Joseph Smith’s Plural Marriage Proposals Pt 1 w/ LDS Discussions – 26

Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's October 20, 2022, and today we are 25 or 26 episodes into a really important epic Mormon Stories podcast series called LDS Discussions), where we examine Mormon Church truth claims as neutrally and objectively and as thoughtfully and as dispassionately as we possibly can. Today we're in the middle of a series on Joseph Smith's polygamy, and today we are covering Joseph Smith's plural marriage proposals. We've done an introduction to Mormon Polygamy. We've covered DNC 132, which was Joseph Smith's polygamy revelation. And today we're covering Joseph Smith's plural marriage proposals. I do want to just remind everyone that this entire series is based on the amazing work of our friend mike@ldsdiscussions.com he has written several essays on various Mormon Church truth claims to. Today's episode is based on the essay that can be found@ LDSDiscussions.com polygamy proposals. And also I want to make sure that people know that all of these episodes can be found in the Mormon Stories podcast feeds, both on the Apple Podcast app on Spotify and on YouTube and the Mormon Stories podcast channel. But these episodes can also be found on Spotify. There's a dedicated Spotify podcast for the LDS discussions episode specifically where. Where you can both listen to them and view them. Spotify allows video, Believe it or not, we've got about, you know, a thousand episodes, a thousand views or listens per episode now. So our Spotify presence with this podcast specifically is growing. And I also want to let you all know that if you just want to watch these in succession, you can go to our YouTube playlist on the Mormon Stories Podcast channel and you can watch these episodes in succession. Today we are excited to have back with us again, Mike from LDS Discussions). Hey, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01 Hey, how's it going, everybody?

John Dehlin 2:02 It's great to have you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04 It's good to be back.

John Dehlin 2:05 We got your new microphone. I hope people like it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:08 Yeah, I hope I sound better. I know when I listen to them, sometimes I feel like I'm extra tinny. So I'm hoping this is a little bit better.

John Dehlin 2:13 Yeah. And we're going to get you even a better mic stand. So anyway, thanks for joining us. We're so glad to have you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:18 Thanks, everyone.

John Dehlin 2:20 And we're super excited to have back for a second time. Alicia Lee.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 2:24 Hey, Alicia, how's it going?

John Dehlin 2:27 Great. Your appearance on the DNC132 episode was really valuable and we're just so thrilled to have you back because wouldn't it be lame to have a discussion about polygamy and have only men talking about it?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 2:40 Yes.

John Dehlin 2:41 She says politely, really quickly, Alicia, let's give you a chance if you, if you want to introduce yourself and also you may have some starting thoughts you want to share. Let's turn the mic over to you.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 2:53 Thanks, John. Yeah, so I'm Alicia. Faith unraveled on TikTok. I'm actually working on a polygamy series on TikTok. It's kind of intermittent. So anyway, whenever I feel inspired to talk about something, one of the stories, I really feel like it's valuable to give these women a voice. So I love talking about it on my TikTok channel. So if you want to check that out. But in regard to today's episode, I just a little framework that I wanted to share. When I was preparing for this episode, I just kept thinking, you know, as a seventh generation Mormon myself, coming from pioneer stock, having been an active believer for 40 years of my life, I am fascinated with Mormon history. And as I started to deconstruct a few years ago, I recognized that many of the themes that we see in these formative years of the church are still, still playing out today. And the one that we're going to see a lot of today, during today's episode is this idea of sacrificing during this lifetime for the sake of the eternities, doing things that the saints did, things that they wouldn't probably ordinarily do if it weren't for their indoctrination. So we see repeatedly in these teachings. It's kind of sequential for me, the way that I see it. It's like, first of all, they have to see this lifetime as this very temporary time, this small speck on the spectrum of eternity. Okay, so that's the first part of the indoctrination. The second part is that the decisions that you make during this very temporary time are going to influence your whole eternity. They're going to dictate what the whole rest of your eternity looks like. And then the part three is you have a prophet, and your prophet is your lifeline who's going to tell you exactly what to do during this very short period of time on the earth so that you don't have to suffer through the eternities. So when I. So when people start to see through this, through this lens, I think it becomes very easy to influence their decisions. I want to use the word manipulate, but I'm just going to say influence their decisions. Because when we see the prophet as our lifeline, then what we're told to do, it doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't have to feel right. We. We just have to do it in the name of obedience. And I would argue that this dynamic that we see early in the church is still sort of playing out today for members of the church, at least I feel that way, as that's. That was part of my lived experience as a member of the church. So I think it'll be interesting to look at these events in church history and see how they are relevant today.

John Dehlin 5:38 Beautiful. That's a great introduction. Mike, do you want to add anything to what Alicia said?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:42 No, I think that is, for me, one of those things you think about is, like, we talked about it in the first few episodes and we'll talk about the next couple polygamy ones is that, as Alicia said, when you have someone that you trust as a prophet of God, it allows them to become the middleman between you and your eternal promises. And so that allows, in this case, Joseph Smith to circumvent our own moral compass, because our moral compass turns. It stops being a moral compass, and it starts being follow the prophet. And I think that is why you see so many offshoots today who are doing things like this, because they learned it from Joseph Smith. They learned from early history. And so, as Alicia said, this stuff impacts today not just with polygamy, but with obedience, with. Not questioning leadership, with. You know, we. We've. We've shown videos before on here, and I've had them on. On, like, Twitter and stuff, that there was a women's conference, like, two years ago where they say you never, ever question the. The priesthood, holding men. And it all comes down to this. And so as we look at these events in history, they are fascinating, but we need to learn from them. And I think in a lot of ways, we're often told to kind of push them aside, you know, put them on the shelf. And you can't do that because you can't understand the present if you don't understand the past.

John Dehlin 6:55 I love it. Yeah. It wasn't until I was in my 40s where I started learning about consent, when I was getting my PhD in psychology. And we had to counsel assault victims and rape victims. And, you know, there's a lot of drinking on campus. And so there are always concerns about sexual health and sexual safety. And you. You learn that there are certain things that certain dynamics to any type of sexual relationship that sort of invalidate the idea of two consenting adults. And of course, underage children cannot consent because they're not even adults yet. So there's no such thing as an adult having consensual sex with, with a minor. Yep. You can't have drunk consent. You can't be drunk and consent. There's no such thing as drunk consent. There's no such thing as consent when you're asleep. And, and so the, the idea is, is that, you know, if you're, if you're trying to find out is Joseph Smith's polygamy righteous, is it of God? And we have Patrick Mason, the church's top believing scholar, calling Joseph Smith's polygamy. He basically said it looks a lot like sin. But, but if you're going to try and analyze whether Joseph Smith's polygamy is of God, then you have to wonder, was it consensual? If he's in such a position of power, he's viewed as God's one true servant. If he's telling people their salvation depends on it, if it's 14 year old girls, if he's mayor and commander of the legion and he's telling people they've got 24 hours or they and their families all lose their salvation, is that a problem? So that's good. That's kind of what we're going to be talking about today. And so Mike, let's jump into the first slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:38 Yeah. And one thing I'll add to your comment is just when you hear the word consent all the time in the Mormon Church, when I was a member, or I mean, I'm still a member, but when I was a believing member, consent was always free agency. So, you know, it wasn't so much. You know, you don't talk about consent, but you always talk about you have free agency. And so when you watch this episode and you listen to these accounts, you have to ask yourself, do these women really have free agency in the church or is that being taken away? And if that's the case, that's another thing we have to address because of the fact that we are always told we have free agency, but in a lot of ways this short circuits that. And so it's just piggybacking off of not just consent, but within Mormonism, free agency is a big deal. And I would argue you can't have free agency under these circumstances, which we'll obviously get into.

Recap of Doctrine and Covenants 132

John Dehlin 9:20 All right, so our first slide is a recap.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:23 Yeah. So Just for those who have watched the first two polygamy episodes or those who haven't, this is episode three out of five on our polygamy kind of miniseries within the larger series. And so in our previous two episodes, we covered the timeline of Joseph Smith's polygamy and kind of how that impacted the production of DNC132, because that does not come until 1843. And most of these, I think all of these proposals come before that. And then we talk about how in the church, they. They have the heading for DNC 132, talks about how Joseph Smith received this revelation as early as 1831. We talked about how that revelation was actually about taking the. The women in the Native American reservations as wives and concubines to make their children whiter, more white. Delightsome is the actual wording. It has nothing to do with DNC132. We talked about how Joseph Smith produced the entirety of DNC 132 in one sitting without even using the peep slash shearstone, because Hyrum Smith requested Joseph Smith to use it, believing that's how he got his revelations. Joseph said no. He riffed off with the 3200 word revelation in one sitting without any help, which I think says a lot about his ability to dictate text. As we talked about with the composition of the Book of Mormon. And then in our last episode, we talked about the wording of DNC 132 and all of the implications that that revelation has for believing members today, mixed faith marriages, and how Joseph Smith broke pretty much all of the specific rules that he set forth within DNC132. We'll talk a little bit about that as we go through these proposals as well. Kind of going back to, you know, and this is, you know, another way where his own revelation, which is going to be written after these proposals, is already broken because of the practices he used in implementing polygamy.

John Dehlin 11:10 Excellent. Okay, should we go to the next slide?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:14 Yeah. And so what we want to talk about in this third episode is to look at how Joseph Smith actually implemented polygamy and to compare it both to DNC132 and how the church portrays it today. Because both of those are very important, because DNC132 obviously is the revelation that we have canonized, and it is one that is still doctrine. And then we have to look at how the church portrays it today because that's important as to, in my opinion, kind of the honesty of how polygamy is portrayed by the church, not just with how Joseph Smith implemented it, but what the implications are for today and for this episode. We want to point out the patterns in Joseph Smith's proposals that I think are important to evaluating Joseph Smith as a prophet of God. And so what we're going to do is we're going to look at some of the proposals where we have accounts from those who are involved in them to see how those stack up against the Church's narratives. We are not trying to find the most salacious details. We're not trying to give shock value here. We're trying to find the accounts where we have solid journal entries or accounts of what happened during these proposals, because a lot of these we just don't have them for. So what we're trying to do is focus on what we do have. I'm not trying to find the most salacious details that I've been trying to do this entire series. We've been doing is to look at what's the most solid and go from there. And so these are going to make a lot of believing members uncomfortable. But at the same time, this is. This is history. And so we need to be able to talk about these, whether whatever you do with it after the fact is up to you. But this is something we have to address and look at the implications of these accounts.

John Dehlin 12:56 Okay. All right, so the next slide is marrying girls that live in Joseph Smith's home.

Patterns in Joseph Smith's Marriage Proposals

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:02 Yes. Before we get to the accounts, I want to cover a few of the patterns that I have found and others have found in Joseph Smith's proposals. And one of them is that Joseph Smith often proposes to girls and young women who he has living in his household first. And so this is a common thread, and it puts women in a very awkward position because they are now being housed with the man they believe is a prophet of God. And then they are being asked to marry him in secret polygamous marriages. I'm hiding it from Emma in the process, who's also in the house. And, you know, we talked about this in our first episode. This is how he had the relationship with Fanny Alger. And I don't believe that was a marriage, as we talked about in that episode, but this is an area where Joseph Smith had her living in his household. She believed he was a prophet. And then they have this relationship. And this allows Joseph Smith to use the time while they're living in the household to feel out the situation, to slowly condition them to be ready for this proposal. And I realize that that sounds Very devious to put it that way. But that's exactly what you would do if you're seeking to take these young women as your polygamous brides, knowing that they believe you're a prophet of God and will recoil at the proposal initially. And so I want to just state off right off the bat that an apologetic argument is that they would were free to reject his proposal to find another place to live. But the point I want to make is that Joseph Smith is putting him in a position where he holds both their. Both his authority as a self proclaimed prophet and his authority as a person housing these women when making these proposals over them. And so as I mentioned a few minutes ago, this puts a dent in this idea of free agency because you're seriously diminishing a person's ability to choose freely when you are in a position where someone you view as a prophet and the person who's housing you is asking you to do something that you already know is just unbelievably immoral and, you know, dishonest.

John Dehlin 14:53 You're shaking. You're nodding your head, Alicia. Why?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 14:55 Yeah, well, it just seems so obvious, but I don't know why it took me 40 years to see that. But I think that just viewing all of the components is super important. And the really great thing is that we don't have to dig into anti Mormon literature to find this stuff. Todd Compton's done great work. The Hales have done wonderful work. They have a faithful perspective. But the word that you used is salacious. I mean, that's. Those details are in those faithful sources. You don't have to. You have to. You don't have to wander.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:24 No.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 15:25 And.

John Dehlin 15:25 And Mike, I obviously. Fanny Alger, Joseph's first known affair, slash by the church's claim, polygamous wife. We've, we've talked about that. That was 1833. Ish. 1835. Ish. Are there other. Are we going to talk about the other women that were also living in the home? Will we be talking?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:47 Yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to cover this. So, yeah, I want to cover these now so that as we go through the accounts, I can say as we're talking about. Yeah.

John Dehlin 15:55 Okay. So the next, the next pillar or pattern is making great promises in exchange for marriage.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:02 Yeah. And this is one where. Actually, can you go back to. Yeah, you skipped two slides.

