one of the, we've talked about this so many times with these topics where a lot of times if you get below the surface, that's when you start to really see that the details are going to give you a really clear picture of what's going on. And so we talk about this all the time. And with polygamy you're going to have a lot of members that rationalize it by saying something like, it'll all work out in the end, we just don't know everything. And a lot of people will say, I hear this all the time, which is, I'm so glad I don't have to live in a time where we practice that. And the fact is this is still the doctrine of the Church. And every member of the Church needs to understand how Joseph Smith implemented engaged in polygamy, because this is still the doctrine of the church. DNC132 is still canonized doctrine and the implications are still there for the eternities. When we talk about the Church removing polygamy, we're talking about the Church removing polygamy for time, meaning on earth, but after death, this is still what every member of the Church has to look forward to. And if you're a member of the Church and you're saying, I'm so glad I don't have to live under the polygamy. I mean, I feel so horrible saying this, but you do have to live through it. It's just that instead of living through it for eternity plus our 80 years on earth, you just have to live for eternity with it. And so this is not something that goes away forever. This is under the Church's doctrine unless they decant, you know, remove 132 from the canon. This is still what you have to look forward to. And so when women say they have a choice, as we go through these episodes, you have to understand your choices to accept it or be destroyed. And people will say, oh, you're taking it out of context. And we'll get to it when we get to the DNC132 episode. But this is not out of context. This is something the church doesn't want to talk about because they know how uncomfortable it is. They know how damning it is. But at the same time, until they remove it, this is the future for every woman in the church and every man in the church for eternity.

John Dehlin 22:18 Yeah. And I think a great reference to that is the book the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy by Carolyn Pearson. I'll include that in the show notes. And also we do an interview with Carolyn Pearson about her book on Mormon stories. So we'll include that in the show notes as well. Okay, so the next slide is every believing member of the church needs to know this information. And we've already kind of made this point. You made it with the missionaries. So what do you want to summarize about this slide that we haven't? Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:45 You know, all I say is just, these things are not gonna be easy. They're not gonna be fun. But if you don't know them, you can't possibly understand, I guess, what you're sustaining in church every Sunday. And as I said earlier, if you're sending your kids off to missions, if you're bringing your kids to church on Sunday and you're doing it without knowing the full history of the church, I think you're doing a disservice not to yourself, but to your. Your family as well. And I know people get really offended by that. But I do believe that we, myself, having a kid who's at the age now, we're starting to kind of understand more and more of this stuff. I feel like if he doesn't have the full picture and you just send them with one side, it's not putting him on a path that is, I would argue, the best one. And the church had updated their handbook. I believe this was in 2021. It might have been 2020. But they have this section about basically sources and information. It says, in today's world, information is easy to access and share. This can be a great blessing for those seeking to be educated and informed. However, many sources of information are unreliable and do not edify. Some sources seeks promote anger, contention, fear, or baseless conspiracy theories. Therefore, it is important that church members be wise as they seek the truth. And this is the problem where you hear all the time in the church where they'll say, it makes you feel good, it's from God. If it makes you feel bad, it's from the devil. This stuff is not going to make you feel good. It's not going to edify. It's not going to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. And the church is going to want you to think that because of that, you need to stay away from it. And it's not reliable. But the problem is these are all historically based. A lot of these are accounts by the wives of Joseph Smith themselves or the people around Joseph Smith. And so them not being edifying is not because Satan, you know, cause me to write this or because the adversary is trying to deceive you away from the church. It's because the history of the church and the history of polygamy is so much more troubling than what we've been taught that it's going to make you feel upset to hear it. But I just want to state up front that that does not mean it's from Satan. It just means that's how you feel in response to the information. And that's something you need to be aware of as we go through these episodes, because a lot of times we feel bad and we want to run. It's the whole backfire effect thing. It's the fight or flight mentality. I just want to state up front that you're. This is not going to be edifying, but it is going to be historically backed. And at the end of this, do it through what you want. But I just want to make that clear because the church often tells us, if it makes you feel bad, don't read it, don't listen to it. But this is history, and it's not going to make you feel good.

John Dehlin 25:16 Yeah, yeah. That's a really. That's a really important point. Okay, the next slide. The devil is in the details.

Religious Claims of Divine Permission for Polygamy

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:25 Two more. There you go.

John Dehlin 25:28 Okay. Religious leaders have justified polygamy beyond Joseph Smith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:32 So we're going to do a whole episode on Joseph Smith's happiness letter. But this is part of what we're going to cover in that episode is Jonathan Streeter, who has the YouTube channel Thoughts on things and stuff, which is awesome. And you should subscribe if you don't. He did a presentation at Sunstone about the happiness letter. And it was one of the most important presentations I've ever heard from Mormon history. And when I heard it the first time, I was absolutely floored. And that's why we're going to do a whole episode on it because it's that important. And he made this point and I think every member of the church again needs to understand that polygamy is something that every, not every, but a lot of high demand religious leaders have done in the same manners, the same kind of tactics as Joseph Smith. And so if you in his presentation he says the following. Keep in mind that special divine permission is nothing new. Self proclaimed prophet David Koresh and the Branch Davidians claim special divine permission to take child brides for the purposes of producing the 24 elders foretold in the book of Revelations. Self proclaimed prophet Wayne Bent of the Lord Our Righteousness Church claimed special divine permission for having sexual relations with children, even his own daughter in law, in order to avoid God's punishment. Self proclaimed prophet Julius Shack now of the sec, known as the Work, claims special privilege to promise salvation, exchange for sexual intercourse with women and children, including his own stepdaughter. Self proclaimed prophet Tony Alamo of Alamo Christian Ministries claimed special biblical permission to illegally marry multiple women and children. Self proclaimed prophet David Berg of Children of God claims special permission to normalize sexual relation with children. Prophets justifying their own permission predations. A special divine permission through the use of pious language and religious sentiment is nothing new. And that's going to make you feel like crap to hear. But the point is, as you listen to this, this doesn't even mention Warren Jeff, as you listen to these episodes, understand that you have to, once you start to give special pleading of what Joseph Smith is doing here, you then have to look at all of these other leaders who did the exact same thing in the Voice of God. And at some point you have to either say it's different because I believe in it, or this is a pattern that's been done throughout history. And every time that someone has done it, it's shown to not be from God and it's shown to be abused. And we're going to go through this in a lot more detail, but I just want to get that out up front because this is something that is done, has been done by a lot of leaders, it's being done by a lot of religious leaders and some of the offshoots, especially the fundamentalist offshoots. And it's horrific. And if you find it to be horrific with them, you can't then turn around and say this is from God with us. I have a really hard time with that.

John Dehlin 28:06 Yeah, yeah. This really struck home to me when I watched the recent HBO documentary the Vow about Keith Renery and Nexium, the Nexium cult. And then when I watched David Koresh in the Waco video, where David Koresh is, like, sitting on the roof with one of his married male followers, and it's like, hey, I've got a. I've got a higher law. I want to share with you and the followers, like, okay, what? He's like, David Kress is like, I want to relieve you of the burden of having sexual relations with your wife. I'll take that burden on for you so that you can focus on your spirituality. And I'm just like, this is every cult leader ever is. He starts sleeping with his followers, wives and then daughters. And you don't have to riff on that. I just wanted to say, me, too. That's kind of.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:53 No, I mean, and that's really the problem. It's just the fact that we've talked about this with a lot of episodes where these things are all around. And in this case, it's been happening before Joseph Smith. It's happening since Joseph Smith. And we talk about special pleading. It's when you're saying, yeah, all of those people are completely horrific and wrong, but mine is different. And I think that's really a hard case to make, especially as we go through these episodes. And we're going to reference back to this quote more as we go. But it's really important just to note this is not unique to Joseph Smith. And a lot of people in positions of authority have been doing the same thing for hundreds of years.

John Dehlin 29:27 Yeah, it's kind of the human condition. Okay, so now we get to a very basic timeline of the introduction of Mormon polygamy.

Fanny Alger and Early Polygamy Origins

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:35 Yeah. And so this one is one, you know, where I talked earlier about how, you know, I was kind of getting some extra details. So with the Fanny Alger relationship, that is what is considered by the church to be Joseph's first, first marriage. And from the standpoint, like, where I'm at, I don't believe it was a marriage. We'll get through the reasons why. I think that. But this could have happened anywhere from 1833 to early 1836. And so the Church wants to claim this is a marriage, but there are no records that exist of it being a marriage. There's only some descriptions of a marriage that come late. And we'll cover this in a couple slides. So that would be kind of like, depending on where you date, that that might be the first kind of introduction to Mormon polygamy. I would also note that and we'll get to this in a few slides. The Church wants to say, in 1831, Joseph Smith was first given the Revelation. We'll get to that as well. In 1835, the church, under the leadership of Joseph Smith, inserts a section to the Doctrine and Covenants which denounces polygamy.

John Dehlin 30:30 Okay. And I keep forgetting. So Book of Commandments didn't have that section in it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:34 It did not.

John Dehlin 30:34 Okay. Okay. I forget that sometimes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:36 No, I did not. And so that's. That's the first time that's put in there. 1836 is when Joseph will claim to have a vision of both Eliza, Elias and Elijah, who are the same person with different translations, to restore the priesthood keys, which are later to be understood to be sealing keys. That'll be important as we go, just because. Especially with the Fanny Alger timeline. 1841 is when the polygamous marriages for Joseph begin in Nauvoo with Louisa Beaman. 1842. We talked about this, I think, a little bit. I think we talked about this in previous episode, but Joseph actually slows down his polygamous marriages because John Bennett's trying to, you know, he's involved in. What is the Church term? Spiritual wifery. And that's kind of exposed. And because it's exposed, it kind of almost brings Joseph down with him. So Joseph Smith kind of has to stop everything for a period of time because of all of the rumors that are now swirling around.

John Dehlin 31:32 You can almost think of spiritual wifery as code for polygamy that Joseph doesn't like. Right? Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:38 I mean, that's the thing. Our fifth episode is going to really hammer on apologetics and really focus a lot on apologetics. And that's the thing. It's all about framing, right? It's all about how you frame words to get the, the, the reaction you want. And so it's like kind of one of those things where spiritual wifery and polygamy, or plural marriage, however you want to call it, it's all the same thing. It's just. How do you want to kind of market it so that one is bad and one is good? And yeah, it's Patrick.

