Faithful LDS woman ex'd for publicly announcing she doesn't believe JS lived polygamy.

[bluebell]

14 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

There is a plethora of information available to those truly interested in studying deeply.

Remember Sunday School is a 45 min. class led most often by regular folks, not educators. It is for meant for the "life lesson" applications, not the nitty gritty details and controversies.

If people want more, they need to take charge of their own studies.

There's a plethora of information for those who want a life lessons approach to the scriptures as well, but we still have Sunday school. 

I'm not talking about wanting a more nitty gritty type of study on the hard parts of the scriptures.  I'm talking about wanting a sunday school type of study:  a study that doesn't skip over it completely and act like it doesn't exist. People leave the church over this type of stuff because they don't know how to mesh what the scriptures are saying with what the gospel and our leaders teach.  That's not a nitty gritty problem to solve.  It's a pretty basic problem to solve.  But so many times the correlation committee doesn't even try to solve it. 

Or at least they didn't.  I have hopes for the future.

[ZealouslyStriving]

15 minutes ago, bluebell said:

There's a plethora of information for those who want a life lessons approach to the scriptures as well, but we still have Sunday school. 

I'm not talking about wanting a more nitty gritty type of study on the hard parts of the scriptures.  I'm talking about wanting a sunday school type of study:  a study that doesn't skip over it completely and act like it doesn't exist. People leave the church over this type of stuff because they don't know how to mesh what the scriptures are saying with what the gospel and our leaders teach.  That's not a nitty gritty problem to solve.  It's a pretty basic problem to solve.  But so many times the correlation committee doesn't even try to solve it. 

Or at least they didn't.  I have hopes for the future.

Well, we better bring back 3rd hour then, because 45 min. ever other week is not enough time to address all the concerns that people may have.

[bluebell]

3 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Well, we better bring back 3rd hour then, because 45 min. ever other week is not enough time to address all the concerns that people may have.

But I think 45 min. ever other week is enough time to address a few extra scriptures a few times a year.

[Rain]

51 minutes ago, bluebell said:

But I think 45 min. ever other week is enough time to address a few extra scriptures a few times a year.

It would especially work if the church quit the nice, neat in a box 4-year rotation and taught for as long as the books are needed.  The OT has 1184 pages, the NT has about 400, the BoM has 531, and the D&C/PGP has about 375, yet each of them is taught for a year each.  I never noticed it till I was teaching OT how much we were racing through it and missing so much.  Would it really matter if it took, say, 2 years and 7 months to go through the OT and 14 months to go through the BoM?  I know there is a big deal about starting over so many things on January 1st, and sometimes that can be motivating, but I think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice by always doing things that way.  So many things in our lives don't start over on January 1st and are just fine.  I think it might be worth a try with the church and the books of scripture.  

Note:  I am NOT saying the church is wrong on this. I haven't even thought about praying about it - even when I was a believing member.  At this point, I don't care all that much about it.  I just think it would be something to consider and would help with a better understanding of what people are reading and discussing.    

[Calm]

7 hours ago, gopher said:

It's an interesting topic for me and I've using your responses to help me organize my own thoughts.  You've been gracious in responding to my comments.

My sentiments as well.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

But I think 45 min. ever other week is enough time to address a few extra scriptures a few times a year.

I get why there is the impulse to go through one scripture book each year and I also get having lessons set up so even new members can feel at home and like they have something to contribute to class discussions, but what is really standing in the way of slowing down and taking two years or even three and four to go through each book?  If they fear boredom or falling behind will cause people to give up and drop out of the reading program and therefore it’s better to reset at the beginning of each year on a new book, repetition can be massively boring as well.

PS:  I hadn’t read Rain’s post before writing this one.   

We may not have trained teachers for this level of detail in each ward, but we have wonderful faithful scholars who would likely be very willing to put together books for additional context and discussions under direction of inspired leaders, both of whom would be great examples to members who are concerned about what might happen to their faith if they dig into the details.  A effort similar to Saints perhaps, though less narrative and more explanation of cultural practices, ancient symbolism, etc. and perhaps a variety of faithful responses, such as some who take scriptures literally and others symbolically and even those who see error in them, but still value what insights that can give to us.  I can see a version of perhaps how not to treat the gospel and God as our way to rationalize our bad behaviours (by laying them on God or some other uncontrollable influence that forces us to do something we know is wrong, corrupt, harming others, but would benefit us financially, like taking advantage of or even mistreating of employees or customers or family and friends).

Edited December 29, 2025 by Calm

[MrShorty]

20 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

If people want more, they need to take charge of their own studies.