John Dehlin 16:08 Oh, sorry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:09 No, no, that's okay. So this one is.

John Dehlin 16:12 So the next one is using older wives to recruit younger ones.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:15 Yeah. And so this is one of the ones. One of the apologetics I often hear was that Joseph Smith could not have been marrying women just for sex because he did marry some older wives that we don't have any record of him having sexual relations with. And that's obviously a true statement. But what I want to state up front is we've said this in the earlier episodes. I don't believe every polygamous marriage was strictly for sex. I think there were a lot of factors, whether it was authority and power. There is, you know, some of these accounts where Joseph Smith almost brings these families into polygamy, almost to make them complicit. We talked about the quote that he was talking about in 1841, which is, if you don't accuse me, I won't accuse you. There are a lot of reasons why you would bring families into this polygamous system. And so this is a new system of marriage, and it's going to lead to him marrying women for different reasons. But with that being said, there are at least two of the older wives that we know were used to recruit the younger wives for him. So they would talk to the women, they would try to get a feel for what they already had heard in the rumor mill. They would try to soften up their beliefs about it. And so this gives Joseph Smith a middle, like a middle woman, I guess, in this case, to have plausible deniability if the proposal is not received well, and also allows Joseph Smith to use somebody who's already in polygamy to sell those young women on how righteous the principle is once you accept it. It's almost like an MLM with polygamy, where you've got the people that are recruiting into the system. And we'll highlight how Joseph Smith was using these older plural wives to recruit younger women today. And we'll also talk about this in our episode, the next episode on the Happiness Letter, because that's going to be another time where Joseph Smith is going to use one of his polygamous wives to recruit others. And so it just goes against that idea that, well, he married some older women. So clearly it was about sex. It's like, well, sometimes those older women were actually helping him to find younger wives. And that's important to note. Again, as uncomfortable as it might be, this is what happened.

John Dehlin 18:09 Yeah. And the bell's already ringing for me, this idea of being able to say, well, polygamy is not about sex. Look, I married a couple old women like that. That could also very much be used as a cover. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:21 Yeah. And there are reasons, like, I believe he married his brother's widow and he may have had sex with her. That, that is, that's gonna be in the happiness letter a bit. But when the happiness letter happens, there's this rumor that he's having some sort of relationship with his brother's widow, and he does ultimately marry her as a plural wife. So then you would have to say, well, there's smoke there, that they're having a relationship. So maybe they did so just because, I mean, Joseph Smith, remember, he's in his upper 30s at this point, so, you know, he's going to marry women who are in their 30s and their 40s. There's no reason he wouldn't have sex with them. I'm just saying that, that apologetic. I think he did marry like one or two that were in their 50s. Well, yeah, but some of these older women were being used. And when I say older, I don't mean like they're ancient. I mean older as opposed to. Not the teenagers he's more known for marrying.

John Dehlin 19:04 It's also kind of ageist to think that a 50 year old or 60 year old wouldn't be having sex or even wouldn't like, my, my, my wife and I are in our 50s. And, you know, so. So it's kind of ageist to think that somehow he wouldn't be having sex with a 50 or 60 year old too. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:21 Yeah. And that's why I'm trying to be careful, because that's not really what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say is that that's an apologetical say, well, he wasn't just marrying the teenagers. He was marrying these, these women who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s. Like, well, yeah, but we don't have accounts for every woman. It's not like the women were like, we didn't have sex. Some of them will say it was only for time or it was only for eternity. But we also have women that are playing a role in the polygamous system and almost working for Joseph Smith. And that is really something that I did not know until a couple years ago. When you see that, you're like, this is, this is something that if you saw any other religious leader doing, you'd be like, oh, my goodness, this is horrific. But when it's Joseph Smith, you go, oh, well, his is from God. It's like, you know, and that's why we have to look at all these together and try to get a bigger picture.

John Dehlin 20:00 Alicia, quick comment.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 20:02 Just, I think it's really helpful to be able to view Things through different lenses. So to take off that lens of indoctrination and just view it through a practical lens and seeing all these details, I think is helpful.

John Dehlin 20:14 Yeah. Okay. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:17 And if you want to pull it, I'll just say, if you want to pull that into a modern analogy or parallel look at what Nexium. You know, we had the. The Nexium cult where they had Alison Mack recruiting women to be basically, like sex slaves for the guy. I can't remember his name now. And obviously there's a whole miniseries on HBO about that. But you. You know, this is something that is done in high demand religions in some of these cults like Nexium, where they're using these women and the women are using this opportunity to recruit other women to elevate their own status, because the more you can make yourself important, the more important you become to Joseph Smith and all that. So there are a lot of kind of messy things that happen within this. But even in the modern day, I think that happened, what, like, three or four years ago, we have a system where women are out there recruiting other women to bring into a system of. That wasn't polygamy so much as just, you know, a sexual cult. But. Yeah.

John Dehlin 21:14 Not to mention the FLDS church as well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:16 Exactly. I mean, you're gonna have it there, too. So, I mean, it's just. It's. It's something you see in other places into what Alicia was saying. If you see that there and you say that is horrific, and you know that's wrong, it's really hard then to go back to Joseph Smith, like, well, his was righteous. And I guess that's the point I'm trying to make through these episodes of, like, you have to view this through the lens of, how would I evaluate this if I was not raised in the church and already conditioned to accept it?

John Dehlin 21:39 Totally. Okay. The next pattern that you're laying out or the next pillar of his pattern is proposing to girls that were in vulnerable situations.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:47 Yeah. And this one is one that is really troubling because what we see in a lot of these proposals, especially to the young girls, is that he's going to ask them to marry him after they believed he was a prophet. And a lot of them after they've gone through a situation that makes them vulnerable. So in a few of these cases, we have instances where, excuse me, Joseph Smith proposes to them after they lose a parent and they're living in the Smith household, they have a parent that died. And, you know, one of the things I always thought of is you hear how missionaries are always taught that the most likely people to join the church are the people that have gone through loss because they're more open to religion. And it just also reminds me of the fact that if you're Joseph Smith and you're trying to find people who you think will be more likely to jump into your. To, you know, accept your proposal, that people have gone through a lot of tragedy or vulnerable, I think are going to be more open to doing that. And so we'll note this as we go with these proposals, but Joseph Smith is the one selecting these women, and so he's selecting them. And we can't obviously say what the reasons are, so we can't get into his head. But when you look at the kind of the patterns and the threads in these proposals, it does seem that he's trying to pick people that have gone through great loss that maybe either don't have the willpower to reject him or are just, you know, going through so much that they're trying to find that spiritual connection that he's offering them in many of these cases. And this one, as we go through these accounts, this one's one where it's just, to me, this isn't like a red flag. This is like a red banner on a stadium that, you know, if you saw it with anyone else, you just lose your mind. So that's a tough one.

John Dehlin 23:21 I know we're going to be hearing about orphans, and I know we're going to be hearing about women whose husbands were in other countries who were living alone. Alicia, anything you wanted to add to this before?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 23:33 I think that was a great summary. I'm excited to jump in today. Lots to look at. Yeah.

John Dehlin 23:40 Okay. The next pattern that we're going to be looking for is making great promises in exchange for marriage.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:46 Yeah. And so we've talked about this in the DNC 132 episode. But, you know, Joseph Smith uses polygamy to promise these great eternal blessings for those who accept his proposals while making grave threats to those who refuse him. And we cover that within the wording of DNC132. We're going to cover that a lot in the Happiness Letter episode because he writes those same ideas there. And we'll highlight that in these episodes as well. But the thing that Joseph Smith is doing is it's almost like you're a salesperson trying to close a deal. And so he's offering these women a direct path to exaltation if they accept his proposal. And in some Cases, especially when there is that initial, you know, refusal, he'll offer, like the entire family exaltation if they give their daughter to become his wife. Or if a woman marries, he'll promise that his whole family, her whole family will be taken through to the celestial kingdom. And this is. Again, we've talked about this. I mean, I've mentioned this a lot because it starts to me with treasure digging, which is this is where Joseph Smith can make whatever promise he wants because he never has to deliver it. He can get these women to keep digging and paying him to dig by marrying him and whatever, because he can now promise. He doesn't have to promise them a treasure he's going to find in the ground. He's promising them eternal promises that he knows he never has to deliver. And you're going to see this in these accounts.

John Dehlin 25:00 I'm glad you mentioned threats as well, because it wasn't just threats. It wasn't just promises. It was also.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:05 Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, they're promises. And then there's threats if you don't do it. So you're putting these women in a horrific situation.

The Angel with the Drawn Sword and Coercion

John Dehlin 25:12 Okay, is the angel with the drawn sword part of a pattern?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:15 So the angel with the drawn sword is an interesting one because we have multiple accounts where he used it and some of the women we talked about today, and this is one where, this is Joseph Smith, where he's using pressure to coerce young women to accept his proposals by telling them that an angel with the drawn sword is going to kill him if they don't accept. And so this is from the church's essay, and it says when God commands a difficult task, he sometimes sends additional messengers to encourage his people to obey. Consistent with this pattern, Joseph told associates that an angel appeared to him three times between 1834 and 1842 and commanded him to proceed with plural marriage when he hesitated to move forward. During the third and final appearance, the angel came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully. And so the first thing I want to point out again is that Joseph's using the very folk magic power of three in the story, which we hear over and over. It's always on the third time that, you know, things happen, which we saw with the treasure digging, the gold plates, the lost 116 pages. And it's a very magical practice. We see it in your Christmas character, Christmas Carol. You have three visitations, all that stuff. And so let's go to the next slide real quick. We can Kind of finish this little.

John Dehlin 26:23 It's almost. Yeah, it's almost. I'm just gonna say, and we'll get into it. But it's almost the trade of an abusive partner or someone who's borderline it. It's a cousin of, I'm going to hurt myself if you don't do what I want you to do, which is even a little bit more demented. God's going to hurt me if you don't do what I want you to do or what I'm telling you God wants you to do. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:48 Yeah.

John Dehlin 26:48 It can be viewed as very coercive. And we'll talk about this. But if God has the ability to send angels with flaming swords, there are so many things he should be doing that for then and now, including child rape, murder, you know, genocide. Like, if God has that power, why. Why is he using it to make young teenage girls have sex with his prophet and not with all the real horrors of, of the. Of the earth?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:20 Yeah. Or more to that point, why didn't he go to Zina Huntington and say. And haven't sent an angel to her and say, hey, don't marry Henry because you are actually given to Joseph and Joseph's going to come and talk to you about it. And then Joseph comes and talks about it. She says, you know what? An angel just confirmed it. Let's go. But instead, it's always after they reject him. And so it really makes.

John Dehlin 27:41 And not to the wind, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:42 Yeah. So it makes God seem like kind of a, you know, the Mormon version of God is kind of a bad manager because the Mormon version of God goes through all these extra steps that are contradicted by evidence, contradicted by everything. When the Mormon version of God could just as easily go to these women and say, hey, I'm. I'm going to kill Joseph Smith if you don't marry him. But I'm telling you this so that, you know, it's legitimate. Instead of having Joseph Smith go after they reject him and say, I know you rejected me, but here's the problem. I'm going to die if you don't marry and have sex with me, or at least marry me. And so it, it takes away free agency, it takes away consent. It also makes the Mormon version of God look like a pretty terrible person. And I realize how offensive that sounds. But if, if I'm a parent and I have a kid, I'm not going to go to someone else and say, I'm going to kill you, unless you can convince my kid to do this. I'm going to go to the kid and be like, hey, this is what you need to do. It's just. It's. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

John Dehlin 28:40 Yeah, yeah, it's a problem. Alicia, do you have a quick comment on angel and drawn sword?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 28:45 Yeah, I mean, if we just remove that lens of indoctrination. I think that's a really good point, Mike. And just view the fact that there are so many factors here, and it's so easy when we look at church history through that faithful lens, to just look at them as isolated events. You know, you've got the angel with the sword and these threats, but you don't really get the full picture until you really conceptualize the fact that these girls, many of which are orphaned or one parent dies, the other one is sent off by profit orders. They're living in the prophet's home. Everyone in their environment is also indoctrinated. And now they're faced with this threat that if they don't make the right decision, their prophet, who is literally their gatekeeper, is going to be destroyed. So to call it free agency, like, I just think is so unimaginable. Once you get the whole picture, you really have to see. You really have to see it all together, you know, to get the picture of what's really going on here. So to call it free agency, I just think is really a stretch.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:44 Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin 29:46 And I guess Micah, cousin to the angel with the drawn sword, is this idea of Joseph Smith as the reluctant polygamist.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:54 Yeah. And so just to kind of cap off that apart from the Gospel topics essay, because what the church wants to do in the essay is to make Joseph Smith the victim. So they paint him as this reluctant victim who was fighting God. He was fighting God about polygamy by ignoring him thinking. There's an account where Joseph was kind of saying he was trying to trick. Basically deceive God. God by making him think he was doing it. I mean, it's just. It's nonsensical. So what they do is they. The church says, look, God, Joseph was fighting this so hard because he knew how bad it was that God had to send an angel with a drawn sword to take his life if he didn't obey the commandment fully. I put commandment fully in quotes because that's part of the story, which to me means sex. And so you got to remember that the commandments to raise up seed, which means sexual relations. So Joseph Smith certainly engaged in sexual relations with his polygamous wives, but he never raised up Any seed that we have confirmation for, which is an interesting data point. But the problem is Joseph Smith is telling these young women who revere him as a prophet of God that if they do not marry and have sex with him, that an angel will kill him. And so Joseph Smith could have gone and found another girl to marry. He could have fulfilled the angel's commandment by just going to another girl who actually wanted to marry him. But instead, he continues to insist to these specific young women to that if they don't do it, Joseph will be the real victim of their refusal to accept this commandment of God that was given to Joseph Smith on their behalf. And so it's just again, pointing out that Joseph invokes this story when he's rejected by these women, which is a way to circumvent their free agency. And as Alicia said, what would you say if you were given the story and it was for Warren Jeffs or David Koresh or the owner of really powerful business, that you have these men of authority telling these women that I guarantee you the overwhelming majority, if not every person would say, that person belongs in jail. And yet when you say it's Joseph Smith, they say, well, if you really think about it through a different lens. And I think that, to me, is why we need to look at these accounts and say, let's look at. Through the lens of history and not through the lens of how we were raised to look at the history.

