A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History by Laura Harris Hales

Author:Laura Harris Hales [Hales, Laura Harris]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Gospel Teachings, Scholarly
Publisher: Deseret Book Company/RSC
Published: 2016-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

The Trial of the Practice of Polygamy

Those who practiced polygamy during the early decades after it was authorized reported varying experiences. Eliza Partridge, married twice polygamously, declared, “Nothing but a firm desire to keep the commandments of the Lord could have induced a girl to marry in that way. I thought my trials were very severe in this line.”35 Some women who practiced polygamy seemed to have found it a blessing in some aspects. Lucy Walker, one of Joseph’s plural wives, recalled the value of plural marriage in teaching character strengths: “I will say [that polygamy] is a grand school. You learn self control, self denial; it brings out the nobler traits of our fallen natures, and teaches us to study and subdue self, while we become acquainted with the peculiar characteristics of each other. There is a grand opportunity to improve ourselves, and the lessons learned in a few years, are worth the experience of a lifetime, for this reason, that you are better prepared to make a home happy.”36

Polygamy on earth does not seem fair to most observers. It generally expands a man’s emotional and sexual opportunities as a husband as it simultaneously diminishes a woman’s emotional and sexual opportunities as a wife. Many of our concerns today regarding polygamy are not all that different from those felt by nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints. Helen Mar Kimball remembered, “The Prophet said that the practice of this principle would be the hardest trial the Saints would ever have to test their faith.”37 This statement seems to apply today as much as it did in Nauvoo. Some of the early polygamists were blessed with spiritual experiences as they struggled to gain a testimony of the principle. Reading their stories may aid in understanding their choices to marry into plural unions.38

Despite these challenges, neither Joseph Smith nor any other presiding leader gave a reason for the requirement of the practice. In 1892, when asked why the principle of plural marriage was adopted, Apostle Lorenzo Snow simply responded, “I can’t tell for I didn’t do it.”39 Future Apostle James Talmage stated that “the sole and sufficient reason which led the church to promulgate the doctrine was that the Lord had by revelation taught it and had commanded its acceptance in the present dispensation.”40

Monogamy Once Again Becomes the

Standard in the Church

In 1890, newly passed federal laws threatened the very existence of the Church and greatly impeded the Church’s ability to do missionary work and to perform vicarious temple ordinances. Despite this enduring persecution, however, the vast majority of Latter-day Saint polygamists were willing to continue practicing plural marriage, if that was the Lord’s requirement. But in September of that year, Wilford Woodruff, who held the sealing keys needed to authorize all valid eternal marriages, declared that the commandment to practice plural marriage had been revoked and was no longer binding upon the Latter-day Saints. Thereafter, the practice of monogamy was the Latter-day Saint standard.

Between 1890 and 1904, a few secret plural marriages were authorized by the Church President each year.

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