Monday, January 7, 2008

Polygamy


I've always had a sore spot in my heart for polygamy. Even today, more than 115 years after the LDS church officially abolished the practice of "plural marriage," it is the one thing that non-Mormons associate most closely with the religion. Personally, I have difficulty accepting the notion that it was ever an inspired doctrine; from my perspective it looks like an oppressive custom embraced by a benighted people in a horribly sexist age. (I've often contemplated the mass distaff revolt or defection that would occur were the church leadership to attempt to revive the practice today.)

The Book of Mormon contains an ambiguous (and virtually impenetrable) passage concerning the taking of multiple wives: "Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none; for I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts. Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes. For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things." (Jacob 2:27-30.) Of course, Joseph Smith later received the revelation that became Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants, in which the Lord putatively did just what Jacob said he might: command his people -- at least, some of the men -- to take multiple spouses, presumably to raise up seed unto him.

The practice began secretively while the church was still based in Nauvoo, Illinois, and it didn't become a public matter until after Joseph was assassinated in 1844 and most of the remaining Saints had migrated west to Utah. Thereafter, the church engaged in it openly for several decades, until Congress passed various statutes outlawing it, which statutes were later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (thus giving rise to the constitutional maxim that the First Amendment protects only religious belief, not necessarily religious practice). The church leadership eventually realized what was going to happen if they didn't jettison polygamy, although the idea that men, at least those who attain exaltation (i.e., godhood), will have many wives in the Celestial Kingdom appears to be a doctrine of the church to this day, albeit one that isn't discussed much.

What to make of all this? I've had several long talks with my brothers about polygamy, and they insist that it was necessary, for a time only, to ensure the survival of the church at a time when great persecution was causing the menfolk to die off and leaving many more single women and widows than there were corresponding adult males. That may be true, but it doesn't explain why Joseph was reportedly wedding some women whose husbands were very much alive at the time, and it also doesn't explain why church authorities at one time tried to justify polygamy on practical grounds as being superior in various ways to monogamy. (In other words, it was never presented as a necessary evil, however much we'd like to regard it as such now.)

I've read a few books by the famous Mormon scholar (or apologist, as you will) Hugh Nibley, and he often went on about the Law of Parsimony (a/k/a Occam's Razor), which, in short, postulates that the simplest explanation for any phenomenon is probably the closest to the truth. What, then, is the simplest explanation for the early Mormons' practice of polygamy? Well, from where I stand it is simply that Joseph needed a plausible means of justifying his roving eye -- and there could be no better way than to have a revelation ordering him to take more wives. Heck, how could any Mormon woman resist such a proposition made under the aegis of divine edict?

Of course, this could present a problem to anyone who believes Joseph was a prophet of God and his instrument for bringing to pass the restoration of the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I still have faith in that proposition, but it's apparent to me that Joseph wasn't the near-perfect individual portrayed in all the airbrushed accounts of his life that the church endorses (tacitly or otherwise). As for the practical, natural consequences of plural marriage, I think one needn't look further than the various apostate, polygamy-centered "Mormon" sects that survive to this day: they don't advocate outright chattel slavery, but they do effect a pretty close approximation of it.