At the risk of putting the burden of speaking for the whole church on you, I often see this and wonder if it really means that the church is not interested in being part of these discussions. I understand that the church needs to determine how to best utilize limited classroom time and other resources, but it sometimes feels like the church really just wants to wash its hands of the whole thing and not be involved. Even looking at the "Obedience" topic in the "Topics and Questions" section of the Gospel Library (where one might expect the church to publish some kind of wrestle with the moral ambiguities of obedience) finds nothing that talks about what we are talking about here.

Putting my point into a "stages of faith (McLaren style)" paradigm, a comment like this sometimes feels to my like the church is disinterested in anything beyond stage 2. For those who transition into stage 3 and on to stage 4, some find that the church is no longer relevant to them. It's important to note that stages are not better or worse, just different, so it's perfectly fine to want to minister to those in stages 1 and 2 and not other stages, but that also means that the church can't be surprised when some people determine that the church is no longer relevant for them.

This doesn't mean the church needs to use its limited SS/PH/RS time for this purpose. It can figure out other ways that it wants to be involved in these discussions -- if it wants to. This kind of comment makes me wonder just how universal/catholic the church really wants to be.

[MrShorty]

On 12/28/2025 at 12:00 PM, Rain said:

While we don’t know all the reasons Saul was commanded to kill all of the Amalekites and their animals...

FWIW, in the current lesson scheduled for June 8-14, the curriculum writers left out any reference to the commandment of genocide. The commandment Saul disobeys is unnamed.

To extend @The Nehor's point, I find that "we don't know" often has two meanings in the church:

1) We legitimately don't know whatever it is.
2) We don't like the answers that we can immediately see, so we claim not to know, hoping that there will be an answer that we do like sometime in the future.

Similar to @The Nehor's example, I've seen some frustration recently expressed by some scholars and content creators around the church's "we don't know" in the heading to OD2. We know enough of the history to know the reasons given by the 19th century church why the priesthood and temple restriction was put in place, but we've disavowed those reasons, but we are unwilling to provide alternative explanations, so we preface OD2 with "we don't know."

Which isn't to say that I expect us as a church to know everything. I believe there are some issues (like the problem of evil) that are ultimately intractable, and there is an inherent element of not knowing. I think it would be valuable for us to explore these places where we don't know and see what is really going on behind it. For me, most of them end up boiling down to something intractable, and it is helpful for me to acknowledge that it is intractable and why it is intractable. Too often, it seems like our not knowing is a kind of self-induced blinder to prevent ourselves from actually looking at the difficult issue.

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Well, we better bring back 3rd hour then, because 45 min. ever other week is not enough time to address all the concerns that people may have.

I am old enough to remember having a third hour and we still didn’t get answers to these kinds of questions. Would really require prophetic clarification or maybe a fourth hour?

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I am old enough to remember having a third hour and we still didn’t get answers to these kinds of questions. Would really require prophetic clarification or maybe a fourth hour?

Or even just presenting options would be a good thing I think.  

I remember the old institute lesson manuals that were adamantly anti-evolution.  I understand the nuance behind why they went that direction pretty well, but we aren't still going that direction today.  There is a lot of room between a literal reading or understanding of scripture and all scripture being manmade.  Sometimes I wish the church was better in lessons at outlining the no-man's land between those two extremes, just to show the possibilities that are still very much compatible with belief in the gospel.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

There is a lot of room between a literal reading

It’s more “literalist modern” reading because 200 or 500 years ago they would not be the same “literal” interpretations.

Edited December 30, 2025 by Calm

[The Nehor]

The biblical literalism thing is mostly a modern thing that only really took off on the USA. Part of the legacy of being descendants of the religious wackos no one in Europe wanted I suppose.

[Kenngo1969]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is excommunicatin' the faithful, now, eh?  Tsk-tsk-tsk!     Makes me wonder if I'm next ... not!  Oh, well!  Sucks to be her, I guess!

 

[Teancum]

On 12/15/2025 at 12:53 PM, Tacenda said:

What are your thoughts? Karen isn't the only one, there is another gal too, Michelle Stone, but not sure if Michelle was x'd, she relented and took down some podcasts. And many more out there that don't believe Joseph Smith lived polygamy.

I listened to the Inside Out podcast last night and this morning.  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-conversation-with-karen-hyatt/id1682941294?i=1000741157141  The polygamy thing is what took me into inactivity when finding out JS lived polygamy, and the way he did, in my mid forties. It changed my life to learn of this and sent me down the rabbit hole. It's strange how these women don't believe the given polygamist wives' testimonies in a court of law, such as the Reed Smoot hearings, or don't seem to mention it. Could they be oblivious?  https://wheatandtares.org/2018/02/04/the-reed-smoot-hearings/

Karen thinks the church should change the narrative of Joseph Smith living polygamy in church history. She thinks just like the ban on blacks getting the Priesthood, polygamy came from Brigham Young. She thinks now that the church is calling that a racist thing now, BY's teachings, the same should go for JS's polygamy just being a teaching of BY.

