Racism, Racial Perceptions and Racial Integration in Mormonism

Mormons believed that the United States was divinely created to facilitate their perfect expression of Christianity. Distinctively American ideology was absorbed into Mormon theology and American social values permeated the fundamental doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From the nation’s inception, varying degrees of racism have found expression in that American ideology. Consequently, it is not surprising that racial discrimination was initially present in Mormon religious beliefs. The relationship between Mormonism and racism after 1978 reflects the church’s attempt to reconcile aspects of its inherently racist theology with the evolution of American social values through a reinterpretation of that doctrine.

Armand Mauss’ All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage illuminates the origin of the racism that is expressed in Mormon theology and attempts to make a distinction between socially tolerant Mormons and their prejudiced religious beliefs. It is essential to note that African Americans were always allowed to practice Mormonism; the issue was their right to the priesthood guaranteed to all male Mormons. In 1852, Brigham Young formally declared that blacks were not privy to access to the priesthood based on their African descent. This fundamentally racist assertion was buttressed by additional presidential proclamations that culminated in 1931 when Joseph Fielding Smith “synthesized and codified the entire framework of Mormon racist teaching” (Mauss 217). The racist justification for the exclusion of blacks from the priesthood espoused by Smith’s book endured until a revelation refuted it in 1978.

Beyond clarifying the origin of Mormon racist theology, Mauss develops a counterintuitive thesis: despite supporting explicitly racist religious doctrines, Mormons are no more prejudiced than the average American. Using quantitative data derived from several surveys of different Mormon wards, Mauss demonstrates that Mormons’ attitude towards race is the same as the rest of the country. Conformity to Mormon orthodoxy leads to religious, not social, hostility towards African Americans. Mauss therefore proves that the Mormons’ support for a racist doctrine stems from their devotion to their faith, not inherent racism.

The revelation in 1978 that denounced racism in Mormon and allowed African Americans to receive that priesthood was delivered by Elder Bruce R. McConkie. The Apostle declared that this alteration of the ingrained theology was the product of a reinterpretation of Mormon scripture and part of God’s overall plan for the Mormons. A revelation from the Holy Spirit “added a new flood of intelligence and light” to the subject and inspired a major shift in Mormon understanding of God’s wills (McConkie 3).

In the time following the official renunciation of racism by the Mormon church, new issues concerning race have presented themselves. Foremost among these, according to O. Kendall White Jr. and Daryl White’s Negotiating cultural and social contradictions; interracial dating and marriage among African American Mormons, is interracial marriages, whether between Mormons or between a Mormon and a non-Mormon. Though the church officially renounced racism, Mormon leaders actively discourage miscegenation. The emphasis put on sealed marriages, now open to African Americans, has highlighted the relatively small number of black Mormons and made finding a black Mormon partner difficult. These teachings and a predominance of white church members bring African American Mormons to an impasse; any possible solution requires the violation of at least one of the church’s commandments.

Is Mauss’ determination that an inherently racist religion does not produce racists valid? What are the implications of the idea that reevaluation of a doctrine can lead to reinterpretation in the context of Mormon faith? Although African Americans can now receive the priesthood, does the LDS church actively attempt to integrate the faithful?

Race in Mormon Communities: Fully Integrating Individuals of African Descent into the LDS Church

The United States, throughout the nation’s relatively short history, experienced numerous divisions and controversies due to race and racial policies. From the beginning of slavery to the turbulent Civil Rights movement of the 1950s, the oppression of African Americans colored these social conflicts related to race. Today, one finds evidence of these past race-related problems in the Mormon Church, which only relatively recently, in 1978, allowed men of African descent to obtain equal status in the Latter-day Saints’ religious community.

