Church members who leave the church

[Calm]

1 hour ago, manol said:

My understanding is that Joseph having been sealed to multiple women other than Emma is a matter of record. 

In your opinion (which I consider to be an educated and unbiased one), were those sealings marriages in the same sense as Brigham's plural marriages? 

Some of them, not all.

I think Helen Mar Kimball was more betrothal than marriage, probably would have been marriage once she got older.  This was similar to later sealings in Utah some cases, the young bride stayed at home till older.  I don’t remember the typical length of time.

But the first on record plural marriage has been assumed to be Louisa Beaman.  However they use the date from the memory of her brother or something, Joseph Noble…who it turns out is famous for having a bad memory about dates and he gave multiple ones.  If dated by something else he remembered doing that year, turns out the sealing was not the first one.  If you then look at the first 4 or 5 sealings not including to the widow of Joseph’s brother, Don Carlos, all of the sealings were to pregnant women…so chances are those marriages weren’t meant originally to be consummated since medical advice at the time said sex during pregnancy would be harmful to the child.  It is likely the first 12 marriages were to already married women.  Don Carlos’ widow could be similar to a Levirate or just assuming custody for her…or imo most likely intended to act like the current proxy sealings do today.  Hyrum was proxy sealed to his dead wife, but I am thinking maybe if one was living, one needed to be in a sealed relationship of some sort with someone else who was living.  I can’t remember if we have  detail explanation of why Brigham and others were sealed to some of Joseph’s wives.

Maybe the attempt was to adopt posterity as in he didn’t care if there was a blood relation.  We still assume if a woman is sealed to a man, any child she has is seen as his under the covenant.  Perhaps that policy started from the very beginning for a very good reason.

Don Bradley’s FAIR presentation,2023 iirc is where I heard about it.  After learning this tidbit, I am rather open to Joseph experimenting and therefore possibly having quite a few variations on the theme besides the family connection ones where they were daughters of his good friends, including quite young women and older BY’s sister and possible posterity adoptions with other men’s wives.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023-old/knowing-brother-joseph-how-the-historical-record-demonstrates-the-prophets-religious-sincerity

Edited September 27, 2024 by Calm

[webbles]

1 hour ago, manol said:

My understanding is that Joseph having been sealed to multiple women other than Emma is a matter of record. 

In your opinion (which I consider to be an educated and unbiased one), were those sealings marriages in the same sense as Brigham's plural marriages? 

The only contemporary evidence is from William Clayton's journal and those who don't believe that Joseph was sealed to multiple woman argue that the journal wasn't contemporary.  There is a lot of contemporary evidence that Joseph wasn't sealed to multiple women since he denied it multiple times and they usually feel that his public statements should be accepted at face value.

For all the later statements, the argument usually is that the women had to say they were sealed to Joseph because their husbands (who were mostly leaders in Utah) made them do it or that they had been indoctrinated to the point that they created false memories of being sealed to him or that they are lying on purpose to support Brigham against the Josephites.

Personally, I think there is enough circumstantial evidence that Joseph was sealed to multiple women without William Clayton's journal, but if you want hard contemporary evidence, you will have a hard time finding it.

[webbles]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

The only way I can see it is to assume Brigham and others ran a massive conspiracy  and that would likely trash my faith in the Church as God’s vehicle as it now stands as that pushes fallibility over into intentional dishonesty for practically criminal reasons imo, so not seeing how active members manage to stay active believers when they are convinced this and yet seeing some claim this. I probably should investigate but I don’t want to deal with the actual arguments at this point having in the past not been impressed by them overall (some are decent points, but not enough), just find how they reconcile belief. 

Back when I was investigating the 132 podcast, I came across a fascinating theory that Joseph's death was planned by Brigham Young.  He knew that Joseph was about to expose his polygamy and so he plotted to have the Expositor be printed, then force Joseph to destroy it, then get him in jail alone with John Taylor.  John Taylor then killed Joseph during the confusion caused by the Carthage Greys (who also were there because of Brigham).  And Brigham pulled this all of while he was away so that he had a solid alibi.  It was really interesting and had lots of interesting facts to back it up.  The author was supposedly an active member but I have no idea how they reconciled their belief.