Karen has a movie and a book she made and wrote, and she's gone to several leaders to get the news out and shared these items with leaders at the top.

Does Karen have a leg to stand on? I'm not sure.

Found this YouTube, that might help give context. 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-conversation-with-karen-hyatt/id1682941294?i=1000741157141

 

I am not surprised at all on this. My understand is Michelle Stone, as you noted, took her material down and was basically threatened into silence on the issue and was not given the boot.

As for their position, it is total bunk and easily refuted. Bill Reel and RFM did a series on Michelle Stone's stuff and she even may have been on their show. But they destroyed her arguments.

[Teancum]

On 12/15/2025 at 2:42 PM, JVW said:

I believe that Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage, due to a misunderstanding in how the radical new doctrine of sealing operates. They used to do adoptions and believe that everyone had to be sealed to the prophet in order to go to heaven. To this day we don't really know anything about what sealing means and I don't fault Joseph for getting sealed to a bunch of women.

I do not believe that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. That is, living a married lifestyle with more than one woman. Anytime he was asked about polygamy he vehemently denied it and condemned the practice. As far as I recall (I don't have time to write a scholarly, well sourced article in this post) all of the women's testimonies in court were given after Joseph was dead and he was unable to defend himself against his accusers. Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants wasn't released until like the 1850s. The angel with the drawn sword story was first told in like the mid-1850s and nearly every other account was 1860s, 1880s, or later and it was all "I heard from a friend who heard it from their dad who heard it from Joseph" type of things.

I do not believe that Joseph was murdered by Brigham Young, but I do think it's possible that Willard Richards murdered Hyrum in jail during the commotion. I saw a pretty persuasive video essay about it once examining the bullet wounds. For the record, Brigham Young is my favorite prophet and I do not believe that the "Brighamite" church went into apostasy and departed from Joseph's teachings and all of that.

I can't explain the D&C 132 thing. Even though it was released posthumously, there strong evidence that Joseph dictated the revelation. This record is from 1843, before Joseph died, and it has all of the juicy polygamy stuff in it https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-july-1843-dc-132/5 The strangest thing about 132 is that it contradicts the dead sea scrolls, the Bible, and the Book of Mormon all in one fell swoop! Note this quote from the Damascus Document, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (copied from this article https://oneclimbs.com/2023/09/15/commandments-given-unto-our-fathers/😞

132 says that David will not be exalted because of Uriah. It contradicts the Bible because Isaac didn't have more than one wife but 132 says he did. It contradicts the Book of Mormon because Jacob says that "many wives and concubines is an abomination to God" and 132 says it is not.

Anyways, I had an itch to scratch with polygamy and researched into it for 2-3 years until I reached a personal resolution (which is that half of section 132 is not God's word). Before I started my research journey I wanted to write a letter to the prophet about it, but realized it would be kicked down to the Stake, and the Stake would kick it down to the Bishop, and the Bishop doesn't have any idea so I just minded my own business. I tend to keep my position on the topic somewhat private because it is against the church's official apologetics (which I think are trying to justify an abomination). I imagine that if I went all public about it I would get excommunicated too.

To me it is obvious that polygamy was a Brigham Young thing because it basically started with Brigham Young and ended like a decade after he died. God allowed Brigham to live in error because he lets us humans do that, and then in order to preserve the church he quickly course corrected it using political influence from the U.S. Government. Thank goodness he did!

That's my two cents. I love this topic. Thanks for the video recommendation and the OP. Cheers!

Wow! That is a lot of I do and I do not believe. It is a tough issue to get one's head around and still believe this nonsense was somehow divinely commanded. Ocam's razor seems useful here.

[Teancum]

On 12/15/2025 at 3:05 PM, bluebell said:

One thing with section 132 that might be helpful is to remember that it was written specifically to Emma (at the request of Hyrum) to try to convince her of the truthfulness of polygamy. That, along with the fact that it was never revised by JS for publication to the general membership (while many if not most of the other revelations were), is good evidence that the version we have is not the version we would have had if JS had lived longer. 

If this is the case how can it be trusted?

[Teancum]

On 12/15/2025 at 6:27 PM, Buckeye said:

Answering for myself …. By not believing that polygamy is part of the restoration, and by not promoting that polygamy was/is false. If someone asks me I’ll answer truthfully that I don’t believe polygamy was ever Gods will. But I don’t actively go around trying to teach members it’s false. 
FWIW, I find it interesting that you’d cite question 7 here, considering the original purpose of that question was to root out polygamists. 

So if there is one false revelation how can you trust the others are not false as well?

[juliann]

On 12/31/2025 at 10:41 AM, Teancum said:

I am not surprised at all on this. My understand is Michelle Stone, as you noted, took her material down and was basically threatened into silence on the issue and was not given the boot.

