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Polygamy lives on in LDS temples, spurring agony, angst and a key question
One thing to keep in mind while reading, is the generational trauma of polygamy among Latter-day Saints. Thread 1/ https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/11/24/polygamy-lives-lds/">https://www.sltrib.com/religion/...
Polygamy lives on in LDS temples, spurring agony, angst and a key question
One thing to keep in mind while reading, is the generational trauma of polygamy among Latter-day Saints. Thread 1/ https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/11/24/polygamy-lives-lds/">https://www.sltrib.com/religion/...
Every LDS knows what it is like to hear polygamy jokes (and make polygamy jokes). It’s all that many non-Mormons know about Mormonism so it becomes an icebreaker, a way to show that someone knows SOMETHING about the LDS Church.
As such, it remains a sore spot /2
As such, it remains a sore spot /2
LDS leadership has never dealt with it from an official standpoint beyond affirming monogamy as the temporal norm. It’s too personal, too painful.
The last LDS Church President to lead the church who was a child of polygamy was Joseph Fielding Smith. He died in 1972.
The last LDS Church President to lead the church who was a child of polygamy was Joseph Fielding Smith. He died in 1972.
No leader is going to say something that could cause hurt to beloved church leaders. No one is going to speak out against something that their ancestors held dear. No one wants to speak out against something called divine for decades.
The problem with being quiet is that the shame never goes away. So it becomes too difficult to talk about polygamy in modern LDS circles (and race, but that’s another thread). That trauma is passed on, generation to generation and there’s no venue to talk about it.
At least, not in church settings. So Morm*n St*ries and fundamentalists have opportunities to make money and find converts who fund that they can tak about questions they’ve had in a place where people can answer questions. people with questions find their own spaces.
So, in some ways, I think the laughter in response to DHO’s talk was surprise and discomfort and hope. Could a leader be speaking about polygamy? Especially someone who is willing to take on controversial topics? It wasn’t laughing at the woman’s pain.
It was expressing discomfort at someone in authority speaking on questions that many people desperately want answers for.
Because as much as LDS are eager to express their confidence in living revelators, it’s essential to remember that public stances on discarded practices like polygamy don’t come very often.
Anyway, some day I’ll write about pain, Protestantization, and optimum tension in the long 20th century of Mormonism. /fin
Actually, one more thing. Protestantization and secularization should beused interchangeably in the LDS example.
As Kathleen Flake has written (and folks miss this amazing point), is that after Reed Smoot’s hearings, Latter-day Saints only agree to look and/or act Protestant.
They don’t actually become Protestants in religious terms.
They don’t actually become Protestants in religious terms.
