This weekend I enjoyed watching Heretic. As a Mormon feminist, interfaith worker, and fan of thoughtful horror plots, this film touched on many things I think about regularly. It kind of felt like it was made just for me.
I won’t be spoiling any outcomes of the film, but I will share and discuss some dialogue near the beginning of it.
Mr. Reed, played by Hugh Grant, raises Joseph Smith’s polygamy as the first line of attack to antagonize the beliefs of two young adult missionaries. He is dissatisfied with the justifications they offer; he says polygamy has no spiritual value, and that Joseph Smith used it to legitimize extramarital affairs with women. Joseph’s actions, he suggests, are a prime example of the problem of mystical experience becoming dogma. He points out that it is hard to trust others’ revelations when people are so liable to abuse power, and how when you see human frailty like Joseph’s, it’s easy to give up trying to believe anything religious.
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. It makes sense to me that this is the very first thing he uses to try to break apart Latter-day Saint faith. I personally have experienced polygamy as the weakest link in Mormonism’s armor and its biggest ongoing problem.
Latter-day Saint plural marriage doctrines have a much bigger impact on women today than any outsiders would be able to pick up on from the film. The teachings did not really end near the turn of the 20th century. They are alive and well, harming marriages and girls’ well-being to this day. In the 90’s and early 2000’s, I was regularly taught at church that polygamy is God’s lifestyle and a more sacred order of marriage I must someday conform to if I wanted to fully return to God’s presence. Polygamy is still upheld as divinely sanctioned in Latter-day Saint temple rituals and scriptures. For example, if I die before my husband does, he could get married for eternity to another woman, making me a post-humous polygamous wife without him or the Church having any obligation to obtain my consent. D&C 132, written in 1843 by Joseph Smith as a message to his wife Emma and canonized as scripture, contains spiritually abusive passages in which women are treated as objects to possess, it is made clear women’s lack of consent has no power to set boundaries for men, and women are threatened with God’s destruction if they don’t approve of men practicing polygamy.
Mr. Reed raises the question how can we know if others’ religious claims are true? One of the sisters says that we can know by the way we feel. This dialogue made me think of my personal history of strong feelings about polygamy and resistance to accepting it as revelation. During the 27-year-long period of my life when I felt compelled to accept polygamy as divine, I experienced many miserable thoughts and emotions. I felt lesser than men, deprived of true sexual and marital agency, terrified of death and heaven, and unhappy about womanhood.
I agree with Mr. Reed that polygamy is a strong example of the obstacles to trusting religious leaders that arise. When my belief in polygamy crumbled a few years ago, this jeopardized my faith and I had to grow and become more independent and nuanced in my thinking.
Joseph Smith’s polygamy continues to harm many people’s spiritual lives and emotional well-being. The problem is perpetuated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ refusal to do virtually anything–besides adding a brief note in the official handbook that God won’t force anyone to stay in an unwanted sealing in the afterlife–about the spiritual and psychological abuse it causes. People at church don’t teach it as much today as they once did, and rhetoric has softened, but the Church clings to unwavering trust in polygamy as a legitimate revelation, a legacy passed down through generations of Joseph’s (overly) loyal male successors (several of whom were polygamous themselves).
Unlike Mr. Reed, I’m not an all-or-nothing thinker about religion. I don’t jump to assuming the worst of Joseph Smith. I know from study and from life that some people are complicated psychologically and spiritually, and that we humans are not all good or evil or all gifted or flawed. When I consider his history as a whole, I don’t think abuse and broken trust are what Joseph Smith consciously intended. It looks more likely he suffered from disordered intimacy due to emotional wounds that he didn’t understand or know how to deal with, and that this led to self-deception about his behavior difficulties. One reason among many others for believing this is that there is evidence he had rock bottom type experience when he regretted his plural marriage teachings and practices and felt he had been wrong about it the whole time, the kind of thing that can happen when someone has been caught up in addictive thinking and starts breaking out of the delusions they used to justify acting out.
