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23 The History of the Principle Polygamy in North America is practiced by as few as 38,000 or as many as 60,000 individuals, depending on which data you read (Quinn 1993; Van Wagoner 1986; Bennion 1998; Daynes 2001; Wilde et al. 2010). Mormon fundamentalists are those who subscribe to a brand of Mormon theology founded by Joseph Smith that includes polygamy, traditional gender roles, and religious communalism. About 75 percent of these polygamists come from the three largest movements—the AUB, the FLDS, and the Kingston Clan. The remainder come from the small LeBaron community in Mexico and unaffiliated polygamists spread throughout the western United States who are known as “independents.”1 These schismatic sects and individuals are dedicated to an Abrahamic kingdom-­ building paradigm that leads to the ultimate goal of entering the celestial presence of Elohim, the Father. Although many mainstream Mormons seek to distance themselves from the practice, polygamy first arose in the Mormon context in 1831 when Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Mormon Church, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­ day Saints, claimed to have a revelation that it was his duty to restore plural marriage to the earth (despite the fact that Africans and Asians had been practicing it for millennia). Smith, who married at least thirty-­ three women and had children with thirteen of them, claimed that he had been given the authority to practice “celestial marriage” from the same source that commanded Abraham to take his handmaid, Hagar, to bed in order to produce a righteous seed and glorious progeny. Smith, like others of his era in western New York, was caught up in the “American dream of perpetual social progress, believing in a unique theology made up of an eternal monopoly of resources (including women) by males and whole congeries of gods” (Young 1954, 29).2 Smith described a vision he had of God and Christ together in a grove of trees in which Christ told him that he would be instrumental in restoring the true gospel. In 1830, Smith organized a Protestant-­and Puritan-­ based religion based on his visions and his translation of the Book of Mormon, a record engraved on golden plates of a people who inhabited the 1 24 mormon polygamy primer Americas before the time of Christ. He believed in restoring the Old and New Testament traditions of baptism, covenants and ordinances, washings and anointings, prophets, plural marriage, temple rituals, and priesthoods, practices that were common in many Protestant movements of his era. Although Smith disclosed the Principle of Plural Marriage in 1843, it was practiced for several years after that in secret in Nauvoo, Illinois. After Smith was assassinated by an anti-­ Mormon mob, Brigham Young led believers on an epic 1,300-­ mile journey west to the Salt Lake Basin of present-­ day Utah. In 1852, Young publicly revealed the polygamy covenant and the notion that a man’s righteousness before God would be measured by the size of his family. Young, hesitant at first, eventually overcame his timidity and married fifty-­ five wives. He had fifty-­ seven children by nineteen of the wives he slept with. In its heyday in Utah territory, however, polygamy was practiced by only about 15 percent to 20 percent of LDS adults, mostly among the leadership (Quinn 1993). Although plural marriage was practiced openly in the Utah Territory, it wasn’t until 1876 that it became an official religious tenet that was included in the Doctrine and Covenants. From 1862 to 1887, the U.S. government condemned polygamy and passed a series of laws that denied the rights of polygamists and their wives and were intended to weaken the Mormon Church. As a result of anti-­ polygamy legislation , many advocates of plural marriage began an exodus to Mexico in 1885 to avoid prosecution. There, they created a small handful of colonies, three of which are still intact today. In 1890, because of threats from the federal government, LDS president Wilson Woodruff issued a manifesto prohibiting polygamy. Woodruff claimed to have had a revelation that the church should abandon plural marriage, as that law had been “fulfilled.” In a historical context , one can see the tremendous pressure from both within and outside the Church to make some concessions to the federal government. It had taken away valuable assets and imprisoned several hundred members. The Church was threatened with destruction. Thus, the “revelation” served two purposes: it facilitated the process of gaining statehood and...

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