Joseph Smith dressed in a Jack Skellington costume in a graveyard.
Picture of Candice Wendt
Candice Wendt
Candice Wendt is an American-Canadian writer and interfaith worker. She is a staff member at McGill University’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and a contributing editor at Wayfare Magazine. She holds a master's degree in comparative humanities studies from BYU. She is married to the psychology scholar Dennis Wendt and they are raising two French-speaking teens together in Montreal. She recently accepted the challenge to try to form and coordinate a choir in what must be one of the most transient and multi-cultural wards in the world.

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Part 1

There once was a gifted and powerful king who inspired awe and adoration. Yet the king grew weary of the same old praise and began to feel empty inside. He wanted something new.

While wandering one night, he stumbled upon a strange place. The customs were difficult to make sense of. He didn’t understand them, but found them alluring. He hoped they would satisfy his desire for something more. He made it his personal mission to bring these conventions to his own kingdom.

He returned home and commanded his people to enact his vision. Some tried to share his enthusiasm. They trusted the King’s judgment over their own. Yet what he demanded felt unnatural and wrong.

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
A king commands his people to enact a personal whim

The king’s actions pained his queen. She warned his path would lead to ruin, but he wouldn’t listen. He continued altering his kingdom’s culture and trampling on the desires of his subjects. Unrest led some to seek his life, and he was shot down.

So goes the plot of The Nightmare Before Christmas. This folktale-like narrative also works as a retelling of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Jack Skellington’s story drives home an important point: leaders can make big, harmful mistakes, even when they are strong in many areas. Whether Jack really is “the Pumpkin King” is never the problem. The crisis is that his gifts and legitimacy do not make him immune to hubris. Jack develops an obsession and makes self-deceptive choices. Joseph’s prophetic gifts likewise did not eliminate character flaws or mistakes. We can reject Joseph Smith’s claims to a divine sanction for plural marriage without this being irreconcilable with a genuine prophetic role.

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
Whether Jack Skellington really is “the Pumpkin King” is not the problem. Because his story is about a gifted leader who makes a major, foolish mistake, the film is an intriguing point of comparison for examining Joseph Smith’s troubling relationship with plural marriage.

While Jack’s story grapples with his errors openly, in official Church narratives, Joseph Smith is protected from scrutiny. Our stagnant narrative leads to confusion, bifurcation and loss of faith across the Latter-day Saint spectrum. Some members deny Joseph practiced polygamy at all, others defend it, some are weighed down by it, and others quietly condemn it. Meanwhile, many who disaffiliate have come to assume Joseph Smith was a sexual predator and fraud. Loss of trust in him and perceptions that the Church has not dealt with his plural marriage teachings and practices in a thoughtful or accountable way has harmed many individuals.

Wouldn’t we all like to be at least a bit more unified about the kind of person Joseph was, what he actually did, where he contributed genuine goodness and where he overstepped? Could we, as we find in Jack’s narrative, come to treat our founder’s scheme as an exception to otherwise reasonable and honorable leadership rather than something that would require discarding all his contributions if invalid?

The truth about Joseph Smith’s character and motivations is likely complicated and lies somewhere in the middle of our polarized and unsettled views. To address the bifurcation, the Church needs to cease clinging to the stale, dogmatic narrative and open up to contemporary reinterpretations. This turn toward greater humility and adaptation is desperately needed in official Church spaces. 

Religious communities’ stories need to be retold over time to stay relevant, and this is nothing new. The ancient Greeks understood this in their ongoing redevelopments of their mythology. The long legacy of reinterpretations in Jewish faith also demonstrates that re-thinking stories is key to keeping traditions burning bright. We need retellings of Joseph Smith’s polygamy that are more historically, psychologically, and theologically sound than those of the past. I offer this essay as one pop culture-influenced version that is perfect for Halloween time. My main source is the 1994 edition of Mormon Enigma, the definitive biography of Emma Smith. It offers a unique, carefully researched, and distinctly feminine perspective of Joseph’s plural marriage teachings and practices and his interactions with others. The illustrations for these posts were created using Canva’s image generator. As the essay unfolds, I will draw several comparisons between Jacks’ and Joseph’s stories.

To being with, Jack and Joseph are both venerated leaders who develop unchecked desires stoked by their personal struggles. Jack acknowledges that his talents as the King of Halloween are “renowned far and wide,” but he’s “tired of the same old thing,” projects for which the objective is to send shivers down peoples’ spines. The “fame and praise” continue as strong as ever, but no longer help him feel fulfilled. He has grown lonely, purposeless, and depressed. At the end of a sleepless night wandering in the woods, Jack stumbles upon a circle of trees with entrances to other holiday worlds. He enters a colorful Christmas tree-shaped portal. After a brief taste of Christmas Town, he becomes obsessed and later comes to believe taking it over as his own domain is the perfect solution for his ennui.

