The Mormon Church has finally formally
acknowledged that its founder Joseph Smith married as many as 40 women, one of whom was only 14 years old at the time.
Elder Steven E. Snow, the church
historian and a member of its senior leadership, said in an interview,
“There is so much out there on the Internet that we felt we owed our
members a safe place where they could go to get reliable,
faith-promoting information that was true about some of these more
difficult aspects of our history. “We need to be truthful, and we need
to understand our history,” Elder Snow said. “I believe our history is
full of stories of faith and devotion and sacrifice, but these people
weren’t perfect.” The essay on “plural marriage” in the early days of
the Mormon movement in Ohio and Illinois says polygamy was commanded by
God, revealed to Smith and accepted by him and his followers only very
reluctantly. Abraham and other Old Testament patriarchs had multiple
wives, and Smith preached that his church was the “restoration” of the
early, true Christian church. Most of Smith’s wives were between the
ages of 20 and 40, the essay says, but he married Helen Mar Kimball, a
daughter of two close friends, “several months before her 15th
birthday.” A footnote says that according to “careful estimates,” Smith
had 30 to 40 wives. The biggest bombshell for some in the essays is that
Smith married women who were already married, some to men who were
Smith’s friends and followers.
The revelation notes that Smith probably didn't have sex with all his
wives as some of them were merely "sealed" into being his eternal wife
in the next life. And on the next planet.
Reposted from Joe Jervis
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