John Dehlin 32:05 Patrick called polygamy. Patrick Mason called polygamy. Apologetics. Lipstick on a pig. That was literally. Those are literally his words.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:13 And he's right, because at some point, you. You know, one of the things we'll talk about in these episodes is that the Church does everything they can to make Joseph Smith seem as clean and perfect as they can, especially like in their essay and in doing so, you're trying to demonize everyone else who's doing the same things Joseph is literally teaching them to do.

John Dehlin 32:30 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:30 And John C. Bennett obviously was not a good person. I think he was doing a lot of horrible things. But I also feel like John C. Bennett was picked by Joseph and brought up through the church very quickly because of the fact that they were close. I mean, and they were. They were, you know, learning off each other. And we'll get into that as we go. But yeah, spiritual wifery really is more of just, you know, my background is in marketing, and so I always think of that as like, you know, in marketing, you have different terms, and they can meet. They're the same term, but they'll give you a different reaction from a customer. Well, in this case, plural marriage in the church is what they like to use. Plural marriage is like all refined, celestial. And then spiritual wifery is like this complete debauchery, which, you know, and that's what they would consider like any other sect to be doing. Like, whether it's Warren Jeffs or John C. Bennett or David Koresh. In reality, it's kind of like there's a meme from the office where Pam's sitting there, and they're like, corporate wants you to. I forgot the meme. And they show her two things, and she says they're the same thing. I mean, that's kind of what that is. It's the same thing. And so anyways, 1843, Joseph resumes polygamy, marries over a dozen women, and that brings the total to over 30. And then on July 12, 1843, Joseph actually recites the revelation to William Clayton, which is now known as DNC 132.

John Dehlin 33:49 Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, we should pay attention to Fanny Alger as the first kind of plural wife that. That the church now acknowledges. And we'll get to the fact that she was a domestic help in the home, that there was undue influence there. But that's before. Before the actual sealing power was ever given. We'll get to that. And then. And then a couple things that are just jumping out at me is just that is that Joseph's 20 or 30 wives in before the DNC 132 is even revealed, which is clearly problematic as well. So. Okay, that's. That's a great summary. The next slide is the Book of Mormon and polygamy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:32 And we covered this in a previous episode. I think we've covered in multiple previous episodes, but the Book of Mormon is absolutely clear that polygamy is abominable. And so I'm just going to read you this. You've probably all heard this. It's in Jacob 2. It says, behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord, Wherefore? Thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. Wherefore I, the Lord God, will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old. Wherefore, my brethren, hear me and hearken to the word of the Lord. For there shall not be any man among you, save it be one wife and concubines he shall have none. For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women, and whoredoms are an abomination before me. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, wherefore this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of hosts. Or cursed be the land for their sakes. For if I will, saith the Lord of hosts, raise up seed unto me. I will command my people, otherwise they shall hearken unto those things. These things. And then in verse 23, you know, just in the Book of Mormon, we were told that God tells the people they are seeking to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms because of the things which were written concerning David and Solomon and his son. And so I just.

John Dehlin 35:49 Can I give two reactions to that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:50 Yeah, please do so.

John Dehlin 35:52 As the learner here, number one, what I get from that scripture, if you know, from past episodes, what I've learned is that the Book of Mormon represents, you know, just like the 1832 first vision by Joseph Smith shows what Joseph Smith believed in. In the Godhead, about the Godhead at the time he gave that. That first account of the first vision. The Book of Mormon represents what Joseph believed or thought or wanted communicated publicly at the time he wrote it. So what this shows is that Joseph generally was against polygamy at the time that he wrote the Book of Mormon. I'm sure Emma was happy with that. But it also shows in verse 30, if I'm just reading it, kind of as a learner, that in his mind he's got, like, maybe someday that might be something that we look into, but for now, it's a no. That's what I'm taking. That's what I'm taking from Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:49 Yeah, I think that's it.

John Dehlin 36:51 And so generally, it's a whoredom that generally it's bad.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:54 Yeah, right. Yeah. And, you know, you had David Bockavoy on. He talked about the different scriptures and you had asked him about polygamy and he was like, well, in no point in the Bible does God command polygamy in any kind of widespread way. I think there's one instance in the Bible where he commands one person to enter into polygamy to take care of a family member or something like that, but not like this. And then he also talks about how in the Bible, whenever there's polygamy, it ends poorly. So it's not written as if this is a good thing to do. And so the Book of Mormon is often using Bible stories to basically repurpose into a 19th century theology. We've talked about this over and over again. There's so much in the Bible that comes into the Book of Mormon that's an ideological myth that he brings in his literal history or like we talked about in the priesthood restoration, he brings in, you know, a Misreading of Hebrews 7 about the Melchizedek priesthood, which is going to then kind of flow through in the long ending of Mark and all these other things. But the. The reality with the Book of Mormon is that he appears to be making very clear through the voice of God that God finds polygamy to be repulsive. And so this is going to be something that everyone needs to kind of remember from this episode, because this is going to spill over into pretty much every one of the next few episodes, because Joseph Smith, just as he does with other areas of the church, is going to contradict himself. But in this case, he's going to contradict God. And that is where you run into a lot of problems when you're creating things in the voice of God, but then you have to change them later. You're going to make God look very indecisive and very unsure of himself because or herself. But this is going to be an area where God is going to directly contradict God's own words in future stuff. And that is a problem if you believe God is never changing and eternally consistent.

John Dehlin 38:41 Right. So I'm guessing that for this next slide, implications of the Book of Mormon polygamy for. We've covered some of that. Anything else you want to say from this slide?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:50 Yeah, you know what? Not. Not really much. Just. Just to say again that Jacob 2:23 says that the people are looking to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms because of the things which were written concerning David And Solomon, his son. I just want everyone to remember that because that's going to be so important in the next few episodes. Because the Book of Mormon is saying that these people are committing these bad things because they're trying to excuse themselves because they're doing horrible things by using David and Solomon as justification. And we'll get into it, but DNC 132, God basically is like, oh, yeah, that's justified. So it's a huge problem.

John Dehlin 39:23 It's almost like projection. Like Joseph is signaling to you in the future what he's going to be doing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:31 Well, I mean, yeah.

John Dehlin 39:32 And why he's doing it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:33 But yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, that's the problem with speaking in the voice of God. And we've talked about this in past episodes. But that was why when Russell Nelson in 2015 went out of his way to say that God confirmed upon every one of the apostles that he wanted that November 15th policy of exclusion and that it was direct revelation that he put himself in a box. Because when the church had to reverse it three and a half years later, then all of a sudden it's got to be revelation from God again. And all of a sudden you go, why in the world is God unable to see what's going to happen three and a half years later? And this is the same problem here, except this is something that's so much more foundational to the church. And. And it's based off of what is really just a confused version of God in the Mormon framing. And that's a huge problem if you're creating revelation and they're just contradicting each other. And as you said, I think what Patrick Mason said is true. Like trying to excuse us is just putting lipstick on a pig. Because this is, as we'll show in these episodes, just a mess. And trying to justify it at this point, I think is a losing battle.

John Dehlin 40:34 Yeah. Okay, so. So this next slide, we're gonna. We're jumping back to 1831 now. And as I'm remembering the timeline you just showed us, the reason why we're jumping back to 1831 is because the timeline is so problematic for the Church in terms of the sealing power. Well, Fanny Alger coming before the sealing power and then polygamy coming before the DNC 132, that's all problematic. And so the reason why we're starting with 1831 is because the Church needs something to pin polygamy on prior to Fanny Alger. 1831 is a date and an event that the Church can say, hey, we've got some polygamy stirrings before Fanny Alger even happened. So I'm guessing that's why right now we're jumping to 1831. Is that right?

The 1831 Revelation and Book of Mormon Context

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:23 Yeah. So we started with the Book of Mormon, which is like, 1829. Now we're jumping to 1831. But this is why it's important, because in the DNC heading, they'll say, although the revelation was recorded in 1843, evidence indicates that some of the principles involved in the revelation were known by the prophet as early as 1831. And so they are trying now to say that basically Joseph Smith got this revelation 12 years earlier than he recorded it. And their essay on polygamy. And Kirtlandauvoo basically restates this idea by saying the revelation on prolonged marriage was not written down until 1843. But his early verses suggest that part of it emerged from Joseph Smith's study of the old Testament in 1831. People who knew Joseph well later stated he received the revelation about that time. And like you said, the one big reason the Church needs to pinpoint polygamy back this early is because of his affair with Fanny Alger. And we're going to cover that more the Fanny Alger. But we need to get into what this 1831 revelation is actually about, because it's not helpful to what the Church is saying whatsoever. And that's why they don't actually tell you what it was.

John Dehlin 42:32 Yeah. Okay. So what is the 1831 revelation on polygamy about?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:38 And so we covered this in the episodes on race and the scriptures of Mormonism. But the people that know knew Joseph well Here refers to W.W. phelps, Oliver Cowdery, and five other men who received instruction for their mission to go to the Indians to take additional wives to make the Indians whiter. This is from the claimed revelation. Now, this is W.W. phelps. He's claiming this happened in 1831. He says it is my. Well, he's saying that Joseph Smith is saying this. It is my will that in time ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white delightsome and just for even now their females are more virtuous than their Gentiles. Than the gentiles. And so W.W. phelps is a friendly source. And so you would say that W.W. phelps is writing this down years later, and he's trying to pin this into a polygamous thing, because, of course, they're Looking at it through the lens of polygamy being open at this time. But we also have an antagonistic source that confirms that Joseph Smith claimed a revelation from God that they should marry the Native Americans. And this is, as we talked about in the Race and the Scriptures episode. This is who Joseph Smith, of course, labels as the Lamanites in claimed revelation from God. And so this is Ezra Booth who left the church and. And after he leaves, he kind of writes these pretty scathing letters. And so in 1831, he writes, it has been made known by revelation that it will be pleasing to the Lord should they form a matrimonial alliance with the natives. And by this means, the elders who comply with the things so pleasing to the Lord, and for which the Lord has promised to bless those who do it abundantly gain a residence in the Indian territory independent of the agent. And so we have two sources, one positive, one negative, both saying that in 1831, Joseph Smith is claiming a revelation that they should take the Native Americans as wives or concubines. Because it's not really laid out here that they would actually be, like, live in wives. This would be more of, like, a concubine kind of system.