[Tacenda]

2 hours ago, manol said:

My understanding is that Joseph having been sealed to multiple women other than Emma is a matter of record. 

In your opinion (which I consider to be an educated and unbiased one), were those sealings marriages in the same sense as Brigham's plural marriages? 

I'm not the one you asked this about but thought I'd share about the Temple Lot case where a few of the wives testified that they were wives in every deed. So not just a sealing but they consummated the marriage. Here's a portion of Malissa Lott's testimony:

https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/common-questions/plural-marriages-sexual/malissa-lott-evidence-of-sexuality/

And this link as well on Brian Hale's website, whom as I'm sure you're aware is a believing active LDS:

https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/common-questions/plural-marriages-sexual/

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, Rain said:

That's why I wasn't sure about how I felt about what you said.  It didn't seem to fit your words.  Then it felt like you were doubling down.  It was a bit confusing for me.

Sorry for the confusion. I don’t understand exactly what you mean but I think we see things differently enough sometimes that it’s hard for us to understand each other in those instances.

 

[Devobah]

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

Some of them, not all.

I think Helen Mar Kimball was more betrothal than marriage, probably would have been marriage once she got older.  This was similar to later sealings in Utah some cases, the young bride stayed at home till older.  I don’t remember the typical length of time.

But the first on record plural marriage has been assumed to be Louisa Beaman.  However they use the date from the memory of her brother or something, Joseph Noble…who it turns out is famous for having a bad memory about dates and he gave multiple ones.  If dated by something else he remembered doing that year, turns out the sealing was not the first one.  If you then look at the first 4 or 5 sealings not including to the widow of Joseph’s brother, Don Carlos, all of the sealings were to pregnant women…so chances are those marriages weren’t meant originally to be consummated since medical advice at the time said sex during pregnancy would be harmful to the child.  It is likely the first 12 marriages were to already married women.  Don Carlos’ widow could be similar to a Levirate or just assuming custody for her…or imo most likely intended to act like the current proxy sealings do today.  Hyrum was proxy sealed to his dead wife, but I am thinking maybe if one was living, one needed to be in a sealed relationship of some sort with someone else who was living.  I can’t remember if we have  detail explanation of why Brigham and others were sealed to some of Joseph’s wives.

Maybe the attempt was to adopt posterity as in he didn’t care if there was a blood relation.  We still assume if a woman is sealed to a man, any child she has is seen as his under the covenant.  Perhaps that policy started from the very beginning for a very good reason.

Don Bradley’s FAIR presentation,2023 iirc is where I heard about it.  After learning this tidbit, I am rather open to Joseph experimenting and therefore possibly having quite a few variations on the theme besides the family connection ones where they were daughters of his good friends, including quite young women and older BY’s sister and possible posterity adoptions with other men’s wives.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023-old/knowing-brother-joseph-how-the-historical-record-demonstrates-the-prophets-religious-sincerity

I'm sure there are some carefully crafted posts on this board as well. Since I think one of the rules has to do with not talking about sexual actions explicitly, it does make the navigation of such topics a bit difficult. (I am just going off of a post that I tried to find defending Brigham's and subsequent General Authorities' quotes about how Mary conceived Christ, so I might be wrong)

I too find the practice of plural marriage both fascinating, while at the same time recognizing the bad it brought. I think there is a difference in the way that Joseph practiced it compared to Brigham. I also am remarkably not well read on the topic, and have relied on blog posts and FAIR articles as my research. Brian Hales's books on the topic are on my TBR.

[webbles]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Hyrum was proxy sealed to his dead wife, but I am thinking maybe if one was living, one needed to be in a sealed relationship of some sort with someone else who was living.  I can’t remember if we have  detail explanation of why Brigham and others were sealed to some of Joseph’s wives.