Joseph Smith is not the first or last spiritual leader to abuse others, or to justify his abuses through theology. Martin Luther King Jr. struggled with sex addiction and created a self-deceptive personal theology to justify betraying his wife through repeated rounds of infidelity and preplanned penitence (I learned about this in How Can I Forgive You?). MLK’s life suggests that someone can have a serious intimacy disorder or be deeply self-deceived in one area and also be a genuinely gifted, inspired, and even prophetic leader who does good in the world that is hard to deny. I’ve sometimes have heard MLK referred to as America’s greatest prophet despite his issues. I see Joseph’s life as having a comparable pattern. Binary thinking about people and religion is inadequate to grapple with the real problems at hand. (For more about my perspective of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, see these recent posts in which I compare Joseph Smith and Jack Skellington: Part 1, Part 2).
Nuanced perspectives allowed me to weather my damaged trust in Joseph Smith. I continue to engage in Mormon spirituality because of positive personal experiences. Mormon community and practices have made my life joyful, fulfilling, and connected in many ways (minus polygamy). I have found many things about Mormon spirituality remarkably rich and emotionally and intellectually rewarding.
Some people like Mr. Reed think religion is about attaining correct, literal beliefs. This is the dominant approach to religion in the Western world. Since this is the water we swim in, we usually don’t recognize this kind of bias. In reality, what’s usually valuable about faith and spirituality is not having specific beliefs, but how it connects us to things that are greater than ourselves. I have valued Mormonism for decades because it offers me connection, belonging, and ways to create meaning.
But the Church’s continued affirmation of polygamy as divine will, as well as other misogynistic structures, traditions, and policies threaten my prospects for belonging in the Church at this point more than ever before. Now that I’ve differentiated on polygamy, it feels like the Church is in direct opposition to some of the values and principles I now cherish the most, especially gender equality. During my childhood, when the Church offered a much richer and more enjoyable community life, staying involved felt like a no-brainer for me, even despite things like the polygamy crap. But the Church has now largely stripped its priorities down to temple worship, a solitary, silent, and solemn activity. It it currently letting go of most of its efforts to build rewarding local community life, making church less and less inclusive and compelling for women (and everyone) and less accommodating to women’s needs, values, desires, and strengths.
The Church has had a self-defensive, negative, and disapproving response to Heretic that I don’t resonate with. The official statement about the film says “Any narrative that promotes violence against women because of their faith.…runs counter to the safety and wellbeing of our communities.” This is a strange thing to say because the film doesn’t promote violence; it depicts it, which is different. Horror films are highly moral, and like most horror films, this one shows us the ugliness and evil of violence. The Church may claim to condemn violence against women, but this feels pretty hypocritical to me considering that the institution has chosen to perpetuate spiritual, psychological, and sexual violence against women for over 180 years through its plural marriage narratives and doctrines (I include sexual violence here because of the early days of women being manipulated into marrying polygamously, and all the instances in which the teachings have justified sexual exploitation since). For all these years, male authorities have failed to respond to thousands of women like me who have called out abuse and demanded change.
In another media-oriented statement in August, the Church said, “The true story of our faith is best seen in the countless lives of those who strive daily to follow our Savior Jesus Christ.” I agree with this, but the official, institutionally promoted historical and theological narratives nevertheless matter a great deal and play a major role in communicating the Church’s values and direction. The story of Joseph’s polygamy, which claims God demanded cruel and disempowering marital and sexual situations for both women and men, is a narrative the Church must become willing to adapt and reinterpret–with women’s contributions and leadership–if they are to move forward and become a truly ethical and accountable institution, one that condemns violence against women through and through.
Personally, I saw nothing that treats the Church unfairly in Heretic, and I think good will come out of it for both members and non-members, including a greater appreciation of Mormon women and missionaries and the challenges and vulnerabilities they face. I feel gratitude toward the makers of this film for bringing Mormon women’s issues, resourcefulness, and strengths into the public eye, and for how this film is a call for deeper thinking about faith and spirituality and also critical and compassionate thinking about violence against religious women. As a Mormon woman living in one of the most secular cities in the world, I felt very much seen by the writers. For me, the film affirmed the importance and the complexity of the difficult questions I grapple with regularly about spirituality, religion, and the meanings we need in our lives as I support Mormon women in my personal life and religious young adults at my work.