John Dehlin 44:31 Yeah. It almost seems like they're away from their families.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:35 Yep.

John Dehlin 44:35 And they're going to be restless. They're going to want some sex, frankly. And so, yeah, these. These Native Americans, they're darker. They're not worth as much anyway. You don't have to, like, actually live. Live with them and support them financially. But if you're there and if their, you know, families are okay with it, you can go ahead and take them as a concubine, sleep with them. So that's one. It's sort of showing a real devaluing of them as people because you're not really showing full commitment. But then also, there's just this racist idea that we talked about in the. In the Race and Mormonism episode where. Where they don't fully understand how genetics and melanin works or melatonin or whatever. Melanin. And. Sorry, not melatonin. Melanin. And so they're basically saying, we as white people are so good that if we mix our seed, you know, or have sex with the natives, their kids are going to be more white, which in their minds means more righteous. That's not helping anybody.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:35 Yeah. And they're trying. You know, in a way, I think Ezra Booth's comment almost seems like he's saying you can take these women as concubines, and then as you have churches. You're going to then get more members of the church in these Native American or Indian reservations, which will give you more influence in their lands, which is also kind of a horrible thing, which is to say that you're telling these people, go preach to them, have sex with the women, and then as you have kids with them, you're going to have more members of the church there, and that will gain you a residence in the Indian territories, as Rebooth says. And that's kind of a bad thing, too, because it feels, from, like, looking at it now, it feels like a kind of shady way to work your way into areas that you're trying to get into. I know from a. From a believing standpoint, you'd say that this allows the Native Americans to come to Christ by spreading the gospel, by getting more kids in there. I just. I feel like when you have W.W. phelps talking about how the Revelation wants them to become more white, and the fact that this has nothing to do with ceiling. This has nothing to do with anything that has to do with the 1843 revelation, you've got all sorts of problems citing this as a continuation from this to 1843. This is just not the same thing.

John Dehlin 46:45 It's also super colonialistic. And then finally, now that we know that Native Americans predominantly don't have Hebrew DNA, but they have Asiatic DNA, now that the Church doesn't even know who the Lamanites are, again, it begs the question, are they even sleeping with Lamanites at all? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:07 Yeah. It's just. It's a mess. And to cite that. And there's a reason they cite that without telling you what it is. And so this is another 1831 reference to polygamy that the Church is never going to cite. I mean, they cite it kind of, but like. So Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner Smith, who is famous in church history for protecting the printed copies of the Book of Commandments when the mob came in. Missouri, was later a polyandrus wife of Joseph Smith. We'll get to polyandry later. And she gives this account of her introduction to polygamy. This is in her own words. At the age of 12 in 1831, Joseph Smith told me about his great vision concerning me. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife. In 1834, he was commanded to take me for a wife. In 1842, I went forward and was sealed to him. Brigham Young preferred the ceiling for time and all eternity. I did just as Joseph Smith told me to do. And this is from In Sacred Loneliness, which is another resource that everyone who wants to know more about polygamy should read. Because Todd Compton, I think, allows the women to kind of tell their own stories as opposed to having the church tell it for them. But. And I think he's still a believing member. But anyways, this is, I want to be clear, I don't believe this story at all. I think that Mary Elizabeth Rollins Leitner Smith is trying to write to retrofit polygamy in so that it makes sense in the timeline. Because I do not believe for a second that Joseph Smith in 1831 is going to a 12 year old and telling her that he's going to marry her. I don't believe that. So it just goes to show we've talked about this so often in these episodes that so much of church history is retrofitted back into these accounts to be, be more faith promoting and in a lot of cases more consistent. But that being said, if you're going to cite references among those who knew Joseph best, you then have to concede that Joseph Smith is talking to 12 year old girls and saying that God commanded him to marry them. I just, it's a, if they want to cite these things and cite them, but this is not helpful. And there's a reason they don't talk about Joseph Smith going to a 12 year old and telling her he's going to marry her. And if this really did happen, I do not believe for a second that she'd marry someone else in 1835. So I just don't believe it's true. That being said, if you're going to cite these sources, cite them.

John Dehlin 49:27 Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's not a helpful, not a helpful statement.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:33 No. And so these are two 1831 revelations that are completely unaware of any polygamous revelations. And so I want to just kind of bring these up because they're going to contradict DNC 132, but they're also going to contradict the church's statement that Joseph Smith was aware of this revelation already. So DNC 42, verse 22 was written in 1831. It says, Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shall cleave unto her and none else. And DNC 49, 16, which was also in 1831, says, Wherefore it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh, and all this that the earth might answer the end of its creation. So both of these are written in 1831, when we're told that Joseph Smith already had polygamy revealed to him, and they're both explicit that you should have one wife and shall cleave unto her and no one, none else. And so this is an area where you could see that the church is trying to back, backfill a problematic revelation to an earlier time so that it works. But then you also have these conflicting data points constantly and say that Joseph Smith was not thinking about these things in any possible way yet. And as a final note, Joseph Smith would edit these revelations in 1835, which would give him a second chance if he wanted to leave some space for polygamy, as he edited so many other revelations, and yet he did not take that chance. So not only was he unaware of revelation about polygamy in 1831, but he's also unaware in 1835 when he's making these edits.

John Dehlin 51:01 Yeah, it's a God of confusion. I was always taught growing up as a Mormon that God is not a God of confusion or the author of confusion.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:09 Right.

John Dehlin 51:10 And it makes no sense that God's revealing to Joseph the law of polygamy as it relates to Native Americans in 1831 and in the same year is, is giving Joseph revelations to put in the Mormon scripture that polygamy is, you know, bad or that you should have just one wife or all that stuff. It just that that makes no sense. So that's a really good thing to highlight.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:36 Yeah. And that's why when we get to DNC 132, I think multiple times in that revelation he says, you know, mine house is a house of order. And it's like, well, kinda in the Mormon framing of God, it's not. And that's why we see that all the time. There's just so many contradictions in God's own voice and that does not make sense. So anyways, so we're talking about how the church's essay frames the timing of the revelation. So, you know, we talked about this earlier where it says the revelation was not written down until 1843, but it's early verses suggest that part of it came from a study of the old Testament in 1831. People who knew Joseph well later stated he received the revelation about the time. And you know, the early verses of D&C132 are set up to justify polygamy, but they're using incorrect Bible references. We talked about this at the beginning of the episode. God never once commands Abraham to enter into polygamy. He does not. Sarah commands him to take Hagar. God never has any part in that. God only goes to Hagar and says, you know, you need to go back, because, you know, obviously it goes poorly with Sarah after it happens. And those who, as we talked about just a few slides ago, those who knew Joseph Smith well, were saying that he wanted to take Native American children to make their posterity wider. Not that Joseph Smith was teaching any form of polygamy that would be practiced by the church later on, such as sealings and, you know, doing kind of like this eternal mindset of marriages. There's none of that here. And so the way they frame the timing of the revelation just simply does not match the historical record.

John Dehlin 53:05 I also want to just call attention to that word later. People who knew Joseph well later stated he received the revelation about that time. I mean, if. If there's the pattern of motivated reasoning in all of this Mormon history that we're reading, then of course, if men who are practicing polygamy later, you know, just like with Joseph and Oliver backdating John the Baptist as giving the Aaronic priesthood and Peter James as John is giving them Melchizedek priesthood, he's doing that years after it allegedly happened. Just like years later, almost over a decade later, he's claiming the first vision. There's always kind of this, let's rewrite history. There's this impulse to rewrite history to justify current crises or trauma. It just would totally fit the pattern if men who are trying to justify polygamy later are remembering back into the history Joseph talking about polygamy from before Fanny Alger, so that they could then make an excuse for Fanny Alger. I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm just saying that would fit the pattern.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:14 Yeah. And in that particular case, they're referring to W.W. phelps, because that's his recollection of Joseph Smith's 1831 revelation, which I think he writes down, like, 1860 or something. Yeah, but the thing is, to your point, they need not just to backfill into the timing for Fanny Algeria, but they also need to backfill that Joseph Smith was unquestionably a polygamist, because this is also when the church, the Brigham Young faction, and the rlds are basically, they hate each other and they don't trust each other. And so the Brighamite Church needs to make Joseph Smith as polygamous as they can, because they need to basically draw that for their authority. And the RLDS Church is saying, no, he wasn't. And so this backdating by W.W. phelps, who is in the Brighamite Church, also serves their purpose at that time, not just for Joseph Smith's character and all that, but also for their current needs at that time, which is to prove beyond a doubt that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. So yeah, to your point, those quotes are very, very have high motivated reasoning. And the only reason that I love that quote, and by love I mean I like it for this particular thing, is because we have Ezra Booth's quote which confirms it and his is contemporary. So we have a positive and a negative source. So I think that's why it's important.

John Dehlin 55:28 Got it.

Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:29 So, all right, now we're getting to Fanny Algernon. As I said earlier, the key reason the church wants to make sure that that the polygamy revelation was back by 1831 is because a few years later, Joseph's going to be caught in a scandalous relationship with Fanny Alger. No precise records exist, so we have people that believe it happened in 1833, and then some have it going kind of early to mid-1836. Excuse me. And depending on when you date it, Joseph Smith's gonna be between 27 and 30 years old and Fanny's gonna be between 16 and 19 years old. And Fanny Alger is going to be a live in maid. So basically she's going to live in their house to help Emma Smith and she's going to live with them starting in 1833, which is why that's kind of the earliest this could have happened. And the church's essay kind of talks about this relationship in the following way. They say fragmentary evidence suggests that Joseph Smith acted on the angel's first command by marrying a plural wife, Fanny Alger, in Kirtland, Ohio in the mid-1830s. Several latter day Saints who had lived in Kirtland reported decades later that Joseph had married Alger, who lived and worked in the Smith household after he had obtained her consent and that of her parents. And just with that Mary Elizabeth Rollins Leitner Smith quote, I do not believe this was a marriage. And I think when we get to the actual quote, you're going to understand why in the exact same way we just talked about with the W.W. phelps thing this late quote, that we're going to get where they say decades later is very self serving because once again, it's in a time when you're trying to privilege Joseph Smith and it's so long after the fact.