The early proxy sealings generally required that one of the persons was alive and the other person who was proxy would be sealed for time to the living person.  There are known cases of women being sealed to their sons for time while being sealed to their dead husbands for eternity.  The mother and son never treated each other as husband and wife so it was more a formality.  It appears that the early members tried to redo every sealing in the Nauvoo Temple, which means that all of Joseph's wives would need to be sealed to someone for time while also being sealed to him for eternity.  I, personally, feel this is the reason why Emma never received any ordinances in the Nauvoo Temple.  She didn't want to be sealed to another man for time (I think Joseph Smith III was too young to be proxy for his dad).

[Dario_M]

4 hours ago, JVW said:

Hey Dario, Rough Stone Rolling was written by an LDS member.

Who also left the church? 

4 hours ago, JVW said:

And it attempts to take an unbiased view of Joseph's life and provide a well-sourced history of the prophet. It's an incredibly good book and people who believe in Joseph and those who don't can both thoroughly enjoy. It's probably the best book about Joseph Smith for the lay person to read. (It is around 700 pages though, so it's not a quick read!) If you wanted anything more comprehensive you'd have to read the Joseph Smith Papers project, which is very dry and pure historical documentation.

Yeah but i'm more interested in information that comes directly from the LDS church. 

4 hours ago, JVW said:

Joseph was sealed to many women.

Okay well i get that now. I've allready read in a church document that Joseph Smith introduced polygamy. But isn't it just not true that there are still LDS members till this day who believe in polygamy? 

 

Edited September 27, 2024 by Dario_M

[Calm]

3 hours ago, webbles said:

Back when I was investigating the 132 podcast, I came across a fascinating theory that Joseph's death was planned by Brigham Young.  He knew that Joseph was about to expose his polygamy and so he plotted to have the Expositor be printed, then force Joseph to destroy it, then get him in jail alone with John Taylor.  John Taylor then killed Joseph during the confusion caused by the Carthage Greys (who also were there because of Brigham).  And Brigham pulled this all of while he was away so that he had a solid alibi.  It was really interesting and had lots of interesting facts to back it up.  The author was supposedly an active member but I have no idea how they reconciled their belief.

Yeah, that one made me ill when I first heard it given how Brigham adored Joseph.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, webbles said:

The author was supposedly an active member but I have no idea how they reconciled their belief.

If it is the one I am thinking of, he no longer is. 

[Calm]

57 minutes ago, webbles said:

The early proxy sealings generally required that one of the persons was alive and the other person who was proxy would be sealed for time to the living person.  There are known cases of women being sealed to their sons for time while being sealed to their dead husbands for eternity.  The mother and son never treated each other as husband and wife so it was more a formality.  It appears that the early members tried to redo every sealing in the Nauvoo Temple, which means that all of Joseph's wives would need to be sealed to someone for time while also being sealed to him for eternity.  I, personally, feel this is the reason why Emma never received any ordinances in the Nauvoo Temple.  She didn't want to be sealed to another man for time (I think Joseph Smith III was too young to be proxy for his dad).

This makes so much sense. Do you have a reference?  Just to help cement it in my mind.

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, Dario_M said:

Who also have left the church? 

Nope, still in.  He is a relative of mine, both descended from Abraham Bushman of the early church I believe. (Great great grandfather I think, but maybe great, great, great.   )  Not that the relation is a big deal, anyone who has ancestors who joined back then are likely related given the size and polygamy connecting so many families.

People have claimed he has lost his faith by pointing to stuff he wrote, but he issues statements saying they were wrong, had misinterpreted and he is still a believer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bushman

This was written some time ago, but after he wrote Rough Stone Rolling.  His testimony really resonates with me  I would not word it the same way of course, but it would contain many of the same ideas.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/testimonies/scholars/richard-lyman-bushman

One small part, the whole is well worth reading…

“Not stopping to think, I told him I remained a Mormon because when I followed my religion I became the kind of man I want to be. No philosophy, no evidence, nothing elaborate. Simply the personal reality that my religion helps me get better. That’s what it comes down to in the crunch. The scripture verse explains what will happen when you listen to the spirit speaking in the wilderness: “My Spirit is truth; truth abideth and hath no end; and if it be in you it shall abound.” For me that promise becomes a simple matter of fact: when I hearken to the spirit, truth seems to abound in me as the verse promises. By that I mean not just truth as propositions about the world but truth as in the true and highest way to live.