Bruce R. McConkie, one of the Twelve Apostles of the Mormon Church, explains and elaborates on the 1978 revelation, which permitted men of African descent to receive the priesthood, in his “All Are Alike Unto God” speech. Utilizing well-known biblical language and established church doctrine, McConkie provides a compelling argument in favor of the new revelation. The Apostle focuses much of his speech to the missionary benefits of the new revelation, including the expansion of the Mormon Church’s ability to “preach the gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people” (1). Though certainly supportive of the new church doctrine, McConkie does not apologize for prior church policies that discriminated against individuals of African lineage. Rather instead, he simply states that “the time had arrived when the gospel, with its blessings and obligations, should go to the Negro” and that “it doesn’t make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year (1978)” (3). By carefully studying this speech, by delving into McConkie’s utter loyalty to his faith community, one infers that the Mormon Church continued to practice discriminatory policies throughout their history not due to their personal beliefs pertaining to race, but rather due to their adherence to their religious traditions and culture.

Armand Mauss, an American Sociologist, in chapter eight of his book, All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage, delves into the shifting LDS stance towards individuals of African lineage from 1830 to 1978. The Mormon community, after their arduous exodus to Utah in 1847 and Joseph Smith’s death in 1844, prohibited the priesthood to this particular segment of the population. In the late 1970s, years of tenuous public relations finally forced the Saints to revise their doctrine, allowing men of African descent to obtain the high status of priesthood. Mauss employs historical dates, psychological surveys, and religious quotes, including those from the Book of Mormon, to highlight and explain Mormon racism in the context of greater American societal trends.

Though Mauss attempts to remove value judgments from his socio-historical work, the author fails to do so. In his analysis of LDS racial prejudice, Mauss supports the Mormon Church in the face of their discriminatory practices and their unwillingness to change their policies until the late 1970s. The sociologist places blame for the church’s long history of bigoted views on national racism, the lack of stability in the Mormon community in Utah, and misinterpretations of Smith’s words in The Pearls of Great Price. Indeed, Mauss states that groups like the NAACP, when the party charged the Mormon Church with perpetuating harmful bigotry in the secular world, actually lacked “empirical evidence” for such claims (219).

Furthermore, in his assessment of discrimination in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mauss completely ignores the definite presence of other types of historical prejudice in the Mormon community, most notably that against women. Unlike men of African lineage, females, both black and white, never received the priesthood and continue to exist as lesser members of the church (as discussed in class, they do, however, possess the role of motherhood). Any mention of discrimination against women as part of official church practice never appears in Mauss’ work. Ultimately, the lack of depth in his arguments and his unwillingness to make perhaps more bold assertions against discriminatory practices in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints limits Armand Mauss’ arguments and assessments to that of a simplistic report, from which readers may potential make a number of false assumptions concerning Mormon racial and discriminatory practices.

O. Kendall White and Daryl White, in their sociological article “Negotiating Cultural and Social Contradictions: Interracial Dating and Marriage Among African American Mormons,” continue the story of racial policies in the Mormon church, focusing on Mormon viewpoints towards African Americans from 1978 to the present. While strongly encouraging the raising of a family within a matrimonial relationship, Mormons today continue to discourage interracial marriage, particularly between whites and blacks. This social proscription frequently creates personal problems for African American Mormons, who lack an abundance of potential dating and marriage partners who belong to their own race and church.

In comparison to Mauss and his utilization of data, dates, and religious quotes, White and White employ personal testimonies of black Latter-day Saints to support their claims pertaining to the African American Mormon community and to marriage. These testimonies permit the voices of the people involved in the Mormon community to rise above the authors’ own words, creating a poignant, comprehensive picture of the variety of manners in which African American Mormons negotiate their cultural and social contradictions. The employment of individual stories also limits the personal bias of the individual authors, who remain relatively neutral narrators throughout their article. However, White and White’s reliance on oral histories to portray a social theme certainly limits the scope of their claims. The authors fully acknowledge this limitation in the introduction of their article, stating that, “since we do not know how representative their experience may be for black Mormons, we make no generalizations regarding the church as a whole” (86). Overall, White and White provide a narrow, yet genuine portrayal of racism and its effects on Mormon society.

Questions for Class Discussion:

1. How did the Mormon’s status as a persecuted religious minority in America affect its opinion towards people of African descent? Did the Mormons’ status as a persecuted religious minority cause the community to become more tolerant or less tolerant of individuals of African lineage?

