The Role of Polygamy in Mormon History
The Church No Longer Practices Plural Marriage in a Physical Form
Joseph Smith started the practice of polygamy in secret long before Brigham Young openly announced that the Mormons were practiced in polygamy. This practice led to the printing of the Nauvoo Expositor. It would be the destruction of this newspaper that caused the events that led to the death of Joseph Smith.
Mormons today no longer practice polygamy as the world sees it. Any member caught with more than one living wife who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be excommunicated. Although polygamy is no longer practiced, the idea that members must have more than one wife to obtain the highest degree of glory can be found in Section 132 of the version of the Doctrine and Covenants used by most Restorationist churches.
The Historical Background for Section 132
At the time Section 132 was received as a revelation, Joseph Smith and high ranking Mormons had been practicing plural marriage secretly before Emma Smith found out about the practice. The revelation was recieved to Emma Smith's reaction to the practice.
Although Section 132 specifically states that Emma must accept polygamy or be destroyed, Joseph Smith later felt remorse and ordered his wife to burn his copy. When the Reorganized Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints formed, now the Community of Christ, Joseph Smith III denied that his father practiced polygamy, but maintained that if the charges were true, his father was wrong. Mosiah, a book in the Book of Mormon, explicitly forbids the practice of polygamy.
Spiritual and Temporal Polygamy in the Mormon Church
Although a man can be married to only one living wife at a time, there are two types of marriages that a Mormon can enter into. The first type that is the same type granted by all other religions is called for time. This type of marriage ends at death. The second type, available to a couple that gets sealed in the temple, lasts for eternity.
When a man's wife dies, he may get sealed to a second woman in the temple. Because temple marriages last for time and eternity, if a Mormon male is sealed to his first deceased wife, he now is married to two women because of a theological technicality. This would mean the man practices polygamy in a strict dictionary sense, but one that is not punishable through the legal system.
The End of Polygamy and the Beginning of Fundamentalist Mormons
The issue of spiritual polygamy resides only from doctrinal issues and only matters if the Mormon view of the afterlife is correct. The manifesto of 1890 addressed the issue of temporal polygamy, although it took a second manifesto against the practice of polygamy for church members to stop the practice of taking multiple wives.
Many Mormons felt that the manifesto ending polygamy took the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into apostasy. According to the FLDS web site, church leaders who still believed in the practice of plural marriage ordained new leaders who would remain the "true Mormons" while they viewed the largest Utah-based Mormon denomination as being in a state of apostasy.
Official Declaration 1, Doctrine and Covenants
Official Declaration 2, Doctrine and Covenants
Journal of Discourses.
Book of Mormon, Mosiah
The Angel Moroni
|
Latest Articles