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
Jack haphazardly finds an entrance to an unknown holiday world and decides taking this world for himself is the answer to his loneliness, boredom, and depression.

Joseph Smith had impressive capabilities and theocratic power over his followers. Did he start feeling empty, bored, or disconnected like Jack? Did he crave power and devotion beyond what anyone should have as he tried to cope with a high-stress life or feelings of inadequacy? Joseph, like Jack, appears to have grasped for happiness, comfort, and satisfaction in the wrong places.

Not unlike how Jack stumbles on Christmas and tries to use it to solve private problems, Joseph stumbled on polygamy and perceived it as a fix for a personal issue. In 1835, he was struggling with extramarital desire for a woman living in his home as a servant, and was also retranslating the Bible. He came to believe the precedent of men taking multiple wives in the text provided him with a justification to marry another woman illegally. Joseph’s proposal to Fanny Alger mentioned desire rather than revelation (The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy 67). The D&C 132 text also identifies desires for additional partners as the context of Joseph’s plural marriages, stating: “[I]f any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another… then is he justified (v. 61, emphasis mine). Emma perceived the desires Joseph expressed as “indulgent” (Mormon Enigma 153). 

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
Joseph brings personal struggles to the Biblical text

The Church narrative focuses on the idea that plural marriage was an unexpected mandate from God about which Joseph felt reluctance. Times of ambivalence did happen. The problem is, the Church turns a blind eye to the evidence that it was more psychologically complex than this. We assume that if any reluctance was present, this is a kind of proof it never could have been Joseph’s idea or a false revelation in the first place. However, alongside ambivalence and doubts, there was even more enthusiasm, desire, and curiosity on Joseph’s part. When we look at the historical details, we find that Joseph’s plural marriage-related thinking and behaviors were the result of an accumulation of ideas that enticed him over the course of several years rather than revelations that he did not want or expect.

Joseph had actually started to express interest in the idea of taking additional partners a few years before Fanny Alger. In 1831, he said he felt inspired that he and other already-married male saints should marry indigenous women, “that their posterity may become white delightsome and just” (Mormon Enigma 65, In Sacred Loneliness 47). In the same year, he told 12-year-old Mary Elizabeth Rollins that someday she should be his; this grooming resulted in her marrying him years later (Mormon Enigma 65). Thus some of his earliest instances of “inspiration” to instigate plural marriages were rooted in racist sentiments and impulses to give attention to underage girls.

Joseph’s three angelic visitation accounts, still treated as bulwarks of the Church’s defense of the divinity of plural marriage teachings, are not as credible or compelling as traditionally held to be. There are no contemporaneous or first-hand records of the experiences, and it is problematic that the accounts we have suggest that Joseph used the experiences to manipulate others and defer responsibility for his behaviors to God. In some cases, he appears to have shared these visitation accounts specifically to pressure women who had already rejected his proposals of marriage (The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy 92-3; Mormon Enigma 110-1, 146-7).

Considering that the commandment from the angel required breaking the law and the ten commandments as well as harming Joseph’s and others’ family relationships on pain of death, what Joseph experienced was not congruent with the loving and benevolent God he encountered in other instances. These “angel” experiences could have easily been caused by a deceitful spirit or a self-justifying delusion. They are strange outliers to his visionary experiences in that they are they the only instances of “forceful admonishment.” It’s hard to think of anything evil would find more useful than for betrayal, adultery, and sexist, unhappy, non-consensual marital structures to be codified as sacred aspects of the restoration of priesthood ordinances.

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
Joseph’s angel with a fiery sword account was used to make polyandry and polygamy appear as mandates from God to reluctant women and families

There are many other pieces of evidence–beyond what I can share in these posts–that Joseph’s personal thinking, desires, and emotional struggles rather than God’s will were at the roots of polygamy. Joseph brought his personal romantic thoughts and feelings into the practice. For example, he used the concept of “kindred spirits,” which theorized that some people belonged to each other in the premortal life, to justify forming polyandrous unions (In Sacred Loneliness 37-8). His interest in plural marriage escalated into a fixation such that he didn’t speak of much else in private during the last year of his life. It had become central to him both religiously and emotionally (23). Surely it should be concerning to us and our current general leaders that polygamy became a kind of idol that eclipsed Jesus Christ and his gospel for Joseph during his final years.