2. How has racism in the United States changed its form in the last few decades? Does racism still exist in the Mormon community? Is the Mormon Church simply reflecting and exposing racial tendencies that still permeate the United States as a whole?

3. How does the Mormon community, in their current views towards interracial marriage, reflect greater trends occurring in our society today in relation to interracial dating? Does this lack of enthusiasm for interracial dating permeate mainstream culture? How does this affect society as a whole (hurt, help, doesn’t affect, etc.)?

4. Terminology can be very powerful. The use of certain terms can provoke strong reaction. Why did White and White and Mauss use the term “black” instead of “people of African lineage"? Does this reveal bias? Why does pejoration affect certain terms and not others?

Life Lessons from Missionary Work

Across the street where I live in San Diego, a Church of the Latter-Day Saints stood erect atop a hill, overlooking the surrounding neighborhood. The young men dressed in black suits, cruising by on bicycles were always friendly and polite, yet few open their doors to listen to their mission while even fewer open their hearts to the faith. In the wealthy, established suburbs of southern California, few were willing to change their lifestyles for the elusive promise of salvation. Missionary work is a hard and mostly thankless task; however an essential component known as the companionship ties the individual missionaries together to form stronger bonds between each other and people in the community. The missionary experience is intended to sponsor the personal and spiritual growth of the Mormon youth, while spreading the holy gospels of God.

In “The Mormon Missionary Companionship” by Keith Parry, the junior-senior partnership is explained by the fact that “though novice missionaries will already have undergone a period of intensive instruction at a MTC....novices often draw on the experience of their senior companions, especially in a foreign mission.” (Parry, 184) The companionship is a social mechanism that the Church uses to bond missionary partners and shield them from outside distractions. Two missionaries are paired up to do everything together 24/7. The system concentrates mission work and uses that both partners to keep the other in line. The companionship system is extremely conducive towards the personal growth and social skills of missionaries, as they must learn to compromise and handle disagreements with someone they cannot live without, at least for the duration of the mission. Two people must learn to accommodate another’s wishes in order to have a functional relationship, which helped many on their future marriages. “All the little problems that missionaries have with their companions are the same ones that many people have with their spouses.” (Parry, 198) Learning to live with another person despite their flaws, and to lean on each other for support are extremely important in successful marriages. It can be argued that companionship in missionary work contributes to the low divorce rate in Mormons as they recognize that the solutions to many marital problems is simply communication and compromise. Companionship facilitates the personal growth crucial to successful future interpersonal relationships for Mormon missionaries.

In “Called to Serve” by Jenette Wood Crowley, the missionaries shared their thoughts and experiences converting people at home and abroad. Josh Kirkham, a missionary in Italy, had convinced a Catholic family of the truth of Mormonism but failed to baptize the family. Fearful of being ostracized, the family backed out in the last minute. Kirkham remember being “devastat[ed] because we are taught that if someone knows the truth and they turn it down it’s much worse than them never knowing it.” (Crowley, 19) As a nineteen-year-old with the burden of an entire family’s salvation on his shoulders, Kirkham was extremely affected emotionally by the weight of his missionary burden. Such experiences will certainly cause many missionaries to reconsider their mission and their faith, however the ones who emerge from such painful experiences do so with stronger conversion convictions. Other missionaries reaffirm their faith through the devout converts they encounter. A missionary understood that a man with African lineage “wanted to be baptized because he loved the gospel. In contradiction to the policy, [he] taught him and his wife and his three kids and they were all baptized.” (Crowley, 21) In Brazil, many missionaries encountered converts who were supposedly disfavored by God. Spiritually it is very powerful to see those who believe even though they cannot receive the full benefit of salvation. Through missionary work, many Mormon youths reaffirm their belief through the action of converting and witnessing the faithfulness of others.
The missionary work Mormons perform in their youth profoundly affects the rest of their lives spiritually and socially. The companions and converts they encounter all serve to contribute to the personal growth of the missionaries, however what do you think the primary function of missionary work is? To educate the Mormon youth or to convert the masses?