14 Responses
Yeah, most of the stuff fictional Mr. Reed says was true (from a certain perspective) but not terribly compelling, but polygamy is an easy check mate. I loved the three word response of one of the sisters, because I feel the same way.
I think many of our current leaders actually like the polygamy doctrine and see it as comforting, because they look forward to having both their deceased first wives and their living second wives with them for eternity, and also like the thought that if they die first, their wives cannot replace them because only men can be polygamous. Since this doctrine benefits men, and only men have authority to change doctrine in this church, we do not see change.
Thanks for reading, April. I like how you articulate the reasons why our leaders likely don’t budge. Holding on to all wives in mortality is the way that Joseph convinced his brother Hyrum to get on board with polygamy, it pulled on his heart strings. But losing everything we have, as Adam Miller has written, is part of discipleship and the human condition, it is what God asks of us in this life. The urge to cling to every wife and create rituals to keep them all safely in hand is something I can feel some sympathy for, but I also perceive it as immature, audacious, and sort of deeply American (“I can have it all, I don’t have to choose”). Mature men have to pick one person to be committed to. Their persistence of practicing polygamy posthumously really objectifies women, the husbands make the choices about the marital situations, the wives have no power here. It certain doesn’t help that Pres Nelson and Elder Oaks are posthumous polygamists and subtly remind us of the polygamist futures they hope for regularly.
I think you’re referring to Sis. Paxton’s response, “not for me,” yes I loved that. To this I add, “not for anyone, and a heaven where there is even one polygamous couple is a heaven with gender inequality that I don’t want to take part in.”
I intended this as an outward facing post that might reach people outside of the Church who are interested in knowing about the experience and thinking of women inside the Church about the details Mr. Reed brought up about polygamy. I care about raising awareness that this issue still hurts Mormon women, that many of us don’t believe it was ever divine, and that we find creative and intelligent ways to grapple with why it happened, and why our faith still matters to us despite the abuse that went on.
Actually, I was referring to the line, “Yeah, it’s sketch.” But I absolutely agree that our elderly male leaders choosing to hold on to this harmful doctrine because they think it will benefit them if it is true, and they think they somehow can own their wives, even after they die, is not a sign of spiritual maturity.
Thanks for clarifying, April! That’s really interesting she said that, I didn’t catch it.
It seems quite petty and selfish that they allow so much damage to be inflicted on members for a bit of psychological comfort and convenience for them (the comfort of believing you’ll retain both your wives in the next life).
Fantastic post, Candice! I haven’t seen the movie yet — don’t know if I will since I hate horror — but I enjoyed reading your take on it and your focus on the polygamy question. In my 20s I used to cry regularly when I thought about polygamy and God forcing me to be a polygamist in heaven. I remember when I was interviewing with the stake president to get my endowments to get married, he asked if there were any teachings I didn’t support (or something along those lines). Among other things, I told him I had a problem with polygamy, and that my fiance and I agreed that if I died, he would not get sealed again unless I visited him as an angel and told him he could do it. The stake president did not like that answer. I think you’re right — some men aren’t too bothered by current polygamous sealing practices because these practices and beliefs only benefit them if their wife dies.
But even with my husband’s promise to me that he wouldn’t get sealed without an angelic visitation, I still cried over polygamy because I had been taught that God would make people be polygamous in heaven. It was a terrible threat hanging over me; it made me unhappy, scared, and anxious. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but eventually sometime in my 30s, I just decided it wasn’t true, that Joseph Smith’s practice was almost definitely him getting his wires crossed and acting as a fallible man, and that any God worth worshipping would not support this system that was unfair, inequitable, and coercive. I’ve decided similarly about other gendered and racist teachings in the church. And I have felt so much more peace and happiness by letting go of these teachings that were so hurtful and damaging to my psyche and soul. I hope all women who suffer because of these teachings will also self-authorize to throw these harmful ideas out the window.
Thanks for sharing your experience with it, Caroline. I found polygamy very harmful in several areas of my life. As a nine year old, I went to a trusted adult in spiritual pain about the teachings I’d been indoctrinated with looking for validation, and they gave me absolutely none. Instead they told me one women is not enough sexually for a man, and that this is how God is too. I was exposed to a lot of misogyny growing up, and this just blended into that.