Why did plural marriage become such an obsession for him? Valerie Hamaker suggests that Joseph suffered from avoidance of his “shadow” or the unconscious parts of him that didn’t match how he wanted to perceive himself as an upright prophet of God. She explains, “[Joseph] didn’t make sense of his own underdeveloped shadow struggles with women, with power, with patriarchy, [or] with sex.” And “when we deny our shadow, it starts to take over, and then we do all sorts of very creative things to make that which is not okay, okay.” Polygamy was a consequence of Joseph deceiving himself and justifying his desires and actions in effort to avoid working through his personal weaknesses (see “The Shadow Side of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy”).

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
Joseph walks away from his shadow struggles to avoid dealing with them. However, avoidance gives them power to take over, much like in Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Shadow”

Perhaps Joseph, like Jack, became obsessed with things he should not have precisely because of nagging dissatisfaction. In Joseph’s case, this dissatisfaction seems not to have been with his leadership role as it is for Jack, but rather with himself. Disordered intimacy is comorbid with self-contempt and shame. Certain early life experiences, such as feeling unwanted in one’s family, and situations that combine humiliation, futility, lust, and anger can lead individuals to struggle with impulses to seek out excessive intimate partners and experiences. 

Acting on such impulses only reinforces self-contempt and serves as an unconscious way of staying connected with deep-set feelings of inadequacy, creating vicious cycles. For a full explanation of the psychology behind this, I highly recommend Unwanted by Jay Stringer. Joseph certainly did not lead a life free of shaming experiences, frustration or anger. Relational and emotional struggles could have easily been at the root of his behaviors and ideas when it came to plural marriage. If Joseph had impulses to seek out excess intimate connections in times of personal strain, this could help explain why he justified spending so much time pursuing intimate relationships in a life chock full of stressful projects, financial instability and transience, strained relationships, disease, loss and grief, arrests and imprisonments, and mob persecution and violence.

Jack’s and Joseph’s approaches to experimentation are ill-suited and do not yield knowledge. After returning to Halloween Town, Jack locks himself away in his study for days, neglecting friends and responsibilities to devote all his time to the study of Christmas. He attempts to decipher its mysteries and meanings by experiments such as dissecting teddy bears, smashing ornaments and boiling them, and observing smashed holly berries under a microscope. Yet the understanding he seeks simply cannot come through such methods. At the end of his experiments, even he acknowledges he still doesn’t get it– the spirit of Christmas has slipped through his “bony fingers” and there is much he cannot grasp.

Joseph’s experiments in studying polygamy were just as poorly designed and violent. His object of study was the Bible, and Joseph’s interpretation was sloppy. Contrary to D&C 132, where we find his thinking about polygamy, Isaac never had plural wives and the biblical text never recounts prophets being commanded to practice plural marriage. Polygamy was just one of the non-religious, worldly aspects of ancient cultures. A harem was a ubiquitous symbol of royalty, power, and wealth. The Old Testament makes clear that the law for Israel’s Kings was monogamy, as laid out in Deut. 17:14-17, which states: “Neither shall [your king] multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away.”

Joseph’s reading ignores the Bible stories in which polygamous relationships create schisms, unhappiness, and jealousy. He didn’t notice the accounts of men repenting from taking excessive partners as part of their journeys toward God. Instead of basing his insights on the text, it is as if he created his own mini mythology in D&C 132 about polygamy being a commandment and priesthood rite among ancient prophets. Joseph’s reinvention of biblical polygamy requires a great leap of faith; his ideas are only really supported in the passage he produced himself in section 132. Despite all this, the Church continues to affirm his stance that Biblical prophets and people were commanded by God to practice polygamy as an exception to God’s standard law for marriage in a Gospel Topics Essay. The supposed divinity of biblical polygamy is a second major bulwark of Latter-Day Saint polygamy that proves flimsy.

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
Joseph treated the Biblical text as if it had content about polygamy that simply isn’t there. Polygamy was against the religious laws for Israel’s Kings and simply part of non-religious ancient practices for wealthy, powerful men. It was driven by economics and lust, not faith or revelation.

Joseph failed to grasp the true spirit of love and marriage just as Jack failed to capture the spirit of Christmas. In section 132, women are treated as objects to possess. If women decline to consent to their husbands marrying other women, they are, most absurdly, to be destroyed by unidentified means. Women’s consent or non-consent amounts to nothing. Joseph couldn’t uncover spiritual light while writing the polygamy verses of section 132 because he had a predetermined agenda to control Emma, cover his personal sins, and gratify his pride (D&C 121:37-41).