Another question not completely relevant to my post, why do you think the Mormons of African descent convert to a religion that believes them to be born with sin?

Interest fact: The Curse of Cain Legacy

"Religion: Mormons and the Mark of Cain" in TIME magazine

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878674,00.html

Missions' Effects: Growing Up and Rewards

The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints calls upon its disciples to go forth and “preach the gospel to every creature [...], baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son, and Holy Ghost” (qt. in Hanks, 315). Although not all Mormon youths respond to this calling, many do. The completion of missionary work acts as a rite of passage for many young Saints of both sexes; nevertheless, the system is organized to more deeply reward the male.
For the Mormons that do embark on a mission, the missionary experience changes their outlook on life, forcing them to mature and accept the burdens of adulthood. This rite of passage is manifested in both the necessity to cope with new situations and confront their faith. Within his essay The Mormon Missionary Companionship, Keith Parry invokes the stories of twelve college students who had recently returned from missions, extrapolating that it is the relationship between companions that marks the transition between adolescent and adult. One interviewee states, “Because we couldn’t choose our companions, we had to make the best of the ones we got. This often forced us to learn patience, tolerance, cooperation, and understanding” (Parry, 187). The need to morph to “make the best” of situations drives the missionaries to shed the petty, uncompromising stubbornness of childhood and take up a mantle of maturity. Furthermore, an intense immersion of religion propels missionaries into adulthood. According to Jenette Wood Crowley’s Call to Serve: An Oral History of Mormon Missions, a compilation of former missionaries’ experiences in the field, serving a mission is a profoundly religious process. Many attest to having a hard time adjusting to not being in a “spiritual state of mind” after returning (Crowley, 27). That former religiosity forces adolescent missionaries to partake in self-reflection and define their lifetime desires and “eternal goals,” both very adult concerns (Crowley, 28).
Although it is clear that serving a mission brings about maturity, wisdom and self-reflection, the direct emotional returns are greater for males than for females. From both Crowley’s and Parry’s stories, there seems to be a larger network of brotherhood than of sisterhood. This provides more opportunity for bonding. Additionally, men can participate in more rewarding missionary experiences. Sisters are only given the authority to “preach the gospel” whereas elders can also perform “gospel ordinances” (Hanks, 322). While this is not a hard and fast line of demarcation between the duties of men and women serving the Church, it still prevents women from attaining the same degree of reward from their missionary experiences. One sister writes, “We get discouraged and upset--but all that is forgotten as we watch someone we have grown to love enter the waters of baptism” (Hanks, 330). Her intention was to dismiss such concerns, but it is likely that if she were permitted to personally baptize that loved one, her elation would be much greater.
Considering these outcomes of a mission trip, what do you think are the other effects? Why would some missionaries come back saying “a missionary converts himself” while others very disillusioned (Crowley, 29)? Also, given that women are more successful missionaries than men, why are they not permitted to perform as many duties as their male counterparts?

Mormon Families vs. Non-Mormon Families

From the 1800s, when polygamy became public, to the present day, Mormons have faced resentment and prejudice for various reasons. As anti-Mormon sentiment became strong when polygamy was introduced, anti-polygamists found more flaws in the Church of Latter Day Saints. Even today, people are intolerant to Mormons because of their movement’s past and the supposed differences between the general public and Mormons. Although Latter Day Saints may have different religious practices and beliefs, their lifestyle and familial interactions do not vary greatly from non Mormons’ habits and relationships.

Tim B. Heaton, Kristen L. Goodman, and Thomas B. Holman in “In Search of a Peculiar People: Are Mormon Families Really Different?” explain why many believe there are inherent differences between Mormons and non-Mormons by introducing the connection between religion and family. The link is based on that religion and family deal with the same concern – love or selflessness in relationships. The authors further that these two establishments have a “symbiotic relationship (87)” because religion shapes daily exchanges and supports family interactions, while a family provides an environment for “religious socialization (88).” Because “according to the Mormon doctrine, the family plays a central role in human salvation”, many believe that Mormons’ relationships would differ as their religion does from the public norm. Mormons do have different religious beliefs but as it’s pointed out in Heaton, Goodman, and Holman’s piece, it does not cause significant differences within their interactions.

