Excerpts from Joseph Smith’s Polygamy in the Context of Changing American Religion and Culture by Non-Momon Robert M. Bowman Jr., with my comments interspersed:
… During this early period (1828-1830), Joseph’s basic theology appeared to be fairly typical of primitivist Christians of the time. His doctrine of God was a roughly traditional (if not consistent) view of God as one infinite, transcendent Creator existing eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.[ 8] His view of salvation and the Christian life was largely Methodist though with some relatively modest differences. His understanding of the church and of eschatology was dominated by two related ideas: the primitivist call for the restoration of lost elements of biblical religion and experience, and the belief that the people of God, including American Indians who had lost touch with their Israelite heritage, were now to be gathered into the restored church in preparation for the imminent Second Coming.
… A New Community Mormon theology and religion underwent almost constant change during Joseph’s fourteen years as the founding Prophet of the LDS Church. …
… Mormons were far from unique, as scores of such communities—many of them “utopian” in some sense—have dotted American society from colonial days to the present.[ 10] Within the first century of American history “there were over one hundred utopian communities in the United States,” many of which took a distinctive approach to matters of sexuality.[11] These communities also felt free to engage in all sorts of experimentation culturally, theologically, religiously, and socially. This experimentation included such varied approaches to marriage and sexuality as celibacy (the Shakers and less radically the Amana Church Society) and pantagamy (the Oneida Community), a system in which “every woman is considered the wife of every man and ever man is considered the husband of every woman.”[12]
Kirtland
From 1831 to 1837, when the Church was based mainly in Kirtland, Ohio, Joseph’s doctrine of God evolved into a kind of ditheism. The first signs of this doctrinal evolution came in Joseph’s work on an inspired revision of the King James Version, which he had started in 1830. A doctrinal primer produced by Joseph and his associates entitled Lectures on Faith (1835) taught that the Father and the Son were two separate personages that shared the Holy Ghost as their common “Mind.” A majority of Joseph’s modern revelations, which the Church compiled in a collection entitled Doctrine & Covenants, were produced during this period (D& C 1, 41-112, 134, 137). These revelations included an 1833 affirmation of monogamy, still found in the LDS scriptures, stating that “marriage is ordained of God unto man: Wherefore it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh” (D&C 49: 15-16). …
Fanny Alger
… LDS historians do not dispute the sexual relationship between Joseph and Fanny; instead, they generally interpret it as the first of Joseph’s plural marriages. This explanation received official sanction in the 2014 article on the Church’s official website.[14]
… the evidence shows that Joseph did not start practicing plural marriage until 1841.
Note that LDS defender Brian C. Hales has come up with a theory defending Smith by arguing that he married Fanny Alger in a plural marriage, so it was not adultery. For my purposes here, I quote this section of the article as outside scholarly support for the emergent nature of Mormonism -- from monotheism and monogamy to plural marriage and a plurality of Gods -- which on my theory could have been "inspired' as a way to affirm bodily life; which I discuss in my blog series Sex, Gods, & Zion.
Back to the article:
Nauvoo
… The Mormons obtained a strong city charter for Nauvoo that gave them a relatively free hand there, and Joseph was emboldened to initiate radical changes. In 1841, construction began on a temple in Nauvoo, which was to have very different functions than what had been envisioned earlier in Kirtland. …
The … main function was a new “endowment” ceremony that was first conducted in the Nauvoo temple in May 1842. The endowment drew many of its ritual elements from the Freemasons, which Joseph had joined two months earlier.
… In 1842 he published the Book of Abraham, … [with a] recasting of Genesis 1-2 as teaching the organizing of the world by a plurality of Gods. …
Joseph’s ritual and theological innovations were both related to his most controversial innovation at Nauvoo: the practice of plural marriage.
Plural Marriage in Nauvoo
The 2014 LDS.org article on Joseph’s plural marriage admits some important facts that have long been known by non-Mormon critics and LDS scholars but that until recently were unknown to rank and file members. …
The Timeframe of Joseph’s Plural Marriages
… Joseph’s closest associates, including his wife and his principal scribe, viewed the relationship [with Fanny] as adulterous, and no one in the LDS movement seems to have known anything about plural marriage before about 1841.
Note that in the mid 1800s, an important defense of plural marriage was that plural marriage provided a healthy outlet for God-given male sexual desire; and the Non-Mormons ("Gentiles") who rejected polygamy ended up defiling themselves with prostitutes. This early Mormon defense of sexual desire being appeased through plural marriage is discussed in the little LDS book Let's Talk about Polygamy by Brittany Chapman Nash. We also have a close friend to Joseph, an apostle, redefining sexual desire as good and holy in Parley Pratt's Letter to Queen Victoria (see: https://archive.org/details/ALetterToTheQueenOfEngland)
The article continues:
The earliest known plural marriage of Joseph Smith was to Louisa Beaman, a 26-year-old single woman, on April 5, 1841.