John Dehlin 31:51 Yeah. When I. When I hear Mormon polygamy apologetics, they often mention Brigham Young and. And the quote that when I learned about polygamy, I never desired the grave more than. Than when. Than when I was first taught the doctrine of polygamy. And then Brigham Young goes on to marry over 50 women. I don't think he was reluctant for very long.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:10 No.

John Dehlin 32:11 Alicia, anything you want to say about reluctant polygamy?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 32:14 Yeah, I mean, this is just it. This is when my lens cracked. My. My faithful lens cracked when I realized, I don't think. Think that God said that. I don't think God commanded Joseph Smith to do it. It was the first time, for whatever reason, that I just saw it differently. And I realized I don't think God commanded him to do this in every case. He's blaming God in every case. And so once that switches, then it just makes you kind of start to deconstruct the whole thing because you're. Then you start looking at the priesthood restoration, and you start to look at the first vision, and you start to look at everything. It all starts to Fall apart. But with really just this section on polygamy. It's so huge. Do you believe that God actually commanded Joseph Smith to do this?

John Dehlin 32:57 Yeah. Yeah, it's a problem. So the next slide is going to be Lucy Walker's proposal. So we're going to start getting into the women. And before we do that, I'm just going to make a couple plugs in our show notes. We try and include good links. I want to make a plug for Todd Compton's book In Sacred Loneliness, where he spends a chapter on each of Joseph Smith's plural W that is the work of scholarship on Joseph Smith's wives. I also want to make a plug for my Mormon Stories interview with Todd Compton, which I did very, very early on with Mormon Stories. And of course, Lindsay Hansen park has an amazing series called Year of Polygamy where she does a podcast episode for each of Joseph Smith's plural wives. And Todd Compton is coming to Salt Lake City this week at Benchmark Books. And this episode may be aired after this week, so you won't be able to see it. But Todd Compton and Signature Books, I believe, are releasing a book about the sources for Todd Compton's book In Sacred Loneliness. So I just want to make sure listeners and viewers have all that, that they can dive and dig into this if they want. So is it time to talk about Lucy Walker?

Lucy Walker's Proposal and Journal Accounts

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:11 Yeah. So now we get into the accounts. And so Lucy Walker is one of the. That for me, the first. This was one of the first accounts I heard of, and it was from a podcast that Bill Real had done for Mormon discussions. And he did it in a way, kind of like Lindsay Hansen park does, where he just kind of goes through the account and the implications without kind of being too over the top. And I thought it was horrific to listen to. And so Lucy Walker joined the church in 1835. She was living in Nauvoo by 1841. On January 15, 1842, Lucy, Lucy's mother, passed away. And she had nine siblings. So her and her nine siblings no longer had a mom. And this is from Lucy herself. She says, ten motherless children and such a mother, the Youngest not yet 2 years old. What were we to do? My father's health seemed to give way under this heavy affliction. The prophet came to our rescue. He said, if you remain here, Brother Walker, you will soon follow your wife. You must have a change of scene, a change of climate. You have such a. You have just such a family as I could love. My house shall be their house. I will Adopt them as my own. For the present, I would advise you to sell your effects, place the little ones with some kind friends, and the four eldest shall come to my house and be received with and treated as my own children. And if I find the others are not content or not treated right, I will bring them home and keep them until you return. So to be clear, following the death of Lucy's mother, Joseph is going to send the remaining parent, the dad, off on a mission. Take the four eldest children into the home to live with him, and then the six younger ones to live elsewhere. And so Lucy herself says, ten motherless children. Joseph Smith immediately sends the father off and introduces Lucy to other people as an adoptive daughter.

John Dehlin 35:57 All right, so. So, Alicia, you get to about how that. How that doesn't feel right for you.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 36:04 Okay, so it's interesting because as I was reading about this just in preparation for today, I kept thinking about this quote from therapist Erin Rackham. She has. She's got her PhD in psychology, she has a TikTok account, and she makes a lot of great post Mormon content. And when the AP article by Michael Rosendez came out, she posed this question to believers. She asked the question, is there an ethical line for you? Like, does a line exist? And if so, where is that? And it's interesting because that kept coming up in my mind as I was reading through this story of Lucy Walker and these other young girls. You know, the faithful perspective is that Joseph Smith, you know, he was human, he made mistakes. So I guess that's where I would pose this question from Dr. Rackham. Where is the line? At what point do we stop seeing Joseph Smith as a prophet of God and start seeing his behavior as consistent with that of a predator? Kind of a tough question to ask yourself, but is there an ethical line? I think it's a great question to ask, and it's relevant when it comes to the history. And it's relevant, I would argue, today.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:16 Yeah. Okay, 100%.

John Dehlin 37:19 All right, next slide, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:22 Yeah.

John Dehlin 37:22 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:24 Yeah. So the first slide kind of sets up the situation Lucy's in. And so this is going to be in the same year after Joseph Smith sends her father away. Lucy Walker is 16 years old, and she says the following in the year 1842. Remember, this is before DNC 132. President Joseph Smith saw an interview with me and said, I have a message for you. I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman. My astonishment knew no bounds. This announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me. He asked If I believed him to be a prophet of God, most assuredly I do. I replied. He fully explained to me the principle of plural or celestial marriage. He said this principle was again to be restored for the benefit of the human family. That it would prove an everlasting blessing to my father's house and form a chain that could never be broken. Worlds without end. What have you to say? He asked. Nothing. How could I speak, or what could I say? He said, if you will pray sincerely for light and understanding in relation thereto, you will. You shall receive a testimony of the correctness of this principle. I thought I prayed sincerely, but was so unwilling to consider the matter favorably that I fear I did not ask in faith for light. Gross darkness instead of light took possession of my mind. I was tempted and tortured beyond endurance until life was not desirable. Oh, that the grave would kindly receive me that I might rest on the bosom of my dear mother. What, should I be chosen from among thy daughters? Father, I am only a child in years, inexperienced, no mother to counsel. She died no father near to tell me what to do in this trying hour. He was sent by Joseph on a mission. Oh, let this bitter cup pass. And thus I prayed in the agony of my soul. The prophet discerned my sorrow. He saw unhappy I was and saw an opportunity of again speaking to me on this subject and said, although I cannot, under existing circumstances acknowledge you as my wife, the time is near when we will go beyond the Rocky Mountains, and then you will be acknowledged and honored as my wife. He also said, this principle will yet be believed in and practiced by the righteous. I have no flattering words to offer. It is a commandment of God to you. I will give you until tomorrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message, the gate will be closed forever against you.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 39:26 Alicia, I just think we are so lucky to have the journal entries of these young girls. I was very emotional last night reading these stories, and I just think that anyone who is invested in this religion, whether you are a believing member, really needs to take the time to read these journal entries. And Lucy and Helen in particular. It's very compelling.

John Dehlin 39:52 What is it about this story? And it's going to be obvious, but I would just like to hear it explicitly. What is it about this story that's disturbing to you?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 39:59 Well, I think I have some personal connection to this because my grandfather was flds, so it's very personal to me. I don't know. I just. I think about this young girl, and she just really had no recourse. She's just in this situation where she just really, I don't know, as of the faithful perspective was that Joseph was doing the Lord's work. And I guess now I just view it as coercion. And you know, she's a young girl. A lot of people don't start viewing this stuff until they get into their 40s. And I wonder if it's because most of us have teenage children when we're in our 40s and we really just start to view it differently because you start to look at your own children and think, what if my child was in this situation? What if this was my, my sister? Or in my case, I think about my mom, you know, when she was a young girl and, and I just, yeah, it just makes me very emotional to think about.

John Dehlin 40:55 So the prophets in his, the prophet is supposed to be God's one true prophet on the earth. He's in his 30s, he's mayor of Nauvoo probably. And, and he's, you know, the, the, the dad of a 16 year old is away and he's propositioning a 16 year old and saying you got to do it immediately and if you don't it's going to be closed forever. You know, threatening gross darkness, sort of threats.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:27 Yeah, he's 36 or 37 here and she's 16.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 41:31 And I think it's also important to note that this wasn't that long ago. It's just interesting because I, I think we don't give enough credit to the fact that 200 years is not a very long period of time. And the common for marriage back then is not that different than it is today. So we think of it as like really old times and you know, but, but it wasn't, it wasn't that different than it is today and it really wasn't that long ago. These are modern times. And so I think that's also important to look at and yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 42:07 And, and what the church's main apologetic and we'll probably cover this is always going to be. Well, a lot of these women in their later years said they love polygamy and said that they, they're glad they did it or that they still believed in it. But that's true for all the women Warren Jeffs, pretty much all the, all the women Warren Jeff's ever married, pretty much all the women in polygamous marriages in the FLDS church. Like just because polygamous women later or during their lives bear testimony to the truthfulness of polygamy or even the divine nature of polygamy or even that they enjoyed it. Many of Keith Ranieri's wives still say they believe he was divine. That's not, that's not evidence. That's not a witness. Truthfulness.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:50 No. And that is always going to be that, that thing where it's like, okay, well if you want to say, well, they had an experience, you can't question it, then you then have to say, well, what about the experiences of everyone else and the offshoots today? Because we have a video that's very common. Maybe we'll play it in the, our last episode. And she's on an offshoot and she's giving her testimony. She's in a testimony, testimony meeting. And she somehow. How she was a teenager, a high schooler or something. Now she's a plural wife and she's struggling and that she knows it's from God. I mean you can't discount that if you want to privilege Joseph Smith. And I think that's where you get down the slippery slope of like Alicia said, where's that ethical line? Because you cannot just apply one line to Joseph Smith and another line to the, to what as Russell Nelson would call the world, you know, it doesn't work. And one last point I'll make is Alicia said, I just looked it up because I had it from other stuff I've done. In 1890, the census, the average age of marriage for men was 26. For women was 22. So you have a four year gap in women were getting married. And this is 1890. So it's not too far from when Joseph Smith was doing this. So this idea that it was normal for a 16 year old to marry someone in their late 30s is absolutely, it's so dishonest. And I hate when people use it from an apologetic standpoint because they know better because these stats are available to anyone who wants to find them.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 44:05 Well, and on that note, a lot of people will reference their grandparent, but the reality was usually when a 16 year old grandmother was married, she was marrying like her 18 year old boyfriend or.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:16 Yeah, boyfriend.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 44:17 Like they were only a few years apart. So that's the difference we're not talking about. It wasn't common for an older man in his 30s to marry a 14 year old or a 15 year old.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:28 No, it just. Okay, yeah, so yeah, and there's another one. Yeah, another one from England. Another one from England has it. From 1750 to 1799, average age of men 25.7, women 24. So that's an even tighter gap. So just to throw that out there and blow that up right off the bat. Because that apologetic drives me nuts because it's so dishonest. So.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 44:48 Me too.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:48 Anyways, that's all I need to say on that.

John Dehlin 44:50 The church will want to say that it was legal for a 16 year old. Yeah. But if God's in charge, then the question is, is it ethical and moral? I think that needs to be asked.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:01 And they want to say it's legal. They'll say, well, it was legal for a 14 year old to marry Joseph Smith, but it really wasn't legal because even then it's a polygamous marriage that was illegal. So you can't, you just can't go that, that route because every. I've said this in so many episodes, every time you try to fix one thing with apologetics, you're creating for the problems that you're trying to make sure people aren't looking at, because. And that's why we try to do it where you're looking at all this at once. Because. Yeah, you can't answer it that way. It just doesn't work.