Surprisingly, as stated before, although religious differences exist, many aspects of Mormons’ familial interactions do not diverge significantly from non-Mormons. Data was taken from the National Survey of Families and Households to evaluate areas such as religiosity, marriage and divorce, childrearing values and behavior, sexual behavior, household division of labor, role evaluation, disagreement and conflict, kinship, and quality of life to compare and contrast Mormons and non-Mormons. When analyzing theses areas, it was found that the only areas that actually had significant differences were that there are higher rates of church attendance for Mormon men and women, more Mormons are married, they have larger families and lower income, and they’re more likely to disprove of premarital sex and pregnancies. Every other area did not have any differences that were too noteworthy. The few differences and similarities lead me to believe that “Mormons and others differ more in attitude than in actual behavior (104).”

Questions:

Do you think that there were any unaccounted factors that would cause even greater differences between the lifestyles of Mormons and non-Mormons?

If there are not such vast differences, why is that Mormons are still looked with such disdain?

Do you think any of the behaviors in each area of familial interactions have evolved? How so? If so, was it significant?

Is there any aspect of Mormon’s human interactions that has vast differences that has gone unnoted?

Assimilation: How much is too much?

“While assimilation is sometimes accomplished in part by increasing tolerance and other changes within the host society, it usually requires much more change on the part of the deviant movement itself.” (pg 24)

As evidenced by the previous readings, the American sentiment towards Mormonism was plagued by negative feelings regarding the follower’s practice of polygamy. The Mormons tried assimilation, at both the corporate and grassroots level, as the nest step towards acceptance by the American population. In doing so, however, they were forced to abandon some of their religious beliefs.

It seems that Mormon leaders went to every extent to adapt to the mainstream and secure their place in the American culture. They revised hymnbooks, taking cues from Protestantism, adopted the Boy Scout Program and worked to improve Brigham Young University in hopes that it would be seen as a legitimate institution. Mauss states that these changes “must have been mind-boggling for some of the states.” At the same time Mormonism became less mysterious to the American public, it became less steadfast in its values. Testimonies, specifically, were once of high importance in the religion became of lesser importance as they switched focus from accounts of personal witness to feelings of gratitude.

The article states that the Mormon people became extremely successful in material terms, and realized that in order for them to become even more so, they would have to compromise some aspects of their faith, including serving alcoholic beverages in their hotels and advertising adult programs on their radio stations. This situation makes it appear as though Mormons were forgoing their traditions in exchange for money. Mormons wanted to assimilate into the American way of life, however I think that Mormon leaders were sending the wrong message by abandoning the values the so vehemently defended to the American public essentially in exchange for monetary means.

To what extent should the Mormons, and present day subcultures, forget their traditional values and change their ways in order to fit into the general population? What are some positives and negatives that could come from assimilating on either those who are assimilating and the general culture? For example, my great-grandmother prohibited my grandfather and his brothers from speaking Albanian, their first language, once they started middle school so that they would become more “American.” Consequently, my grandfather cannot speak a word of Albanian today. A somewhat similar phenomenon is happening in where I am from in southern California with the Mexican immigrant population.

Anti-Mormonism

Anti-Mormonism and the question of Religious freedom provided by the Constitution
The Anti-Mormon sentiment prevalent in society during the late 1800’s contributed greatly to the Supreme Court decision to deny the Mormon’s right to practice polygamy. Though polygamy had been outlawed in the United States for years previous, Mormons had continued to practice plural marriage on the grounds that the religious freedom provided by the Constitution protected them from legal repercussions as long as they attributed their practice to religious reasons. This notion, though perhaps previously unchallenged, was firmly refuted by the Supreme Court’s decision in Reynolds v. The United States in October 1878 in which the court stated that the Constitution provided only for the protection of free religious thought and this protection did not extend into the realm of religious practice. Chief Justice Waite cites the main reason behind this decision as stemming not so much from a disproval of polygamy, which had already been established, but instead from the inability for a government to properly preside over its people if man’s “professed doctrines of religious belief” were considered superior to the law of the land.

