78 replies to this topic

[calmoriah]

noel00, on 31 March 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

  Why did she not take advantage of the situation?

How would she have been able to support herself?

[juliann]

This would be like sealing Jacie Duggar to the father of her children.   And I'm sure there is some wingnut who would do it.   I think we have a breed of Mormon who truly thinks that they will be beloved by dead famous people for doing their work and that it makes them very special.   I don't see how this would be considered a valid ordinance anyway when they weren't married and there was no acknowledgment of a common law marriage.

I wonder who found this one.

[calmoriah]

I believe I found the original article and if it is accurate, I am wondering why they report the baptismal date of Sally Hemings (1991), but not the sealing date.

http://www.slate.com...ds_church_.html

Quote

What is surprising is that the LDS Church, according to its Family Search registry, considers Hemings to be Thomas Jefferson’s wife.....This means that the LDS Church recognizes Jefferson’s paternity of a sizable number of his own slaves

This is obviously wrong in that doctrine or official position is not established by what shows up on the FS registry.  Considering the rest of the post's tone, I find this comment rather disappointing, he could have easily checked this, should have checked this considering the controversy lately and it just shows laziness not to have done so.  Especially since he asked them to confirm if the sealing had taken place.

I have no problem with the rest of the article.  It could have gone into the fact that even today divorced couples remained sealed on paper to each other when it is recognized the marriage is not longer intact because there is another involved in the sealing whose covenant with the individuals is intact and that is God.

However, I don't think it should be automatic to seal anyone together who has had children together.  And I believe the sealing instructions are clear enough on this that at least a common law marriage should be in existence.  Man and Concubine/Slave or Man and Mistress are not the same thing as Husband and Wife.  There are all sorts of adulterous relationships, for example, that result in children, including slave relationships.  And simply because LDS recognize authorized polygamous relationships, there seems little reason to assume that all sexual relationships are somehow sanctified by the individuals' death.

Bottomline...in the vast majority of cases, if people were following the policies, these types of sealings wouldn't be happening.

Edited by calmoriah, 31 March 2012 - 04:18 PM.

[juliann]

I mean who found the sealing.   I know of a guy who announced that his sister had been told to seal Hemmings and Jefferson in a dream.  So I wouldn't be surprised if the sister is the culprit.   But I wonder who discovered it and took it to the press.   I'm sure there are a lot more like this woman out there chasing celebrities so this can go on forever,  name by name, expose by expose.

Edited by juliann, 31 March 2012 - 11:41 PM.

[calmoriah]

juliann, on 31 March 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

I'm sure there are a lot more like this woman out there chasing celebrities so this can go on forever,  name by name.

Yep, I pity the poor family history reps who have to deal with this attitude.  Hopefully at least among those who aren't like the sister you describe above, most will get the message from the recent policy change where people will start getting locked out.  Enough rumours of this happening should discourage some.  However, the diehards will only be discovered by either being locked out if they happen to be unlucky enough to choose someone who has been marked off limits already or by contributing to the problem by coming up with new celebrities to process and thus new ones to be discovered...

[kolipoki09]

Log, on 31 March 2012 - 11:10 AM, said:

The article also implies that Mormons believe only Mormons gain salvation.

Quote

Tuesday, 8.--I [Joseph Smith] spent the day with Elder Rigdon in visiting Elder Cahoon at the place he had selected for his residence, and in attending to some of our private, personal affairs; also in the afternoon I answered the questions which were frequently asked me, while on my last journey but one from Kirtland to Missouri, as printed in the Elders' Journal, vol. I, Number II, pages 28 and 29, as follows:

.............



Third--"Will everybody be d*mned, but Mormons?"

Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness. (History of the Church, 3:28-29)

[KevinG]

Now ask what Mormons mean by damned.

[Log]

kolipoki09, on 31 March 2012 - 11:06 PM, said:

Sigh.

Mormons also believe a great number of the saved shall also be damned, to greater or lesser degrees.  A specific example would be the unmarried celestial beings.

Mormons also believe that a great number of non-Mormons shall be saved in some kingdom or another.  Baptism, confirmation, and temple ordinances only pertain to the celestial kingdom.

Edited by Log, 01 April 2012 - 01:13 AM.

[Storm Rider]

In that we believe that all the ordinances of salvation will be offered to all people from the beginning of time to the end of this earth, all will have the opportunity for Exaltation.  Being a LDS does not guarantee Exaltation any more than being a Hindu excludes you from it.  All will bend their knee to Jesus Christ; all will know the truth.

Attempting to claim that only one people will be in the Celestial Kingdom is a misunderstanding of scripture and doctrine.

[Log]

Storm Rider, on 01 April 2012 - 02:00 AM, said:

In that we believe that all the ordinances of salvation will be offered to all people from the beginning of time to the end of this earth, all will have the opportunity for Exaltation.  Being a LDS does not guarantee Exaltation any more than being a Hindu excludes you from it.  All will bend their knee to Jesus Christ; all will know the truth.

Attempting to claim that only one people will be in the Celestial Kingdom is a misunderstanding of scripture and doctrine.

Who's making any such claims?

Edited by Log, 01 April 2012 - 03:34 AM.