As for their position, it is total bunk and easily refuted. Bill Reel and RFM did a series on Michelle Stone's stuff and she even may have been on their show. But they destroyed her arguments.

Reel doesn't have the expertise to destroy anything. If he did, the church would be dead by now. That aside, the value of Stone is in her punching a few holes in the standard scholarly narrative. She pays attention to some things that they don't and it needs to be addressed. I've only looked into her stuff once and immediately saw this in at least one instance (which I no longer recall.) I'm unconcerned with how right or wrong she is, however, I will never dismiss the women's statements from JS's wives. But I'm also skeptical of the polygamy advocacy of the more vocal researchers that have shaped the narrative. I will never be able to take them seriously until they stop denying polyandry....just as she denies polygyny. They are no different in that sense. 

[juliann]

On 12/15/2025 at 4:51 PM, longview said:

I 

---

Summary Judgment

Yes. According to multiple independent LDS historical sources, Joseph Smith taught that an angel with a drawn sword commanded him to practice plural marriage and threatened him with destruction if he did not comply.

This claim:

• Is early

• Is consistent

• Comes from participants and witnesses

• Is acknowledged (though not emphasized) by modern LDS scholarship

As far as I am award, these recollections were not "early." They were later. No one but JS was a participant or witness of this claim. You are trying to turn hearsay into first person testimony. The likely reason it isn't "emphasized" by modern scholarship is because it didn't come from JS himself and there are no contemporaneous accounts. This might be true...but it also might fall into the seagulls and crickets category of history.

[longview]

38 minutes ago, juliann said:

As far as I am award, these recollections were not "early." They were later. No one but JS was a participant or witness of this claim. You are trying to turn hearsay into first person testimony. The likely reason it isn't "emphasized" by modern scholarship is because it didn't come from JS himself and there are no contemporaneous accounts. This might be true...but it also might fall into the seagulls and crickets category of history.

Is it your understanding that Joseph started learning about biblical plural marriage in the early 1830's and was deeply reticent about the first commandments. It was 10 years of delays and putting off until God began putting more pressure on him in the early 1840's?

I have heard it said that it was plural marriage that saved the church and made it stronger before the trek to the Rocky Mountains.

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, longview said:

Is it your understanding that Joseph started learning about biblical plural marriage in the early 1830's and was deeply reticent about the first commandments. It was 10 years of delays and putting off until God began putting more pressure on him in the early 1840's?

I have heard it said that it was plural marriage that saved the church and made it stronger before the trek to the Rocky Mountains.

Joseph started learning during the translation of the Bible. He made some tentative attempts in the 1830s before eternal marriage was revealed but once it was revealed as a key component of the New & Everlasting covenant (D&C 132) and the temple ceremonies he was commanded to fully participate.

I'm not sure how much impact it had on the trek west since only about 30 men entered polygamy in Nauvoo, out of a city of 12,000.

[juliann]

2 hours ago, longview said:

Is it your understanding that Joseph started learning about biblical plural marriage in the early 1830's and was deeply reticent about the first commandments. It was 10 years of delays and putting off until God began putting more pressure on him in the early 1840's?

I have heard it said that it was plural marriage that saved the church and made it stronger before the trek to the Rocky Mountains.

I think the most responsible answer to JS’s instigation of plural marriage is nobody knows. Getting it from the Bible is hardly an explanation. What saved the church from going under like almost all New Religions was Danish/English immigration. What in the world would polygamy have done. It was likely the reason JS was killed. That’s just goofy. 

We seem to be replicating a coming of age when it comes to polygamy just as we have with the priesthood ban. Members are now openly assigning it to racism rather than God. Polygamy has also been damaging to the church.  There is nothing good about it and the rationales for it are ridiculous and frivolous. 

[Buckeye]

8 hours ago, Teancum said:

So if there is one false revelation how can you trust the others are not false as well?

By my own witness and by seeing the fruit of the doctrine. Polygamy as we practiced it necessarily excluded the majority of men. The fruit was bad. 

[webbles]

2 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

I'm not sure how much impact it had on the trek west since only about 30 men entered polygamy in Nauvoo, out of a city of 12,000.

This made me curious about how many men had entered polygamy by the time the Nauvoo temple was finished.  Per https://archive.org/details/nauvoo-sealings-adoptions-and-anointings/page/n1/mode/2up, I counted about 150 men who were sealed to at least two living women.  More than I expected, but still a small percentage.

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

This made me curious about how many men had entered polygamy by the time the Nauvoo temple was finished.  Per https://archive.org/details/nauvoo-sealings-adoptions-and-anointings/page/n1/mode/2up, I counted about 150 men who were sealed to at least two living women.  More than I expected, but still a small percentage.

I should have said 30 by the time Joseph died.  Your number would be a five fold increase in just a year or two.