I had similar inspiration to you in my mid-thirties. I have heard many other women describe coming to the conclusion that, “any God worth worshipping would not support this system.” I had a spiritual experience after praying about how I was done making space for polygamy that solidified my stance. I agree with Carol Lynn Pearson that God seems to insist very loudly that this all be corrected. People have to be in the right head space to seek and accept such revelation. I want to help Mormons deal with this area in a way that can bring some peace, healing, and more nuance instead of reductive thinking.
Thanks for your insights on this issue. I remember noticing, some years ago, that things I had been taught in the church as a child were no longer mentioned in lessons or conference (justifications for the priesthood and temple ban, polygamy, the importance of taking the sacrament with the right hand, etc.). I was so RELIEVED as I came to the conclusion that these teachings were fading out and maybe the church no longer believed them.
It’s been interesting seeing the church slowly (too slowly, in my opinion) distance from the “folk doctrines,” to quote Jeffrey Holland, double down on polygamy, and reinstate right hand sacrament taking, although this was just quietly slipped into the handbook and still hasn’t been taught in any lesson I’ve ever seen). Since then I’ve taken ownership of what I believe and what kind of God I am willing to worship. I’m a little bit sad that I didn’t own what I am willing to believe earlier in my life, but better late than never. Thank you again for speaking up and raising these issues that impact us so much.
I did not know about the right hand sacrament taking being reemphasized. That’s really dumb. I’m glad when folk doctrines that are sexist, racist, and hierarchical are abandoned, but one I treasured (when I was younger — now I have mixed feelings) is that of Heavenly Mother. I’m not sure I want her thrown out, if the church retains it’s teaching that God the Father is an anatomical male. Though I suppose people could argue she’s a real doctrine, not a folk doctrine. I probably put her in that category because Armand Mauss used to categorize Heavenly Mother teachings as folk doctrine. I have a lot of feelings/thoughts to work through when it comes to Heavenly Mother.
I’m very grateful to have seen the post on Instagram that led me here today, Candice. Your thoughts have helped me finally, finally, get clarity with regard to LDS polygamy. I’ve been struggling with this for 30 years. My great-grandfather was a polygamist in the LDS colonies in Mexico. He abandoned his wife and their children, leaving them in poverty. Learning that face was my first taste of what polygamy was really like. Over the years I have read everything I could find about the practice, from primary sources to commentary and realistic fiction. I have found very little to indicate that it benefited women and children (aside from sister wives helping each other with housework). Your post here and the one on Beauty for Ashes have clarified JS’s possible motivations for me. I appreciate your thorough reasoning and research. I will be returning to your writing again and again, as I navigate this particular thorn in my testimony.
Sarah, thank you so much for responding. I’m glad my thoughts have been helpful. They come from recognizing that there are some well-intentioned, smart, very spiritual people around me who have actually inspired me a lot and whom I’ve even shared spiritual learning and experiences, who have childhood traumas that have left them with an impulse for too much intimacy in the wrong places. A few years ago I was supporting a close friend who was struggling with being married to a good person suffering from sex addiction, and she was also wrestling with Joseph Smith’s story and how much it reminded her of the experiences of betrayed women married to men suffering from compulsive behaviors and addictive thinking. She saw how Joseph’s behaviors were abusive and unhealthy, and looked like an addiction more than revelation. I’m hoping to research more and write a book on the intersection of polygamy and mental and relational health in the next few years with a coauthor who has her own insights. For anyone interested in the blog post about Joseph Smith and sex addiction that Sarah referred to, you can find it here: https://beautyforashesldsblog.wordpress.com/2024/03/30/i-believe-joseph-was-a-prophet-and-seer-but-also-sexually-broken/
You were given this explanation as a nine-year old!?! 😳😡 I was also exposed to so much sexism and misogyny growing up. My dad would joke about polygamy, dismissing the pain and experiences of women so cavalierly. He is such a good patriarch that he absolutely knows what’s best for women, you see, and understands women’s situations better than women themselves do. After naively sharing a personally traumatic experience with him as an adult women, he reminded me over and over again that I was overreacting and that he knew best, saying ad noseam that, as a stake president he had “counseled women like me” and knew what he was talking about.😱🤦♂️😵😢😠
This recently came up in a conversation with my sister, (who spells her name the same way you do, Candice; small world). My father recently posthumously sealed my grandmother to my grandfather, despite their having been divorced for over 25 years before their deaths. Now, if his widow-his second wife-has her temple work performed someday and she is sealed to Grandpa, too, my grandma “gets” to be the first wife, but still… My sister left the Church years ago and rarely broaches the subject, so when she brought this sealing up to me and relayed her “icky” and empathetic feelings for Grandma’s potential rage, (my sister just experiencing divorce herself,) I couldn’t help but commiserate and exchange opinions on related subjects. I told her, misquoting Joseph, that I agree with Moroni’s statement that Joseph’s name would be had for good and ill (quote is actually “evil,”) because, as I put it, “Joseph was both good and ill.” I’ve also seen symptoms of sex and intimacy addiction, trauma related to inheritance and family of origin and the infant mortality in his own family and postnatal mother mortality all around him, in his story. I look forward to seeing this subject explored more rigorously.