John Dehlin 45:26 Okay. All right, are we going. Are we on to the next slide?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:29 Yeah. And so this is just kind of,

John Dehlin 45:30 you know, patience of, of the Lucy Walker proposal.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:34 Yeah. And so we covered at the beginning of this episode some of the patterns I found. So this one particular, the first one, is that Lucy's living in the Smith household, which gives Joseph time to evaluate if she might be open to it, to kind of, you know, as I would. I would call it, you know, condition her to be more accepting of him being a prophet. Second, he's proposing to her when there's no parents around. She's in a vulnerable situation following the death of her mother. This was obviously not lost on Lucy. She says in her journal, no father near to tell me what to do in this trying hour. So she's all on her own with a person she reveres as a prophet of God. He actually says, do you believe I'm a prophet of God? She says, yes. Then he drops a hammer on her and basically says, oh, you believe that? Okay, Boom. I need you to marry me. And then third, Joseph Smith is going to apply pressure on Lucy by putting a time constraint, by saying, I will give you until tomorrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message, the gate will be closed forever against you. And so I've heard Jim Bennett talk about this where he'll say, well, that was a second meeting. So it's not like he said that the first time, but I would still say if you. Even if you give someone time and their initial reaction is like, no, I am. There's no way in the world I'm marrying you. And then you go back and you put a time constraint, you're still putting a time constraint on. And so, you know, imagine that have you have someone that you believe be a prophet of God. They tell you that you've been commanded to marry them, that your exaltation depends on it, that your father's exaltation, because he says in there that it'll be a blessing to your father's house, and that if you can't tell him yes, by tomorrow, the gate will forever be closed against you. And just read that quote as you would read it from anyone else. And if you find that to be repulsive, you cannot then privilege Joseph Smith here because he is doing the very same tactics that we all know would be, you know, probably illegal for in many instances. This is just.

John Dehlin 47:19 It's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:19 It's hard.

John Dehlin 47:21 Yeah. Okay. All right. Lucy Walker is just the beginning. Did you want to say something, Alicia?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 47:26 Yeah, real quick. There was just. There was just this tiny detail that I wanted to add, and it may seem really small, but you know how Joseph Smith would always start by saying, do you believe that I'm a prophet of God? So this was exactly what Warren Jeffs did when he. Before he presented to his saints that they were going to go ahead and make that trek to the Yearning for Zion camp. I guess it wasn't a trek, but they were going to travel to the Yearning of Zion. And for. For anyone that's not familiar with that situation, he was actually taking some of the children from their parents. So the parents, in not all cases did the parents go with their children. And you think how unimaginable this is that a parent would send their child with Warren Jeffs to go to this place where they're basically going to be groomed to become his wives. And you think, like, how would he get people on board for this? And I think it's just an interesting note that it happened exactly the same way that Joseph Smith started by asking, do you believe that I'm a prophet of God? In the case of Warren Jess, he has them show by a raise of the hand that they believe he's a prophet. Then he continues with this. With this, you know, this plan. And so I just think it's notable. You know, there just seems to be this sequence of coercion, and it's consistent, and we see the patterns that are very comparable from the formative years of the church to today's flds, which I would argue is most consistent with the. With the early days of the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:47 Yeah. And that is what. When little kids sing follow the Prophet 54 times in the one song and primary, this is what this is. Because the moment that he asked them, do you believe I'm a prophet? And they say, yes, he has now rewired their entire sense of morality, because now if they reject him, they can say, well, you clearly don't believe I'm a prophet, because I'm telling you, this is from God, and this is his way of basically putting them in a box they can't escape from. And it's a very manipulative tactic. And it's a very kind of a scary tactic, because from the other side, once you tell them you believe he's a prophet, you know, you're boxed in. And so that's. That's the intent. That is why you see it from Warren Jeffs. That's why you see from all these leaders of all sorts of. Of unhealthy places today, because it's effective, because once you get someone into that box, it's hard for them to get out of it.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 49:32 Yep.

John Dehlin 49:34 Got it. Okay, so the next slide is Lucy Walker's spiritual Confirmation of polygamy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:40 Yeah. And so I wanted to cover this because obviously this is from the church's essay. They'll always say, well, they had spiritual experiences, so, you know, you need to not worry about it. And so we'll cover this more in future episodes. But Lucy Walker is a good experience of how witnesses can be manufactured and manipulated and created. And so from her own account, she says, this aroused every drop of scotch in my veins. For a few moments, I stood fearless before him and looked him in the eye. I felt at this moment that I was called to place myself upon the altar of a living sacrifice, perhaps to brook the world in disgrace and incur the displeasure and contempt of my youthful companions. All my dreams of happiness blown to four winds. Oh, how earnestly I prayed for these words to be fulfilled. It was near dawn, after another sleepless night, when my room was lighted up by heavenly influence. To me it was in comparison, like the brilliant sun bursting through the darkest cloud. The words of the prophet were indeed fulfilled. My soul was filled with a calm, sweet peace that I never knew. Supreme happiness took possession of me, and I received a powerful and irresistible testimony of the truth of plural marriage, which has been like an anchor to the soul through all the trials of life. I felt that I must go out into the morning air and give vent to the joy and gratitude that filled my soul as I ascended the stairs. As I descended the stairs, President Smith opened the door below, took me by the hand and said, thank God you have the testimony. I, too have prayed. He led me to a chair, placed his hands upon my head, and blessed me with every blessing my heart could also could possibly desire. The first day of May, 1843, I consented to become the prophet's wife. It was sealed to him for time and all eternity at his house, at his own house, by Elder William McClellan. And. Yeah, so basically, this is showing that when you have someone who feels like they're going to lose everything, they have not slept, they have not eaten, they're going to have responses. We've talked about this in previous episodes, like in the Kirtland temple, where everyone's having these crazy experiences because they fasted and they drank a bunch of wine. And in this case, she has the pressure of thinking she's going to lose her exaltation. She's not eating, she's not sleeping, and she gets this experience. And I'll end with saying, why does she have to go through all that torment to see, potentially, a light in the room when God could have just sent an angel to her and said, hey, this is right. So it just shows how you can create your own experience. And we've all had that. I've had that in my life where I'm just so upset about something and I'm. I'm up late and I'm thinking about. Then all of a sudden you feel that feeling of calm because you know you can do this. I. I don't know. It just shows how manipulation works.

John Dehlin 52:06 Alicia, do you have any reactions to this spiritual.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 52:10 Yeah, I wish I had more context for, like, indoctrination. There's so many great experts that could talk. Talk to this point of, like, is it cognitive bias? I mean, when the brain creates what you've already come to a conclusion, and now your brain is going to create what it needs to come to that conclusion, to solidify that. So not only does Joseph Smith say, do you believe I'm a prophet of God? He also says to her, before they part, if you will pray sincerely for light and understanding in relation thereto, you shall receive a testimony of the correctness of this principle. You shall receive. Okay, so she is going into this with that notion, and she believes that he's a prophet. So anyway, and I just think it's important to point out, because this is the most. You know, this is the apologetic point. This is the strongest apologetic point, looking at the girl's actual spiritual experiences, their own testimony. So I think it's helpful to add a little more context to that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:10 Yeah, it's like the Book of Mormon witnesses where Martin Harris is with them and he can't see the plate, so he leaves. The other two claim they see it, they go back to Martin, they pray again. Then Martin claims he saw it. Probably because at that point you've been led to see it, you have other people who are claiming to have these things, and all of a sudden, yeah, you're going to claim to see it, because it's either that or you're every. You know, I mean, you lose everything. And I just. I feel like, to Alicia's point, this is. This is how you lead somebody through a vision. This is how you lead someone to make a decision they don't want to make.

John Dehlin 53:36 For me, it's an epistemological problem. Epistemology is the study of how we know things. And in. In Mormonism, we're taught that if we get really strong, overwhelming feelings or emotions, that that is the Holy Ghost. It's either the Holy Ghost telling us that something's true, or it's Satan counterfeiting God's Holy Ghost and deceiving us with good feelings that something's true and it's really false, or the adversary, Satan, can give us really bad feelings. And if it's true that feelings equal divine approval or satanic tempting, then then how do we distinguish between our own genuine, just feelings of fear or happiness or kindness or wanting to please others? How do we distinguish between that and what is divine or of Satan? And again, all you have to do is watch that video that we released on Mormon stories where you have people, Muslims and Jews and Mormon fundamentalists, all bearing almost identical testimonies where they say that the Spirit came into their heart and. And filled them with the Spirit and told them that what, you know, the prophet that they happen to believe in is true, whether it's David Koresh or Warren Jeffs or Jim Jones or Keith Ranieri. There's an epistemological problem. Once people are led to believe that their feelings equal God's approval, and we don't have to look any farther than under the banner of heaven and the Lafferty brothers and many other really horrific examples of really horrible things done by people who claimed that they had those warm fuzzies in their heart. And you can't really talk a person who's a committed believer out of their spiritual witness. And we're actually not trying to do that for people that are open to considering evidence. We're just saying, hey, it's worth contemplating and learning more about epistemology and this idea of emotional flow or emotion uplift. What's the other word? Emotion.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 55:50 Elevation. Emotion.

John Dehlin 55:51 Elevation. Elevation. Emotion. It's worth learning more about these principles so that you can really ask yourself, does the fact that a 16 year old girl whose dad's away, who's being pressured by the prophet, who's got all this family and social pressure around her to accept, along with the prophet's power, a proposal, and then she gets a feeling, is that God and the Holy Ghost or is that coercion and a desire to conform socially? And we're going to let our viewers and listeners decide what they think is right. We just want to at least raise some hopefully reasonable questions about that.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 56:29 Yeah, and I just wanted to mention because I think that the video that you mentioned is so compelling and the search query for it on YouTube is testimonies and spiritual experiences across religions. It's posted on your podcast, Mormon Stories Podcast. And I think that that is again, really compelling. I think, I think it's a great one to listen to. It just gives you a sense of how we believe that our spiritual experiences are unique and sometimes we don't realize that they are pretty consistent among all other religions.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:04 Yeah.

John Dehlin 57:04 And most of the religious creeds are mutually exclusive because Joseph can't be God's one prophet. And Muhammad and Warren Jeffs, those are all mutually exclusive. And so, you know, so anyway, I think we've made that point. Okay, so the next slide is Lucy Walker's testimony in the Temple lot case.

Lucy Walker's Temple Lot Case Testimony

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:24 Yeah, I just find this interesting because this is Lucy Walker giving testimony in the Temple law case. And so they ask her, can you state the circumstances under which he first taught you that principle of polygamy or plural marriage? And she says, well, the circumstances were these. It was a command from God for to me to receive it. And I would rather have laid down my life than disobeyed it. But it was a grand and glorious principle that was to be established. And when I was called upon, when I. And when I was called upon, I stepped forward and gave myself up as a sacrifice to establish that principle. And I did that in the face of prejudice. Of course, in this day and age, this is in 1892, we are considered fanatics, of course, more or less. I gave myself up as a sacrifice for it was not a love matter, so to speak, in our affairs, at least on my part, it was not but simply the giving up of myself as a sacrifice to establish that grand and glorious principle that God had revealed to the world. And they asked her, did you live with Joseph Smith as his wife? And she said, he was my husband, sir. And so Lucy Walker here is basically saying that she didn't love Joseph Smith. She viewed herself as a sacrifice. Clearly she did not want to do it. And it's a chilling comment on what these women had to go through after being convinced by Joseph Smith that God was commanding them to marry and have sex with them. And I can't imagine, you know, how Lucy Walker was able to do some of the things she would have had to have done with them, knowing that she didn't love them. It's weird and it's one of those things that it's uncomfortable to think about, but we often think about it. She was 17 years old when she married and had sex with a 37 year old man who claimed he was doing it in the name of God. It's just, it's chilling when you really think about all of the implications and all of the events that go into these proposals and marriages of these young teenage girls.

John Dehlin 59:08 Anything else, Alicia?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 59:10 I think that about wraps it up for Lucy. I'm excited to get to Zina.

Zina Huntington Young and Polyandry

John Dehlin 59:14 Okay, is next Zina Huntington, Jacob Smith Young. What a. What a mouthful.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:20 Yeah, so I've made sure to put all the last names because a lot of times you would see on the church's website Zina Huntington Jacobs Young. Because they never wanted to mention that Joseph married her as well. So she lived in the Smith household for a few months in the winter of 1839-1840. She was recovering from an illness. And at that time, Zina received numerous courtship visits from Henry Bailey Jacobs, a friend of her brother's who accompanied Oliver to the house. Simultaneously, Joseph Smith, in private conversations, taught her the principle of plural marriage, suggesting that she become a spiritual wife. And so basically, you've got Zina who has someone that's courting her that she actually likes, and you've got Joseph while she's living in his house, recovering from an illness, trying to condition her to accept his proposal for marriage. And so obviously this tormented Zina because she was falling in love with Henry, but she knew that the person she viewed as a prophet proclaimed that God had given her to him to become one of his polygamous wives. And so Zina wrote in her autobiography, oh, dear heaven, grant me wisdom, help me to know the way, O Lord, my God, let thy will be done. And with thine arm around, about to guide, shield and direct. And so what's interesting is Zina is going to rebuff Joseph's proposal, and she's going to marry the person she actually loves in Henry Jacobs on March 7, 1841. At this. At this point, Zina was 21 years old and was convinced that by doing this, she would circumvent any further overtures from Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 1:00:47 Okay, anything you want to say about Zina so far?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:00:52 Yeah, I have some more. I have some insights, but I think we could probably go to the next slide.