John Dehlin 57:02 Got it. Okay, that makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:05 So this is the one. And so as I was saying, there's no record of a marriage. There's no documentation that a marriage took place on a certain day. And this is important to note because the church wants to needs to declare this as a polygamous marriage, because they do not want it to be an affair from a prophet of God who is using, you know, the exact same tactics later to marry other women. And so this is the quote they're going to give us. And this is from Mosiah Hancock, which is a secondhand source to his father Levi, from 1869. And he says, therefore, Brother Joseph said, brother Levi, I want to make a bargain with you. If you will get Fanny Alger for a wife for me for a wife, you may have Clarissa Reed. I love Fanny. I will, said Father, go, brother Levi, and the Lord will prosper you. Said Joseph, Father goes to Fanny and said, fanny, brother Joseph, the prophet loves you and wishes you for a wife. Will you be his wife? I will, Levi said she, Father takes Fanny to Joseph and said, brother Joseph, I have been successful in my mission. Father gave her to Joseph, repeating the ceremony as Joseph repeated to him. And so I do not believe for a second that this quote is real. I think there's the fact that there's no record of this marriage tells you that it probably didn't happen. And the fact is there is no record of Joseph having any kind of a ceremonial script at this point. That is not going to happen until the 1840s. And so the idea that he had this in the 1830s and it wasn't written down or anything just doesn't make any sense. And as we talked about, the ceiling keys, depending on when you date, this are likely either going to be three years later or like right after Joseph Smith is going to be already engaged in this, in this relationship. And so, from the Church's perspective, if you want to cite this account, I believe they should put the quote in the essay. Because if you really want to use this, you're going to have to then contend with the fact that we have Joseph Smith using Clarissa Reed as a bargaining chip because Levi Hancock wants to marry Clarissa Reed and ask Joseph for permission. I'm not sure why he needed to ask Joseph for permission anyways. And then Joseph says, yeah, you can marry her if you can get me Fanny as a wife. I think if you really want to use this quote, then all of a sudden you've got Joseph Smith using women as bargaining chips for spiritual favors. And I think that is horrific, too. So it's like, pick your poison here. And so the Church is going to kind of, you know, vaguely reference this, this citation, but they're not going to tell you what it says.

John Dehlin 59:27 The other thing I'll just note is from my readings of doctrine and Covenants 132, specifically when we had Sandra Tanner on, there's this language in DNC32 which is like, and behold, if you are righteous and she is a virgin, she shall be given unto you. There's all this language in DNC132 that women are kind of like cattle to be given and assigned by God or by a God's prophet. And so this idea, this quote of like, you give me Clarissa and, you know, you get me Fanny, I'll give you Clarissa. It's very consistent with the way DNC132 describes how the patriarchy views women more as cattle and bargaining chips than actually as humans.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:13 It also fits in really well with, I think, how polygamy went once you got from Joseph Smith and then into Utah. I mean, they're, you know, listening to, like, Lindsay Hansen Park's episodes. There are a lot of instances where you have people that are basically making deals, you know, to almost exchange women for favors. And so this. That's why this quote is very anachronistic to 18, 33 or 34, whenever you want to date the marriage. 30, even 35, 36. It's very anachronistic. But I just. I love the fact that they're citing this quote that has Joseph Smith basically using, you know, Fannie and Clarissa Reed as bargaining chips, which I think they would really want to avoid telling their members because it reads awful when you read it. And. And like I said, it's just, it's. It's so the way, as you said, it's phrased, it just. It's out of place to that time frame. And so that is a really good indicator that that is not a true account.

John Dehlin 1:01:03 Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so what was the fallout?

Fallout for Oliver Cowdery and Emma Smith

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:09 So the fallout was huge, obviously, and it caused a lot of problems for Joseph Smith. Emma Smith threw her out of the house when she found out that they were having a relationship. Oliver Cowdery, in a letter, wrote that it was a dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his. And Fanny Alger's was talked about, was talked over, in which I strictly declared that I had never deserted from the truth in the matter, and as I suppose, was admittedly by himself. And so this creates a lot of issues. And so the church's essay says that after the marriage with Alger and in separation, Joseph seems to have set the subject of plural marriage aside until after the church moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. And again, what they don't mention is that the relationship ended in separation because Emma kicked her out of the house, I believe, in the middle of the night after finding them together. And so According to William McClellan, he's an early member of the church, who would know? But he's later considered to be an antagonistic source because he apostasized and obviously was. Was not a fan of Joseph Smith. He told Joseph Smith's son the following. Again, I told her, Emma Smith, I heard that one night she missed Joseph and Fanny Alger. She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction. She told me the story, too, was verily true. And so you have this relationship that's building with Joseph and Fanny, and once it's discovered, Emma kicks her out of the house, you know, which ends whatever relationship they had. Oliver Cowdery is. This is going to play into. Largely into his excommunication from the church because he does not view it as a marriage. Remember, Oliver Cowdery at this point is basically the number two. This is, you know, if you want to believe Fanny, that the relationship was in 1835 or 36, which I know is what Brian Hales and Dan Vogel both agree on. It might be before the ceiling key, the keys in the Kirland Temple, but either way, it's a little later than 1833. That would be before Oliver, or it would be after Oliver was made the number two man, after he creates the priesthood restoration story. So you have the number two person in the church who has no idea that Joseph Smith has this polygamy revelation because he's calling it an affair. And I think that's another important indicator because we're often, always like, oh, man, Oliver got excommunicated for it. And it's like, yeah, that's important. But it's also important because that tells us that he had no idea that Joseph Smith was creating any kind of system of polygamy or had a revelation on it. Because he would know.

John Dehlin 1:03:31 Yeah, you can't, like, on the one hand, say, well, Oliver is a credible witness to the Book of Mormon. You know, he's one of the three witnesses, so you gotta believe him. And he's also a witness to the priesthood restorations. And, you know. But then all of a sudden, God wants Oliver to be a witness to all these sorts of things, but then leaves Oliver completely out of the loop when it comes to polygamy, there's something that stinks there, that God, that God wouldn't care enough about polygamy and plural marriage and women and families to. And at some point Oliver was even like co president of the church. He wasn't just like, he was like co president. And so it's just suspicious. But then also women often remind us that what about Emma? Like didn't Emma deserve a revelation? Didn't you know, later DNC 132 has got this law of Sarah that basically says that the first wife needs to consent or at least be given the option of consent of subsequent wives. So why didn't Emma deserve a visit from God too? Or does God just not care about the women? And so I think we often forget that God owed something not just to Oliver, but to Emma as well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:44 Oh yeah, I mean it just shows, like I said, it shows that all of this is in Joseph's head. And at this point, just as we talked about with some of these earlier kind of foundational things such as the first vision and priesthood restoration, this idea of polygamy is not developed yet. And so this is, I would argue that anyone looking at this from the outside would call this an affair because there is nothing supporting the idea that it's a marriage until you get to years later. And at that point they're trying to privilege Joseph Smith. So you can't just go with that without, you know, looking at the, the corroborating stuff that we've been talking about.

John Dehlin 1:05:18 Totally.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:19 And so this is some more kind of confirmation of how this ends. And so after Emma discovers the relationship between her husband and their live in maid, Emma throws Fanny out of their home. And so Annaliza Webb Young says, now of course people consider her antagonistic source, but she says Emma had turned Fanny out of the house in the night by degrees. It became whispered about that Joseph's love for his adopted daughter was by no means a paternal affection. And his wife, discovering the fact, at once took measures to place the girl beyond his reach. Angered at finding the two persons whom she most loves playing such a treacherous part towards her, she by no means spared her reproaches. And finally the storm became so furious that Joseph was obliged to send at midnight for Oliver Cowdery, his scribe, to come and endeavor to settle matters between them. And so people will dismiss that and say she's an antagonistic source after she was a polygamous bride of Brigham Young. But she would know about this because of the fact that Fanny was sent to her parents house after Emma kicked her out. And so here is Anne's father, Chauncey Webb, speaking about the incident. He says Emma was furious and drove the girl, who was unable to conceal the consequences of her celestial relation with the prophet, out of her house. And so here you've got Ann Eliza Web Young saying that Joseph Smith referred to her as an adopted daughter. And that's important because that happens more than once where Joseph calls someone who lives in the home and adopted daughter and then later proposes to marry to them. And in this case I don't believe there was a wedding, but I think he probably did call her an adopted daughter. They weren't literally adopted, but just kind of the way that the relationship was. So if you call someone your adopted daughter, you should not be having sexual relations with them. And, and then you've got her father saying that there effectively was a pregnancy or some consequence of their sexual relations that caused her to go. And I think most historians don't believe that Joseph Smith got her pregnant, but Fanny would marry fairly shortly after leaving them. So I mean, it's possible. I don't think there's any real history that shows that she was pregnant, but it does show that this was probably a relationship that lasted months and a relationship that was concealed by, from Emma, four months between Joseph and his adopted daughter.