Staying in that practical vein, I sometimes tote up a few specifics about the church. What makes it work? While I am a constant inquirer, I like being a Mormon. I like its gritty, down-to-earth feel, and when I stop to think about it, lots of good things come to mind. ”

Edited September 27, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Devobah said:

(I am just going off of a post that I tried to find defending Brigham's and subsequent General Authorities' quotes about how Mary conceived Christ, so I might be wrong)

For the most part if it’s done respectfully and is relevant, it does not get dinged from what I have observed. Speculation about if God has a sex life is generally not encouraged because it does get disrespectful for many at that point, some might call it blasphemous if they aren’t members and even if they are possibly. 

I know there is a  trope about how everyone gets grossed out by talking or even thinking about their parents having sex, but honestly that never bothered me and I wonder why it would bother anyone, though of course I respect others’ feelings in this even if I don’t understand them. I think that same kind of feeling it’s just wrong to think about applies to speculation about God or Jesus and so the mods lean to cutting speculation off as it gets push back and posters get offended too often.

But I think just discussing what Brigham and other leaders said about sex in any context is okay, again if done respectfully.

[Dario_M]

28 minutes ago, Calm said:

Nope, still in.  He is a relative of mine.

Oh really? So he is family of yours?

28 minutes ago, Calm said:

both descended from Abraham Bushman of the early church I believe. (Great great grandfather I think, but maybe great, great, great.   )  Not that the relation is a big deal, anyone who has ancestors who joined back then are likely related given the size and polygamy connecting so many families.

DId he also believed in polygamy? I though that this book of him was another gossip source you know. But now i realize that it is not. Maybe Teancum can send me a copy of the book. 🤡 Since it was his idea anyway that i needed to read it. 

28 minutes ago, Calm said:

People have claimed he has lost his faith by pointing to stuff he wrote, but he issues statements saying they were wrong, had misinterpreted and he is still a believer.

Well..that' a good thing i guess. He must be a relaibe latter day saint then. 

28 minutes ago, Calm said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bushman

This was written some time ago, but after he wrote Rough Stone Rolling.  His testimony really resonates with me  I would not word it the same way of course, but it would contain many of the same ideas.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/testimonies/scholars/richard-lyman-bushman

One small part, the whole is well worth reading…

Yeah maybe i will buy it. If there is an option for me to pay for it. I always find it difficult to buy something from abroad because payment options are often scarce. 

28 minutes ago, Calm said:

“Not stopping to think, I told him I remained a Mormon because when I followed my religion I became the kind of man I want to be. No philosophy, no evidence, nothing elaborate. Simply the personal reality that my religion helps me get better. That’s what it comes down to in the crunch. The scripture verse explains what will happen when you listen to the spirit speaking in the wilderness: “My Spirit is truth; truth abideth and hath no end; and if it be in you it shall abound.” For me that promise becomes a simple matter of fact: when I hearken to the spirit, truth seems to abound in me as the verse promises. By that I mean not just truth as propositions about the world but truth as in the true and highest way to live.

Staying in that practical vein, I sometimes tote up a few specifics about the church. What makes it work? While I am a constant inquirer, I like being a Mormon. I like its gritty, down-to-earth feel, and when I stop to think about it, lots of good things come to mind. ”

Is that a part of his text from his book? 

[Calm]

30 minutes ago, Dario_M said:

But isn't it just not true that there are still LDS members till this day who believe in polygamy? 

Depends on what you mean by this. Practicing polygamy in the here and now is apostasy. There are groups that have split off and started their own churches.  One of the groups is called FLDS for Fundamentalist LDS, though I challenged the idea that they are fundamentalists because they choose to ignore some fundamental church doctrine, imo.  People who have more than one spouse will not be allowed to be baptized and neither will their children until they are adults and can say whether or not they believe polygamy if practiced now is a sin or accepted by God.