John Dehlin 1:00:56 Okay, so the next slide. Joseph Smith's overtures did not end when Zina got married. Okay, that's awkward.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:03 Yeah. So Zina thought that would put an end to it, and it does not. And so Joseph even throws off their wedding day plans. And so from Emma Jacobs, she says, this is Henry's sister. A family tradition relates that Henry and Zina had asked Joseph to perform the marriage. He consented but did not appear, and John Bennett officiated in his place. When Z later asked Smith about his absence, he reportedly said that he couldn't give the one he couldn't give to one man, a woman who had been given to him by the Lord. The Lord had made it known to him that Zina was to be his celestial wife. So, you know, basically Joseph's like, I'm not performing that marriage because you're mine. And I just said so. Oh, my God. Anyways, so Joseph Smith was so convinced that Zina was given to him that he wouldn't perform the marriage that he promised he would do. That was actually based in love to Henry. And so this is where it gets kind of crazy to me. So Joseph doesn't even let it go here. So just a few months after she becomes a married woman, he sends Zina a message through her brother Dimick. It says, he sent word to my brother saying, tell Zina I put it off and put it off till an angel with a drawn sword stood by me and told me if I did not establish that principle upon the earth, I would lose my position in my life. At this point, Zina was seven months pregnant with Henry's child. She's being placed in a situation where she now has to stay true to the. To the man she loves who is the father of her child, or to marry the man she believes is a prophet of God because he will be killed if she does not marry him. I. This. This is one of Those ones where you're just like, what is going on here, Alicia?

John Dehlin 1:02:35 You ready to comment or you want to wait?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:02:37 Well, I'd like to wait until after the bit about the missions.

John Dehlin 1:02:42 Okay.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:02:42 What happens? So my insights are on Henry. So.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:46 Okay, this is a really.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:02:47 This is a really sad story.

John Dehlin 1:02:49 It is. Joseph, like, won't let it go. The woman said no. Like, when we talk about consent, no means no, right? Yeah. And. And she said no. He keeps pursuing. Even when she's pregnant, he won't marry her. Like, that's. That's. This is predatory.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:08 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:03:09 Kind of creeper, abusive kind of territory. Yeah. I'm just. If this is true, I mean, it's

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:14 from her own words. It's from her own words. So, I mean, there's no. This is not from some antagonistic source. This is from her own words. And what's crazy about it is he says that the angel's going to kill him if he doesn't establish that principle upon the earth, he can establish it with other women. That's what is so ridiculous about this statement. And it's so trans. It's so transparently predatorial. It just is.

John Dehlin 1:03:32 Yeah, yeah. And this is where he's pulling out the angel with the sword after she's

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:36 already married and gotten pregnant by the other guy.

John Dehlin 1:03:38 Okay. All right, that's a problem. All right, let's go to the next slide. Zionist submits after Joseph's angel with the drawn sword story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:45 Yeah. So then it worked. Of course it works. Because you're like, you wanna. You're gonna allow the prophet of God to be killed because you're so selfish. They won't marry me.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:03:54 It's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:54 So anyways. So Zina would then be sealed to Joseph Smith with her loving husband Henry standing as the witness. Again, I can't imagine poor Henry standing as a witness as Joseph Smith takes his wife to be his polyandrus wife, knowing full well that upon death that she will be Joseph's, along with the child that she's pregnant with that is his. So it's clear that Zina is tormented by this decision. And she famously said the following. I made a greater sacrifice than to give my life, for I never anticipated again to be looked upon as an honorable woman by those I clearly loved or dearly loved. And then, for Henry's part, he actually rationalizes this by stating the following. Whatever the prophet did was right without making the wisdom of God's authorities bend to the reasoning of any man. And that statement right there is used today in, of course, phrase, differently Whether it's Dallin Oaks or Russell Nelson, it's always whatever the prophet does, you have to listen to. And this leads really good people to make really bad decisions. Because if the person who claims to speak for God abuses their authority or makes it up, they are going to get really good people to do some really, really bad things against their own judgment because of the fact that they believe this person speaks for God. And this slide makes me want to my head to explode.

John Dehlin 1:05:08 I, I, I did. I have not read In Sacred Loneliness. I'm just going to admit it. And I, I did not realize that, that Henry was standing next to his wife while Joseph was sealed to her.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:18 I just. Oh, my. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:20 Are you ready yet, Alicia?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:05:21 Well, I just wanted to point out, this is a really important point, that Henry is faithful. He actually remains faithful throughout his letters home from his missions, which we're going to talk about next. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:32 Yeah. Yep.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:05:34 So he's faithful. They're all viewing this. The prophet speaks for God. So we are literally doing God's will right now, even though it is the hardest thing. We would rather die than do this. We're doing it for the Lord. And we know that because this man right here speaks for the Lord.

John Dehlin 1:05:50 And I'm just going to say that's not, that's, for me, that's not a credible defense that the husband was okay with it because it's still coercive. He's still being either threatened with punishment or promised eternal salvation. And you just have to go to the accomplices with Warren Jeffs or Keith Ranieri or Jim Jones or whatever. All of those people have people who literally died for their devotion to their leader. And so just because Henry was okay with it, number one, doesn't mean it was right. Number two, doesn't mean it wasn't coercive. And number three, doesn't mean it was true. Yeah. All right, so Joseph would send Zina's legal husband on missions.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:35 Yeah. So following Joseph's polyandrus marriage to Zina, Henry gets sent away on missions, sometimes personally sent by Joseph. We don't have any record of Zina and Joseph having sex. Neither of them obviously talk about that. But, you know, it would be one thing for a polygamous wife to admit to sexual relations, but a polyandrous wife would be a whole different level. And so I'm guessing that's why the church didn't want to push her out on the Temple law case. But remember, they're married, and he's sending Henry away for long stretches. So the idea they didn't have sex seems unlikely to me. And honestly, it makes no sense given the very premise that Joseph is supposed to establish a principle to raise seed. And we know that Zina doesn't get pregnant from Joseph, at least I don't believe there's any indication that that's the case. So it's out there. But we know Brigham did have sex with her after sending Henry away. So, anyways, while Henry was away on his missions, he was still deeply in love with Zina, telling John D. Lee during one of the missions what a true virtuous, lovely woman she was. He almost worshiped her. And, you know, one small note here is that Zina would actually stand proxy for Jane Manning James when Jane was sealed to Joseph as a servant, because the church would now allow a black woman into the temple even to be sealed as an eternal servant to Joseph. So that's a small, obviously, side note there, but it kind of ties into our priesthood episodes as well.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:07:49 Another side note that I think is important is the fact that I know I read somewhere. So, Mike, hopefully you'll have. Hopefully one of you will have a source for this. He was. He was commanded to give up his belongings to the church before he left on his mission, I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:04 Yeah, I think that was standard, too, for a lot of people where they basically say, if you're leaving for a mission, put all your stuff with the church and then, you know, before you leave.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:08:11 So how are you now going to support your wife and children when you get home from your mission, which is going to become relevant because he just keeps going on mission after mission after mission.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:20 Yep. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:08:22 Yeah. And that's, you know, number one, you mentioned, I think, a previous slide, that William C. Bennett or John C. Bennett was involved. That's deeply problematic because we now know that John C. Bennett was later excommunicated for what Joseph called spiritual wifery. So, you know, there have been accusations that he performed abortions in Nauvoo, which I don't know if we have enough evidence to really confirm, but just the fact that John C. Bennett was involved in anything makes it deeply problematic to me not to pile on. But then also there's this conflict of interest where Joseph is basically, oh, I'm just the prophet sending people on missions, and I'm just gonna. I could. I could call men on missions or not. You know, it's up to me. And I could call lots of other men on missions that I'm not going to call on missions. But yeah, Henry, I think you really need to go, you know, that feels like a really problematic conflict of interest.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:18 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:09:18 He's sending off the husband of a woman that he likely wants to have sex with.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:22 And for the John C. Bennett thing, John C. Bennett almost was Joseph Smith's right hand man until he gets outed

John Dehlin 1:09:29 in the first presidency or co president of the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:31 So it would make some sense that when Joseph Smith tried to throw the monkey around wrench into their wedding day, that John C. Bennett might have been pulled to, to stand in. So I don't know that that's nefarious because it's, it's, I'm not saying it's nefarious.

John Dehlin 1:09:43 I'm saying it's problematic knowing that very soon after John C. Bennett's going to be excommunicated and accused of misdeeds around Abraham, sexual misconduct.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:57 Yeah. And we'll. Our next episode is going to cover a lot about how what John C. Bennett was doing mirrors a lot of what Joseph's doing here. And I would just say we talk about, as far as I've never found any credible evidence on abortion. So I for the most part stay away from that.

John Dehlin 1:10:13 We don't have enough evidence. There's just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:14 Yeah. And yeah. And just the fact that to your point, Joseph Smith, he's the one choosing the women, he's the one choosing the many sending away. And so this idea that, you know, we talked about this early in this episode, I made a point of saying when, when he goes to these women, he's the one choosing them, they're not choosing him. And so it just shows the power imbalance and how that can be abused so badly.

John Dehlin 1:10:39 Yeah. And again I, you said this really quickly and I just want to drive the point home. Mormon. What Mormon apologists like Brian Hales and others like to do is say, well, there's no evidence of. So, so first of all we've talked about, we introduced the term polyandry in a previous episode. That's a woman being married to multiple men. What the church wants to do is say there's no evidence that any of Joseph Smith's polyandrous wives had sex with them. And first of all, what do they want, you know, video camera, what you know. But also do they expect people to like publish it in the newspaper? Hey, Joseph and I had sex last weekend. Like what evidence are they looking for? But more importantly, as you mentioned very quickly, the Book of Mormon, when it says when the Book of Mormon makes the exception allowing for polygamy in Jacob, it says, except I want to raise up A righteous seed. And you said that really quickly. But it means the whole point of polygamy is sex. And every other polygamous prophet after Joseph Smith and polygamous Mormon was having sex with all of his wives, we presume. So why would we want to just bracket off? What reason would we have other than we're embarrassed by lying about it and, or by, by our sacred first prophet, you know, being associated with it? For what other reason do we want to bracket off the polyandrous marriages and say that they weren't sexual? It. It literally makes no sense. And it's one of those isolated, you know, non contextual apologetics that if you look at the full picture, is, is disingenuous. Maybe not intentionally, but it's just completely dishonest in my view.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:21 Yeah. And if I can add in real quick from our Last episode on DC132, Joseph Smith is condemning Zina to a life in outer darkness or hell Whatever, because DNC132 says if you marry someone by the new and everlasting covenant and you're still with someone who's not married to you in the new and everlasting covenant, you're damned. You're going to be destroyed. So Zina, living with Henry after marrying Joseph is condemning her to being destroyed. So that just shows how absurd the rationales and the dictations that Joseph Smith is giving on polygamy are. Because you either have to believe that Joseph is so sinister that he's knowingly condemning Zina to be destroyed just for his own, his own personal desire, or DNC132 is completely nonsensical, which it is anyways. But I'm just saying, like, you can't take this stuff all together. It's such a mess. And you cannot untangle it with apologetics because every apologetic use, as you just said, opens up more problems. It does not solve anything.

John Dehlin 1:13:13 Anything to jump in here on Alicia before we go to the next slide.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:13:16 Well, it seems like we have these conflicting apologetics too, because on one hand we're saying, well, like in Heber C. Kimball's view, it was that they would be linked in the eternities. That was the whole reason that he pushed Helen into polygamy, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. But on the other hand we have like multiple sources that say that Joseph Smith clearly indicated that it was to raise up a pure. I want to say he used the word race somewhere in Todd Compton's work and it was like a secondary source but someone said that that's what, you know, that Joseph Smith. It was. It was the. The purpose of polygamy was to raise up a righteous race of people, a righteous generation. So, you know, which one is it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:56 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:13:57 Yep, that's right. Okay. All right. Well, let's talk about Zina's life after Joseph Smith's death.

