Reddit reviews Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith
We found 14 Reddit comments about Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Reddit reviews Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale SmithWe found 14 Reddit comments about Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
You seem like a super intelligent girl. You need to read four things before you get baptized. And read these items with your LDS boyfriend.
1) Letter to a CES Director
2) Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham from LDS.org.
3) Cherry Picking! The Book of Abraham Essay shows you how The Mormon Church lies about their true history and doctrine. There are many other sources that show this academic dishonesty
4) Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith
Read these items with your boyfriend. Make him read them critically. Don't let him off the hook. If you are planning to change your entire life for your boyfriend, he should be willing to do the same for you. Fact check everything using sources. Don't rely on anyone's word. And don't let your boyfriend use ad hominem arguments to defend The Mormon Church. Be honest... with yourself and with each other.
When you are done reviewing these items, if you wish you can move on to Mormon Think and Year of Polygamy. And check out NewNameNoah's videos on YouTube. NewNameNoah will show you the Mormon Temple ceremony in a safe environment.
> In my understanding polygamy is not officially gone from church doctrine, but rather just not currently practiced. Reading OD1 seems to confirm this as in no place does it strictly repeal it. Is this true? Will polygamy be practiced in the Celestial Kingdom and would it be practiced again should the laws of marriage in the United States change to permit it?
Yes, it is still doctrinal and does still shape sealing policies. I've been taught that it would be practiced again in the future and that it is practiced in the CK. I don't, however, believe that.
> I've heard rumors and read accounts of prominent Mormon leaders (Joseph Smith & Brigham Young in particular) marrying women who already had husbands that were still living. Is this true? What is the reasoning behind this?
Yes, it's true. I don't know the reason. It's one of the most troubling aspects of the historical practice of polygamy.
> In the afterlife, can someone marry my wife? (We are sealed in the temple)
Who really knows what exactly will happen in the afterlife?
> Brigham Young had children with multiple (like... 15ish?) wives? Why were these children not permitted to have a father they didn't share with so many others? Did Utah Territory have a significantly larger female population than male?
Brigham had children with 16 of his 55 wives. In a lot of cases, I don't really see a significant difference between growing up with Brigham Young or Heber C Kimball as your father and growing up without a father—especially when those fathers spent so much time off on missions. Utah didn't have significantly more females than males. The census actually indicates that there were more men than women. AFAIK, it was only a small number of men that were able to get a large number of wives. Elder Widstoe talks about it in his book "Evidences and Reconciliations", and concludes that they practiced polygamy not because there were surplus women but because they believed that God commanded it.
> D&C 132:62-64. Do we still believe that? Why is that still in the scripture, it seems very... ... not what I learn in Sunday School. Man owning women, man sleeping with many women - women being denied the same, if the original wife disagrees God will "destroy" her... this is a bit concerning, please tell me I'm misunderstanding this.
No, I think that you do understand these verses. I don't know whether or not "we" (the Church) believe them, but I don't accept them. They're in the canon, but any lesson that includes section 132 is usually selective about how it covers it and mostly just covers the blessings of eternal (one man and one woman) marriage.
Polygamy is difficult to understand and easy to judge. There was some good that came out of it (including me), but a lot of it was also done poorly.
If you really want to learn more about polygamy, I would recommend reading history books.
Here are some good ones you could look into:
I would also recommend reading what Parley P Pratt wrote about polygamy in his autobiography, as well as this essay that the church recently put out.
one source I just found from: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/yearofpolygamy/2016/09/10-things-polygamy-gave-mormonism/ "'10 Things Polagamy gave Mormonism' SEPTEMBER 27, 2016 BY LINDSAY HANSEN PARK.
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\>10. Temple attendance, sacredness, holy garments, and oaths:
This is a complex and sensitive topic, so I will try and tread as respectfully as I can.
If biographer’s of Emma Smith are to be believed, the temple garment started out as a way to set polygamist men apart from monogamist men ( see Emma Hale Smith Biography, page 140). While the Endowment Ceremony first developed around those who were secretly initiated into plural sealings, it was quickly extended to more than just polygamists. Still, it is suggested that those receiving their endowments would have known about the secret practice, even if they didn’t currently live it. They would have been initiated into the Holy Order which meant keeping the practice secret, or rather- sacred, from the outside world.
>The relationship between Emma Smith and plural marriage is a very complicated one--later in her life, I think I remember reading that she denied her husband ever allowed or entered into plural marriages, but I'm having trouble finding a source that says this so I may be misremembering.