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Part 1
Imagining Emma Smith being mysteriously destroyed by God. Emma ultimately did not consent to Joseph Smith’s plural marriages and demanded he separate from his illegal spouses. She lived a lot longer than him and had a joyful dream about reuniting with deceased family members before her death (Mormon Enigma 303). Her supposed destruction proved to be an empty threat. Joseph, on the other hand, was murdered by a mob partly in consequence of his polygamous teachings and lifestyle.

Like the angel with the sword account, there are specific reasons to treat section 132 as a rejection-worthy outlier to Joseph’s other revelatory experiences. For one thing, Joseph usually used the Urim and Thummim to aid his process of receiving revelation, but in this case, he chose not to. He explained to his brother Hyrum that the content was already in his mind (Mormon Enigma 151-2), almost as if he had already decided he didn’t really need God’s input. Joseph usually intended revelations to be shared to benefit others in his community, but he intended D&C 132 to be only for Emma’s eyes. It was actually an indiscretion on the part of later Latter-day Saint leaders to publish and canonize it. Usually, Joseph recorded revelations contemporaneously, but he recorded section 132 over ten years after he started having impressions about plural wives and several years after he started experimenting with the practice. 

Joseph’s experiments with writing scripture about polygamy seem intended from the outset to justify and enable his personal desires and behaviors, however unconscious this probably was. This was selfish and immature. Joseph was a caring, compassionate, gifted, and inspiring leader in many other instances and areas that I can’t cover in these posts, but not when it came to plural marriage.

We will continue the comparison between Jack’s and Joseph’s tragic schemes tomorrow. Will the stories continue to work in parallel, or will they diverge in the end? You can read the conclusion to this post here.

Candice Wendt is an American-Canadian writer and interfaith worker. She is a staff member at McGill University’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and a contributing editor at Wayfare Magazine. She holds a master's degree in comparative humanities studies from BYU. She is married to the psychology scholar Dennis Wendt and they are raising two French-speaking teens together in Montreal. She recently accepted the challenge to try to form and coordinate a choir in what must be one of the most transient and multi-cultural wards in the world.

26 Responses

  1. This is a powerful post. It so clearly lays bare how and why polygamy is the creation of Joseph’s. There are so many things about polygamy and its justifications that directly contradict the gospel of Christ. Husbands are supposed to cleave to their wives, which includes fidelity. This is impossible with polygamy. All are alike unto God, meaning men and women will receive all the same blessings. If women are supposedly in polygamous sealings in the afterlife, they would not receive the blessings of a faithful spouse. This is unjust. The worth of each soul is great in the sight of God. God’s gospel does not create anguish and horror. Polygamy creates anguish and horror for women because it dehumanizes them. God loves Their children and does not proscribe laws that treat women like chattel. We know polygamy is evil by its fruits. Look at the FLDS church. Polygamy is men playing a God of their own creation.

    1. Amen to all of this. We can see the dreadful fruits of polygamy in what has happened in the FLDS church, and they preach the things that Joseph did. My teenage daughter watched the Keep Sweet Pray and Obey series twice without me even realizing she was doing this. Do you think there is any chance she will ever consider the idea polygamy is from God? Nope. Mormon polygamy is truly inconsistent with the love, goodness, and promises of God. I like how you describe the relational and spiritual unfairness to women. Reminds me of something I wrote for a smaller blog: “betrayal was unavoidably built into also polygamous relationships, in which fidelity and unadulterated trust and intimacy are impossible. I find the same kind of heartache and misery caused by partner betrayal in the accounts of Mormon plural wives like Emma as we find among women experiencing betrayal today.

      Polygamy was a way for men to get out of choosing just one person to commit to and be accountable to; it strives to fulfill a romantic and sexual fantasy in which virtually any woman is a potential partner. And if a husband was mistreating, neglecting, or not getting along with one wife, there were others he could go to. Husbands could avoid accountability and personal growth. This is an immature stunted way of being in relationship. Because of eternal polygamy doctrines, these distorted and unequal relationship dynamics still harm LDS marriages today.”

      Thank you for reading and responding, I really appreciate it, and I’m glad the post resonates with you.