However, this is contrasted to how we treat eternal sealings. A man can be sealed to more than one woman, but cannot be married to more than one.  In other words, he got divorced but kept the sealing to his first wife and a lot of people see that as a form of polygamy because they believe that man will have both women as his wives after death.  Me, I think if they are divorced the covenant of marriage has been broken whether or not the sealing is removed on paper. 

BTW, a divorced woman has to have her sealing canceled before she can get married to another man.

Another form of polygamy we still practice is similar to the divorced man, only in this case one of the spouses has died and the other one remarries.  A man can be sealed to both the living wife and the dead wife and since there was no break in the covenant with the dead wife through divorce, assuming there isn’t an unknown reason for canceling the sealing, he is sealed to two women at once…or more if multiple wives have died and he remarried as often occurred in the past.  Two? apostles and even Pres Nelson are sealed to dead wives and have remarried and have been sealed to their new wives and some leaders in that situation have expressed the belief they will have both wives after they die. 
 

The usual reason given is why would God ask someone to break up with someone they have loved and lived with and built a life together and even had children in many cases…but this argument doesn’t really work because of the vast majority of members saying this to support the idea of polygyny in the eternities don’t believe that wives who have had multiple husbands due to early deaths will be able to keep all her husbands even though she loved and lived with and built a life together just as the man did.  They believe women can only have one eternal spouse and so has to choose. This is why a woman has to get a temple cancellation of her sealing from the First Presidency  if she is getting remarried and wants a new sealing even though a man only has to get a clearance from the First Presidency (to be sure he hasn’t mistreated his former wife, is caring as he should for the children, etc).  So if God can say “no, your love isn’t enough to allow you to be married to two or more men for eternity”, why would he be saying “yes, of course you can have all your loves with you forever” to men? [especially doesn’t work now gay marriage exists, is legal, do those who believe this think gays will be able to tell God “I love him” and God will say “good enough for me, get sealed!”, so two cases in that view where love is not enough, so why would it be in the third?]

If there is only men with multiple wives in the eternities, it will need be for a different reason than just because they loved all their wives.  And since even in mortality now we know how to tell who the father is even if the mother has multiple sexual partners, that isn’t a valid reason now to exclude women from having multiple spouses eternally as well.

So the idea of polygyny in the eternities after death is not really well thought out as a doctrine even though it is believed to be a doctrine by most members in my experience.

However, not that long ago the rules changed and women can be sealed to all their spouses who are dead…which most take to mean only one of the sealings will be valid in the eternities, but the Lord is being kind and not making her or the family members doing the proxy work if she is dead choose which husband gets the sealing (what if it is the guess of who she wants to live eternity with is wrong, after all).

Me, I just see the treatment of men and women’s sealings becoming more similar over time and so so wonder if the difference is there because of our culture that gets squeamish still at times when it comes to women being sexual beings and where once of a woman had multiple husbands and was living with all of them, it might be impossible to know who the father was where even with multiple wives, the father and mother are always known.

There is also this conception that is women were allowed to also have multiple spouses than suddenly it’s chaos with one gigantic blended family so heaven becomes a practical orgy, but this doesn’t take into account the belief we will all be perfect beings, with no petty feelings of jealousy or lust and will have massive amounts of time and ability to pay attention to each other, to be one with each other at least in one way where Christ says be one as I am with my father, so the predicted mass of confusion of relationships would never happen in my view.

So my guess is if there is polygyny in heaven, men with multiple wives because God wants families to be together forever because they love each other, then there will be women with multiple husbands as well.

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, Dario_M said:

h really? So he is family of yours?

Very distant cousins, lol.  But it is fun to meet such relatives. I haven’t found out yet where I relate to my husband, but his brother in law connects to me through another polygamous marriage way back when, the Stoddards, and the family who built our house are related to yet another, the Turley family line.  There are some very common family names in the Church for two reasons, many families had many members joined early on and second, when one has five wives as did a couple of my ancestors, one can have a lot of sons to carry on the family name.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Dario_M said:

Oh really? So he is family of yours?