[kolipoki09]

Log, on 01 April 2012 - 01:04 AM, said:

Sigh.

Mormons also believe a great number of the saved shall also be damned, to greater or lesser degrees.  A specific example would be the unmarried celestial beings.

Mormons also believe that a great number of non-Mormons shall be saved in some kingdom or another.  Baptism, confirmation, and temple ordinances only pertain to the celestial kingdom.

I'm not disagreeing with you Log, I'm just saying that, given statements like that of Joseph Smith's, it wouldn't be too difficult to misunderstand as a journalist and come away with the idea that Mormons believe they're the only ones going to heaven.

Your first sentence is very important. One thing I've always pointed out is that in Mormon theology, salvation and exaltation are essentially two sides of the same coin, as illustrated in D&C 132:17:

Quote

For these angels did not abide my law; therefore, they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods, but are angels of God forever and ever.

[Avatar4321]

Only problem is the evidence is weak at best that they even had a relationship.

[noel00]

1. Madison (Sally Hemmings son) 'his mother was Jefferson's "concubine"
2. Sally only fell pregnant when Jefferson was home at Monticello
3. Sally taken to France with him, taught French, given gifts (could have been free in France, chose to go back)
4.DNA

Even some conservative scholars admit the relationship now. See the PBS program on the matter. Brodie's son claims that many Jefferson scholars whose careers were built on their writings on the man, could not bring themselves to see Jefferson in this new light.

[Pahoran]

noel00, on 01 April 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

Even some conservative scholars admit the relationship now. See the PBS program on the matter. Brodie's son claims that many Jefferson scholars whose careers were built on their writings on the man, could not bring themselves to see Jefferson in this new light.

Brodie has a son?

Permit me to explode a popular myth: Brodie's awful biography shed no "new light."  She was not the first to write about the supposed Jefferson-Hemings relationship.  If there is anything original in her treatment of that old rumour, it is the way in which she parlayed it into the central episode of Jefferson's life.  Some people might think that a number of other things might be more historically significant, like (just for example) authoring the DofI and serving as POTUS; but not la Brodie.  For other historians, it was an unprovable rumour about whether or not one more southern slave-holder took advantage of one of his slaves, as if that was so very unusual.  But for Brodie it explained everything anyone needs to know about Jefferson, although how exactly it explains why he did things no other southern slave-holder did, is not clear.

Regards,
Pahoran

[noel00]

Since you have "issues" with Brodie, read Annette Gordon-Reed,s book The Hemingses of Monticello. She appears in the show on PBS that dealt with the issue. Also Brodie's  son is interviewed there. He says that Brodie got upset many traditional Jefferson historians because they whole .lives had been built on writing a lie. Brodie's book on Sir Richard Burton is great. But then I supposes your Brodie "venom" will discount that effort also.

[Avatar4321]

DNA evidence isn't nearly as convincing as some have made it sound.

[thesometimesaint]

Avatar4321:

It's pretty convincing, but not conclusive. The best we can do so far is that it was a male related to Thomas. Whether it was Thomas himself, or a brother we can't tell from just the genetics.

Edited by thesometimesaint, 02 April 2012 - 07:59 AM.

[Pa Pa]

Log, on 31 March 2012 - 10:04 AM, said:

http://news.yahoo.co...-154735300.html

Words fail me.

Clearly we have agents provocateurs in our midst.

If he could have in his lifetime he would have married her.

[cdowis]

Here are some of those who entered a marriage date, according to the records.

Deleted personal email addresses.

Edited by Hestia, 02 April 2012 - 12:57 PM.

[LeSellers]

Pa Pa, on 02 April 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

If he could have in his lifetime he would have married her.

We frequently forget this important fact: it was illegal in XVIII Virginia for a white man to marry a slave or any free Negro.

I do not know, nor do I care too much, whether Jefferson fathered Hemmings' children. But Sally was his wife's, Martha's half sister (and perhaps cousin as well, the Randolphs were not too particular where they sowed their oats*). She looked amazingly like Martha, and was very fair-skinned, as I read the accounts. Thomas Jefferson was smitten by his widowed wife, and took her to Shadwell (one of his two estates, Monticello came later) and loved her dearly. It doesn't take much imagination to see Thomas falling in love with his wife again, and being unable to do anything legal about it. This is another example of how slavery was also a burden on the slave owners: it turned them into inhuman cads just as frequently as it changed the slaves into beats of burden.

* I recently read yet another reason that chattel slavery was doomed in USmerica: the white women of the South were near to being fed up with seeing their slaves becoming lighter and lighter after their husbands were absent from the manor house for a couple of weeks at a time, almost, but not quite, a year earlier.

Jefferson worried about slavery for decades. It enslaved him as much as it enslaved the Africans who worked his farms. After he married Martha, she inherited  more land, and, with it, more slaves. The debt that came both was enormous. He could not sell the land (and didn't want to) after Martha died, either: the slaves and the land they came with were collateral for the debts. He died without being able to pay his father-in-law's debts, much less his own.

It is interesting to note that he rarely pursued runaway slaves, especially Hemmings' children. He did manumit a few, including several of her offspring, when he died, but the bank kept him from following what I believe to have been his desire to rid himself of this burden.

Lehi