quote:
You will find that they are not marriages the way the world thinks of marriage.
Would the existence of a love child in at least one of these polyandrous marriages throw some cold water on the contention that Joseph married other men's wives for spiritual purposes only, and not to satisfy his very active libido?
From D. Michael Quinn's
The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power:
quote:
8 Feb. [1844]. Smith's only acknowledged polygamous child Josephine is born. Her mother Sylvia Sessions Lyon is legally married to Windsor P. Lyon which whom she is living, and so this is the first acknowledged polyandrous child (p. 642, note 8).
Quinn's note says that Joseph acknowledged paternity. It's quite a different approach from that of Samuel Katich, author of the apologetic article you referenced, who maintained that the lovechild learned the truth about her father at her mother's death bed--casting doubt about the identity of the father.
Such ambiguity is not unusual when one studies history. Scholars may look at the same set of documents and come to different conclusions, e.g, the number of women Joseph Smith married. What distinguishes the Katich article from more scholarly works, however, is its decided apologetic tack that tries to cover all of the bases. Just a few paragraphs later, the author pens a catchall disclaimer:
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If there was an intimate dimension in every one of these particular marriages, it is ultimately a matter of no consequence as he 'could not commit adultery with wives who belonged to him'." (p. 6).
In other words, Katich seems to be saying, if you don't believe my contention that Joseph maintained only a spiritually based, plutonic relationship with these married women, then you should accept my fallback position: If indeed he had sex with them, it couldn't be adultery because Joseph Smith actually married them.
This is a classic tactic of religious apologists, one that set them apart from scholars such as Mike Quinn, Fawn Brodie, Jan Shipps, et al., who stake out defined positions and defend them. Apologists protect a front line until the facts render their position intellectually overmatched. Then they retreat to fallback positions.
Sometimes, their antagonists give up or change the subject, and then the apologist has won. Otherwise, the apologetic historian falls back on the ultimate defense. In this case, Joseph was a prophet of God and he was only marrying these other married women because he could provide a spiritual dimension that their disaffected or non-baptized husbands couldn't.
Some men wouldn't join the church or were not good members. Without Joseph's intervention, their wives would never enjoy the eternal benefits of being married to an exhausted husband. Other more worthy men were so unselfish that they were willing to allow their wives to be married to Joseph Smith in the eternity. In this way, their wives would remain with them for "time," but would be hitched to rising star in eternity.
The ultimate weakness of the typical apologetic article is its tendency to overreach. Katich falls into this trip. Not content to defend only the eight polyandrous marriages that he documents, he attempts to provide a true believer's cover for Joseph's other nefarious activities.
Observe the way Katich defends Joseph Smith when the Prophet proposed marriage to another man's wife, encountered resistance that he ultimately overcame, but decided not to carry out the sealing:
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Joseph's requests were an Abrahamic test of individual willingness to submit to the Lord's will. Those who were willing to submit themselves at all costs were proven and strengthened in faith as well as received a much larger responsibility in terms of fulfilling the commandment to take plural wives (p. 2)
In other words, if a man ultimately said yes to Joseph's advance on his wife, whether or not Joseph subsequently married her, he would later be rewarded with permission to take multiple wives of his own. I contend that such a test had more extensive implications. Joseph Smith, a prophet of God, also controlled the temporal world of early 19th century Mormondom. If a man wanted a favorable business position, or a grant of desirable property, it all depended on his status in the church, i.e., his relationship with the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator.
Perhaps the luckiest men in Kirtland or Nauvoo were those devoted servants of the church who had older or homelier wives, unattractive to Joseph, but who maintained otherwise favored status with the Prophet. They could keep their wives, unmolested by his advances, and still prosper in Zion.
[This message has been edited by DualAG (edited 5/1/2006 9:52a).]
