as Smith took Desdemona as a plural wife and became part of an early group wives taken by Smith After Smiths death, Desdemona married Ezra T. Benson on January 26, 1846, in the Nauvoo Temple The marriage was only "for time", instead of being for "time and all eternity", meaning that Desdemona was sealed to Smith in the afterlife but would be married to Benson until one of them died. As a result, over 200 plural marriages were performed between 1890 and 1904.[62]. One third of the women of marriageable age and nearly all of the church leadership were involved in the practice. Valentina Gabusi/iStock/Getty Images. [82] Critics point to the fact that church leaders practiced polygamy in secret from 1833 to 1852, despite a written church doctrine (Doctrine and Covenants 101, 1835 edition) renouncing polygamy and stating that only monogamous marriages were permitted. After the Manifesto, some Mormons continued to enter into polygamous marriages, but these eventually stopped in 1904 when church president Joseph F. Smith disavowed polygamy before Congress and issued a "Second Manifesto," calling for all plural marriages in the church to cease, and established excommunication as the consequence for those who disobeyed. [94], However, it seems that Brigham Young attempted to stamp out the practice of men being sealed to excessively young girls. Among Cochran's marital innovations was "spiritual wifery," and "tradition assumes that he received frequent consignments of spiritual consorts, and that such were invariably the most robust and attractive women in the community. Bountiful's residents are part of a fundamentalist breakaway Mormon sect, which believes that a man must marry at least three wives in order, one day, to enter heaven. A dozen “sister wives” might be married to a single man, and they all raise their children by him together. [90] His biographer writes that he "became sick in body, but his mental wretchedness was too great to allow of his retiring, and he would walk the floor till nearly morning, and sometimes the agony of his mind was so terrible that he would wring his hands and weep like a child. He returned to Salt Lake City on September 21, determined to obtain divine confirmation to pursue a course that seemed to be agonizingly more and more clear. According to the Mormon Church, which is officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, polygamy or plural marriage was practiced a long … The following morning, he reported to some of the general authorities that he had struggled throughout the night with the Lord regarding the path that should be pursued. Joseph Smith had 34 wives, … [34][32] Two months later, apostle Orson Pratt taught in a church periodical that "We have now clearly shown that God the Father had a plurality of wives," and that after her death, Mary (the mother of Jesus) may have become another eternal polygamous wife of God. Unlike the pattern that usually prevailed in Mormon towns, many young men of Orderville entered the celestial order when they first married or soon thereafter.” Nearby Kanab was less successful in its communal economy and had less than half as many polygamists. the word marriage is only used once in the book of Mormon, but marriage is referred to elsewhere in the book using other words and phrases, like "taking a wife". "[89] When Kimball first heard of the principle, he believed that he would marry elderly women whom he would care for and who would not be a threat to his first wife Vilate. [108] Ann Eliza Young, nineteenth wife of Brigham Young, claimed that Young coerced her to marry him by threatening financial ruin of her brother. “I believe Missouri is the promised land,” said Sean Anderson, a 51-year-old fundamentalist Mormon from Mexico who has also lived in Arizona and Utah. Receiving clearance does not void or invalidate the first sealing. While many church leaders in 1890 regarded the Manifesto as inspired, there were differences among them about its scope and permanence. Similar family sealings are practiced in Latter-Day Saint temples today, where children of parents who were not sealed at the time of their marriage are sealed to their parents and to one another in a group ceremony. The U.S. was both fascinated and horrified by the practice of polygamy, with the Republican platform at one time referencing "the twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery. By 1943, both were in their seventies. For public relations reasons, the LDS Church has sought vigorously to disassociate itself from Mormon fundamentalists and the practice of plural marriage. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. Mormon fundamentalists often use an ambiguous September 27, 1886 revelation to John Taylor as the basis for continuing the practice of plural marriage. Pratt reported that Smith told some early members in 1831 and 1832 that plural marriage was a true principle, but that the time to practice it had not yet come. [69] Although the LDS Church has requested that journalists not refer to Mormon fundamentalists using the term "Mormon,"[70] journalists generally have not complied, and "Mormon fundamentalist" has become standard terminology. Official Mormon sources have recently admitted that Smith had as many as 33 wives, although other researchers say they have found evidence for more. [52], Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that church leaders established the practice of polygamy in order to further their immoral desires for sexual gratification with multiple sexual partners. In 2005 and 2007 studies, a geneticist with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation stated that they had shown "with 99.9 percent accuracy" that five of these individuals were in fact not Smith descendants: Mosiah Hancock (son of Clarissa Reed Hancock), Oliver Buell (son of Prescindia Huntington Buell), Moroni Llewellyn Pratt (son of Mary Ann Frost Pratt), Zebulon Jacobs (son of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith), and Orrison Smith (son of Fanny Alger). Without being able to appear publicly, the leadership was left to navigate "underground.". It is also true that LDS men whose wives have died can be sealed for time and all eternity to a second or even third wife within LDS temples, while women … In the early days of the Church (1800's), polygamy existed, but only in certain circumstances. [35][36] He also stated that Christ had multiple wives as further evidence in defense of polygamy. Young famously stated that after receiving the commandment to practice plural marriage in Nauvoo, he saw a funeral procession walking down the street and he wished he could exchange places with the corpse. [111] However, this is understood by most scholars as the collective sealing or binding of the family and not a marriage between Bernhisel and his sister. Many get their endowments who are not worthy and this is the way that devils are made."[95]. [77] Current apostles Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks are examples of such a case.[78]. In 1998, the LDS Church created a new policy that a woman may also be sealed to more than one man. 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