Politic?

This is a blog dedicated to a personal interpretation of political news of the day. I attempt to be as knowledgeable as possible before commenting and committing my thoughts to a day's communication.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Well Oops and Good Gracious

"Plural marriage was difficult for all involved. For Joseph Smith's wife Emma, it was an excruciating ordeal."
Mormon Church essay
In this dispensation, the Lord commanded some of the early Saints to practice plural marriage. The Prophet Joseph Smith and those closest to him, including Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, were challenged by this command, but they obeyed it. Church leaders regulated the practice. Those entering into it had to be authorized to do so, and the marriages had to be performed through the sealing power of the priesthood. In 1890, President Wilford Woodruff received a revelation that the leaders of the Church should cease teaching the practice of plural marriage (Official Declaration 1).
My goodness, and all this time faithful Mormons had been convinced of their Church founder as being faithfully monogamous to the sole woman whom he loved. All the while he had been casting his mind back to the progenitor of monotheism, Abraham, he of Biblical antiquity who, quite like other residents of Ur of the Chaldeans, took more than one wife. And it's a safe bet that thumbing back through the millenna his wife too was unhappy with her status as chief wife.

Though the biblical account, written solely by males without doubt, give Sarai, Abram's wife, credit for having thrust upon the reluctant husband a concubine to give him a son where his wife had been unable to, the deed was done and the succession succeeded apace, score one for the Jews, and an add-on for the Arabs. But this event of Mormonism is of a much more historically recent advent, when it was uncommon in the world of the West to have more than one wife.

It was, in fact, considered a crime in the United States, which put pressure on the Church of Latter-
Day Saints to surrender its fondness for polygamy to the dustbin of rejection. Even while the Mormon Church was associated with polygamy in its initiating years, it took care to portray its founder as a happily married man with a singular wife. Now to be revealed by the hierarchy of the church to have been a false portrayal, not reflective of the historical truth.

What is historical truth, after all, but an account advanced by some individual whose perception of truth and reality may differ widely from someone else's, and all the more so if the scaffolding was being laid for an event of telling proportions? As in the introduction of a new religion, for example; based on an existing religion, to be sure, but diverging wildly, readily distinguishable from the original by that fact.

An ancient Judeo-Christian people existing in North America, something that no other historians had ever discovered, nor was it known before Joseph Smith made his astonishing revelations, that Jesus Christ visited America for the very purpose of preaching Mormonism in the United States and from there, worldwide. He had, after all, an example of success following a similar trajectory, in Islam, but without the violent conquest portion involved.

Perhaps the prospect of multiple wives seemed too compellingly persuasive to those who joined the original Mormon Church in the 19th Century. Where an inspired young treasure hunter discovered golden plates inscribed with the Book of Mormon, in upstate New York. "Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40" wives attributed to Joseph Smith; some of those women already married, one not yet fifteen years of age.

The thing of it is, Joseph Smith had no wish of his own to acquire more than one good wife. He had little choice in the matter. The threats of an angel that "came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully", persuaded him in awe and confusion that he must indeed follow in the footsteps of the venerable Abraham, his predecessor and role model.

And so, good people, he did. And in so doing restored the "ancient principles" of Biblical prophets. A principal principle one must take it, being that women be subservient to men; their willing servants and bed-companions. And while he was at it, he authorized other Mormons to do likewise. Another form of conquest; persuading reluctant males to take unto themselves buxom, nubile brides, age no consideration.

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