While the issue of simultaneously ensuring autonomy and maintaining government effectiveness has always posed problems for America and democracy in general, the means through which Congress here tries to establish the power of the government over the individual is proved to be too far-reaching for other members of society. In George Cannon’s response to the Supreme Court decision he writes, “I had hoped that the Court would give to this question-one of the most important that has ever been submitted to it-the most calm, profound, and unprejudiced attention; that they would examine it thoroughly and exhaustively, and render a decision that would be read with interest and delight by every lover of freedom and the rights of man,” expressing his disappointment at the lack of thorough analysis with which the court had enacted its decision. He then asserts that a more proper law would state that Mormons and religious people in general have every right to engage in those practices determined by their religious beliefs, as long as their practice does not interfere with the rights of their fellow men. His expression of a wish that Congress would have viewed the issue with an unbiased view sheds light onto the role that Anti-Mormonism most assuredly played in this uncharacteristically far-reaching Court decision. Had not the issue of polygamy been so hotly contended by so many members of society, Congress would have perhaps been more inclined to view the issue of religious freedom on a broader scale and see that the extensive effects of a decision to endorse government intervention in any religious practice were both invasive and Unconstitutional.

Questions
1-How specifically do you believe Anti-Mormonism influenced the Supreme Court decision? Do you believe that it was a natural byproduct of society’s disdain, or should the Court in theory have remained unsusceptible to this outside influence in its decision?
2-How much did the issue of slavery play a part in the heavy anti Mormon sentiments of the time period?
3-Do you agree with the disappointment expressed by George Cannon, or do you support the Supreme Court’s original decision to protect only religious beliefs and not practice?

Anti-Mormonism Sentiment

From its outset, the Mormon faith was the subject of persecution just about wherever its members are. Its inherently different religious views and claim to be the “restoration of all things” angered other the Christian sects that existed in America at the time. Mormons had to move constantly in order to avoid persecution, eventually ending up in Utah, where they had no neighbors to anger. However, the existence of polygamy in the Western reaches of the United States caused many to associate the Mormon faith with everything that America was trying to leave behind.
The outrage against plural marriage arose from the long-standing tradition of monogamy as the status quo. Society’s reverence of single marriage as a time-honored tradition to be upheld at all costs, and polygamy was seen as one of the two major threats to this institution. “Divorce and polygamy, so the theory went, were twisted strands, already strangling society through the destruction of marriage” (Gordon 174). Polygamy was seen as a threat to marriage as it should be in society. It was seen to destroy marriage in a similar way to divorce. The avid outcry against polygamy began to pick up steam and eventually caught the attention of those in charge of the country.
Spurred on by many dissenters, the federal government began to raise questions about the legality of polygamy, and the matter eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. “The weakness in the system exposed by Mormon polygamy, they argued, could topple the whole structure. In the wrong hands, precious liberties were perverted into justifications for licentiousness” (Gordon 40). The Mormon polygamist movement was seen as something that took advantage of the freedom in America and the start of what could become a rush of immoral developments that could follow. The Constitution offered the citizens freedom, but many argued that polygamy blatantly crossed the line of American freedom and utter freedom.
Once the issue reached the Supreme Court, polygamy was doomed to be outlawed. The massive public outcry from the northeastern United States forced the Supreme Court to deem plural marriage illegal. The reasons stated didn’t really matter, but involved calling the precedents of English law, in which polygamy was punishable by death. The opinion of the court was stated as “Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people” (Waite 3). The polygamous nature of the Mormon Church was seen as a barbaric and very un-American establishment by the majority of the American population. The American ideal was seen as a philosophy of restrained personal freedom, not a free-for-all attitude as polygamy implied.
Questions
1. Mormonism suffered because it came to being in the religiously focused climate of nineteenth century America. How do you think Mormonism would fare if it had never existed until now and started up in today’s climate?
2. Do you think the opposition to Mormonism arose from a religious objection or from a defense of the Constitution?

