Pres. Oaks talk - Be One event

[ALarson]

20 hours ago, Ahab said:

To kill men just because they have more than one wife?

Yup.  Ask Parley P. Pratt about that.  Though technically it was polyandry that led to his murder.

[hope_for_things]

14 hours ago, kllindley said:

In Nauvoo, Illinois, conflict was often based on the tendency of Mormons to "dominate community, economic, and political life wherever they landed."

http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/religionculture.html

"The rapid development of Nauvoo's economic and political power, along with rumors about strange Mormon religious rituals, greatly unsettled other Illinois residents. They particularly resented the Mormon practice of voting in elections as a bloc at the direction of Joseph Smith. Then in 1844, Smith decided to run for president of the United States. This combining of religion and politics further inflamed public opinion in Illinois. Nor did all Mormons in Nauvoo approve of Joseph Smith's political activities.

A dissenting newspaper in Nauvoo accused Smith of crowning himself king. In response, he and members of the Council of Fifty destroyed the paper's printing press. State authorities jailed Smith and several others for inciting a riot. The governor sent a state militia to guard Smith against mob violence. But the militia itself became a lynch mob and shot Smith to death in his jail cell on June 27, 1844.

After debating who should replace Joseph Smith as prophet and president of the Mormon Church, an emergency assembly of the Latter-Day Saints selected Brigham Young. But soon vigilantes began to burn the homes and farms of the Mormon settlers in a determined effort to drive them out of Illinois.

Brigham Young and the other church leaders realized that they could not remain in Nauvoo under such dangerous conditions. They then led an epic migration of 16,000 Mormons to the Great Salt Lake Valley in the western wilderness."

http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-17-1-b-the-persecution-of-the-mormons

"By May 1844 the Latter-day Saints were once again embroiled in an apparently irreconcilable conflict with their neighbors. There were many reasons for this: politically the Saints were alienated from nearly everyone else in Illinois, other communities were jealous of Nauvoo’s economic growth and political autonomy, many people in Illinois feared the power of the Nauvoo Legion, the Masons were disturbed by alleged irregularities of the order in Nauvoo, and there was a general distaste among the people for peculiar Mormon doctrines and practices which had been misrepresented by John C. Bennett and others. Despite these factors, the Saints still might have been able to maintain peace if it had not been for the apostasy developing within the Church. Unhappily, all signs pointed toward eventual violence. On 29 May 1844, Thomas Sharp told his readers he “would not be surprised to hear of his [Joseph Smith’s] death by violent means in a short time.”¹⁴

https://www.lds.org/manual/church-history-in-the-fulness-of-times-student-manual/chapter-twenty-one?lang=eng

 

Did you have any references that all scholars and correlation attribute all Illinois persecution to polygamy?

Thanks, this is great to get some additional comments on the historical narrative.  There was a lot going on during the Nauvoo time period, for sure.  I'm not sure how you got the idea that I thought polygamy was the only contributing factor towards persecution, I never made that claim.  I even mentioned political worries as being another factor in an earlier thread.  

Just for review, when I brought up the point that polygamy has been a major source of persecution for Mormons, Ahab said this:

20 hours ago, Ahab said:

It is my understanding that polygamy wasn't a cause of persecution for those who persecuted the Church back then.  

 

19 hours ago, Ahab said:

I think the world, generally, used polygamy as an excuse to persecute rather than polygamy being the actual reason for them persecuting the saints.  They wanted their property and they didn't want the Church to even exist so they were trying to do whatever they could to get rid of them and take what they had from them.  I'm not saying the Church wasn't persecuted, or that the world didn't use polygamy as an excuse, as they saw it, for their behavior.

So Ahab is making a counter claim that polygamy is not a reason Mormon persecution, that the actual reason is that people wanted to steal their valuable property.  

I don't see any of the quotes you've provided as supporting this very unique thesis that Ahab is promoting.  In fact, I've never encountered this thesis in all my readings of history as being a primary motivating factor for the expulsion in Nauvoo.  

 

[Ahab]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

So Ahab is making a counter claim that polygamy is not a reason Mormon persecution, that the actual reason is that people wanted to steal their valuable property.  

I said their coveting was a reason, not the reason, and that I think polygamy was just an excuse many used to try to justify why they persecuted some saints in those days.

But even if polygamy was involved as a reason for they persecuted the saints I would say the reason was more because of jealousy than because some men had more than one wife.  They knew about Abraham and Jacob/Israel David and Solomon and others who had lived in OT times and they didn't appear to have a problem with their polygamous relationships.  So I don't believe polygamy had much to do with the real reasons why they were being persecuted.

 

[hope_for_things]

Just now, Ahab said:

I said their coveting was a reason, not the reason, and that I think polygamy was just an excuse many used to try to justify why they persecuted some saints in those days.

But even if polygamy was involved as a reason for they persecuted the saints I would say the reason was more because of jealousy than because some men had more than one wife.  They knew about Abraham and Jacob/Israel David and Solomon and others who had lived in OT times and they didn't appear to have a problem with their polygamous relationships.  So I don't believe polygamy had much to do with the real reasons why they were being persecuted.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.  That said, you've still yet to produce any other people who share your unique interpretation this history.  

[Scott Lloyd]

On 6/14/2018 at 10:16 AM, hope_for_things said:

Ok, thanks for clarifying.  That said, you've still yet to produce any other people who share your unique interpretation this history.  

I share it. And I don’t think it all that unique. 

The practice of plural marriage was a carefully guarded secret that did not become widely known until very late in the Nauvoo period. Yet the saints were already being persecuted in the New York, Ohio and especially the Missouri periods. 

The mob manifesto issued in Missouri makes a lot of vicious claims against the Mormons. But there’s not a single word in there about polygamy. 

Edited June 16, 2018 by Scott Lloyd