DId he also believed in polygamy? I though that this book of him was another gossip source you know. But now i realize that it is not. Maybe Teancum can send me a copy of the book. 🤡 Since it was his idea anyway that i needed to read it. 

Well..that' a good thing i guess. He must be a relaibe latter day saint then. 

Yeah maybe i will buy it. If there is an option for me to pay for it. I always find it difficult to buy something from abroad because payment options are often scarce. 

Is that a part of his text from his book? 

No, FAIR, the organization that defends the Church that I belong to, awhile back collected a number of scholars’ testimonies to post online to combat the idea that educated and informed people would never keep their faith once they learned the truth. This is quite untrue as the LDS faith actually shows the more educated someone is the more committed they are on average to the faith.  (This is going off memory, I may be remembering the study wrong as I know there is a study out there that shows we have a higher percentage of higher educated members than most other faiths, I believe Jews and Hindus are even more educated).

Found it:

”Among Mormons, those who are more highly educated are not simply as religious as those with less education – Mormons with college experience are more religiously observant, on average, than Mormons with less education. Fully 92% of college-educated Mormons are highly religious, as are 91% of Mormons with some college. Among Mormons whose education topped out with high school, however, just 78% score high on the index of religious observance.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education-equal-less-religion/#:~:text=This analysis looks at measures,most years of formal schooling.

As far as Richard Bushman’s personal belief in polygamy, if it will be an eternal principle I don’t know.  If you mean does he address it in his book, I believe so.  My copy of it was borrowed by a family member and I have forgotten which one and they likely have forgotten who they borrowed it from so I can’t check it to see how much he treated it.  Plus a lot of good scholarship has been done since he wrote the book on polygamy. 

Rough Stone Rolling is a serious scholarly book.  It was written so nonmembers wouldn’t get turned off by the religious aspects as Bushman was hoping to have nonmembers learn about Joseph more than just the gossip that gets online about the scandals, so some members don’t like it because he doesn’t take an obvious stance on religious claims, but I prefer it that way. 

Bushman is a history professor who specializes in Mormon studies. 
 

Just looked at the time, got to go to sleep. Will finishing answering later. 

Edited September 27, 2024 by Calm

[Dario_M]

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

Depends on what you mean by this. Practicing polygamy in the here and now is apostasy. There are groups that have split off and started their own churches.  One of the groups is called FLDS

Yeah the FLDS is a totaly different church. From Warren Jeffs. That guy gives our church a really bad name. With his sick practices. 

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

for Fundamentalist LDS, though I challenged the idea that they are fundamentalists because they choose to ignore some fundamental church doctrine, imo.  People who have more than one spouse will not be allowed to be baptized and neither will their children until they are adults and can say whether or not they believe polygamy if practiced now is a sin or accepted by God.

I was not talking about the FLDS though. I was talking about the group of people who are within our LDS church. But believe that they need to practice polygamy. Because they think that it is Gods will that a man needs to have several wives. 

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

However, this is contrasted to how we treat eternal sealings. A man can be sealed to more than one woman, but cannot be married to more than one.  In other words, he got divorced but kept the sealing to his first wife and a lot of people see that as a form of polygamy because they believe that man will have both women as his wives after death.  Me, I think if they are divorced the covenant of marriage has been broken whether or not the sealing is removed on paper. 

If people get divorced and split up the sealing also has been broken in my opinion. 

But a man who has married to several wifes has several sealings i find. But seriously i can't understand how this can work out. Being married with several wives... i mean..how do you keep the peace in that kind of a marriage. 

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

BTW, a divorced woman has to have her sealing canceled before she can get married to another man.

Strange...will her sealing not go automatically canceled after the wife has divorced her husband? 

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

Another form of polygamy we still practice is similar to the divorced man, only in this case one of the spouses has died and the other one remarries.  A man can be sealed to both the living wife and the dead wife and since there was no break in the covenant with the dead wife through divorce,

Hmmmm that's kinda complicated. Why need the other females get remarried? Why can't they stick with the man they have been allready married with. What does the deceased woman have to do with their marriage?