A great source on Emma is Mormon Enigma. (My copy is at home so I can't cite page numbers or grab exact quotes) but when her son went and interviewed her shortly before she died, she denied that Joseph had ever practiced polygamy. Although she certainly knew that he had. That whole interview is quite interesting because of how unreliable Emma is it it. Joseph Smith III (her son doing the interview, not her husband) I also really respect and he eventually did concede that his father wasn't innocent in polygamy after being exposed to the evidence.
>doesn't mean he had any interest in living with them
We know this isn't true. That he lived with them and slept in their beds is explicitly documented in some cases.
I recommend Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, an excellent biography of Emma by two faithful LDS historians.
I also have it linked in the text portion of the Wives of Joseph Smith Infographic
References:
Marriage Details are from wivesofjosephsmith.org
Which has compiled genealogical research from the following sources:
[A] familysearch.org (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City)
[B] Mormon Polygamy: A History, (Van Wagoner, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 1989)
[C] Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, (Newell & Avery, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1994)
[D] In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, (Compton, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 1997)
[E] Doctrine and Covenants, (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City)
Additional Panel References:
[1] "Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy", NY Times, 8/23/1998, James Brooke
[2] Polyandry definition at wikipedia.
[3] Henry Jacobs' mission call; "Zina and Her Men", FAIR LDS Conference, 2006
[4] David Sessions mission call, wivesofjosephsmith.org, Patty Bartlett Sessions Biography
[5] Desdemona Fullmer quote, wivesofjosephsmith.org, D. Fuller Biography
*The cameo silhouettes were created by mormoninfographics for presentation purposes.
Other Resources
Black and White version of this chart for printouts, download here.
Full Rez image from above here.
https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smiths-Polygamy-1-History/dp/1589586859/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1518919832&sr=8-3&keywords=joseph+smith%27s+polygamy
https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Loneliness-Plural-Wives-Joseph-ebook/dp/B019RD9ZX8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518919866&sr=8-1&keywords=in+sacred+loneliness
https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Enigma-Emma-Hale-Smith/dp/0252062914/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1518919952&sr=8-4&keywords=in+sacred+loneliness
http://www.mormonthink.com/joseph-smith-polygamy.htm#links
I hear Mormon Enigma is pretty good.
Here's how I would put the many Joseph Smith books out there. I would be intrigued with others thoughts:
Joseph Smith 101 - LDS.org / anything put out by the Church (hagiographical with definite faith-promoting angle)
Joseph Smith 201 - Truman G. Madsen's Joseph Smith the Prophet (my first foray into JS while on my mission), things put out by Deseret Book (tend to be more friendly), FAIR Mormon (apologetic, faith-promoting angle)
Joseph Smith 301 - BYU Studies on Joseph Smith (especially the 1970s pieces written during a more "free" time of LDS history access), Donna Hill's Joseph Smith the First Mormon (written by non-Mormon, fairly friendly and objective)
Joseph Smith 401 - Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling, Tippets and Avery's "Emma Hale Smith: Mormon Enigma," any Dialogue and Journal of Mormon History article pertaining to Joseph Smith.
Graduate-level Joseph Smith - Joseph Smith Papers for primary source documentation, Dan Vogel's "Early Mormon Documents," (again, source documentation), Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History" (again for source documentation that she had unavailable to us in 2016). Primary sources allow you to begin your own research. I'm not very good in this area, but I do try.
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery. Still untoppled as the best biography of Emma Smith, this biography actually accomplishes something amazing: it's not a biography of Joseph Smith (I'd argue that, as such, it's actually the only biography of Emma Smith yet written). The authors work hard to ensure that Emma remains the main figure of her own biography, even ensuring that Emma's years as Emma Bidamon are fairly covered as well (she was Emma Bidamon far longer than she was ever Emma Smith). Emma (and, by extension, most of the women of Kirtland, Missouri, and Nauvoo) emerges as a powerful force in Mormonism, one that time has, unfortunately, glossed over much.
If you haven't studied "anti-Mormon" sources, you can't claim you aren't any of those things, because that's part of it. The constant reminders to only get your information from the church. That is one of the biggest elements of indoctrination, brainwashing, and sheltering.
They're preventing you from doing thorough research and frankly, it's not our job to digest all of for you. The problems with the church are so numerous there is no way anyone is going to be able to lay them all out for you in a comment on a reddit post. Asking us to tell you why we left is not evidence you weren't indoctrinated if you refuse to go do the study yourself.