  2. I love this! I remember when I first learned about polygamy when I was 12. I cried after reading D&C 132 because I figured, if God treated Emma so poorly, why would he treat me any differently? I loved the beautiful things I learned in primary but when learning about polygamy, it felt as if there was a footnote saying “oh, these beautiful things only apply if you’re a man.” I felt so hurt and betrayed. I finally gave myself permission to have a different perspective when I was on my mission. I was talking to my companion about how I hated polygamy and they just said “oh yeah, I think Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet.” I had never thought that was something I could believe because I had been taught the black and white belief that Joseph is either a prophet or he isn’t. But it makes sense that he is a fallen prophet considering he literally died because of polygamy and one of our beliefs is that God will take away any prophet that is leading people astray.

  3. Very well done. As an adult, I approached my own study of polygamy the same way I was taught to approach the question of “Is the Book of Mormon/ Church true?” in my youth. That is, through careful study of the “correct”/ “safe” sources and then taking the question to God with an open heart and mind, ready to receive whatever answer he had for me. It was a scary, faithful process because I was ready to receive and accept the truth, even if it meant that what looked to be a nightmare was actually the celestial kingdom. Turns out, the answer I received is that it really is just a nightmare! Which was a relief on one level, but a difficult answer still…because I then had to take on the new struggle of working to reconcile the newfound dissonance of the “true” prophet and church getting something this major so terribly, frighteningly wrong and then stubbornly clinging to the error through so many lives…and going on two centuries…of catastrophic damage. We could indeed call this saga “The Nightmare Before the Full Restoration.” It is certainly a stumbling block holding the Church back . When I read the Church’s gospel topic essay on the subject, I literally began shaking and developed a nasty pit in my stomach. Sorry, no spirit of peace testifying of truth there. It’s just the same, old, tired, flimsy justifications.

    1. Tracy, I love this experience. I have had a similar one. I prayed for years to know for myself that polygamy was from God because it never felt like it was and it filled me with dread. I never received an answer. I put it aside, but occasionally it would rear its ugly head and I came to recognize in my 30’s that it weakened my trust in God and my own spirituality. It still filled me with dread of death and the afterlife. About 3 years ago, I told God I was done. I was closing the door on polygamy. I would never be willing to entertain the idea it was godly or heavenly anymore. Profound personal peace followed, and then 5 minutes later, a powerful experience of personal communion with God/revelation that I never would have expected. God understood exactly where I was at and turning away from polygamy was something that pleased God!

  4. It’s tragic in so many ways, just one of which is that there are actually many lessons to be learned from this error, and the process of messing up and repenting is what actually leads to growth (as the Church teaches it). But in stubbornly running from its own shadow, the Church stays stuck in the error. It wouldn’t be so hard to grapple with and grow from if the Church hadn’t for so long taught its members to take on an “all or nothing” approach. Alas, the Church remains stuck in problems of its own making.

    1. I like the fact that you pointed out that the church runs from its own shadow. It is like in following the first prophet, the whole church is making the exact same mistake and then failing to repent of it. I can’t wait until Oaks and Nelson who both have second wives they want as polygamous second wives in the next life, are gone and we have a one wife prophet without that polygamous motive to refuse to see polygamy as a mistake. Hinckley called it a mistake but then Nelson and Oaks do not want it to be a mistake, so they try hard to keep a mistake as “true” and just perpetuate the damage.

      1. Anna, I’m also concerned about having leaders who are actively opting into eternal polygamy. It troubles me and I notice it weakens the trust of the women of the Church in these leaders. The Church has a history of punishing people like me who do shadow work such as looking at unhealthy events and abuses of power. Valerie Hamaker has made some interesting episodes about that.

    2. Tracy, I agree, I know members of the church who individually learn incredible things about marriage, sex, psychology, God, and more by grappling with all the tragic mistake of polygamy as individuals. It feels like the Church is stuck in a state of denial and immaturity due to not learning from its mistakes. I think the leaders have inherited a kind of traumatized self-defensive response. Brene Brown writes, “when the culture of a…church…mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of that system and those in power than it is to protect the basic human dignity of individuals…you can be certain of the following problems: Shame is systemic, Complicity is part of the culture. Money and power trump ethics. Accountability is dead. Control and fear and management tools. And there’s a trail of devastation and pain” (Atlas of the Heart pg. 195).

  5. Wow, I never made the connection that Emma went on to live a long life, and it was Joseph who was destroyed.

    When I think about “taking the name of the Lord in vain” I think about Joseph attributing his practice of polygamy to God, and causing all that hurt and betrayal that still ripples out to us today.

    I love the gospel and attend church every week, but Joseph got this part very very wrong.