Anti-Mormonism in the 19th and early 20th Century

The place of women in the history is the Latter-day Saints is very interesting. As we read over the last couple weeks, women could be either especially strong willed like Emma Hale Smith or they could bend to pressure like many of the young wives Joseph Smith married. Thus women had an important role within the church. Women also had a crucial role outside of the church, specifically in the opinions of outsiders. In fact all the while that the Federal government was trying to punish and disenfranchise the Mormons, public opinion was rather obsessed with Mormon women first seeing them as victims then as criminals. As Sarah Barringer Gordon puts it, “Indicted as fornicators, with no vote, these women had gone, in less than a decade, from being called victims to being labeled criminals” (181). Gordon’s book tracks the progress of public opinion which first saw the women as victims of abusive and capricious husbands then as complicit criminals who deserved punishment. Gordon claims this turn of opinion was caused by “Congress’s turn to coercion in the second half of the 1880s” (148).

The women also played a large role in the prosecution of polygamists. Many plural wives were taken to the stand in an effort to gain testimony. However this goal of the prosecution was not reached because often the witnesses would “simple ‘forget’ the material elements of the crimes associated with plural marriage” (Gordon, 162). The women especially would forget if the husband had other wives or where the other families lived. Here the victim became complicit in the crime.

Another striking part of the reading was the passage in which Justice Reynolds compared polygamy to human sacrifice and the practice of sati, in which bereaved wives were made to jump on the funeral pyre of their deceased husbands. To link polygamy with two such religious practices was a very strong statement which shows how the wider community felt about polygamy, that is was destructive, barbarous, and potentially violent. This view of the polygamy links back to the early public opinion concerning women, that they were victims. To combine the two would show that the public originally thought that polygamy was a disgusting and dangerous practice that endangered and abused women. As time went on only the latter half of the opinion changed because polygamy was always hated by outsiders.

Questions:

1. Is it fair to link polygamy with sati and human sacrifice? Do the latter traditions have anything in common with the first? Does polygamy hurt anyone? Or was Justice Reynolds just exhibiting his prejudice when he compared the three?
2. Concerning the women of the LDS, are they victims of monstrous polygamy or are they equal perpetrators of the crime? Are they a combination of the two?

Rise and Fall of Plural Marriage

Kathryn Daynes examines the rise and fall of plural marriage within Mormonism in the first two chapters of More Than One Wife. Chapter one traces the development of polygamy from the Mormon settlements in Kirtland and Nauvoo. Joseph Smith’s revelation about plural marriage was seen as a commandment from God and another initiative toward the “restitution of all things” (21). Daynes argues that the belief system of the Mormons was receptive to the practice of polygamy. Their belief that God’s will was revealed to Joseph Smith as his prophet and that practicing polygamy would lead to their salvation when the soon-coming Christ returned to Earth, made their acceptance of the controversial revelation much easier. She also describes the way Mormon communities were different from the other American households, which focused on the immediate family. When plural marriage was officially announced on August 12, 1843 of created a chain reaction of events that led to the murder of Joseph Smith and his brother and the exodus of the Mormon community to a settlement farther west.
Chapter two, Plural Marriage under Mormon Control, discusses the ways in which Mormons were repeatedly persecuted because of their marriage system. When the Mormons settled in Utah they tried to create an isolated community to govern themselves but the United States government issued a series of laws that tore down their legal system that supported their polygamist beliefs. Having their property taken away and being disfranchised by laws such as the Edmunds-Tucker Act led to the issue of the Manifesto, which halted plural marriage in the Mormon Church.
The Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 and the Official Declarations are revelations from God to his prophets that began and ended polygamy for the Mormons. Both issued harsh consequences if the decrees were not adhered to.

Questions:
The title of Chapter 2 Plural Marriage under Mormon Control implies that the Mormons had complete control of their belief at some point. Do you think that their history in America supports this?

In Doctrine & Covenants Section 132 there is a section that speaks directly to Emma Smith about her role as the wife of Joseph Smith and her acceptance of a plural marriage. Is it possible that Joseph added this to the initial revelation after Emma’s fierce rejection of the practice?