John Dehlin 1:07:38 To me, it also these quotes explain why Oliver Cowdery would call it a dirty, filthy, nasty affair. If it's true that like things with Emma and Joseph were boiling over to the point where Joseph had to call, you know, Oliver Cowdery to come kind of calm Emma down and settle things down. That would make sense why Oliver would know about it and would characterize it as a dirty, filthy, nasty affair because he was embroiled in the middle of it. And so this, this kind of seems to fit, fit well with the story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:13 Yeah. And you know, this kind of foreshadows different elements of polygamy. And so we're going to see when we get to the episodes about the different proposals Joseph Smith's engaging in these relationships behind his wife's back. And as you said, that completely violates what is going to later be written down as DNC132 and she is actively working to root out polygamy and relief Society. And while she's doing that, many of her closest friends that she believes are working with her are secretly married to her husband. And so these details are going to make you uncomfortable, but these are historical facts that we're going to have to address as we go through these episodes. And he is going to marry women that are people that live in the home that he has a lot of authority over, both with regards to the church and the fact that they're living in his home. And this is another area where we need to note that this is not a marriage. And even if you want to claim the later ones are marriages, they're not legal. And so even if Joseph Smith had performed some sort of marriage to Fannie, it would not be legal in the eyes of the law, and it would not have been legal in the eyes of the church if he had not claimed the sealing keys at this point, which I don't think there's any good reason to think he would have. Because even if this relationship had started after the Kirtland Temple in April of 1836, as we just talked in the last slide, the indications are this was something that was going on for months. So even if she was kicked out in the summer or the spring, most people think like, early 1836, the odds are this was happening before that. And as you said, Oliver Cowdery did not believe it was a marriage. He was the second in command of the church. He was the one that was called to try to get things settled down. If he had any indication that Joseph had a revelation on polygamy, he would not be calling it an affair. And so no matter what you do here, there's no good way that fits this with Joseph Smith's later ideas of polygamy or the idea that this could have been a marriage under the new and everlasting covenant.

John Dehlin 1:10:07 And that's why I think someone like Patrick Mason, who knows all of this, would just say an attempt to explain this away is lipstick on a pig. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:15 Yeah, I think so.

John Dehlin 1:10:16 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:17 And so this is possibly following the Fan Algeria relationship. There are other rumors with some other members of the church who are engaged in, you know, extramarital affairs. Joseph Smith went on a trip to Michigan, and while he was gone, the church writes this article on marriage, which would be later added to the DNC in 1835. And it says, inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and. And polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again. And so this is not a statement you would put in the dnc unless there were rumors persistent about Joseph Smith's relationships. You wouldn't do this. You wouldn't put this because of some low level member having an affair. This is something you'd put in because there are rumors that are damaging to your church. And so I think Todd Compton in Sacred Loneliness, at least the time he wrote it, was a faithful. I think he still is. But he stated clearly the statement represented an effort to counteract scandal and perhaps to defuse rumors of Fanny Alger's marriage, possible pregnancy and expulsion. So this is, again, this is not something you'd put in the Doctrine and Covenants unless it was really hindering your top, top people. Which in this case would point directly to Joseph Smith because of the fact

John Dehlin 1:11:30 that it also completely shoots down the 1831 apologetic that the church wants to advance.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:36 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:11:37 Because. Because if Joseph is. You can't have it both ways. You can't say Joseph envisioned polygamy as early as 1831 and also say that in 1835 he publishes in the Scriptures that it's bad and forbidden. And we've covered that before. But I'm just going to make that point again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:52 Yeah, because I'm sure the apologetic would be to say, well, he had the Revelation 18:31, but then the world wasn't ready yet. And so they put this in there until the world was right. But you know, we've talked about at that point, then it would have, then

John Dehlin 1:12:04 it would have the same sort of loophole that the Book of Mormon has, which would say, unless I, the Lord, command it. You know what I mean? It wouldn't just like condemn it all the way.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:14 Yeah, and that's my point too. I think the fact that you're going the opposite way tells you that you don't have that conception yet. And so we talked about this earlier. So in 1836, Joseph is going to have the vision in Kirtland Temple to receive the priesthood keys. And so this is going to be later kind of retrofitted to mean sealing keys. Remember that? Like, I think it was John Hamer was on some podcast and he was kind of joking about this because we talk about it now as if he got the ceiling keys, but he just got keys. And so I think John Hamer said something like, what do keys open? Well, everything. You know, they open doors. So you can later say the keys are whatever you want them to be. But at the time, this is still not fleshed out as ceiling. And so this revelation is now known as DNC110. It's a shared vision between Joseph and Oliver. And again, I want to point out that Joseph claimed to see both Elias and Elijah during this visit in separate visions, even though they're the same person with a different translation. One's Hebrew and one's Greek. So that's a problem right off the bat for the credibility of the vision. But with regard to polygamy, it's not obviously necessarily the big problem. But as we said, typically the church will always associate this with the sealing keys being restored. But if you read DNC110, you'll see no missions of sealings, eternal marriage, polygamy, or celestial marriage. The vision is using the idea of keys in the most generic sense, which is then later used to kind of fit whatever evolution Joseph Smith's theology has. And so the church's essay kind of makes this point. They say the sealing of husband and wife for eternity was made possible by the restoration of priesthood keys and ordinances. On April 3, 1836, the Old Testament prophet Elijah appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland temple and restored the priesthood keys necessary to perform ordinances for the living and the dead, including sealing families together. And so, as we've been kind of talking about Fanny, there's no way that could have been a celestial marriage without proper sealing keys if it occurred prior to this. And again, there's dating issues with the Fanny relationship. But there's also no way that Joseph Smith's 1831 revelation would have had any connection to what is happening in this Kirtland vision. Because the idea is simply, we're not developed yet. They're not even developed at this point for sealing. At this point, Joseph Smith is getting. We talked about this in the priesthood restoration episode. This is where Joseph Smith is getting him and Oliver the authority above everyone else. No one else can touch their authority now because Joseph and Oliver are sharing this vision to get the keys that they have that they then separate themselves from everyone else. As far as authority goes, they're going to then use this later on to kind of retrofit it into what they need. But at the time, they are not talking about sealing families together.

John Dehlin 1:14:54 Yeah, got it.

Joseph Smith's Practice of Polyandry

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:57 So this one is one I learned from the Happiness Letter episode with Jonathan Streeter and Christopher C. Smith. And this is amazing because this is in 1841. Joseph Smith is starting to ramp up his polygamy, and he's going to introduce a very interesting teaching that he dictated in his journal. So this is, again, this is not just me making, you know, kind of opinions here. This is from November 7, 1841. This is from Joseph's journal. I charged the saints not to follow the example of the adversary in accusing the brethren and said, if you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser, you will enter heaven. And if you follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my backload. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you. If you will throw a cloak of charity over my sins, I will over yours. For charity covereth a multitude of sins. What many people call sin is not sin. I do many things to break down superstition, and I will break it down. And so this teaching is amazing because this is happening as rumors are swirling around about Joseph's infidelity. Since at this point we have Fanny Algernon, he's starting to engage into a system of polygamy. There's rumors about people around Joseph with the spiritual wifery. And here Joseph Smith is literally telling members, if you don't accuse Joseph of sins, he's not going to accuse you. And so this is like a really good way of completely circumventing the idea of sins and confessions and, you know, all sorts of accountability. Accountability by telling members, hey, don't you dare accuse me of the crap I'm doing. And as long as you don't, you'll be safe. The moment you do, though, I'm throwing everything you have out to the public. And so this is, yeah, the logical.

John Dehlin 1:16:37 The logical extension of this. It's like if I steal money, but not nobody accuses me of stealing the money because they don't know, then it's not a sin. Or if I abuse a child, but I can make sure the child is too afraid to accuse me. Or if I want a little action on the side and the woman's okay with it, and she's okay not telling her husband, no harm, no foul, no accusation, no sin. Like the. The implications of this teaching are. Are very disturbing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:05 They're horrific. And to your point. Yeah. I mean, like you again, a believing member is going to listen to what you said. They're going to say, oh, oh, my goodness, how disrespectful to say if I want a little bit of action on the side. But this quote is telling you, if I have an affair with a woman and she doesn't accuse me, and I don't accuse her, and my wife doesn't know, so she can't accuse me, then I'm going straight to heaven. I mean, Joseph Smith is saying that, and it's wrong even if he didn't

John Dehlin 1:17:26 engage in those behaviors. It's a dangerous revelation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:29 Yeah, this is going to lead to really dangerous things.

John Dehlin 1:17:32 Yeah, it's problematic. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:34 And so, yeah, this is like Joseph Smith is flipping morality upside down here to help his own authority. And so we're going to talk about this in the next few episodes about Joseph's proposals to women. But here Joseph Smith is flipping doctrine upside down to suit his personal needs. The idea if you have no accuser, you will enter heaven is a terrible theology and is explicitly telling people who have been wrong to keep quiet or else Joseph Smith is going to air their dirty laundry in a guaranteed mutual destruction. And so this is just, you know, remember God. Sorry. Joseph Smith is telling members that his word is God's word by declaring, if you follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my backload. And so you're going to see this theme over and over as Joseph proposes to these women. He wants to make sure that the moment you believe he's a prophet, that then at that point Joseph has ultimate authority over you. And, and he's constantly giving these teachings, which is to say basically, if God tells you to marry and have sex with me and you do it, it can't be a sin because you got it through me and I got it through God. And this is something we're going to talk about a lot in the Happiness Letter because these ideas are used explicitly in his writings in the voice of God to pressure young women to marry him. And so as we talked about the beginning of this episode, these are tactics that Joseph Smith is not unique to using, but other religious leaders who are initiating sexual relationships with their followers use. And so the idea here is that the only person that can speak for God is the leader and that whatever he says is divinely approved. That didn't start with Joseph Smith and it's continued through all of the self proclaimed prophets we talked about earlier. And that's why people believed Warren Jeffs and married and had sex with him because of the fact that Warren Jeffs is using the exact same teachings Joseph Smith is using here to claim divine authority to do whatever you want as long as no one accuses you of sin. It's so horrific.

John Dehlin 1:19:29 And yeah, totally. Okay, so now we get introduced this word that I didn't learn, I don't know until probably 2001, 2002, this word polyandry, that most Mormons will have never heard of, but it's one of the most important words and it's different than polygamy, Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:49 Yeah. And so polyandry is going to be one that they're going to talk about in the essay as well. And so this is why I had no idea about this until four years ago when I first started doing the deep dive. And so the church's essay says, following his marriage to Louis Sabiman and before he married other single women, Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married. And I just want to point out that the churches in this essay, they're really specific on numbers, except for when it comes to Joseph Smith, they're always vague about the numbers because they don't want to say it. Todd Compton puts the number of women that were polyandrous to 11. And polyandry. Polyandry means that you're marrying a woman who is already married to another man, whereas polygamy is when you marry multiple women. And so I just find it funny.

