polygamy

Sunstone 2010 – A Feminist Recap

August 17, 2010
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Sunstone 2010 – A Feminist Recap

I really enjoyed the last day of Sunstone, since I was able to attend all day, rather than a session here or there.  Don Bradley gave a presentation titled “Dating Fanny Alger”, a bit of a play on words.  I remember he gave a funny line to the effect of “By all accounts, she was hot!”  Anyway, Bradley tried to pin down when the “affair” happened.  Apparently, Emma discovered Joseph and Fanny late at night in the barn.  According to Bradley, Alger appeared pregnant.  Emma threw a fit, and threw Alger out of the house.  (Apparently Alger had been...

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Why Mormon History is Not What They Say

August 2, 2010
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Why Mormon History is Not What They Say

Our controversial guest post today is from Rock Waterman.  Check out the original unabridged post at his blog, Pure Mormonism, so titled from his observation that the organic religion founded by Joseph Smith was nondogmatic and libertarian. A couple of weeks ago Jeff Riggenbach sent me his latest book, Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction To Revisionism. I’ve had a passion for revisionist history for as long as I can remember, but something I read in Riggenbach’s informative volume caught me up short. It was an essential factor that I had never known or considered...

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Joseph and Sidney: A Strained Friendship

June 22, 2010
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Joseph and Sidney: A Strained Friendship

The friendship between Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith is very fascinating.  Sidney was one of the earliest, and most impressive converts, joining the church in December 1830.  His training as a Baptist minister was especially helpful to Joseph, and he often preached many wonderful sermons.  As time wore on, there were some really interesting issues between Joseph and Sidney.  Richard Van Wagoner wrote a biography called Sidney Rigdon: Portrait of Religious Excess.  The Missouri and Nauvoo periods were especially tumultuous. With Sidney running the church in Quincy, Joseph and others were still in the Liberty Jail.  Through the first...

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Leavitt Alone, You Idiot!

May 10, 2010
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Leavitt Alone, You Idiot!

Our guest post today comes from Renn Oldsbuster, a somewhat passionate (!) polygamy sympathizer who blogs occasionally at The Fall of Reynolds. Okay, yes, I’m all amp’ed up about this one. Stupid David Leavitt has jumped on the anti-polygamy wagon again. He has taken on the custody case of a Juab County, Utah, woman who doesn’t want her soon-to-be ex-husband to have their children near any fundamentalist Mormons – see the following recent article from the Salt Lake Tribune: (and I have pasted some paragraphs below ) -

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The Lonely Polygamist: MM Book Review

May 8, 2010
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The Lonely Polygamist: MM Book Review

At the tender age of 19, a sister missionary handed me a Book of Mormon and challenged me to read it. The only thing I’d ever heard about the Mormons is that they were somehow connected with polygamy.  My interest was piqued.  I figured I could find out more by reading this book that they had given me — but though I read it straight through in the next 3 days, it took me longer than that before I discovered any evidence of polygamy!  Brady Udall’s new novel “The Lonely Polygamist” promises in the first sentence: “This is a...

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The Seder, Social Justice, and Leroy Jessop

April 1, 2010
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The Seder, Social Justice, and Leroy Jessop

OT SS Lesson #13 At a Passover Seder this week, President Barack Obama’s message to American Jews focused on social justice. Obama said that the message of the Exodus teaches of oppression to be fought and freedom to be won, and that we all have a responsibility to fight against suffering and discrimination wherever we find it. Some Jewish journalists discussing the remarks saw them as a veiled reprimand against Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory. Others heartily agreed that Jews should be particularly sensitive to oppression. The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer enthused: “I’ve viewed Passover as an opportunity not...

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Rachel and Leah: A Modern Perspective

March 28, 2010
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Rachel and Leah: A Modern Perspective

Last year, I posted a topic about Marriage Fitness.  The author is Mort Fertel, and he makes no illusions that his method is a quick or easy solution to a better marriage, but he does guarantee it works, if followed.  Part of the package includes a book with the same name. He has an interesting perspective on the Biblical story of Rachel and Leah.  As we all know, Jacob (who later changed his name to Israel), greatly loved Rachel.  After working for 7 years to marry Rachel, he was duped into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah, and then had to...

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Our Voices, Our Visions: An Amazing Night in Colorado City

March 25, 2010
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It’s the third day of the Our Voices, Our Visions Mormon Women’s Literary Tour and we’re making the long drive on the 89 through the western reaches of the Navajo nation into the red rock country of southern Utah.  At Kanab, we turn south towards Fredonia and then west towards the twin towns of Colorado City, Arizona and Hilldale, Utah. There are, after all, Mormon women writers in these communities too:  Mormon women with their own rich stories to tell. Thanks to a friend we met at our reading in Tempe, we have been invited to visit with a...