    1. Thanks, Moss. I like this framing it was a way of taking the name of God in vain. I agree. I read the book Addictive Thinking by A. Twerksi and it talks a lot about how when people struggle with self-deception, one of their big tactics is to project their own flaws and violations onto other people and things. The way I see it, Joseph projected his own problems onto God! He essentially said “you’ve got to marry me or God will kill me!” That’s pretty twisted and manipulative.

  6. Amen to all of this! Polygamy brings so much harm historically and today. I find it impossible a loving God created it. Joseph Smith was an imperfect human and we need to be more willing to say that! I wish the church would openly call polygamy what it was—a mistake.

    1. A friend recently said she is completely disinterested in whatever God would command polygamy. I’m totally in that camp now. It shocks me I put up with that unloveable God, as Carol Lynn Pearson puts it, “the God who hurts you” for so long. Some men, esp. older white men, are very, very out of touch with polygamy being a problem today. But the pain is real and I find it everywhere.

  7. While realizing this is kind of tangential, I can’t help but feel troubled by the use of generated imagery to illustrate the article. A lot of diffusion engines that create AI images are “trained” by the nonconsensual and uncompensated use of others people’s art (https://beautifulbizarre.net/2023/03/11/ai-art-ethical-concerns-of-artists/). I understand wanting to enhance the piece with seasonally appropriate Halloween imagery, but I think the article would be stronger if this thorny moral problem wasn’t distracting from and undermining its message.

    1. I get the concern about the ethics of AI, I usually don’t use AI art. The platform I used for all these images is Canva, which does pay their art creators and has an ethics protocol (https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/safe-ai-canva-shield/). I in turn paid to use this service. I’m just a volunteer putting research and writing time in to contribute to Mormon Letters because I care about people, not to make moola off this.

  8. Thank you for this wonderful essay. I respect your choice, and others choices, to honor Joseph as an otherwise good man and true prophet except for the horrors brought about by the implementation and theology of polygamy. I however personally choose to not respect him in that way. I see the institution of polygamy as a part of the long-standing pattern of self-aggrandizement, using power and charisma (which he had in spades) to elevate himself, his personal desires, and his ideas. His personal power structure was fraught with poisonous secrecy and manipulation , especially in the case of polygamy, as well as fraud and deceit in other historical aspects. Historian Dan Vogel labels Joseph as a “narcissist” and “pious fraud”, which rings more true to me. I do think it’s true that in many ways he felt he was doing God’s work, and thus he felt justified in the ways he sought to carry it out. If the visions or revelations or the “angel with the sword” weren’t quite real, it didn’t really matter because, in his eyes, it was all Gods work for him, Joseph, to do. Again, I hold space for those who believe that Joseph was basically good and just lost his way with polygamy. I hope there is space for those of us who believe that polygamy is just the huge cherry on the cake of problematic issues. Thank you for this great article and for shedding light on a topic that ultimately feels so personal to many of us.

    1. Hi Karen, people connecting respectfully in this way is exactly what I value when discussing these things. I do respect others who don’t want to root themselves in Mormon spirituality, and who decide to distance themselves from Joseph. I love when we can talk about it openly. I feel it’s likely that Joseph developed some narcissism. A lot of powerful people do, and obsession / addictive thinking and behavior is also conducive to this problem. I know Larry Foster suspects he came to struggle with narcissism. But I find the Vogel’s assertion he was a fraud to be dismissive and a boundary violation against spirituality. No responsible religious studies scholar today would say something like this, there stance must remain on the academic side rather than deciding what is true or real. We all have our personal beliefs, and that’s our right, but ultimately, none of us knows with certainty what all of his motivations were. None of us can know for sure he was a fraud or what actually happened when it came to his mystical experiences in an objective way.

      As an interfaith worker who works to build my religious literacy, I learn about how abuses of power, esp. misogyny and sexual abuse have infiltrated every religious movement, and the lives of many venerated leaders. Was Martin Luther King a fraud because he was a sex addict who justified sin in his personal theology and was implicit in rape? Did Ghandi accomplish nothing good because he committed sexually abusive acts? Is Buddhism all useless because it has incorporated misogynistic teachings that women need to be reborn as men to achieve a fuller enlightenment? Sexual abuse, sexist teachings, and abuses of power are so ubiquitous that we end up throwing out so many movements, people, and cultures if historians were to label their founders and leaders as “frauds.” We have to keep in mind there is a lot of bias against Mormons in the US and scholars bring their negative feelings and biases into this. In addition to religious leaders, many historical figures who had great minds and hearts made similar mistakes as Joseph’s justifying betraying their partners, being with multiple women, or abusing women. A few I admire are Thomas Hardy, Karl Barth, and Charles Dickens. Betrayal and abuse have been easy traps for men to fall into throughout history. Some of these men eventually saw what they did as tragedy and a blight on their lives as Joseph likely did (see part II of my post). Their harmful behaviors did not entirely dim the good they did in the world or the beauty and truth of their ideas, despite the fact that their personal histories disappoint and sadden us. Their sexual brokenness and narcissism doesn’t mean they were frauds. We end up finding we need to judge their fruits, such as the texts they produced, or how they impacted society, separately from how they lived their personal lives.