John Dehlin 1:20:35 I've heard polygyny is marrying multiple women. Have you heard?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:38 Yeah, I've heard that too. I've heard that too. So I don't know. I'm sure there's some technical difference in the two. I actually heard that as well from the year polygamy episodes. And I don't know, it's so easy.

John Dehlin 1:20:47 I forget. I learn it and then I forget. So.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:49 So, yeah, I do, too.

John Dehlin 1:20:50 So I'm looking up polygeny, a pattern of mating in which a male animal has more than one female mate. So that's polygyny. G, Y, N Y. So P, O, L, Y, G, Y, N Y. And then if I look up polygamy, it says a pattern of mating in which an animal has more than one mate. So it sounds like technically the term polygamy is. Is. Is just saying multiple mates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:20 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:21:21 Polygyny means multiple women. Polyandry means multiple men.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:27 Okay.

John Dehlin 1:21:28 So anyway, I'm not trying to correct you. That's just what I. What I read.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:31 Yeah. So polyandry, I guess, must be from the perspective of the female having more than one husband. So. Yeah. And so in this case, you know, Joseph Smith is going to marry nine of his. Of the first 12 women he married were. Were polyandrus. And so that's from Todd Compton from In Sacred Loneliness. And so while the church says a number, Todd Compton can tell you, you know, between nine and, you know, 11, and nine of the first 12 of them were polyandrous. And so the church provides a few reasons for why Joseph would marry women who are already married. And we'll just cover them here. They say there are several explanations, possible explanations for this practice. These sealings may have provided a way to create an eternal bond or link between Joseph's family and other families within the church. And Joseph Smith's ceilings to women already ceilings to women already married may have been an early version of linking one family to another. In Nauvoo, most, if not all of the first husbands seem to have continued living in the same household with their wives during Joseph's lifetime. And complaints about these dealings with Joseph Smith are virtually absent from the documentary record.

John Dehlin 1:22:36 So I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, and this is just me kind of as learner, two things. Once you read Doctrine and Covenant, and you're probably going to talk about this later, so we can touch on it briefly if that's the case. But just in my fresh eyes reaction, we'll read later in doctrine and Covenants132, this use of the word virgin, that the woman has to be a virgin to qualify for celestial marriage, if you want to use that term, or the new and everlasting covenant. So, so automatically we are going to assume that women who are already married to men aren't virgins. So there's no way to square polyandry with a fair reading, I think, of DNC132. The only other thing I'll say is why would Joseph be marrying women of other men's wives? There's probably a power element to it, just like when David Koresh was trying to have sex with the wives of men in his congregation. There's probably a power element to it. There's probably also a plausible deniability element to it because if a pregnancy does erupt, it's not a single, you know, teenage girl. It's. It's a woman who's already married to another man. And so that pregnancy isn't going to be a scandal. Now, forgive me if you touch on that later. I'm just giving my cold, immediate reaction.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:59 No, I do. And those are actually great points because those are some of the things I thought of as well. So that's. I'm glad you brought them up.

John Dehlin 1:24:04 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:08 Yeah. Kind of going. Touching on what you just said. So the one thing I really don't like is that the church will say, and you hear this from a lot of apologists today, you hear this from a lot of members. They'll say that one of the main purposes of polygamy and prolonged marriage was to intended to link families together. And I would point out, if you're going to make that argument, it's got to be consistent. And so you look at it and you go, why did so many of Joseph's wives have to be young girls and other men's wives? And the church practiced what was known as the law of adoption, which Joseph Smith also practiced on occasion, which allowed men to be sealed to other men as adopted sons. So if the purpose of polygamy or polyandry was to link families together, why couldn't Joseph had just sealed the men, the husbands, to him directly rather than sealing himself to their wives or daughters? Because the moment that Joseph seals these women or girls to himself as celestial daughters, or. I'm so sorry, let me rephrase that. Joseph could have sealed the girls to himself as celestial daughters rather than wives, which would allow them to have found worthy husbands that they actually loved to spend the eternities with. But now he's removing them from a normal social life and preventing them from finding actual true love with some of their own age, because he's taking them as these, you know, kind of polygamous, celestial, eternal wives. And, you know, the thing that, where it really falls flat for me, this idea that it's about creating dynasties is that if it was really all about attorney only sealings that were intended to eternally join friends and families together in the afterlife, there would be no need for the secrecy and lying. Joseph could have said, emma, I love the Kimballs, and I want to be connected with them for eternity. God revealed to me an ordinance that will make this possible that would require no lying, no denying, no sex, no writing secret letters. And there's a letter where it says, when Emma comes, you cannot be safe. Burn this letter as soon as you read it. And I know from an apologetic standpoint, they say that's because Joseph was on the run from the law. And so that would make her unsafe, like in a literal sense. But there's also other letters where he tells women to burn them. The point is, if you're trying to make this, you know, about dynasties, and you'll hear this today from a lot of apologists, it doesn't work. And this is another area where Joseph Smith is going to marry multiple pairs of sisters. If it's about creating dynasties, why is he marrying pairs of sisters and having sex with them? Yeah, he could marry one. One doll. He could marry one girl. And, you know, as we said earlier, if the law of adoption was something Joseph was believed was a. Was a real thing, he could have sealed himself to Heber Kimball as an adopted son and Then Heber could have stayed married to his. You know, to which he did. But then he also, Helen Markimbell, who we'll talk about later, could have then had a real life and not had any need to be married to Joseph because they'd be sealed together. It's. All of. This is a mess when you actually just take a step back and look at what they were doing. This. This apologetic is. Is just not. It's not feasible. And I would argue it's out of necessity and it's very misleading.

John Dehlin 1:27:02 Yeah, yeah. It just reminds me of. Of the foreshadowing Joseph does to his own practice about using David and Solomon as a justification for whoredoms. That's. That. That's a. You know, if you look. Just look at Occam's razor. What's more likely. Is it more likely that God is working in this weird, twisted way or just that? Or that Joseph and others are trying to justify, you know, bad. Bad sexual behavior? That just seems more likely. The. And another piece of evidence that in my mind, validates the sex argument instead of the dynasty argument. It's just that we don't practice dynastic ceilings anymore. So if dynastic ceilings were super important back then, then we'd still be doing them, but we're not doing them. So again, that's just another piece of evidence on the. On the balance of this being more about sex than about God. In my view. In my view.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:55 Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, at least, you know, because a lot of people say, oh, it's not just about sex. And I know there's more to it than sex. I think what you said earlier about power. There's instances where Joseph Smith. And we'll get to them as we go, like with Heber C. Kimball. He asks Heber for his wife, and Heber C. Kimball offers him his wife, which we'll get to that. That's a horrific one, because the essay cites. This is this big, grand thing.

John Dehlin 1:28:17 Inspirational story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:18 Yeah, it's a horrible story. But the point is, once Heber was willing to give Joseph his wife, Heber is now complicit in polygamy. So Joseph then says, I don't want your wife. And then depending on how you read the story, either Heber offers his daughter to Joseph instead, or Joseph asks. I'm sorry, excuse me. We don't know for sure what it is. But the point is, once you get someone complicit in polygamy, then they. As we talk about the no sin, no accuser, you're A lot less likely to accuse Joseph once you're practicing it. And so there's all of these different aspects of polygamy, whether it's sex power. There's one account where he marries these two. I think it's a pair of sisters that have, like, a trust to them. And. And there's a lot of controversy on that, whether or not Joseph was in charge of the money. There's a lot of things going on. And so there is more. It's more than just sex. But the fact is, you know, sex is at least an element because Joseph could. Avoided. Could have avoided sex with the women by using the law of adoption, which he was using elsewhere, if he was not doing this, in part to have sex with young, young women.

John Dehlin 1:29:19 Yeah. And also the fact that the Church hid this from us for. For however long is just another example of why it's problematic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:27 It's.

John Dehlin 1:29:27 If it weren't problematic, they wouldn't have hid her from us. They would have been proud of it and taught it to us all from the very beginning.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:35 100%. Yeah. So I talked about earlier. This essay is really designed to protect Joseph Smith above all else. And so the essay says these ceilings may also be explained by Joseph's reluctance to enter into plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma. He may have believed that ceilings to married women would comply with the Lord's commandment without requiring him to have normal marriage relationships. This could explain why, according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel reprimanded Joseph for having demurred on plural marriage even after he had entered into the practice. After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to ceilings with single women. And so what's really interesting here is that the Church wants to portray the Fanny Algeria relationship as a marriage because it included sex. But then they turn around here to say Joseph avoided sex to save his wife Emma, the sorrow polygamy would bring her. So the problem is Joseph Smith was already having sex with other women at the time. So I'm not sure how much more sorrow would be spared for Emma. Knowing he wasn't having sex with every single one of them. Like, this is just. It's one of those word games that they play in these essays to try to keep you from really just looking at the most obvious conclusions here, which is that Joseph Smith was likely having sex with women and was using biblical references to justify it later on. And we see this with a lot of other things he does. We talked about how he creates, you know, the priesthood out of Necessity for authority, the first vision. All these things are being created using sources around him and religious texts like the Bible. And yet here we're kind of told, oh no, you know, it's all in the up and up. But it's just, it's not, I don't know how to say it because there are. Joseph Smith could have avoided this. And the last thing I'll point out there is they say in the essay Joseph thought he could get around by just marrying already married women. He, he's a prophet of God. You think he could just say, hey God, if I marry this already married woman, will this qualify? And God be like, yeah, no. So that then completely waters down his ability as a prophet as well. Like they're like, oh, Joseph Smith thought he could get around it by marrying 11 or I think nine of the first 11. And he didn't know. I mean it's just, it makes Joseph Smith seem really powerless as a prophet as well.

