General

After book group this Tuesday, one of my friends mentioned she’d been reading about the various presidents of Relief Society. Knowing of my interest in early Mormon polygamy, my friend said she wanted to talk with me sometime about Zina Diantha Huntington [Jacobs Smith Young], who served as General Relief Society President after the death of Eliza R. Snow.

Zina was one of the first women to covenant with Joseph Smith, one of the few who was told Joseph had only acted because an angel threatened him with a sword. According to other accounts, the angel had appeared to Joseph repeatedly since 1834, but it would only be in 1841 that the angel implied lethal force might occur if obedience to the commandment was not forthcoming.

Following the 1844 death of Joseph Smith, Zina would undergo a uniquely unusual marital shift, leaving the ostensibly faithful/believing father of her children to become the conjugal wife of Brigham Young.

Here is my explanation for why a married and pregnant Zina entered into a covenant marriage with Joseph Smith, and why after Joseph’s death she abandoned her believing husband to become one of the many conjugal wives of Brigham Young. Continue reading Zina Diantha Huntington Young: Exploring a Confusing Legacy

For Day 2 of the 2015 Fair Mormon Conference, the following presentations were scheduled. Those that are hyperlinked and marked with a star are covered today. Others may be covered in a few days when the streaming video is made available after the conference.

* Michael R. Otterson – Correcting The Record: Brother Otterson is with the LDS Church Public Affairs office.

* Stephen Webb – Why Mormon Materialism Matters: Steven Webb is a Catholic theologian and author of Mormon Christianity.

* Laura Hales – Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding: Laura Hales become immersed in the matter of polygamy when she recently married Brian C. Hales.

Lynne Wilson – Christ’s Emancipation of Women in the New Testament from their Cultural Background and Baggage

* Cassandra Hedelius – A house of order, a house of God: Recycled challenges to the legitimacy of the church: Cassandra Hedelius is part of the Fair Mormon team and reacts to the gnostics who claim they’ve learned secret truths that indicate the Church has gone off the rails.

* Paul Reeve – From Not White Enough, to Too White: Rethinking the Mormon Racial Story: Paul gives a fascinating description of why early Mormons might have wanted to counteract the image that they were a new and dangerously multi-cultural and degenerate race.

* Dan Peterson – The Reasonable Leap into Light: A Barebones Secular Argument for the Gospel: Dan Peterson shares an outline for the argument that we are not merely random bits of cosmic goo, indicating that it is completely rational to belief in the divine.
Continue reading Fair Mormon Day 2 – The Rest of the Story

Six months ago now, I visited Nauvoo for the Untold Stories Conference, held in Nauvoo the first weekend of February each year. While there, one woman told me I just had to meet her friend, Kimberly Jo Smith, great-great-grand-daughter of Joseph Smith.

This weekend I finally got a chance to spend time with Kimberly Jo and her son Bryan (together on the right, posing with a recent convert after a fireside). They travel around the country giving firesides to help people understand Emma and the circumstances she faced after the death of Joseph. They talk about their own experiences finding the gospel. But most of all, they talk about the misunderstandings that cause hard feelings, and how we can overcome those hard feelings if we listen to the Holy Ghost and choose to love rather than hate. Continue reading The Family of Joseph and Emma

Today I came across a TEDx talk by ADM Greenert, who is Chief of Naval Operations.

I know something about the Navy, but as I listened to ADM Greenert’s remarks about integrity and accountability, I thought about the individuals who lead our congregations at the ward and stake level.

I thought about a Joseph Smith who took responsibility for the sins of his people, that we all might be saved with our families. And I thought about Eliza Snow and Brigham Young, two of those who had at one time had been deceived by those promulgating spiritual wifery (aka illicit intercourse).^[1]

I also thought of William Smith, forgiven and counseled innumerable times, who ultimately chose to boldly embrace error rather than submit to the “bondage” of Christ’s leadership.

By contrast, a few days ago the sidebar had a link saying:

Kate and John don’t want you to be miserable anymore

I assumed this piece must be a parody, it was so over-the-top and offensive. But as I have seen others comment as though this is real, perhaps I was wrong to presume that Kate and John had more decency and self respect than to pen such a piece. Continue reading Integrity and Respect versus Sparking Joy

1. ^[1]Eliza’s November 1842 poems describe innocence being betrayed by a foul deceiver. “BY” is implicated as having accepted the teachings regarding transgression in William Clayton’s journal, though there is confusion about whether or not BY actually transgressed or not.↩

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words (see my post from last week about trek). Our “Pa” had a GoPro with him and captured what the trek experience was like for our trek “family.”

