Why did Emma Smith fight polygamy so strongly?

[VideoGameJunkie]

It was reported that she never believed polygamy was right and that she fought against it hard and used the Relief Society to try and stop it. Why'd she fight it for so long before finally accepting it and being sealed to Joseph Smith well after he'd already been sealed to like 20 other women? Here's an article on Emma Smith and it mentions her disdain for polygamy a little bit. http://janariess.religionnews.com/2013/04/23/the-reinvention-of-mormon-emma-smith/

This weekend at the Midwest Pilgrims retreat in Nauvoo, Illinois, I had the opportunity to listen to a fascinating talk by Linda King Newell, co-biographer of Emma Smith, first wife of LDS founding prophet Joseph Smith, Jr.

In 1984, Linda wrote, with Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, which has stood for nearly three decades as the definitive biography of Emma. Until that time, Emma had been largely written out of official LDS history. When the two authors began piecing together Emma’s life, there was only one small manila folder about her in the entire LDS Archives.

One of the materials in it was a pamphlet that said Emma could be forgiven for her sins because she had lost her mind. One of the other items was a photograph of a family member that was mislabeled as being Emma.

So, what materials that existed were unfair or inaccurate. Emma had been disappeared. Why?

We all use history to suit our purposes, and Emma simply did not suit the purposes of the LDS Church in the years following her husband’s death.

• It wasn’t just that she was the mother of a boy whom many Saints felt to be Smith’s rightful prophetic heir, rather than Brigham Young.
• It wasn’t just that she clashed with Young so severely that he once claimed that “more hell was never wrapped up in any human being than there is in her.”
• And it wasn’t just that she later helped her son found a rival church, coalescing the support of many former Mormons who had stayed behind in the Midwest.

It was that she hated polygamy and flatly refused to countenance its presence among the Mormon people.

Emma’s disappearance from LDS history was so total that Linda says when she and Valeen co-authored an article about her for the Ensign in 1979, it was the first writing about her to appear in any official church publication in 113 years.

It’s a beautiful article, but it’s not a fully honest one; polygamy is not mentioned once anywhere. That’s likely why its content was acceptable for the Ensign nearly a century after the Church had begun distancing itself from polygamy.

The biography Linda and Valeen published with Doubleday several years later was not so guarded, detailing Joseph’s many polygamous alliances, his repeated lies to Emma about those marriages, and her conflicts with his plural wives—including a much-debated stair-pushing catfight with Eliza R. Snow. It’s an outstanding and award-winning biography that was the product of countless hours of primary research.

The biography was an instant commercial success, selling out its first two printings. At the time of the third printing, however, Val’s bishop received a call from a higher-up in Salt Lake who said that “two girls” had written a book about Emma Smith and were not to be invited to speak about the topic in sacrament meetings. When pressed, Linda’s bishop admitted he had received a similar call. The authors were alarmed, though Linda was comforted by her stake president, who told her, “You are my parishioner, and I will see you through this no matter how long it takes.”

It turned out that such calls had gone out to bishops and stake presidents in several states. Within three weeks, the press got wind of the authors’ ecclesiastical silencing and began to report about it—thereby tripling sales of the book.

Linda requested and was granted a meeting with some general authorities, including Dallin Oaks, to discuss the ban and discover what aspects of the book had been found objectionable. When asked if he had read the biography, Elder Oaks said he had seen several excerpts from it, and found that the authors’ views of Joseph Smith were “nontraditional.”

Nontraditional. Which is another way of saying that a particular view of history does not suit institutional needs in the moment.

