20. Joseph had Nauvoo Expositor Torn Down
September 17, 202419. Joseph had Others Lie About Polygamy
September 18, 2024
While Joseph Smith was married to many women, he said “…what a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers.”
Table of contents
- While Joseph Smith was married to many women, he said “…what a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers.”
- A1) Joseph published denials.
- A2) Gospel Topics Essays Confirms Leaders and Joseph used “carefully worded denials.”
- A3) William Clayton wrote in his Journal that Joseph counseled him to lie about plural marriage.
- Issues these Facts Raise
- Questions these Facts Raise
A1) Joseph published denials.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
In the summer of 1842 rumors circulated in Nauvoo regarding Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Joseph published a statement in his own defense: “We are charged with advocating a plurality of wives...now this is as false as the many other ridiculous charges which are brought against us. No sect has a great reverence for the laws of matrimony...we practice what we preach.” Several of Joseph’s close associates also published a proclamation that Joseph “is a good, moral, virtuous...man [and bore] testimony of the iniquity of those who had [made false statements about] Pres. J Smith’s character”. One of those defending Joseph was William Law, Joseph’’s counselor in the First Presidency. William had been a family friend of the Lawrence’s in Canada. He was unaware of Joseph’s polygamy, or that Joseph had just married his sixteenth wife, Sarah Ann Whitney.
By October 1843, William Law became aware that Joseph was indeed practicing polygamy. He didn’t agree with the doctrine, or its secret practice, and tried to get Joseph to abandon it. William, “with his arms around the neck of the Prophet...[and] tears streaming down his face...pleaded with him to withdraw the doctrine of plural marriage.” Joseph said he couldn’t, and released William from the First Presidency. Finally in late spring 1844, William resolved to take Joseph’’s polygamy public. As polygamy was against the law, William filed a lawsuit against Joseph for living “in an open state of adultery” with Maria Lawrence. The following Sunday Joseph commented on William’’s suit in his sermon, “Another indictment has been got up against me...What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one.” - LDS History of the Church 6:411
William would go on to be one of the main publishers of the “Nauvoo Expositor.”
A2) Gospel Topics Essays Confirms Leaders and Joseph used “carefully worded denials.”
Supporting Sources and Quotes
As the LDS.org Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Navoo essay puts it, “The rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated “celestial” plural marriage.22 The statements emphasized that the Church practiced no marital law other than monogamy while implicitly leaving open the possibility that individuals, under direction of God’s living prophet, might do so.23”
Beyond the fact that the church is using phrases such as “carefully worded denials” when Joseph was lying, the footnote (22) explains “In the denials, “polygamy” was understood to mean the marriage of one man to more than one woman but without Church sanction.” So, effectively the church essay is differentiating between “polygamy” and “plural marriage” as verbal semantics that Joseph used to lie to both the public and most members of the church about his secret marriages.
A3) William Clayton wrote in his Journal that Joseph counseled him to lie about plural marriage.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
Joseph privately told William Clayton to keep a particular plural wife knowing that the membership would be troubled about it if they found out, since most of the saints believed Joseph's repeated denials about polygamy. Joseph cautioned Clayton that if "they raise trouble about it and bring you before me I will give you an awful scourging and probably cut you off from the church and then I will baptize you and set you ahead as good as ever." (An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton, p. 122)
Issues these Facts Raise
This is a clear case of Joseph either: 1. Lying to the people of the church, 2. Telling a half-truth (honestly I don’t know how this could be considered as even a half-truth) with the clear intention to deceive. Somehow God is okay with this? If so, what does that say about God? If not, why did God allow his prophet to deceive the church?
Further Joseph Smith’s tactics in denying polygamy reminds me of Bill Clinton (he liked to say carefully worded denials as well). Joseph said, “What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one.” Joseph obviously didn’t believe sleeping with other women without Emma’s knowledge of adultery, and can’t seem to find any of his many other wives except Emma. Similar to how Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” he was excluding oral sex from his personal definition of sexual relations.
Questions these Facts Raise
If Joseph is known to lie on multiple occasions to the entire church, why should everything else he said not be suspect? Why shouldn’t I ask if other things he said were a lie?