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

assuming there isn’t an unknown reason for canceling the sealing, he is sealed to two women at once…or more if multiple wives have died and he remarried as often occurred in the past.  Two? apostles and even Pres Nelson are sealed to dead wives and have remarried and have been sealed to their new wives and some leaders in that situation have expressed the belief they will have both wives after they die. 

 

Ooh okay. So if the man died he will be with both sides on the end?

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

The usual reason given is why would God ask someone to break up with someone they have loved and lived with and built a life together and even had children in many cases…but this argument doesn’t really work because of the vast majority of members saying this to support the idea of polygyny in the eternities don’t believe that wives who have had multiple husbands due to early deaths will be able to keep all her husbands even though she loved and lived with and built a life together just as the man did.  They believe women can only have one eternal spouse and so has to choose. This is why a woman has to get a temple cancellation of her sealing from the First Presidency  if she is getting remarried and wants a new sealing even though a man only has to get a clearance from the First Presidency (to be sure he hasn’t mistreated his former wife, is caring as he should for the children, etc).  So if God can say “no, your love isn’t enough to allow you to be married to two or more men for eternity”, why would he be saying “yes, of course you can have all your loves with you forever” to men? [especially doesn’t work now gay marriage exists, is legal, do those who believe this think gays will be able to tell God “I love him” and God will say “good enough for me, get sealed!”, so two cases in that view where love is not enough, so why would it be in the third?]

Omg. That is super complicated. 😵

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

If there is only men with multiple wives in the eternities, it will need be for a different reason than just because they loved all their wives.  And since even in mortality now we know how to tell who the father is even if the mother has multiple sexual partners, that isn’t a valid reason now to exclude women from having multiple spouses eternally as well.

So the idea of polygyny in the eternities after death is not really well thought out as a doctrine even though it is believed to be a doctrine by most members in my experience.

Practice polygamy is not the practical way it seems like. Better just stick by 1 wife or husband. Makes it all less complicated. 

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

However, not that long ago the rules changed and women can be sealed to all their spouses who are dead…which most take to mean only one of the sealings will be valid in the eternities, but the Lord is being kind and not making her or the family members doing the proxy work if she is dead choose which husband gets the sealing (what if it is the guess of who she wants to live eternity with is wrong, after all).

Yeah.

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

Me, I just see the treatment of men and women’s sealings becoming more similar over time and so so wonder if the difference is there because of our culture that gets squeamish still at times when it comes to women being sexual beings and where once of a woman had multiple husbands and was living with all of them, it might be impossible to know who the father was where even with multiple wives, the father and mother are always known.

I always thought that polygamy was about 1 man with several wives. I didn't know that 1 female  also can have several men. That's new to me. 

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

There is also this conception that is women were allowed to also have multiple spouses than suddenly it’s chaos with one gigantic blended family so heaven becomes a practical orgy.

🤣

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

but this doesn’t take into account the belief we will all be perfect beings, with no petty feelings of jealousy or lust and will have massive amounts of time and ability to pay attention to each other, to be one with each other at least in one way where Christ says be one as I am with my father, so the predicted mass of confusion of relationships would never happen in my view.

Agree. It's better to just stick with 1 marriage. 1 man and 1 woman. That makes it a lot clearer.

Or in my case one guy with another guy. And we're not even married. But happily together. I'm happy that my ward doesn't make such a fuss about my relationship with my bf. 

55 minutes ago, Calm said:

So my guess is if there is polygyny in heaven, men with multiple wives because God wants families to be together forever because they love each other, then there will be women with multiple husbands as well.

Yeah i also guess that. I don't really see the problem of having a plural marriage. But it makes things complicated i find. 

But in my opinion there's nothing wrong with it. If a group of wives injoys having 1 husband and they need to share him with each other but they don't mind doing that then it's fine with me. Allthough i find it hard to believe that jealous feelings won't occasionally arise in such marriages. Suppose that in such a group of plural woman some woman may be prettier than the others...so those prettier womans get more attention from their husband. That must almost arouse jealous feelings among the others. 