In the past three decades, there has been more published about Emma Smith in official church channels, including the new Daughters in My Kingdom manual, which mentions her very positively as the founder of the Relief Society, and the Gospel Doctrine manual for church history, which holds her up as an example—somewhat reproachfully—of how to support one’s spouse. It’s an improvement that she’s discussed at all. But the way Emma’s story is carefully sculpted reveals as much about gender expectations and religious norms in our own era as it did when Brigham Young declared her mormona non grata. For example, in the support materials for the Joseph Smith manual, polygamy is once again nowhere mentioned. If that were the only document people used to learn about Joseph Smith and his life, they would naturally assume that he was married once, to Emma, and not to approximately three dozen other women. The way that current materials deal with the conflict with Brigham Young is . . . to ignore it entirely. According to the official narrative, Emma stayed behind in Nauvoo rather than joining the majority of the Saints in Utah because she was a widow caring for five young children and Joseph’s aging mother, not because she believed that, as she expressed it at the time, “the Twelve have made bogus of it.” Although she never lost her faith in the Mormon religion and in the sacred nature of the Book of Mormon, she had no testimony of Brigham Young and other polygamous LDS leaders. What’s especially interesting to me about the unfolding historiography of Emma Smith is that she herself would have been happy with the disappearance of polygamy and Joseph’s other wives from Mormonism’s official party line. This was exactly what she had tried to institute herself as a theological agent in her own right, so much so that when the Reorganization was founded in the 1860s she declared that Joseph had never been married to anyone but herself. Emma knew better, but she also knew that a polygamous history would not serve her needs. In a remarkable twist of irony, her version of history is increasingly the LDS Church’s as well.

[VideoGameJunkie]

And was polygamy the reason Emma turned Fanny Alger out of their house as it's been stated many times?

[VideoGameJunkie]

No one knows why Emma Smith fought polygamy? Oh well.

[Guest]

Any woman would object until they gain a testimony of it, and even then it would still be a bitter pill to swallow. I would also fight against the policy of polygamy. 

[VideoGameJunkie]

22 minutes ago, Pa Pa said:

Any woman would object until they gain a testimony of it, and even then it would still be a bitter pill to swallow. I would also fight against the policy of polygamy. 

Even if your spouse was the chosen prophet of God?

[VideoGameJunkie]

This is from Emma Smith's Wikipedia page:

Rumors concerning polygamy and other practices erupted into the open by 1842. Emma was involved in campaigns to publicly condemn polygamy and deny any involvement by her husband. (Joseph's participation in polygamy was a closely guarded secret at the time.) Emma authorized and was the main signatory of a petition in summer 1842, with a thousand female signatures, denying Joseph Smith was connected with polygamy.^[10] As president of the Ladies' Relief Society, she authorized the publishing of a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy and denying her husband as its creator or participant.^[11] In March 1844, Emma published:

We raise our voices and hands against John C. Bennett's 'spiritual wife system', as a scheme of profligates to seduce women; and they that harp upon it, wish to make it popular for the convenience of their own cupidity; wherefore, while the marriage bed, undefiled is honorable, let polygamy, bigamy, fornication, adultery, and prostitution, be frowned out of the hearts of honest men to drop in the gulf of fallen nature.^[12]

 

[Jeanne]

She loved Joseph.

She knew it was wrong.

Didn't particularly want to run into an angel with sword.

[VideoGameJunkie]

16 minutes ago, Jeanne said:

 

She knew it was wrong.

It's not considered wrong by the church and church members though.

[JulieM]

13 minutes ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

It's not considered wrong by the church and church members though.

Well, some members.  

I think Emma struggled with polygamy for the same reason you or any man would struggle with his wife or girlfriend being with another man.  She loved Joseph deeply and I believe he loved her just as much.  Everyone desires to be in a devoted, committed, and monogamous marriage (at least all that I know).

Polyhgamy is a painful subject for many or most women to think about.  It was no different for Emma.

Edited March 6, 2016 by JulieM

[VideoGameJunkie]

26 minutes ago, JulieM said:

Well, some members.  

I think Emma struggled with polygamy for the same reason you or any man would struggle with his wife or girlfriend being with another man.  She loved Joseph deeply and I believe he loved her just as much.  Everyone desires to be in a devoted, committed, and monogamous marriage (at least all that I know).

Polyhgamy is a painful subject for many or most women to think about.  It was no different for Emma.

But by fighting against it, she is fighting against a God given commandment in open rebellion.

[sunstoned]

4 hours ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

And was polygamy the reason Emma turned Fanny Alger out of their house as it's been stated many times?

At the time it wasn't called polygamy.  In face the Fanny Alger affair happened before the sealing powers were restored.  I think Oliver called this one correctly.

[JulieM]

1 hour ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

But by fighting against it, she is fighting against a God given commandment in open rebellion.

I don't know that it was a commandment from God. I believe Joseph was a Prophet, but I also believe they are not infallible.   I think polygamy was a mistake and came from man. 

Edited March 6, 2016 by JulieM

[VideoGameJunkie]

22 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

At the time it wasn't called polygamy.  In face the Fanny Alger affair happened before the sealing powers were restored.  I think Oliver called this one correctly.