Henry Jacobs After Losing His Wife

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:03 Yeah. And so this is, I think, what Alicia was kind of anxious to talk about. And it's, to me, one of those things that just. It gets worse. So after Joseph Smith died and was killed, many of his wives were taken by the other leaders of the church, with many of them going to Brigham Young. In Heber Kimball, Brigham Young took Zina and was sealed to her for time, which meant that even though she was already sealed to Henry for time and Joseph for eternity, Brigham wanted Zina as well, because she had a husband. So this idea that Brigham Young needed to take her is problematic, and it goes against DNC132, as I just mentioned. It goes against our basic sense of morality and the biblical scriptures as well. And again, the children that Brigham is going to have with Henry's wife Zina are going to be sealed to Joseph Smith just to show how screwed up this kind of structure is. And so Brigham Young also sent Henry away on missions. And even during a time when Henry was very ill, Brigham still sent him away on a mission, which seems insane. While on the mission, Henry continued to send his wife love letters, writing the following. I dream of you often and desire to see you very much. He wrote in one letter. Another says, Zion, I have not forgotten you, my love. Is it as ever? Is as ever the same and much more abundantly, and hope that it will continue to grow stronger and stronger to all eternity, worlds without end. I remain, as ever, your affectionate husband in truth. And it's just. It shows that Henry still loved her and the church is going. Actually, I'll let Alicia do this because she. I know she's covered some of this before.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:15:32 Well, just like the Young wives journal entries, I think that it's really good to read the letters home from Henry Jacobs. Some of them have been transcribed and uploaded to FamilySearch. And I know that's not probably the best source, but I'm imagining that they probably are somewhere in the Joseph Smith papers. These letters home from Henry indicate that he loved his family so much. He loved his boys. He loved the prophet. At one point, he refers to Joseph as either our God Joseph or our Lord Joseph. I mean, they really revered. He really revered him as a prophet and felt like he was doing what he needed to do, what the Lord wanted him to do. And I think that that's relevant because in this one letter, he's. He's saying to his wife that he's so disheartened that he hasn't heard back from them. He's writing home to his wife and children over and over again, and he's not hearing back for them and from them. And I was so sad to learn that the children really didn't have any knowledge of their father caring for them. So at one point, Zina chooses to go with Brigham. We don't have a lot of context for that. We can only really make assumptions about. About her choice to do that. You know, he's. Henry is sold off his property. He really has no way of supporting his family when he gets home, I imagine. So the most interesting point of this entire story, and I think it just really, where it all culminates, is where we see in the church's source, even today, the church asserts that Zina's husband Henry abandoned her and the children. Now, just think about this. He's going on missions, commanded by the prophet. In one case that Mike just mentioned, after his second baby is born, he's sick, and. And he is sent to England, and he. In the church's source, even today, it says that Zina was abandoned by her husband, Henry. So if you think about it, the only thing left you have after you die is your legacy. That's the only thing that you have. And the church is willing to just completely destroy his legacy, destroy his reputation, when he has devoted his life to. To the quote, gospel, to the prophet, and this is what's left of him. And I have a link to the church's source where it references him as having deserted his family. So this is. This is the point for my husband, that he just kind of lost it. It was like, where is the integrity here for the church's reputation? This is all for the. You know, it's just, yeah, yeah, like

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:14 you said earlier, where do you draw the line? Because at some point, you have to establish where that line is before you can evaluate this stuff. And. And at some point, I have a problem with apologists who try to defend this. It's like Patrick Mason has the only approach you can take, which is to say, yeah, I'm not defending this, because, yeah, it looks like sin. Now, of course, I also think that the moment you admit Joseph Smith is willing to use deception, I mean, we've shown that with treasure digging, We've shown with the gold plates, we show through the Book of Mormon, all stuff. I think at some point it's like, well, how many times do you have to deceive to, to have a pattern where, you know, it's not from God? But that's a different issue. But there's no reason to defend this. It's just, it just, it doesn't pass any smell test or decency test. And you don't need to defend it because you were raised to think he was a prophet.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:19:02 If there's, if there's two things the church could do today to make things right, well, there's a lot they could do, but one is to reverse the ceiling of Jane Manning as a servant. Why don't, why don't they undo that? Make a really public announcement about that? Number two, why don't they correct the statement that Henry Jacobs abandoned his family?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:19:28 So I, I also want to register a couple problems with, with, with this account. You know, I'm going to go back to this slide you show. Zina Huntington, Jacob Smith Young. You do, I think you, you do that kind of tongue in cheek, but it's actually not funny. It's kind of tragic. It's this idea that it's always the men in power. You know, when somebody, when somebody is claiming to talk to God, it's always the men in power who get the spoils. And so in this case, I remember a quote once that said, you know, whenever a group of people receive the revelation from God that a group of people is God's chosen, it's always the people receiving the revelation that they're the ones chosen. They never receive the revelation that that other group over there is chosen. Right? And accordingly, whenever a prophet gets the revelation about polygamy, he's always the one that gets the most. He's always the one that gets first choice. He's always the one that gets the spoils. And then if he allows other, you know, you could say Joseph Smith was generous because at least in his case, he, and this is gross offensive language, at least he let other men also have plural wives for that whole conversation. It introduces this problem in D&C132. And just with the structural problem of polygamy, which is that women are property, women are possessions, women are chattel or cattle or whatever word you want to use. Like, that's problematic in and of itself, the way that women are treated as objects as, as, as one friend says, dimes, dimes to a dollar, pennies to a dime. A fraction of the worth of a man. That's a problem. But then the problem that it's not like Joseph's getting the revelation. It's like, hey, I'm going to just have Emma because, you know, because I want to be above reproach. It's going to be other men in the community that get the plural wives. It's always Joseph and Brigham and Heber and Hyrum, the men who are highest on the pecking order that number one, get first choice. Number two, get the largest numbers. Brigham Young's case, over 50. But then three, when a prophet dies and, you know, where do the wives go? They just get assigned to the highest ranking prophets in charge. And by the way, this is exactly what happened with Warren Jeffs when. When Warren Jeff's dad died. Rulon. Well, guess who got Rulon's wives. It was Warren. I mean, I. I think that's true, but I hope my point carries, which is it's always the guys in charge that get the most spoils and get the first pick, and that's a sign that there's something wrong. Alicia, tell me if I'm. If I'm getting that wrong.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:22:21 No, I was just thinking a little common sense goes a long way here. Yeah, it's a great point.

John Dehlin 1:22:28 Yeah. And to see Zina just passed from Joseph. I mean, from Henry to Joseph to Brigham to Heber. That's. There's no world where that is going to be okay. That this woman just gets passed from old man to old man to old man, empowered. There's no world where that's. That's okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:47 No. And it just shows, like you said, when. When you set up yourself as the only person who could speak for God, you become the gatekeeper. And so you decide who gets what women and who doesn't get what women. And there's stories of Brigham Young where someone will go to Brigham. They're like, I want to marry this girl. And he's like, no, she's not right for you. And then all of a sudden, he marries her. I have to look it up because I know that happened. And then there's one quote.

John Dehlin 1:23:07 There's also the quote of, like. And we got. Mike, you write this down. We got to include this quote before we end these series, if we haven't already. But it's this idea of, like, general authorities, Mormon general authorities in the mid 19th century Getting mad because some general authorities get first pick on the. On the immigrant. On the young teenage immigrant women coming over from Europe. And it's like Brother so and so is getting first pick on these women. And I want. I want in on the spoils. Do you know the quote that I'm talking about?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:37 Yeah, it's. I'll find it real.

John Dehlin 1:23:41 I'm just saying let's. Let's make sure we include that at some point. But it. But it really drives home this idea that it's. It's more like an auction of cattle where they're bidding. Where they're bidding with their power on who gets the cutest girls and the youngest girls.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:55 Yeah, it is. And it's about. It's about power. And it's also about, like you said, getting first picks. And isn't it funny that the people that claim to be profit are the ones that decide who gets who? And it's always going to be a. It's bad.

John Dehlin 1:24:09 Yeah. And it's not like the poor farmer or the humble schoolteacher is getting the 50W, like the rich farmer, the rich businessman, the person who knows where the bodies are buried, the fixer that's helping Joseph clean up all his messes. It's the men closest to the prophet who are wealthy or in power or who are doing the prophet's bidding. They're the ones who get the spoils of the women. Alicia, you get your last word on this topic.

The Partridge Sisters' Proposals and Secret Marriages

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:24:40 I think it was William Clayton that you might have been referring to, Mike, where she. He married wives or sisters and then wanted to take their younger sister. And Joseph Smith, like, I have received a revelation. You cannot take the younger sister. We can't have three sisters in one family. I just received revelation, but I'm going to take her instead.

John Dehlin 1:25:00 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:01 Yeah. I just think about how. I mean, like, I. Again, when we do these episodes, we're trying to be as level head as we can, but, like, think of how nonsensical that is. Like. Like this idea that someone's like, I want to marry these three sisters, which by itself is insane. And just like, I got a revelation. You can't marry three. You can have two, though. But we're gonna. I'm gonna leave that one. I'm actually. I'll help you out. I'm gonna take that youngest one. It's just. It's.

John Dehlin 1:25:22 And Joseph married not only sister pairs, but mother, daughter pairs as well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:25 Yeah. And we'll get into that with the apologetics, because that's another thing. We're like, well, they're creating an eternal chain. It's like, no, they're not. Because he's marrying mothers and daughters. You don't need to marry both if you're trying to create a chain. And you certainly don't need to have sex with. You know, I mean, it's just. It. Yeah, it's just. It's so stupid when you look at. When you look at all of the things that have to happen for this work. And. John, I'm gonna read you that quote. It's from Heber Kimball, and it says the brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here and bringing on the ugly ones for us. Hereafter, you have to bring them all here before taking any of them and let us all have a fair shake.

John Dehlin 1:26:00 Who is that and what.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:03 So it's Heber Kimball. And I. I believe there are apologists who say that they don't trust the quote. I think it's from an article in the New York Times that's not very nice to the Church. So I'm just throwing that out there that there is controversy over the quote, but it's from an 1860 New York Times article, and it quotes Brigham Young as saying that. So I will say that there is some controversy over whether or not that quote is 100% legitimate, but that, you know, that is what was written in 1860.

John Dehlin 1:26:31 The church has a long history of any. Calling anyone critical of the Church anti Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:36 Right.

John Dehlin 1:26:37 Missing any source that's critical of the Church as invalid. Because it's critical. And that's it. You know, it's important to consider the credibility of historical sources. But when the Church has that long history of smearing and defaming any person or any evidence that criticizes, then. Then it's the Church's fault. When we're. We're sort of leaning towards privileging critical comments because we. We can't trust the Church as a. As a neutral, objective broker or determiner of the validity of quotes. Anyway.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:12 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:27:13 All right, well, for today's episode, we're going to end with one more. We're gonna. We're gonna split this episode into two parts because we're already an hour and a half in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:22 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:27:22 And we're about halfway done with the slides, and I don't want to rush. So we're going to end today with, I think, a really important example of a sister pair. And it's going to be Emma, Emily and Eliza Partridge.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:37 Yeah. So Emily and Eliza Partridge were the daughters of Edward Partridge, who was the first bishop of the Church. We've actually talked about him a lot because of the back and forth that Joseph Smith had with him when we talked about the priesthood restoration and how his authority was being challenged. So that if that name sounds familiar, he obviously is very integral in early history. So Edward is tarred and feathered and was a target in Missouri. And the Partridge sisters, unfortunately, had to live through the trauma of seeing their father, you know, treated like that and tarred and feathered. So obviously they grew up with that. And so, upon moving to Nauvoo, Edward Partridge died, and the Partridge sisters then moved in with the smith home. In 1842, when Emily was about 18 years old, Joseph Smith attempted to introduce the practice of polygamy to her. He requested that she read a letter and burn it afterwards, but Emily was having none of it. Emily wrote the following. I shut Joseph up so quick that he didn't bring up the subject again for several months. This is where I mentioned earlier about having the mothers in Zion, the older wives. So he then sends one of his older polygamous wives, Elizabeth Durfee, to recruit Emily into polygamy. And as I mentioned earlier, this is a pattern. And what's interesting is during this visit, Elizabeth actually kind of wonders aloud, next to Emily, if there was any truth to the rumors of spiritual wives. So Elizabeth is married to Joseph already, and now she's talking to Emily as if she's trying to feel out what Emily knows about polygamy before she kind of, you know, tries to sell her on it. And I think that's a very deceptive tactic. And you obviously are not going to have Elizabeth doing that without Joseph Smith telling her, hey, I need you to. To try to, you know, get her to come around on this. Okay.

John Dehlin 1:29:19 Alicia, anything you want to comment on for this slide?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:29:23 I have so many thoughts on Sister Durfee, or Mrs. Durfee, as they called her. I think it's a really sad but fascinating power dynamic to look at in patriarchy, where you will often see this, even today, when there's scarcity involved, that there are women in the system that will work to uphold the patriarchy by oppressing other women. It's really sad. You see it today, even, like, in corporate America, and it's a result of the patriarchy. And these women, like, they're. In some cases, they're only. And I don't mean to say that Sister Durfee was doing this for power, but I think that it. It's important to point this out, that you do see women in the system that are oppressing other women. It's just part of the nature of that oppressive System of patriarchy. So I would think that that maybe had something to do with these older wives who were willing to go be mentors, you know, and they were viewed as just women who already had a testimony of this principle, and so that they were going to mentor them and help teach them. But looking at it without that biased lens of indoctrination, I think that we can see it as maybe potentially a dynamic effect. Patriarchy.

John Dehlin 1:30:34 Yeah, for sure. And. And I'm just gonna highlight that. That, you know, we introduced the pillars of Joseph's polygamy at the beginning of this episode. This has, you know, teenage girls, they're vulnerable. The dad's dead. They're living with Joseph, and. And he's. He's doing his coercion thing, both by being prophet and by getting other women. So, like this. And it's a sister pair like this. This has a lot of the elements of. Of Joseph's patterns, just in this one example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. Okay, thanks. Thanks for that, Alicia. Let's go to the next slide. Joseph gives Emily Partridge a birthday gift of polygamy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:13 So Emily, of course, knew that Joseph had already attempted to engage her in this, but did not say anything and learned, and later learned that Elizabeth was a friend of plurality and knew all about it. And so basically, she. She learns later on. Oh, yeah, she was in on it it, you know, the whole time. And, you know, as we just said, this is an example of Joseph sending another polygamous wife to test Emily to see if she'd be willing. And this gives Joseph Smith plausible deniability if. If Emily gives off the vibes, like, you know, yeah, I heard about this. Like, if she starts blabbing about Joseph, then Joseph knows. I mean, it's. It's a really deceptive test that Joseph is putting her through. And so on Emily's 19th birthday, Joseph Smith gave her what must. What he must have thought was the greatest gift of all, the commandment to Mary, and have sex with him as a polygamous bride. From Emily, he taught me this principle of plural marriage that is called polygamy now, but we called a celestial marriage. And he told me that this principle had been revealed to him, but it was not generally known. And he went on and said that the Lord had given him. Given me to him, and he wanted to know if I would consent to a marriage. And I consented. And so this just shows that Joseph Smith used another woman to kind of soften up her. Her, you know, defenses, and then goes back to her after he knows from Mrs. Durfee that she's more receptive after being, you know, conditioned, groomed, whatever you want to call it, and goes back and. And proposes to her and. And obviously, at that point, she. She submits.