[Dario_M]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Very distant cousins, lol.  But it is fun to meet such relatives. I haven’t found out yet where I relate to my husband, but his brother in law connects to me through another polygamous marriage way back when, the Stoddards, and the family who built our house are related to yet another, the Turley family line.  There are some very common family names in the Church for two reasons, many families had many members joined early on and second, when one has five wives as did a couple of my ancestors, one can have a lot of sons to carry on the family name.

Well well... you must have a really big family then. 

[Dario_M]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

No, FAIR, the organization that defends the Church that I belong to, awhile back collected a number of scholars’ testimonies to post online to combat the idea that educated and informed people would never keep their faith once they learned the truth. This is quite untrue as the LDS faith actually shows the more educated someone is the more committed they are on average to the faith.  (This is going off memory, I may be remembering the study wrong as I know there is a study out there that shows we have a higher percentage of higher educated members than most other faiths, I believe Jews and Hindus are even more educated).

Well. But i do believe that the LDS church is well educated. More then every other surch. 

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Found it:

”Among Mormons, those who are more highly educated are not simply as religious as those with less education – Mormons with college experience are more religiously observant, on average, than Mormons with less education. Fully 92% of college-educated Mormons are highly religious, as are 91% of Mormons with some college. Among Mormons whose education topped out with high school, however, just 78% score high on the index of religious observance.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education-equal-less-religion/#:~:text=This analysis looks at measures,most years of formal schooling.

Aaawh okay. That clears thinks up. 

1 hour ago, Calm said:

As far as Richard Bushman’s personal belief in polygamy, if it will be an eternal principle I don’t know.

But does Richard really believes in polygamy and practices it himself?

Or did he just wanted to write about it? But didn't wanna practicing it for himself? And didn't believed that this way was the right way?

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Rough Stone Rolling is a serious scholarly book.  It was written so nonmembers wouldn’t get turned off by the religious aspects as Bushman was hoping to have nonmembers learn about Joseph more than just the gossip that gets online about the scandals, so some members don’t like it because he doesn’t take an obvious stance on religious claims, but I prefer it that way. 

Yeah...it's always better then those nasty gossip articles. Who wanna make Joseh Smith look bad. 

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Bushman is a history professor who specializes in Mormon studies. 
 

Just looked at the time, got to go to sleep. Will finishing answering later. 

Yes dear Calm. I wish you a goodnight sleep. 🌌

Edited September 27, 2024 by Dario_M

[Frank11]

2 hours ago, Dario_M said:

Yeah but i'm more interested in information that comes directly from the LDS church. 

You will find very little official information from the church. This is because church leaders are generally not experts in history and have to rely on historians for the details.

The fact that the church does not want to officially commit itself is also quite practical for them, if any documents are later discovered that shed a different light on a case, there is no need to admit any error and the responsibility can be attributed to the independent historian.

 

[Dario_M]

16 minutes ago, Frank11 said:

You will find very little official information from the church. This is because church leaders are generally not experts in history and have to rely on historians for the details.

Okay but i still wanna recieve my information from the church or the church members you see. Not from a small group of ExMormons who love to write gossip articles. 

 

Edited September 27, 2024 by Dario_M

[Frank11]

2 minutes ago, Dario_M said:

Okay but i still wanna recieve my information from the church or the church members you see. Not from ExMormons. 

Then you can be glad to live in the 21st century and that respected members such as Richard Bushman or Brian Hales can address the issues at all without fear of excommunication.

[Dario_M]

6 minutes ago, Frank11 said:

Then you can be glad to live in the 21st century and that respected members such as Richard Bushman or Brian Hales can address the issues at all without fear of excommunication.

And i can also be glad that i can tell my church that i am GAY and i live together with my boyfriend without having the fear of getting excommunicated. 

[Frank11]

1 hour ago, Dario_M said:

And i can also be glad that i can tell my church that i am GAY and i live together with my boyfriend without having the fear of getting excommunicated. 

I'm no expert on the subject, but the church leadership is perhaps even further ahead on this than some conservative members who have grown up with books like The Miracle of Forgiveness.

Edited September 27, 2024 by Frank11