  9. I’ve been toying with the idea that polygamy wasn’t from our loving heavenly parents for a couple years, this post really supports everything I’ve been thinking and reading about. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Hi Liane, Thank you so much for reading and commenting, and I am happy this post felt supportive to you. I’m grateful for how differentiating concerning polygamy has been healing and joyful in my relationship with my Heavenly Parents. It’s helped me perceive that they are good, loving, fair-minded, and desirous of their children’s righteousness, peace, and happiness through and through. Not a wit of cruelty or sexism. After writing this post, I’ve had a strong sense of love and forgiveness toward Joseph Smith. I believe in so much of his vision. For me, The Book of Mormon holds up. It is a visionary text that brings people to God, and I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful to be in this nuanced space of fully embracing what I discern as good and right and not force feeding myself things that feel wrong.

  10. The problem with Polygamy at it’s core is “legalized infidelity”.

    Women are “in fidelity” to their husband (only 1) and children while men are “in fidelity” to multiples of spouses, in-laws, and children.

    As was chillingly illustrated with Emma, women do not get a say in whether the resources can be spent to expand the family unit beyond the husband/wife/children household when it comes to Polygamy.

    “Social Infidelity” aka “Split Attention” – The “man is being shared” (even if it is just the man’s social prestige and community ranking) and that social currency cannot be spent to further the careers of the children, connect to the mother, or other ways.

    “Emotional Infidelity” – It’s easier to “live around” and migrate between households as a quasi-honored guest then it is to “do the work” of living amongst one’s family and “growing together” emotionally.

    “Financial Infidelity” – It was hit or miss on how the family finances were managed. While wealthier husbands could “afford” more wives (in theory), the economic costs of not having a dad around (because he was living with his other family) are not small. Polygamy and Poverty went hand in hand as a man’s income wasn’t necessarily easily divisible and women tried to make up the difference.

    “Mental Health Infidelity” – The level of insecurity and replacement felt among wives was where jealousy and distrust between all parties grew. Young single men were the other party that had serious mental health challenges from their prospective marriage partners being absorbed into polygamous families.

    1. Amen to all of this, thanks for taking the time for pointing out all these social and emotional disadvantages and their consequences. I really feel for the men who were lower in the hierarchy and who faced painful situations. I love how Carol Lynn Pearson debunks so much of the myths about polygamy in her book, including that there was not a surplus of women, and some men didn’t have people to marry.

      I have a second great grandmother who happens to look a lot like me who was born into polygamy. I had surgery on my jaw for the underbite she passed down to me, she has always felt really close to me emotionally through the stories about her too. She was born into a large polygamous family with big financial struggles. At seven, her parents sent her to work as a servant in another home to earn her keep. She was supposed to receive some organ lessons in return, but these never happened. She didn’t get to grow up with her family. She grew up as a working child, a servant on her own. At 14, her bishop proposed marriage and she turned him down. Two years later, she married a handsome English immigrant and they had 6 kids together and a reasonably happy life. This is the grandma that my grandfather grew up with. This story is part of my psyche, part of her is very much inside of me. The disadvantages of having a weak connection to your father, financial instability, a mother who is continuously betrayed– it’s just an awful situation. Sadly, these people thought they were doing God’s will, and I think God really has so much empathy and kindness toward that. So much good has come out of their lives and their families despite the difficulties the Church put them through.

      One of my favorite pet points to add to the list of disadvantages is that the idea that one man having a bunch of wives could ever produce more offspring in a society. One of the gospel topics essays, the one on LDS plural marriage broadly, still asserts that increased births was a reason it needed to happen. This is nonsense. It is proven that polygamous communities produce fewer births. How could having fewer males, thus less, sex and sperm to go around ever, ever produce more babies? All it does is allow dominant men to have more children as individuals (not the women, they have fewer), and it causes less privileged men to go partner-less. You can see this in how the FLDS have had periods of kicking their adolescent boys out of the community because they don’t need them. It is so degrading to boys and girls both. My sister pointed out why would God produce 50% females and 50% males and then have this system? I was always told fewer men would go to the celestial kingdom because they are more wicked. Looking back on this and on me being taught this was my eternal future, I think whose husbands are going to be mysteriously damned and kicked out of their families out of all my friends and family?