… Joseph took 33 or so plural wives between April 1841 and November 1843. Thus, all of the known plural marriages to Joseph took place in Nauvoo. This is consistent with the fact that Joseph had a much freer hand in Nauvoo than in Kirtland and with the fact that he felt free to introduce other radical changes in the community’s practices and doctrine during the same period. Most likely, then, the union with Louisa Beaman was the first of Joseph’s polygamous unions. Six months after Joseph was sealed to Louisa, he began taking more plural wives. The first “wave”of these unions took place in a ten-month period between October 1841 and August 1842, when Joseph was sealed to a dozen women (possibly thirteen).
Polyandrous Unions
… Sylvia Sessions Lyon…was 23 years old when she was sealed to Joseph in 1843. Since Sylvia remained married to her husband Windsor Lyon and lived in his home until his death in 1849, the evidence shows conclusively that Joseph had sexual relations with her while she was still married.[24]
Footnote 24 reads:
Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 181-85, contra Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 1: 354-64; and see further Robert M. Bowman Jr., “Joseph Smith’s Polyandrous Plural Marriages” (Grand Rapids: Institute for Religious Research, 2014). …
The article continues:
… Mormon scholars now concede that Joseph engaged in sexual activity with many of his plural wives …
… The argument [by Mormon leaders in Nauvoo] that the extralegal unions were celestial marriages when sanctioned by the Church but grossly immoral without that sanction was paralleled by the Oneida Community founded in upstate New York in 1848. Its members contrasted their pantagamy with the sexuality of other “free love” groups that they said practiced “whoredom” rather than true “marriage.” [28] …
… LDS author Stanley B. Kimball put the matter plainly: “In Nauvoo plural marriage was never openly practiced, taught, or admitted. In fact, to prevent wholesale apostasy over such a radical doctrine, the teaching was not only kept secret but was officially denied.”[30]
On my theory, these denials would be expected given the puritanical culture of the day. For example, reading through the Nauvoo Expositor Newspaper, that attempted to expose Joseph Smith's polyamy, one of the things it complained about as immoral was dancing in Nauvoo!
Persuading the Saints
… Joseph claimed that plural marriage was an honorable practice of Old Testament saints such as Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon, and that it was being “restored” as part of the great latter-day program of restoration. This explanation resonated with Mormons who had already accepted the supposed reinstitution of other facets of Old Testament life, including the priesthood orders of Aaron and Melchizedek, as part of the “restitution of all things” promised in the Bible (Acts 3: 21 KJV).
All three of these claims were brought together in a revelation Joseph gave that was recorded on July 12, 1843, though not made public until after the Saints had settled in Utah.
Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness, because they were given unto him, and he abode in my law; as Isaac also and Jacob did none other things than that which they were commanded; and because they did none other things than that which they were commanded, they have entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods…. I am the Lord thy God, and I gave unto thee, my servant Joseph, an appointment, and restore all things. (D& C 132: 37, 40)
In this revelation, Joseph’s radical departure from traditional Christian doctrine is bound up with his radical departure from traditional Christian values. Polygamy is grounded in polytheism, as those Saints who accept the principle of plural marriage are promised that they will be exalted to the status of gods.
Keeping with my Emergent Mormon Perspective, I would change the wording above to:
In D&C 132, Joseph’s radical departure from Augustinian dogma is bound up with his radical departure from puritanical Augustinian ideas. Polygamy is grounded in familial-theism; as those early Saints who accepted the principle of plural marriage were promised that they would be exalted to the status of gods: as motivation to change their consciousness from the sectarian Creeds -- that denied God the Father's body -- and instead affirm the pre-Augustine theology of Abraham that affirmed the body and sexual desire as holy.
The article continues:
Joseph Smith’s Polygamy in Retrospect
… It is easy enough for non-Mormons to conclude that Joseph was a scoundrel who manipulated the women and their families in order to satiate his own lusts. That may be partly correct while not being the whole answer. Perhaps we simply do not have enough information to make confident judgments as to what motivated Joseph to do what he did.
I agree with Bowman that we should not pretend to know Joseph's motivations. I have instead tried to present a theory based on all the facts. Bowman continues:
What can be known and understood is why the practice of plural marriage came to be accepted in a community with cultural and religious roots that were deeply monogamous. America itself was a kind of grand experiment in which the freedoms of religion and expression were the preeminent values. As people explored what to do with those relatively new freedoms, virtually everything was subject to being viewed in new ways. The fervor of the Second Great Awakening gave energy to the primitivist impulse to “restore” true Christianity by rethinking everything and starting from scratch.
Restorationism virtually demanded novel doctrines as well as novel practices. …
How is this any different from Paul's radical message that Gentiles are included into Israel -- and rescued from Paul's expectation of an immanent End-Times calamity -- by being possessed by the spirit of a crucified Messiah; within the cultural and religious context of the first century in Rome when there were grand experiments with mystery cults and savior gods? Just as Paul's midrashic innovations that utilized Stoicism can be thought of as inspired synthesizing by Christian scholars; why can't Joseph's American environment of exploring freedom of religion leading him to possibly feel free to break away from Augustinian dogma -- and restore original Abrahamic theology (when the Gods were plural and sexual desire was holy) -- also be considered inspired in some way?