Happy day after Pioneer Day!

Dr. Kyle R. Walker^[1] has produced the first biography of Joseph Smith’s controversial brother, William B. Smith.

William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet was published in June 2015 by Greg Kofford Books, and offers a thorough and gentle view of the last surviving brother of Joseph Smith.

Dr. Walker seems thoroughly on Team William, focusing on William’s great efforts on behalf of the Church. However Dr. Walker is not willing to hide contemporary documents completely, and gives credence to contemporary reports from Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff regarding William’s unorthodox marital/sexual behavior. Thus Dr. Walker is ultimately unable to avoid recounting facts leading to William’s inability to retain a leading role in the Church William’s brother had founded. Continue reading Review of William B. Smith Biography

1. ^[1]Kyle Walker has a PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy from Brigham Young University.↩

This weekend our stake held their fourth “trek” youth conference, of which members of my family have participated in three. This is my second trek, accompanying my daughter who is autistic.

Eldest daughter, as passionate about fiber arts as I am about the history of polygamy, decided we would be greatly benefited by participating in authentic period costume, including corsets. Now that I know what it is to wear one and how it shapes the body, I can see the corsets on all the pioneer women in pictures from the 1800s. Speaking for myself, my reaction went from “You have got to be kidding!” to “Not bad.”

The handcart trek experience is becoming one of the experiential touch points of being a Mormon young person. In contrast to all the intellectual hand wringing I see on the internet, the trek experience is down to earth and visceral. This is no simple lecture about how hard life was for the early Saints. It is days of sleeping on the hard ground, pushing and pulling a cart carrying your few possessions, not knowing ahead of time what will happen, how long the road will be, or what natural delights and perils await on the path ahead. Continue reading Handcart Trek: Corsets and Army Boots

The account below is a composite of the stories of two individuals, male & female, disfellowshipped & excommunicated, currently under discipline & long reconciled to the Church. They are known to the M* editors, but at least one has requested their name be withheld.

The authors hope that their response to the hurt they endured during their respective times of distance from the body of the Church might inform those who feel estranged from the Church over the matter of same gender marriage. Continue reading Dealing With Hurt

The other day, as the missionaries visited us, we discussed repentance.

My daughter and I both thought of our foreign language experience and proposed that repent seemed to come from the Latin for “think.” Thus, re-pent would seem to mean re-think.

I happily looked up the etymology of the English term repentance, and was dismayed to find that my insight was not accurate. Yet the search also brought up articles discussing scholarly disagreement on this point.

At this point, inspired by Reid Litchfield’s exploration of the original Greek and Hebrew terms in the Bible (related to slavery), I dug further to see which Hebrew and Greek words have been translated as “repent.” I found the following at Bill Fallon’s Free Grace Resources, discussing the three words translated as a form of “repent”:

“Nacham” is used 108 times in the OT and is translated some form of “repent” 41 times. It is translated as “comfort” or “comforter” 66 times. Whereas “shuwb” means something similar to “turn” or “return,” “nacham” has a different meaning similar to being “eased” or “comforted.” Neither word seems to have the identical meaning as the most common New Testament Greek word for “repent” (metanoeo), which basically means ” a change of mind.”

If we consider a view that God is our Father, a beloved parent acknowledged by us as God before this life, then the idea of returning and being comforted make perfect sense for “repent.” Continue reading To Repent

I was recently browsing the internet and came upon Brian C. Hales’ post of May 21 titled “Yes, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph Smith Practiced Polygamy.” After listing the numerous testimonies gathered across the years regarding Joseph’s involvement in plural marriage, Brian concludes his post with the following:

“Plural marriage is an uncomfortable topic and understandably so. However, denying Joseph Smith’s involvement is not useful to the discussion. The evidences supporting his polygamous sealings to create time-and-eternity unions that included sexual relations is too great to ignore.”

I’m not sure Brian is responding to me in this post, since I don’t deny Joseph was involved in polygamous sealings. Nor do I deny that many were willing to imply that Joseph had been sexually intimate with women to whom he was sealed.

I simply question whether the data support a conclusion that Joseph necessarily consummated the ceremonial plural marriages he personally entered into. Continue reading Was Joseph Smith a Practicing Polygamist?