John Dehlin 1:32:33 Alicia, thoughts on the slide?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:32:34 Yeah, it definitely looks like grooming to me. And I was also, as I was reading about Mrs. Durfee, it reminded me of going to the temple for the first time and sitting in that endowment session. I apologize if this is offensive, because I know the endowment session is sacred to a lot of people, but just thinking back on it now, there's so many things that happen in that room that would be startling and troubling. But you're looking around and you're seeing all these people that you trust. You're seeing your young women's president and your parents and all these people that you know and love, and they're all going along with it. And so I just thought it was an interesting. Like, to me, that was the immediate comparison that I made, that Mrs. Durfee is this mentor, and she's this woman that already has a testimony of plural marriage. And I'm going to mentor you, and I'm going to help you learn. I'm going to help you gain a testimony of this, because it seems difficult, but really, it's the Lord's will. So

John Dehlin 1:33:30 I'm just. I'm just smiling. I have a first cousin named Joan. Joan Beatty, who married a man named Doug Durfee, and her name is Joan Durfee. And I'm just. I am 100 sure that. That my. That my first cousin's husband is a descendant of. Of this woman.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:49 Yeah. Very, very likely.

John Dehlin 1:33:51 Probably a proud. Probably a proud descendant of this woman.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:54 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:33:55 All right. And what a birthday gift, by the way. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:59 Yeah. I just find it. I mean, I know it's tongue in cheek, but it's just. Yeah. Happy birthday. Why don't you marry me? It's just. It's so weird.

John Dehlin 1:34:06 Yeah. This idea of coercion, again, it's repeating. No means no. No means no. And so you don't keep trying. And again, if God's gonna. If God can appear to people, he needs to appear to Emily, not.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:23 Yeah. And, you know, I mean, you can ask somebody a second time. Like my wife, the first time I asked her out, she told me no and. And never told me the reason. It never. Never told me that because I wasn't Mormon. I didn't know she couldn't go with me because she wasn't 16 yet. So, ironically enough, I Didn't know that at the time, but she did say no. And then the next year, I asked her again, and she said yes. And she was actually just about to turn 16. But anyways, the point is you can ask again. It's just you can't. Now, if I had sent someone to her. That she trusted as an authority figure. To soften her up to accept my. Then I'd say, no, you can't do that. Because that's. You're then circum. Circumventing consent by sending out people. To deceptively try to soften you up to what Joseph Smith's trying to do. By telling them it's okay. And I think that's where. That's why consent in this case is being kind of chipped away at. Free agency, being free agencies, being chipped away at. Because you're using deceptive tactics in the name of God, by the way. To get people to accept these proposals. That they obviously didn't want to do in the first place.

John Dehlin 1:35:19 Okay. All right. Well, let's get to Emily Partridge's account of Joseph Smith's proposal.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:25 Yep. So this is what Emily wrote. And she said. Mrs. Durfee came to me one day. And said that Joseph would like an opportunity to talk to me. I asked her if she knew what he wanted. She said that she thought he wanted me for a wife. I was thoroughly prepared for almost anything. I was to meet him in the evening at Mr. Kimball's. Brother Heber told his children that they better go into one of the neighbors. As there would be a council that evening at their house. Then he said to me, I don't know if it's valet. I think it's valet. Valet is not at home, and you had better call another time. So I started out with William and Helen. And bid them goodbye. I started for home as fast as I could go. So as to get beyond being called back. For I still dreaded the interview, however. Soon I heard Brother Kimball call Emily. Emily. Rather low, but loud enough for me to hear. I thought at first that I would not go back. And took no notice of his calling. But he kept calling and was about to overtake me. So I stepped, stopped, and went back with him. I cannot tell you all, Joseph said. But he said the Lord had commanded. To enter into plural marriage. And given me to him. And although I had gotten badly frightened. He knew I would yet have him. So he waited till the Lord told him my mind was now prepared. And would receive the principles. I do not think if I had not gone through the ordeal I did. I would have ever gone off that night to meet him. But that was the only way it could be done then. Well, I was married then and there. Joseph went home his way and I went my way alone. A strange way, a strange of way of getting married, wasn't it? Brother Kimball married us on the 4th of March, 1843.

John Dehlin 1:36:52 And it's probably safe to say that Emma didn't know about many of these marriages we're talking about. So Joseph is doing this before. For. For many of these marriages. We've already covered this. He's doing it before DNC132 is actually revealed, you know, before he's even gotten the polygamy revelation. And he's doing it without Emma's knowledge, lying to Emma, lying to the public. And in many cases when he married, he's violating the. The rules of what would become DNC132, you know, by doing things like marrying other people's wives. Really quickly. Alicia, what. What we should have had you read from now on, Michael.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:30 That's true. Yeah, we should.

John Dehlin 1:37:32 Let's have Alicia read the women's accounts. But, Alicia, what do you want to say as you contemplate Emily Partridge's account?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:37:40 Well, I feel for Emily and Eliza, but in this case, I. I just. I think about Emma so much. I think about them in the house together in the mansion house. There's four girls living there at the time. You've got the Lawrence girls and the Partridge girls. And there's this period of time that Emma doesn't know that this is going on. This is behind her back. And what we're going to talk about next is her eventually suggesting that those become his plural wives. Once she's convinced of it. I think after DNC132 is the revelation. Once the revelation is read to her by Hiram, I just think about what that dynamic must have been like for her. Can you imagine being the. The spouse in the house with these young girls? I mean, you've got to know that something is going on. And yeah, it just makes me really emotional to read and to think about Emma and just. This is. It's horrific. It's absolutely horrific. I think Emily was 16 when she was first proposed to, so she was a little older when it actually happened. But I just can't imagine what this must have been like for Emma.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:46 That's another.

John Dehlin 1:38:46 That's another good point. Like, why wasn't Joseph, if he. If he had to practice polygamy and didn't want to, why wasn't he just marrying all the widows who were like 40 and 50 and 60. Why was he picking 16 year olds, 17 year olds, like, that's a. That's a tell. I mean, there were some, but the majority were. Were young and hot. I think is. Is right from his perspective.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:39:10 Yeah, Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:11 I mean, they're younger and. And yeah. And the one that sticks, you know, stands out to me is that her, in her own account, she's saying that she's trying to get away until he over almost overtakes her, and then she stops. And you're just like, it feels so bad. Like he basically drags her back in the house because she doesn't want to do it. And so of course he lunges.

John Dehlin 1:39:30 It's like he's lunging for her.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:31 Yeah, he probably is jogging. He's probably jogging out of the house, trying to get her attention, knowing that she's trying to ignore him and, you know, almost overtakes her. And then she goes back in. And it's just one of those things where it's like, this is over and over again. We see these accounts for the women. Like, I didn't want to do it, but then I did it because I believed I had to because God wants me to. And it's, you know, and they believe God wants them to because Joseph Smith, they revere him as a prophet. And it just shows how our faith in leaders can lead us to do bad things. And you see that today. You see it where people believe Russell Nelson is a prophet of God and they will do anything that Russell Nelson says. And, you know, and what's with this quote?

John Dehlin 1:40:07 I cannot tell you all Joseph said, like, what else did he say? Like, you know. Yeah, like a lot of things. But what. What's worse? What's worse than he's gonna marry a 16 or 17 year old who lives in his house whose dad died?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:22 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:40:23 What would be worse that she couldn't say?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:26 Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:40:29 If she's telling us the stuff she can say. Yeah, it's horrific. Then what's the stuff she can't say?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:37 No, it's a good point. It is.

John Dehlin 1:40:38 Okay. All right, so let's talk about Eliza, the sister.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:43 Right, Sister. Now, so I'll just kind of start off by saying, you know, I kept their. Their proposal separate because, you know, Joseph kept their proposals separate as well. And so Eliza was married to Joseph Smith around the same time. She didn't write as much, unfortunately, so we don't have as much. So here's Eliza's account. And, Alicia, if you want to read that, that would actually be pretty good.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:41:05 Oh, sure. Here, let me just expand it so I can see it. After a time, that paragraph. After a time, my sister Emily and myself went to live in the family of the prophet Joseph Smith. We lived there for about three years. While there, he taught us the plan of celestial marriage and asked us to enter into that order with him. This was truly a great trial for me, but I had the most implicit confidence in him as a prophet of the Lord and not but believe his word, and as a matter of course, accept of privilege of being sealed to him as a wife for time and all eternity. We were sealed in 1843 by Heber C. Kimball in the presence of witnesses. I continue to live in the family for a length of time after this.

John Dehlin 1:41:52 Okay, thank you, Alicia. Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:54 Yeah, and so it's just to point out that, you know, her entire testimony of polygamy was based on her believing Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. And I'm trying to highlight that a lot because it shows that Joseph Smith knew how much his followers revered him, and he was able to use that to circumvent these women's moral compass so that they would marry him in both polyandrous and polygamous marriages in a situation that went completely against what they wanted to do in their own lives.

John Dehlin 1:42:21 Yeah. At this point, like, we're halfway done with this presentation, and I almost want to say, oh, we're not done with. We're not done with Emily and Eliza yet.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:31 Yeah, we're not quite. Just a couple more slides for them.

John Dehlin 1:42:33 I just want to say, already, I'm like, I think we've already shown that this is ridiculous. Right? Like, we don't even need to continue cases shown, and we're not even done with Emily and Eliza. And we still have another hour and a half of a podcast to go, but.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:50 Yeah, but let's.

John Dehlin 1:42:51 Let's keep going. So let's go to Emily and Eliza's secret marriage to Joseph Smith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:57 Yeah, and so this is one of those things that, you know, is just so crazy to me that they were both married to Joseph, but they didn't know that they were both married to him at first. So Emily Partridge later remarked that neither of us knew about the other at the time. Everything was so secret, and so this is just crazy. They're living in the Smith household, and they are living there together, you know, in going through such a horrific time, and they have no idea that they're both married to Joseph Smith. And they both think that they are. This. This is gonna sound horrible, but Joseph Smith kind of tells all these women, like, you were given to me by God. So it gives you that sense of being in a special club and an elite status. And then all of a sudden, you don't realize that you're both having sex with the same man in the same household when his wife is unaware of what's going on. And this is going to lead to one of the more insane stories of polygamy, which is that Emma Smith is going to, for this very brief time, tell Joseph you can enter into polygamy, but I get to choose the women. And she chooses the Partridge sisters and the Lawrence sisters, who are married. I'm sorry, who are living with the Smith household. But she has no idea that. That he's already married to them. And so it just shows, like, Emma's choice makes sense because they live in the household. She could keep an eye on them. She doesn't know that he's already married and having sex with him, which is just. It's just like, this is the kind of stuff you couldn't, like, write in a script if you were trying to be creative, because it's so insane. Wow.

John Dehlin 1:44:16 Alicia, I'm gonna let you respond, and then I'm. I may want to respond.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:44:19 Yeah. One thing that just really stood out to me here is that Emily really viewed herself as having already been given to Joseph Smith by God. And I think that's a really important point here to make, that these girls are just. Just so indoctrinated. They don't even view their lives as their own. And, John, when you were talking about consent, I don't think that consent was even within their realm of entitlement. Like, I don't think that they had any degree of entitlement to. To consent to anything. You know, they really believe that this is God's prophet. And I wish I had the exact phrasing, but Emily believed that she had already been given to Joseph Smith by God. And I just think of. I don't know, just the. The way these girls are just, like, viewed as property, and they view themselves as property.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:11 Yeah, yeah, it's.

John Dehlin 1:45:13 It's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:14 You know, you mentioned earlier how sometimes you go through the temple and you kind of see some of the same similarities here about how you go along with things, you know, are just crazy. And, you know, it reminded me of when I went to the temple. And I don't want to get into specifics. We've been trying not to do that, but There's a part in the temple where you basically promise yourself everything you have to the church. You don't promise it to God.

John Dehlin 1:45:35 Consecration, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:36 Yeah. So you promise to give your life and everything. Not to God, to the church. And so this is an instance where this is being utilized by Joseph Smith because he's saying, you belong to God through me, because I speak for him. And it just shows how, like you said, when you have people that are that devout, you can get them to do things that they would never do otherwise because they don't even understand how. They, like, they don't have Google. They can't hop online and see what Joseph Smith is doing. They can't see that Joseph Smith has gotten the Book of Mormon wrong, that he made up the priesthood restoration. They can't see all that stuff. So they're going along with it because they truly are so engrossed in this idea. He's a prophet, and it just shows how horribly abused it can be.

