I’m thinking about experiences like Starfoxy’s (#74), of growing up with the idea that polygamy will ultimately be required, and I think this is more than an issue of local leaders teaching false ideas (as suggested in #105). Early Church leaders clearly taught that polygamy was required for exaltation. As far as I know, those teachings haven’t been repudiated; even OD1, as others have pointed out, doesn’t challenge polygamy on a doctrinal level. Polygamy causes so much angst, I think, not because there are misguided people who are still teaching that we’ll have to practice it again someday, but because it currently occupies such an ambiguous place in LDS doctrine. (If Brother X teaches in Gospel Doctrine that we’ll be resurrected as grasshoppers, that might raise some eyebrows, but I don’t think many would lose sleep over the possibility that he’s right. If Sister Y, on the other hand, teaches that polygamy is a requirement for the Celestial Kingdom, she’s got a lot of tradition to back her up.)

As unsettling as I find the practice of polygamy itself, what I find most disturbing about this section is the language used to describe women. I don’t find the possibility that God in fact commanded polygamy nearly as disturbing as the possibility that God sees women as prizes to be awarded to righteous men. And what makes this particular text even more painful than, say, the writings of Paul advocating female submission, is that it purports to be in God’s own voice. Ouch.

It is strange. I agree with nearly everything I read from you (even on non-Indy IV topics) and spend so much of my time in life as a heretic liberal. Getting accused of fundamentalism just takes some getting used to for me.

I never made any statement that it was an all-or-nothing kind of deal. I said that if God played no part in it then that really puts Joseph in a nearly unredeemable position, in my opinion. That leaves considerable room for various middle-ground views, like the one you’ve suggested. If you have not seen people on this thread suggest that the whole thing is attributable to womanizing and the justification thereof by means of unrighteous dominion, then I would suggest you have not been reading closely enough.

I’m glad that so many people were encouraged by my fundamentalist view getting the smackdown, though. Certainly I am not looking to discourage anyone from negotiating their own faith through the brier patch of reality.

While there’s historical precedent for decanonoization, there’s also precedent for the canon retaining historical material that has been superseded by later revelation and understanding. Huge chunks of the Old Testament and quite a few passages of the Doctrine and Covenants come to mind as examples.

The US constitution still has passages mandating that only 60% of slaves be counted in the population, that senators be elected by state legislatures, that the presidential runner-up becomes vice president, and a whole variety of other provisions that have been superseded by subsequent amendments. Yet the original text still remains in the constitution. Don’t we already do something similar with section 132 and OD1? Jesus didn’t delete anything from the Old Testament. He simply proclaimed new understandings of the existing text.

But the old section on monogamous marriage was removed in 1876 from the LDS D&C, and the Lectures on Faith were removed around 1921. I do not think there is a requirement that material consitute a traditional “revelation” to be included in the D&C. Section 134 is a declaration of belief adopted by a conference (similar to the former declaration regarding monogamous marriage).

Perhaps section 132 could be put into an appendix at the end of the D&C like an historical footnote and replaced by the Proclamation.

(Yipes, your tone is more likely to drive people away from the church than anything that gets said ’round here. Well done, mate.)

As for chattel, read again.

I am really stunned that those who regard themselves as faithful and believing Latter-day Saints reject that Joseph Smith’s revelations are inspired and from God. Surely Mormons have some notion that a prophet must speak the truth or at least be close to it when claiming revelation?

Amen. Thank you for articulating so well what has really concerned me about m&m’s approach to many issues for a long time.

M & M, I hope you will give serious thought to what Ronan has written. I’ve been in an Institute classroom (as a student) where one student turned to another who was questioning something and said, “Look. You either believe that he was a prophet, or you don’t.” Do you really want to be accountable for forcing someone to make that choice on your terms?