Most active members have no idea just how much information there is and that no, it is not spun. Here's a little bit of the history on why and how the real history the church is now trying to manage finally came out. There is a couple in Provo who have a Christian ministry basically dedicated to taking down the Mormon church. Around 1990 they published a pamphlet that talked about some serious stuff the vast majority of members didn't know, like Joseph's Smith polygamy. Normally the church wouldn't respond to these things, but they felt the claims were worrisome enough (getting questions from members) they needed to publish a response, so they invited two BYU historians into the archives (you know the ones in the mountain) to study ALL of the historical documents they had and write a refutation debunking the Tanner's claims.
For about two years Michael Quinn and Dan Vogel studied every document and took photos of each one, with the church's blessing. Problem was, not only did what they find back up the Tanner's claims, but the actual history was much worse (things like Polyandry). They did write a rebuttal, but it was rejected by the Q15 and they were told not to publish anything at all, ever. More than twenty years later the essays on lds.org the church finally published to at least be a little bit honest are right out of Vogel and Quinns essays. By being a little bit I mean, if you not only read the essays, but then follow the footnotes, well. It's not good. The Saints book is the same way. It doesn't out and out lie, but talk about out of context and leaving out very important information if it's too faith challenging. It's still not fully honest. Not even remotely. Shouldn't the church have to be as honest as they expect the membership?
Being historians, not publishing and keeping it all a secret didn't sit well with them and they published anyway. In fact, Dan Vogel made all those facsimiles of all those documents, thousands and thousands of them, available to any other scholar wanting to pour through them and publish their own findings. For their trouble they were excommunicated as part of the September Six (google it).
Many (maybe most on church history) of the anti-Mormon books out there directly source these documents and you can even get them yourself. Dan Vogel published all of them in several volumes called, "Early Mormon Documents." The goal was to publish all the source material he and Quinn had collected without editorial comment. I'm not sure how much more objective it can get or how any Mormon can claim the stacks of books that came out of these are not sourced or dishonest.
If you want a summary list of the major issues, and it's a long one, you should download the free pdf version of the CES letter on cesletter.org. Then read the rebuttals over on Fair Mormon. Then read the rebuttals to the rebuttals.
When I left, a nice summary didn't exist, so I had to read books and boy did I read a lot of them. I happened to start with Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, which is well sourced out of the RLDS archives, but I also read Grant Palmer's, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. Incidentally, he was another BYU professor excommunicated for publishing the irrefutable truth. Keep in mind, these people were active members. They were not trying to tear down the church. They simply felt it was morally wrong to continue to have blatant and significant inaccuracies in teaching manuals, in conference talks, in Seminary, in well......everything.
My reading list (those I can remember at least):
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins
Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (A Biography)
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power
Mormon America: The Power and the Promise
If you still think everything other than what is directly published by the church are anti-Mormon lies or tricks, well I can help you there at too. How deep have you gotten into Journal of Discourses? It's almost worse than anything written by an anti-Mormon. So much worse than a couple of troublesome quotes. I also re-read the D&C while reading Teaching of the Prophet Joseph Smith in tandem. It was a lot harder to swallow that way to say the least and both of those are obviously considered faithful study.
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If you want to claim you aren't brainwashed or indoctrinated you have to do the work. Saying "I posted on Reddit and no one convinced me," or the other favorite, "people much smarter than me have already studied all that and say its fine," are not valid arguments. They're lazy cop outs.
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Good luck on your search for truth. I encourage you to study it out from ALL sources, including faithful sources you haven't yet studied.
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edited to add: Forgot one of the most important. In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith
edited edited to add: If you want something a little more biased for the church you can even just read Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. If you're going to read the D&C and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith at the same time as I did, I recommend at least reading this one first. It's going to be much clearer if you've read at least one of the biographies and Rough Stone Rolling was published by Deseret Book.
Some random links:
Depends what you're looking for. The journal of discourses would be the shotgun approach with a little bit of everything.
I'll also put a plug in for the mormon enigma. It's quite telling on the secrecy and lies in the early church. From a TBM standpoint no less.
Highly recommend reading a good book together with your wife written by LDS women about Emma Hale Smith. It will help you both appreciate Emma's perspective and is well researched. It's called Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. http://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Enigma-Emma-Hale-Smith/dp/0252062914 It was sold in Deseret book stores. There shouldn't be too much about this that threatens your wife but if read together can lead to interest in that time and good discussions together. This was very helpful for my wife and I when we were in a similar situation two years ago. Show more love now with your wife, your courage honesty and integrity will make a huge difference, that's what's real, that's what's good.