John Dehlin 1:46:16 Yeah, yeah. And you hear in Mormonism the saying, and it's probably in Christianity and Biblical Christianity, you know, God's saying, my house is a house of order. Right. I am not the God of confusion. Like this scenario where Joseph is married to Emma, but is practicing polygamy, but lying about it to Emma, but then marrying two sisters who are foster children who are living in his home, who are teenage girls. Then neither of them know about each other and Emma doesn't know about them. But then Emma finally is okay with polygamy. And so when she chooses one or both of the sisters to be married to Joseph, Joseph doesn't admit to Emma that he's already married to them. But then he, as we're going to see in the next slide, performs a sham marriage to fool Emma and to make the, the. The sisters liars, like compelling them to be deceptive, all in the name of God. That's, you know, I'll make a boomer reference. That's more Keystone Cops. That's ridiculousness. That's not a house of order. And what God. What God would. Would sanction that sort of behavior? And let's just go ahead and go to that slide to, to kind of drive it home.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:40 Yeah. And so this is just. This is one of those. When I heard this, when I first started doing the deep dive in this stuff, I just. I like, you can't believe this. It seems so insane that you can't believe it, but it. Rough stone rolling. It's not. This is. This is very historical. So because Joseph couldn't tell his beloved Emma that he was already married to and having sex with these teenage sisters. He staged a second mock wedding to keep the secret from his beloved Emma. And I'm putting beloved in there because that's how the the Gospel Topics essay refers to her. To try to again soften what was happening that Joseph was doing to her on May 11, 1843. This is before DNC132 was written. Joseph is going to be sealed to them for a second time. However, their previously great relationship with Emma turned sour almost immediately after the mock wedding. Emma forced Joseph to kick the girls out of the house. With Joseph Smith telling the girls, my hands are tied, the Partridge sisters left to live with another polygamous wife. And Emma's brief time in accepting polygamy came to an end. That's actually what's going to lead to Joseph needing to write DNC132 because now he's like, I need to basically threaten them before, you know, I mean, and I'm putting a little bit of words into. Into there. But. But the marriages to the Partridge Sisters really hits on all the issues we talked about, as you mentioned, John, and this is a great write up on polygamy. It's from a letter from a doubter and I should give you the links. It's a really good read. And in their polygamy section, it says, besides the heavy handed pressure applied to Emily and Eliza, there's a disturbing amount of deceit going on. Joseph asking her to burn a letter and not talk to her family. Elizabeth Durfee testing the waters with Emily under the pretext that she's heard rumors. Joseph concealing the marriage of the sisters from their families and from each other, keeping it a secret from Emma, then putting on a mock wedding rather than telling her the truth. In fact, secrecy in the sea is a recurring problem with polygamy, as we're about to see. And then their letter goes into more of these accounts as well.

John Dehlin 1:49:30 Okay, that reference letter I'm seeing, I'm trying to google it. I'm seeing Letter to a doubter. Letter from a doubter.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:36 If you have it, I'll get it for you.

John Dehlin 1:49:39 Okay.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:49:42 About the sham marriage, I just want to say about all of this. This was until roughly what 2008, considered anti Mormon literature. Like anyone who talked about this stuff, if it came from Fawn Brody, anti Mormon literature, you know, it wasn't really until the Joseph Smith papers. I mean, I could be wrong on this. You guys, guys, please chime in here. But until about 2008 people just dismissed this stuff. They just viewed it as anti, you know, and so I think it's really great here to just point out that this can be found in faithful sources. This story that we just talked about, like mind blowing story. This is, you know, it's historical event and it can be found even in church sources. So I don't know if we want to mention any of those. Like, I think for sure we've already mentioned Todd Compton. We've already mentioned what else. I mean, Lindsay,

John Dehlin 1:50:42 it'll be in rough. Stone rolling.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:50:43 That's right. Rest unrolling. And then what about the Saints? I haven't read the Saints, volume one, Volume two, but I, but I think that it references some of this stuff. For any faithful listeners that want to just look at only faithful sources, I think it's just a good point to make that this isn't a lot of the faithful members that we know who are, who, who are really kind of more nuanced in these ideas will say, like, this isn't anti Mormon literature. It's really important for active members to understand that this isn't anti. It's not, they're not lies. You know, it's, it's in there. So I think it's.

John Dehlin 1:51:16 This is uncontested and acknowledged by the church, its historical department, and its most faithful credible historians. Undisputed. The sham marriage of the Partridge Sisters is fact. Yeah. As any part of Mormon church history.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:51:33 And you can, and you can put on what you can view this from a faithful perspective. There are members of the church that view this with a faithful perspective. You know, and we're just all here having this conversation with. We've all got our own, our own interpretation of these events. You know, I have deconstructed because of reading this stuff, but not everyone does. Some people continue faithful even after reading it. So. Absolutely.

John Dehlin 1:51:57 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:58 Yeah. I would just, I would just add to that last slide, which I find, I mean, we've, we're beating a dead horse to a point on this, but Emma Smith is living in a household with the Partridge Sisters, doesn't know they're married to Joseph. Then she agrees to this marriage. She kicks him out because of course Joseph's having sex with these women. And then Joseph has. Has to write DNC132 all during all this time. God doesn't send an angel to her to be like, like, this is what I need you to do. It's just interesting. It's very convenient that Emma has to go through all this without any spiritual confirmation. The church doesn't really point you that way because of course, they want you to focus on these women who are like, yeah, I really didn't want to do it. I really don't want to do it. But he was a prophet of God, so I had a confirmation. It's just very convenient. All of this stuff is very convenient to Joseph, and God seems to only do whatever is in Joseph's interest. And I find that to be very interesting as a theme throughout all the episodes, not just polygamy.

John Dehlin 1:52:51 Yeah. All right, well, and we're all. We're about two hours in, and we're only halfway done with just the polygamy proposals. So I want to reference again, ldsdiscussions.com polygamy proposals. That's Mike's amazing website at LDS Discussions), where you can read about this and hopefully find a lot of the sources. If you want to view or listen or refer someone to these episodes in their sequence, you can. You can go to Spotify and find the LDS Discussions) podcast. You can listen to or view them there for free. You could also go to the YouTube playlist under Mormon Stories podcast and have videos of this in succession. And, yeah, that's part one. And I guess next week we're going to come back with part two where we're going to talk about other examples of. I mean, I think we've made the point. So a part of me wants to say part two isn't necessary, but, like, Alicia, give us the case for why we needed a second part.

Closing Reflections and Episode Wrap-Up

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:57 I'll let you go first, Alicia, if you want.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:54:00 I gotta look at my notes. Well, in the next part, we're gonna go into, you know, the Lawrence sisters. There's some interesting points there about the estate that Joseph Smith comes into and ultimately takes control over. Oh, we're going to talk about Helen Markimbell. We can't have a series on the proposals without talking about Helen Mar Kimball. It's the most recognizable name in Mormon history. Polygamy, because she was only 14 years old. So there's so many more things that are important to cover, I think, to really make our. Make our point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:30 Yeah. And with Helen Mar Kimball. Alicia, I don't mean to be rude, but I have to correct you. She wasn't for. She wasn't 14. She was several months before her 15th birthday.

John Dehlin 1:54:39 No, it's several months shy of her 15th birthday.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:43 I think the word. They use this before, but I could be wrong either way. And the reason I think Helen's story is actually amazing, too, is because of the way the church portrays Heber's introduction to polygamy. And so when we go over that, that is one of the most crazy stories that the church essay promotes as faith promoting that when you actually know what the context is, it is like it'll blow your mind. So I'll give you that as a tease because when I heard that the first time of why he cried tears of joy. Yeah, I remember I was working and I had my headphones on and I was working on some stuff and I just was like, I think like an audible gasp, like, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Like, this is insane. So, yeah, as Alicia said, Helen Mark Kimball, you have to talk about. And I think Heber C. Kimball, we have to talk about. And then when we finish looking at the implications of what this means for how we view this, how we try to reconcile this with DNC 132. So I think there's a lot to cover. So the next episode will be good because we won't have to pile it all into like a three and a half hour episode. So thanks to everyone who's. Who's being patient with us and letting us get through all this stuff in the detail we have.

John Dehlin 1:55:50 Well, thank you, Mike. You've done really, really important work. And Alicia, this is so much better with having you here. I hope you'll.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:55:58 Yes, it is. We're going to make you come back, so you have no choice.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:56:03 I love this topic. And Mike, thank you so much for all the work that you've done on these slides. I just, he sends them to me and I just write my notes. But this is. You've done so much work and I really feel like this is so impactful for so many people. I get messages every day about how deconstructing has really benefited people and is really changing people's lives for the better. So I know there's a lot of critique on this space on making. Forcing people to deconstruct and how that can be harmful. But you know what? I think that it's. I think it's an overall good. I think it's a net positive. I think people are really, really benefiting from this work that you're doing. And John, of course, you were a lifeline for me when I had my deconstruction. So I just appreciate you both so much.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56:44 Well, and I will say before we go, Alicia was like the first person I thought of when I was trying to think of someone to come on because her approach to all of this in her videos and stuff that she's done on TikTok are so just kind and comforting and they're not mocking anyone, they're not making fun of it. And so I just love your approach and so you're the perfect person to have. So I'm so glad you're. We're willing to take the time and hopefully we can at least get one more with you. And, and just thank you so much.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:57:10 Thank you.

John Dehlin 1:57:10 Alicia's TikTok is faith and faith unraveled, right?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 1:57:16 Yep. Faith unraveled. And I'm going to be talking a lot more about polygamy. I just love this topic. It's very personal to me. So.

John Dehlin 1:57:24 Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, thanks, Mike. Thanks, Alicia. And most important, thanks to everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. We couldn't do this without your support. So for everyone who makes this possible, including donors, including our board of directors, Clint Martin and Carrie Whip back, including Gerardo and Maven's been helping out a little bit and Brooklyn and, and Julia who's helping out with TikTok, just to everyone who's making and Margi who's been my co host and Samantha and Kara and John Larsen, just for all the people that make the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories possible, I want to thank them, want to thank donors that make this possible. Also want to say that if any of you, you know, we just bought Mike, we just upgraded a bunch of his equipment, spent a couple grand, like we hope to tweak his audio so that it just gets better and better. You know, all this stuff costs money. So if you are able to become a monthly donor. We lose donors every month. So if you're able to become a monthly donor, you can go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor. Your donations are tax deductible in the US we're transparent in our finances and every dollar we spend hopefully goes towards the mission we believe goes towards the mission of informed consent for Mormons and questioning Mormons and non Mormons, but also to support Mormons who are having a faith transition and to support people who are rebuilding their lives after Mormon orthodoxy or after leaving the church. So and of course, helping people find community and friends and support during difficult times. So please support us if you can. You could also support us by subscribing like on YouTube. We're, we're getting around 2,000 subscribers per month. If we can keep that pace, within maybe a year and a half to two years, we'll have a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube, which we think is a, is a really, really validating accomplishment to help us know that we're reaching people. We now know that over half of our viewing audience on YouTube has never been Mormon. So we're reaching people of other religious traditions as well. So please become, please click the subscribe button not just on YouTube, but on Facebook, on Instagram, and on TikTok. And that will help with all of the algorithms and everything else. So. And share these episodes with anyone that you can spread the word and give us your feedback. Feel free to comment on any of these episodes, Mike and I, and I'm sure Alicia will look at every, every comment. We'll try and tweak and make things better to accommodate or to respond to your feedback. And of course, you can always email us@mormonstoriesmail.com and Mike, I think you have a email as well if people want to email you directly. Is that right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:00:01 Yeah, you can always email. It's LDS discussion with no s gmail.com if you want to reach out. And I'm on Instagram at LDS discussions, that's another. Or, you know, either way, you can get Alicia.

John Dehlin 2:00:12 Is there an email you want to give people?

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 2:00:14 Oh, maybe not yet.

John Dehlin 2:00:16 Okay. DM. DM her at what? TikTok. Faith unravel at TikTok. No, no DMs. No DMs.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 2:00:24 You know what, you can go to my TikTok and tag me and I always look at my tags.

John Dehlin 2:00:29 Okay.

Elisha (Faith Unraveled) 2:00:29 Unraveled). I have a question. Follow me back. Okay, we're getting there. We're going to expand eventually to Instagram. I didn't want to get excommunicated. I'm sure it's too late for that

John Dehlin 2:00:40 now, but you're too awesome to be excommunicated. All right, well, thanks again, everybody. Thanks for this episode. And check us out next week or next episode for part two of our episode on Joseph Smith's plural marriage proposals. And know that we've got at least a few, at least two dozen episodes remaining after we're done with the polygamy series, which will now be a six parter. We're still going to cover Book of Abraham. We're going to cover Kinderhook plates, Joseph Smith's translations, the witnesses to the Book of Mormon and other scripture, how the church handles doubt. We're going to talk about Joseph Smith's revelations, the transfiguration of Brigham Young, apologetics, so much more on this series with LDS discussions. So please join us in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. We love you all be kind to each other, be good to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.