Then if he got with Fanny without the sealing power, isn't that adultery and an affair?

[sunstoned]

6 minutes ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

Then if he got with Fanny without the sealing power, isn't that adultery and an affair?

That is what OC thought.

[VideoGameJunkie]

23 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

That is what OC thought.

But the current members of the church don't believe this though.

[mrmarklin]

I've been a member all my life and never felt that Emma was invisible. Her role in helping with the BoM, Relief Society, standing by the prophet during what must have been a very tough married life through all persecution has been discussed many times in church lesson materials. Those materials were largely silent on Joseph's polygamy, however. Although it was acknowledged that she was agin' it.

[Analytics]

3 hours ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

No one knows why Emma Smith fought polygamy? Oh well.

Ironically, there is an RLDS book which you can read online called Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy by Richard and Pamela Price. 

Joseph Smith went to his grave denying he practiced polygamy.  Emma followed his example and went to her grave denying it as well.  Perhaps Emma fought it for the same reason Joseph did?

 

 

[VideoGameJunkie]

5 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Ironically, there is an RLDS book which you can read online called Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy by Richard and Pamela Price. 

Joseph Smith went to his grave denying he practiced polygamy.  Emma followed his example and went to her grave denying it as well.  Perhaps Emma fought it for the same reason Joseph did?

 

 

I believe Joseph only fought it until an angel with a drawn sword threatened him, then after I felt he was on board.

[JulieM]

1 hour ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

But the current members of the church don't believe this though.

I think the majority of church members don't know about Fanny and Joseph.   

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, JulieM said:

I don't know that it was a commandment from God. I believe Joseph was a Prophet, but I also believe they are not infallible.   I think polygamy was a mistake and came from man. 

So you believe that all historical instances of polygyny and polyandry were based on the human cultural practices of the time and place?  So that Abraham and his grandson Jacob simply practiced polygyny without divine warrant, and that God overlooked such tawdry practices in those days as examples of human fallibility?  Indeed, any Scriptures saying the contrary are the inventions of men, plain and simple?

[JulieM]

10 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

So you believe that all historical instances of polygyny and polyandry were based on the human cultural practices of the time and place?  So that Abraham and his grandson Jacob simply practiced polygyny without divine warrant, and that God overlooked such tawdry practices in those days as examples of human fallibility?  Indeed, any Scriptures saying the contrary are the inventions of men, plain and simple?

I don't believe that God ever commanded polygamy to be lived.  If consenting adults choose to live it, that's their choice, but no, I don't believe it came from God.  

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

I believe Joseph only fought it until an angel with a drawn sword threatened him, then after I felt he was on board.

He fought it until his death. 

[ALarson]

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

He fought it until his death. 

What exactly do you mean by "fought"?  Do you believe as some that he never did live polygamy?  (I see that you referenced the book above by this title.)

[rpn]

1.  What John Bennett was doing was not sanctioned by anyone, and deserved every condemnation it received. 

2.   The church has just published a book about RS's first fifty years, in which the debate over polygamy is discussed.   BY believed that it was Emma's advocacy on polygamy that got JS killed.   (And if Emma heard that she would have been utterly distraught and it would have been naturally to disavow that he had had anything to do with it.   We just don't know what we don't know.)

[ALarson]

39 minutes ago, rpn said:

1.  What John Bennett was doing was not sanctioned by anyone, and deserved every condemnation it received. 

Well, John Bennett is an entirely different topic.  But he was probably one of Joseph's closest friends and confidants for quite some time in Nauvoo (he lived with Joseph).  He knew a lot of the "secrets" regarding polygamy.  He told some truths after he left Nauvoo and I believe he also told some ugly lies to get revenge or because he was bitter.  Sorting out the truth from the lies can be difficult (although some are obvious).

39 minutes ago, rpn said:

2.   The church has just published a book about RS's first fifty years, in which the debate over polygamy is discussed.   BY believed that it was Emma's advocacy on polygamy that got JS killed.   (And if Emma heard that she would have been utterly distraught and it would have been naturally to disavow that he had had anything to do with it.   We just don't know what we don't know.)

Do you believe that Emma was an advocate for polygamy?  Do you have a quote by Brigham Young stating that he believed this? (I'm truly curious to read it if you do...)

Edited March 6, 2016 by ALarson