John Dehlin 1:31:40 And if I could just check in here for a second, like there are these times where we start out talking about any of these topics where I'm like, well, let's dig into it because there's a lot here. Once you get into the weeds on this, there's always this moment, whether it's Book of Abraham or polyandry, where I'm just like, I can't believe we're actually having this discussion.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:01 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:32:02 Like he's sleeping with 14 year olds, other men's wives. And we're all trying to like analyze this weed here and this weed here too. But if you just zoom back out a little bit. This is just outrageous that we're even having this discussion at all. But, but sometimes apologetics leads you to the weeds or the trees that, that, you know, in a way that, that makes you forget to look at the forest. And the forest is that this is just awful. Even if it's just dynastic ceilings, women are just again being traded around like cattle. Their value is diluted. Yeah. Anyway, it's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:44 No and it's fair. And I think one thing I'd point out is I know we'll get to Helen Mar. And my goodness, what's the other, the other girl's name that was 14 is like Mary Elizabeth Nancy Winchester, I think. And so there's, you know, the thing with the 14, the two 14 year old marriages is we don't know if Joseph slept with them. But at the same time, under the, the laws of DNC 132, not only was he, was he allowed to but he was supposed to. To raise up seeds. So, yeah, that's a mess. But, yeah, we don't know that he. That he slept with them. But, yeah, there's a. You read this sometimes, and when we get to the, like, the proposals and the happiness letter, you're like, if you saw this and it was about anyone else, you'd be like, this guy is absolutely.

John Dehlin 1:33:21 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:22 Making it up. And yet we're sitting here, we're gonna do five episodes on it because of the fact that the apologetics are so thick about it, so.

John Dehlin 1:33:28 And belief is so resilient, and we've been conditioned to view Joseph as literally, you know, the most righteous person next to Jesus. That was another powerful moment in my interview with Patrick Mason. He's like, I reject the teaching that Joseph Smith is the more righteous. Is the most righteous person next to Jesus Christ. He said, I think Mother Teresa was way more righteous than Joseph Smith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:50 Yeah, I mean, yeah, we go through it all the time, and we got a lot more to go. And so not just with polygamy, but there's just so many instances that at some point, it's just like, if this was anyone else, you would walk away a long time ago. And belief is resilient. And so another possibility that the Church's essay gives for the polyandrous marriages was to say, another possibility is that in an era when lifespans were shorter than they are today, faithful women felt an urgency to be sealed by priesthood authority. Several of these women were married either to non Mormons or former Mormons. And. And more than one of the women later expressed unhappiness in their present marriages. Living in living in a time when divorce was difficult to obtain, these women may have believed a ceiling to Joseph Smith would give them blessings they might not otherwise receive in the next life. And this paragraph is particularly problematic because the Church is framing polyandry as if Joseph is somehow saving these women from bad situations. And the reality is that many of these women were married to faithful, active members of the church. They kind of use these weasel words like, more than. One of the women later expressed unhappiness. Well, we have 11 polyandrous marriages. So how many is more than one? Is it two? Is it three? And some of them were married to faithful members. And so only three of Joseph Smith's polyandrous wives were not married to members of the church, means at least eight of the 11 were married to members of the church. And so some of these women were married to leaders of the church, and one of them was married to an apostle that were sealed to Joseph Smith. So the church is kind of using these very vague terms to try to avoid the fact that Joseph Smith is marrying women who are already married to members of the church. And so, as we'll get into it in the next slide, this creates a lot of just huge problems that the church doesn't really have an answer. They really don't have an answer for today. If you ask them today, they'll just say it'll all work out in the end. This is where it gets really bad.

John Dehlin 1:35:43 Let's go and jump to that next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:44 Yeah. So if we are to believe the sealing power of Joseph Smith and the church, and then Joseph Smith taking polyandrous wives creates massive problems for the eternities because Joseph Smith is marrying women that were already married to faithful members of the church. The kids of that woman and the first husband would then be sealed to Joseph Smith and not to their father. And so even if you work under the premise that Joseph wasn't having sex with these wives, he would still be taking the father's kids away for eternity and would then have the wife to populate planets with in the eternities. And so, like putting in where I'm at now, so I'm a member of record, I've been through the temple, I have the priesthood, all that stuff, but I am no longer a believer. And so under the church's doctrine, and we'll get into this as we go, because this is doctrine, this is not me making it up, because I no longer believe in the church. Under the church's doctrine, my wife, who is still a believer, is going to be paired up with another guy for the eternities. Now, if he gets sealed to her in the eternities, then my kid would technically, under church doctrine, be sealed to this other guy for eternity. And in the eternities, even if I stay married to my wife until we die and I remain a non believer, she remains a believer under church doctrine, she would be given to another. That's the phrase. I'm not making this up. She'd be given to another man and then they would have eternal sex and she wouldn't really have a choice in it, or she'd be destroyed. We'll get into that as well. And my kid would be sealed to this guy no matter who he is and taken away from me because I don't believe in the Mormon framing of God. And so this really hits home for me in a personal way, even though I'm not obviously participating in polyandry or polygamy. But the fact is, this hangs over my head because I have a family member of my wife who is a member of the church. And so this is something that holds over my head. And we talked about this at the beginning. The women can say, yeah, this won't impact me because we don't have to practice it. But the fact is this is still doctrine for the eternities. And so these implications are real. And so in this case, going back to Joseph Smith's time, he is taking the wives of men who are faithfully believing in him as a prophet. And these men are going to lose their children for eternity to Joseph Smith. And then he is going to. Because they'll talk about how, in the essay, they talk about how the women live with the husbands, and they'll say they remain with their husbands. So maybe Joseph isn't having sex with them. We don't know. I mean, under the doctrine, he certainly is allowed to. And there's some references he had sex with at least one of them. But the reality is Joseph Smith is almost like earmarking these women, saying, once you die, then for the attorneys, we will be having sex to popular plans like, these implications are real. And that's why when you ask leaders of the church, they'll just say, we don't have all the answers. It'll all work out in the end. Except it's right there. This is what's supposed to happen. And I just. Yeah, it's horrifying. It bothers me on a personal level because of my situation. And to think of these people having to go through it in real time, I can't even imagine.

John Dehlin 1:38:39 Yeah. And. And if I can just kind of give my observer comments, it's like whenever it's. Whenever it's polygamy after Joseph Smith, there's zero question that sex was involved. Nobody asks, nobody's ever asked once that I'm aware of. Did Brigham Young have sex with his 55 wives? Why wouldn't he have, like, all the polygamy after Joseph involves sex. So it should be suspicious, I think, to people to be saying, why is it that we're always, like, questioning whether sex was involved only when it's Joseph? And it's because, number one, he's the founder. Number two, we're taught that he's the most righteous person is Jesus. And three, we know that he was denying it and hiding it and lying about it and that it was withheld from us. We all kind of somehow knew as Mormons growing up, the Brigham was A polygamist, but somehow we never really knew about Joseph. And that's a problem of informed consent or deception. And you know that it should be clear to us why we keep trying to make sexual exceptions for Joseph Smith, especially in the case of polyandry. The only other point I'll make is kind of a confirmatory point. My late sister who passed away, who by the way lived in Chicago for much of her adult life. She married a non member when she was inactive and then later she became super active and raised her kids in the church. She lived in Lake Zurich and Cary areas up in the northwest suburbs. But I was always sad by the fact that because her husband, he smoked, so he was never a member, she always looked at him as a temporary husband. And I even remember her telling me, you know, I'm kind of ready to go to the next life because, you know, I'm not going to divorce my husband because I love him and he's a good father to my kids, but he's not the man I'm going to end up with in heaven. And so she was almost ready to go to the next life to meet who her eternal companion would be. And Maya was my, my thought always was, what a sad heaven that God makes. Where we're all told that this eternal family concept is so beautiful, but really what it's doing is it's basically making my, my non Mormon brother in law inferior and kind of lesser than. And then it's making my sister not really cling to him and view him as her one and only, but it's making her look forward to this future, potentially fictitious man who by the way may be married to some other woman or sealed to some other woman within a Mormon context, because that's how it's going to work. There's going to be more for polygamy or celestial marriage to even exist in the afterlife. It's going to mean that there are more women in the celestial kingdom than men. And so more likely than not, my sister is going to be sealed to some man who she doesn't know who's. Who's going to be already sealed to some other woman. And as you said, all of her children, if they remain faithful, which none of them have, by the way, if they were to have remained faithful, they're all going to be sealed to this other man that was never their dad. It's just so. And you don't need to comment on this. It's just. It's just problematic in all the ways.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:44 Yep. Yeah. And the last thing I pointed out, which you'd point out earlier, is to me, there is. I. So you can't know this for sure, but I think the best reason that Joseph Smith would have started by marrying already married women. You had mentioned this earlier is that if you were to get one of them pregnant, it would be very easy to say like, oh yeah, but having a kid, congratulations. And I think, does it get the profit?

John Dehlin 1:42:06 It doesn't get the prophet in trouble?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:07 Yeah, if there's a pregnancy and I don't know, you know, we'll get into this as we go. I don't really believe Jose Joseph had John C. Bennett performing abortions or anything. I don't really. There's no evidence for any of that. But you know, people back then were learning a little bit more about like the rhythm method and there were condoms and stuff. I'm just saying, like it could have been that Joseph Smith started to get more comfortable with what he was doing, that he kind of figured he, he knew how to not get win pray. I don't know. But that would make a lot more sense than just saying that he thought he was finding a loophole with God because that just makes no sense. So that was just confirming what you said earlier. But this is to me where things get really kind of like fascinating because I had no idea as a member how DNC132 is produced. And so the saints book kind of talks about it and they say on the morning of July 12th, this will be 1843. William Clayton was in Joseph's office when the prophet and Hyrum entered. If you will write the revelation, Hyrum told Joseph. I will take it and read it to Emma and I believe I can convince her of its truth. And you will hereafter have peace. You do not know Emma as well as I do, Joseph said. That spring and summer he had been sealed to additional women, including a few whom Emma had personally selected. Yet helping Joseph choose wives had not made obeying the principle easy for Emma. The doctrine is so plain, Hyrum said, I can convince any reasonable man or woman of its truth, purity and heavenly origins. We will see, Joseph said. He asked William to take out paper and write as he spoke the word of the Lord. Much of the revelation was already known to Joseph. It described the new and everlasting covenant of eternal marriage, along with associated blessings and promises. It also revealed the terms governing plural marriage, which Joseph had learned while translating the Bible in 1831. The remainder of the revelation was new counsel for him and Emma addressing their questions and current struggles with plural marriage.