Having wrestled with polygamy since college at different times in my life, I’ve come to settle on its main sticking point for me being consent. I would not care to practice, and have lost much emotional intimacy to that ghost of polygamy myself over the years. If, however, people want to enter into polygyny (yes, it should be fair between genders,) and are all fully informed, mature, autonomous, and consensual, that’s a freedom I allow them, even in a heaven. It is a rare, rare thing in human history for plural marriage to show up in this form, however, as we especially see when we peer into Mormon past and Mormon-adjacent spaces, and that is certainly not okay now, nor descriptive of a heaven for which I strive.
Misty, thanks for sharing some of your experience and for the encouragement to write about the possible psychological reasons for Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Writing about it overwhelms me, but I also feel like someone needs to do it. I’m glad others can see this angle, it helps me keep going. I love this “for good and ill perspective” of Joseph.
I don’t doubt that some people learn valuable things from and have an expansive experience with polygyny, or that some people figure out how to do polyamory in a more ethical way. But I realized recently how I really feel about it recently when polyamory was being taught as a healthy, normal sexual path at my kids’ high school. This made me really uncomfortable. I gave negative feedback to the directive team about it, partly because polygynists don’t enjoy civil protections. My brother pointed out to me that some of the most common abusers of kids are their mom’s boyfriends, and how having extra adults in the parents’ marriage could make kids more vulnerable to abuse. From the real-life polyamory I know of being practiced, it is often privileged couples courting younger less advantaged people for the sake of spicing up their sex life, I find most cases that are happening now very voyeuristic, and something that waters down the nobler and more spiritual parts of marriage and sex. So I’m full-on opposed to it, its too unstructured and hard to justify as a real need, esp. in light of the needs of children for stable families, and I don’t trust for women to be treated as equals in these situations. I’ve also been turned off by it because I’ve heard some polyamorists talk about their sexuality as something more evolved and advanced than what other people have, and I think things get arrogant and kind of wacko, really quickly in this uncharted territory.
Especially where children are involved, as I’ve seen it proposed or practiced, here on earth amongst very flawed humans, I also don’t agree. Even serial monogamy, including the dating process, can be very damaging to children (as you mentioned). My “allowance” for poly- relationships, if one could call it that, would be in a more celestial or evolved setting, I’d say. Like I said, if it does or has existed here, even equitably for the adults involved, it is rare. Add children to that… that’s a whole other level of messy.
I’ve heard of more open relationships being discussed among students in high school, but not taught. Wow. I don’t know that not discussing various historical and cultural relationship forms is wise, depending on the course and age of students, (I’m thinking of how many LDS people’s minds and testimonies have been shattered upon learning about polygamy in their adulthood,) but advocating for any kind of relationship at that maturity level, I’d take issue with, as well! Teaching it as fully acceptable without research and qualifiers, is poor education, at the least, and misguided, jumping to a conclusion here.
This is one reason I’ve put myself into graduate school at 49, with one of my emphases on family and community studies…to learn how to conduct and understand research beyond my own experience and reading, and engage where I see the need!
Thank you for your thoughts!