  11. I didn’t include the information about “more children” because I don’t think that Polygamy was ever about “more children”.

    I get how it was billed as the “more children” pathway back then – but the leaders could have created a pre-Mandalorian Foundling Foundation with better results if “more children” was the indiscriminate end result.

    A case could be made of “more children – like us” and/or “more children of our best bloodlines” – but genetic in-breeding always ends badly and requires infusions of DNA (and thinking) from “outsiders” such as Ruth, Rahab, and David (before they became “insiders”).

    1. Amy, you are right. I don’t find the “more children” or “raising up seed” idea early on in Joseph’s thinking. It’s not in 132. It’s possible Joseph had children by his plural wives (this is a mystery, Mormon Enigma presents some evidence of them possibly being raised by other families, not their moms) but he didn’t raise them, the point seemed to be the sealings for him. I think it came later with the interpretation of the verse in Jacob and what went on with later Saints. I used to buy into the idea that certain men were so valiant they could benefit their children spiritually, but now that seems like nonsense when we look at the big picture of humanity and God’s plan. God wants growth and opportunities like being a parent for all, not just those who are obviously achieving religious devotion, and children to have fathers who have time and energy to give them.

  12. My favorite quote from Emma in Mormon Enigma is, “Joseph ruined a beautiful region.” Reading William Clayton’s journal opened my eyes to how the temple was structured around men saving women….not Christ. Structuring the endowment/veil this way made William think he was in God’s mission when he listed after women, to “save them”. I.e. husbands resurrect wives…

    1. I haven’t read that, that sounds like an interesting and useful source for feminist writing. These thoughts remind me of Trudy’s recent post, Jesus Saves, Marriage Doesn’t at https://exponentii.org/blog/jesus-saves-marriage-doesnt/ . Also reminds me of thoughts a guest shared on I think the ALSSI podcast about how after Jesus came, we really didn’t need an intermediary between us and the temple or the presence of God. We shouldn’t have a priest decide our fitness for us, we are free agents to come to Christ and God on our own. Some women I know are very very troubled by their impression that Joseph’s abuses of power in polygamy crept into temple language and the promises made there– like oaths of secrecy and loyalty. Some see the temple as having been used partly to keep women under men’s’ thumbs. There has been some progress away from that, but I think we have a way to go still. I like how the endowment does some interesting work orienting us to a mortal life and giving us a sense of purpose and possibly resilience. I hate the passivity of going and the gender differences and disadvantage that remain.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Our Comment Policy

  • No ads or plugs.
  • No four-letter words that wouldn’t be allowed on television.
  • No mudslinging: Stating disagreement is fine — even strong disagreement, but no personal attacks or name calling. No personal insults.
  • Try to stick with your personal experiences, ideas, and interpretations. This is not the place to question another’s personal righteousness, to call people to repentance, or to disrespectfully refute people’s personal religious beliefs.
  • No sockpuppetry. You may not post a variety of comments under different monikers.

Note: Comments that include hyperlinks will be held in the moderation queue for approval (to filter out obvious spam). Comments with email addresses may also be held in the moderation queue.

Write for Us

We want to hear your perspective! Write for Exponent II Blog by submitting a post here.

Support Mormon Feminism

Our blog content is always free, but our hosting fees are not. Please support us.

related Blog posts

We each have to come to terms with our religious history and most especially, polygamy.
Mr. Reed is a horrible person and a psychopath. It’s cruel how he antagonizes the missionaries about their faith. Most of what he shares in the film is not challenging to me at all as a Latter-day Saint or a religious person. He’s a puffed-up, self-aggrandizing man with an intellectual air he uses to try to mask his underdeveloped dualistic thinking and shoddy arguments. There is just one topic he covers that genuinely does and should sting regarding the Church: his concerns about polygamy. Watching this scene at this point in my life, I honestly resonated with Mr. Reed’s take of what happened with polygamy and the dilemma it poses to believers.

Never miss A blog post

Sign up and be the first to be alerted when new blog posts go live!

Loading

* We will never sell your email address, and you can unsubscribe at any time (not that you’ll want to).​