John Dehlin 1:43:51 If it's okay, Mike, I'm just going to give a quick reaction.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:54 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:43:55 Number one, like, again, this defies the idea that Joseph got the revelation in 1831. Like, two, it provides a more secular, boots on the ground explanation. It's like, Emma's not down with this, you know, so we gotta. It provides a motivation for why finally it was revealed. And then third, it kind of implicates Hiram. And you always kind of think of Hiram as this kind of noble, loyal brother, but the fact that he can make a statement like that, I can convince any reasonable man or woman of its truth, purity, and heavenly origin. I'm like, really? I think there's a lot of men and women out there who he would never be able to successfully convince. And I think that's demonstrated by the fact that Joseph didn't tell so many of his own leaders, including people like Sidney Rigdon or others. He was afraid to tell them because it, you know, so I, I think Hyrum was naive and in many ways complicit. Those are some of the things that come to my mind.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:54 Yeah, no, I think he was naive. I mean, you know, like I said, if you read, I remember reading Saints, I think Saints talked about a little bit. And then there's other stories where they talk about all these early members like Brigham Young and Hyrum and how much they hated it. And then they cried, and then all of a sudden they had the confirmation from God that it was real. And then they were just gung ho on it. And I just, I feel like I, you know, a lot of these people were true believers in Joseph Smith. They believed he spoke for God. And so maybe that's why they felt so naive about their ability to convince others. But, yeah, it's, it's, you know, in all honesty, it's probably a lot easier to convince a guy to do it than obviously a woman. You know, it puts a lot more. Yeah, you know, yeah, you know, it's very beneficial for men as opposed to women. And so, you know, we've pointed this out a few times in this episode. Now, what happened in 1831 is completely different from what is happening in Nauvoo. Joseph was taking about, talking about taking the Lamanite women as wiser concubines to make their posterity white, delights them in just that phrasing is based on the Book of Mormon, which says that you could turn Native Americans whiter by bringing them to Christ. We talk all about that in the race and The Scriptures of Mormonism episodes. And, you know, just as with the essay, there's a reason why Saints is not explaining what that 1831 revelation was. Because it's based on some very controversial and now pretty much disavowed teachings and, you know, scientifically wrong teachings about skin color. And then the other big entry is that Saints doesn't tell the reader that at this point, Joseph Smith is already married to 20 other women, with Emma being completely unaware of most of them. And then Saints make sure to indicate that, including a few whom Emma had personally selected. But what they don't tell you is that Emma had chose. She chose four women for Joseph to marry. And of those four, two of them were a pair of sisters named Emily and Eliza Partridge that Joseph was already married to. And he had to have a secondary sham wedding in front of Emma so that she didn't know he had already married them behind her back. And so this is just another area, and obviously the Saints book I did a long time ago for the first one, the chapter by chapter, but it's a very distorted view of history. And there's a lot of areas where the church is intentionally misleading with the history. And this is another case where they're using very careful wording so that if you came to them, they'd say, we weren't lying. But they're being. They're using words that are very misleading if you know the history. And in this case, there's a lot of issues with how they frame the production of DNC132 against the historical record.

Dictation of Doctrine and Covenants Section 132

John Dehlin 1:47:16 Okay, all right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:18 So this is where it gets cool to me. So Hiram is going to ask Joseph to dictate the revelation. We know this. The dictation process, to me, is just super fascinating given what we talked about way back when in the early episodes on the Book of Mormon dictation. So William Clayton, who recorded the Revelation, wrote this note about the process. He said Hyrum very urgently requested Joseph to write the revelation by means of the Urim and Thummim. But Joseph, in reply, said he did not need to, for he knew the Revelation perfectly from beginning to end. So to be clear on this, Hyrum is asking Joseph to use the Peep Seer stone that he used to translate the Book of Mormon with and that he used to get his early revelations. So that would be a direct revelation from God. But instead, Joseph Smith is telling him, no, I don't need it, because I know it so perfectly from beginning to end. I think that is one of the most Important aspects of this is that Joseph Smith Hyrum believes that Joseph can get words through the stone. And Joseph is saying, I don't even need it. That's how well I know it.

John Dehlin 1:48:19 Yeah, yeah. And I think you make the point. I was gonna, I was gonna just ask, well, how many words is DNC132? And that's on the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:26 Yeah. So this why this is so important. So DNC 132 is over 3200 words long. There is no way anyone could retain and memorize a 3200 word revelation in the way Joseph Smith claims to hire him. By Joseph Smith's own claims, this is a revelation that Joseph was given years earlier that was never recorded. But as we mentioned in the Book of Mormon authorship overview, a typical scribe could legibly write about 1200 words per hour. That means the dictation of the of DNC132 was the same equivalent to an entire day of translating the Book of Mormon. And Joseph Smith was able to do it without any source material or the use of the Seer stone. The dictation of DNC132 is made in the language, in the voice of God and in the language of the King James Bible, just as the Book of Mormon is. It also includes many of the similar phrases that occur in Joseph's other revelations, such as I am the Lord thy God, behold I am alpha and omega, etc. So it's not so much that the exact phrase, phrases and overall style, but what I'm saying is if you compare this to Joseph Smith's other kind of, you know, revelations they wrote himself, it becomes pretty clear just how gifted Joseph was at being able to speak in a normal way versus being able to speak in the voice of God. And to be able to do it in a setting where Joseph Smith is able to riff off 3,200 words off the cuff, I think really cuts against the idea that a lot of people have, which is that Joseph could not possibly have written the Book of Mormon himself because here he's writing an entire day's worth of the Book of Mormon by just being asked by Hiram to do it and he's doing without the aid of anything else.

John Dehlin 1:49:51 Yeah, you're right. I think that's a great point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:54 Yeah, I think that, to me is one of the biggest takeaways of this whole thing. And so fascinating. Yeah. And so like I said, it might not seem like a big deal until you realize about the implications of Joseph Smith's abilities to write scripture. In the name of God. This was serious. This was one of those aha moments for me when really doing the polygamy deep dive was just the ability that Joseph Smith had to. To be able to produce so much text in the voice of God, to do so much with biblical references and to speak in that language. And, you know, like I said, you know, apologists argue that Joseph was given the revelation so many times they knew it by heart. But the reality is DNC132 contains references to issues with Emma that are happening right around the time DNC132 is dictated. So you'd have to then argue that part of it was ancient, like 10 years old, and part of it was brand new. And that just leads to a lot of problems. But as we have said earlier, we're going to have a whole episode on that. And so we're going to kind of stop this episode now because we're going to go right into DNC132 on the next episode.

John Dehlin 1:50:48 I love it. Well, that's a nice little Easter egg or surprise finish that we're not. You know, and that's why these episodes, again, are so important, because they build on each other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:57 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:50:58 And that's a fun. That's a fun sort of illustration of a concept that we've discussed earlier in terms of the Book of Mormon in its translation. All right, so what's the closing slide?

Preview of Remaining Episodes and Closing Thoughts

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:08 Yeah, so this is just going to be. For those of you who've made it this far and are curious how we're going to split this up. So we're planning four more episodes on polygamy. I think they're going to be in this order. They might switch a little bit. But we're going to have one episode that focuses on the text of D&C132 and how that relates to how it was actually practiced. We're going to have an entire episode on Joseph Smith's proposals and kind of the patterns that emerge in those proposals to the women in the church. We're going to have an episode that's going to look at the happiness letter that Joseph Smith wrote to Nancy Rigdon. And then we're going to have a final episode that's going to look at polygamy after Joseph Smith, along with the implications for how polygamy is today. And we're going to cover a lot more of apologetics in that episode. The apologetics in that episode will kind of overarch all the other ones so that we can kind of COVID all of that at the end. So we can make sure we're getting everything in there.

John Dehlin 1:51:57 Yeah. Not to poison the well, but as I'm trying to anticipate, we. We've covered DNC 132 with Sandra Tanner, but there's always new stuff and it's always worth learning multiple times just for memory's sake. But the language in D&C132 is so problematic. So that's gonna be a great episode. Yeah. Joseph Smith's proposals and patterns, just how coercive he was with people is really disturbing. And then the Happiness letter is for sure one of the most disturbing, twisted parts of the entire restoration, as far as I'm concerned. Shout out hat tip to Jonathan Streeter for his. His work on that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:37 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:52:38 And then post, post Joseph Smith, polygamy. I've got polygamy in my own family. My great. My great grandparents were polygamous. My. My grandma's parents. And I've discovered really disturbing things about that just in the past few weeks and months. So, Mike, it looks like we've got some good stuff coming up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:54 Yeah, we got a lot to cover, and I think all four episodes after today will fit into this one. So they really will kind of build on each other. So hopefully, if you're. If you're watching this, keep, you know, watch them in the order we do them. And I think, like I said, it won't get easier, but it'll also, I think, help us understand it a lot better. So it'll be good, good in that way.

John Dehlin 1:53:13 All right, Mike, thanks so much for what you do with LDS discussions.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:17 Yep. Thanks everybody.

John Dehlin 1:53:18 And everybody else, thanks so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Again, a reminder that you can watch all of these episodes in an isolated series, either on Spotify audio or video, on YouTube as a playlist under the Mormon Stories podcast page. You can go to playlists or wherever you consume your podcast, you can just search the LDS Discussions) podcast episode. We want to thank Mike and remind you all you can go to LDSDiscussions.com for the essays that are well set cited and you can read much of the source materials there. We want to thank everyone for their support. We hope you enjoy this series. Please give us feedback either as comments on YouTube or comments on the blog or comments wherever on Facebook, wherever you consume this, these episodes, if you like or don't like, or have tips for how we can make this better or if you find errors that you want to correct us on. We, we always love and welcome learning that we've made a mistake, and we'll do our best to own up on that. So thanks for your support. Your financial support makes all this possible. If you love this series, please become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org and we'll make this content available to future generations. I personally think this series with Mike and LDS discussions is is as important in different ways than CES Letter or Mormon Think or Letter from My Wife or, you know, lots of the other episodes, including Mormon Expression and Mormon Stories. So thanks everyone. Take care. Be be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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