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In the Shadow of the Temple by Guest

December 22, 2009
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In the Shadow of the Temple by Guest

A close friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous recently saw in the shadow of the temple his story follows In October, I was fortunate to attend the Portland, Oregon, screening of the movie, In the Shadow of the Temple. http://www.intheshadowofthetemple.com The screening was hosted by the producers, Karen Di Millia and Dennis Lavery. Prior to the screening Dennis and Karen spoke for 10 minutes and explained how they started this project. After the screening they took questions and answers for roughly 30 minutes. Lavery and DeMillia, who are not–and never have been–LDS, originally planned to make a...

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Brother Brigham Brother Young

December 6, 2009
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Brother Brigham Brother Young

Recently I drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon with my brother and nephew.  This is the canyon in which many of your ancestors pulled out  the granite for the construction of the salt lake temple. As soon as we passed the granite facings on the side of the canyon my nephew played a song on his iPod by Corb Lund Brother Brigham Brother Young and it brought mental flashes into my mind of men working on the side of the mountain blasting granite out of it.    It made me think of the struggles that men and women had even back...

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Trading Polygamy for Statehood

September 27, 2009
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If one searches around the bloggernacle, you’ll find a snarky comment about how the church traded polygamy for statehood, or that the church just wimped-out on polygamy.  Such comments don’t seem to take into account how much pressure the US government was putting on the church–it was literally trying to snuff it out if the church didn’t back down from polygamy. I’d like to get into some of these details leading up to the Manifesto.  (This is a shorter version–more details are found here.)  I talked about the Manifesto previously in the context of whether the prophet would ever...

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Poly-What?, or, a Contemporary View of LDS Plural Marriage

July 12, 2009
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Being from England, we do not really have a Polygamous Pioneer heritage like some from the US. However, we do have something a little more contemporary. I was speaking recently to a single woman who had a few children and had divorced been for some time and as we were speaking about the Church's history in this area she explained to me a few of her recent experiences with people who wanted to practice Polygamy.

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Bushman’s Take on Polygamy

June 20, 2009
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Bushman’s Take on Polygamy

A few weeks ago, here at Mormon Matters, I posted on My Perspective on Polygamy (with a longer version found on my blog.)  I hinted that I wanted to talk about it some more, and this time I thought I would try a more “faithful” perspective.  A commenter on my blog took exception to some “hearsay” I had been discussing.  So, I wanted to see what Bushman had to say on these issues, as well as address some assertions by others regarding Joseph’s possibly nefarious motives for polygamy.  Specifically, I want to address 3 controversial issues:

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Women are from Venus, Men are from Kolob

May 27, 2009
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Women are from Venus, Men are from Kolob

Based on my experience, I would guess that the majority of LDS women under age 65 would say that polygamy is NOT an eternal principle and that it doesn’t require any earthly worrying as a result.  While the men are probably not worrying about it (although any of them who are married to me should think twice about expecting additional wives in the future), my impression is that a higher percentage of them believe it is an eternal principle that will be practiced long term.

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My Perspective on Polygamy

May 17, 2009
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My Perspective on Polygamy

I have long avoided talking about polygamy on my blog.  It is a source of tremendous discomfort for me, but it keeps coming up, so I want to give my impressions about this early practice in Mormonism, as well as my beliefs and reconciliations.

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Interfaith International British DJ

May 13, 2009
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Interfaith International British DJ

OK Paul technically isn’t exactly an international DJ, not unless you consider that you can listen to his interviews on line.

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Why Faith Needs Reason

April 29, 2009
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Why Faith Needs Reason

The tragedy of 9/11 had a big impact on my views about the relationship between faith and reason. As I watched the video footage of the jumbo jets flying into the World Trade Center towers over and over again, it dawned on me that I was witnessing the destructive power of faith unchecked by reason. Consider for a moment the faith proposition that motivated the 9/11 hijackers: “If you slit a few throats to hijack a plane and then fly that plane into a skyscraper, killing yourself and all your comrades along with thousands of civilian men, women, and...

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Big Love -Big News

March 10, 2009
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Big Love -Big News

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The Purposes of God Cannot Be Frustrated

February 10, 2009
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The title is from DC3:1.  Today’s guest post is from Bouvet and is in reference to this year’s Doctrine & Covenants manual, Lesson 4 is Remember the New Covenant, Even the Book of Mormon. 

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Glorifying “The Good Old Days”

January 21, 2009
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I think it’s fascinating to watch people justify their angst over prophets by pointing out all the “weird” stuff about which prophets used to speculate, then turn around and criticize the current church leaders for being “boring” because they won’t speculate any more.  I also think it’s fascinating that most of the people who long for “the good old days” rarely mention that those “good old days” included INTENSE persecution, death and incredible hardship – or the that “bad new days” include explosive growth and much more of a “rolling stone” appearance than the “good old days”. 

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