Your continued insistence that J. Nelson-Seawright’s review which started this thread is unfair is unsupported, your claim that “on the prowl” is a good description of JSJ’s activities is ridiculous, and your apparent belief that talking about Nauvoo polygamy in this manner means that you are scholarly, thoughtful, and academically respectable is laughable and infantile. You also apparently think that b(l)og is funny. Forgive me if I don’t laugh along.

People, I think we have looked at this review from multiple angles, so I’m closing comments now.

He may nominally be LDS (not sure anymore), but has published several times with a pro-atheist publication, Free Inquiry, “where he makes a sustained (if unoriginal) case against the historicity of the Book of Mormon and against Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling.”

If it walks like a duck…

I recognize the problems with labels and definitions. I just don’t see GDS as “one of us.”

I wasn’t trying to single out Steve, just that he made a comment about my character and motivation. Actually, he reflects the general tone of some of the other comments on the thread. Meanwhile, as for Joseph and early apostles being “on the prowl,” it is certainly not a mischaracterization of their pattern of courtship. Regarding the themes George’s book raises that are new and could be discussed, here are five:

1. Joseph met many of his future wives when they were adolescents and he stayed overnight in their parents’ homes.

2. There is a recognizable correlation between Joseph’s new plural marriages and Emma’s pregnancies.

3. Joseph used persuasion (pick-up lines) in convincing women to marry him, even telling them the true meaning of the biblical ten talents was polygamy—that the single wife of a man would be given to a polygamist.

4. When the other Nauvoo polygamists (apostles, etc.) were proselyting, they convinced married women to abandon their husbands and children and join them as their plural spouses in Nauvoo—like something right out of a horror movie (and incidentally answers the questions posed by Dane, Nora, and Still Confused which were not adequately answered in this thread).

5. This is not the first time we’ve seen this story play out in the real world. Find a significant belief or practice from the 16th-century Anabaptists in Munster that doesn’t show up in Nauvoo! (“How long has this been going on?”)

I hope that a careful reading of George’s book for perhaps a second go-around would offer more to the reader than what’s been portrayed here so far.

J. Thanks for sticking up for me. It’s an interesting crowd you run with here—but far different than the scholarly, thoughtful crowd as portrayed in the past.

Tom

That said, I don’t think language like “anti-Mormon” is at all helpful in describing disagreements “within the tribe,” as it were. I do hope people can avoid such unnecessary negative characterization in the future.

I’m proceeding on the assumption that there is still something to salvage from this conversation.

It is unfair for you to single out Steve, although that is an understandable error on your part. Some of the rest of us who have at least a little responsibility for this blog ought to start pulling our own weight and stop allowing Steve to be the fall guy.

Your remark about Joseph Smith Jr. being “on the prowl” for women is incredibly offensive. If you think that is a fair characterization of Nauvoo polygamy, you are simply out to lunch. It is the equivalent of me saying that Tom Kimball is swindling customers by peddling crummy books. It would be uncharitable and unfair, not to mention inaccurate.

I’ve been an observer at more scholarly and academic presentations than I can count which dealt with aspects of Mormonism in Nauvoo and Kirtland. I have never heard anybody use that phrase to describe our early experimentation with polygamy, and it is not hysteria to say that if you want to participate in conversation, you need to adopt a different manner of expressing what you think.

“Continuing to peddle your wares in this way may cement your market share among the antimormons, but among faithful saints you’re just alienating yourself and asking to get excluded from any important conversation.”

Thanks for this comment. It has taken me some time to understand that faith and scholarship are not mutually exclusive. Even so, it’s difficult for me to understand the logic or hysteria of those who think that tackling an issue regarding my faith tradition is anti-Mormon. Maybe I’m a bit flippant, but it’s my clumsy attempt to be up front (as I have also been about my employment, not hiding behind anonymity as some posters do).

When I put my hands on my son’s head and ordained him a deacon just after Thanksgiving, I didn’t feel like an anti-Mormon. I felt like a Latter-day Saint. Maybe that’s just my style. Take the pill without the spoonful of sugar. This “b(l)og” that you run has still offered little comment on the evidence George and other scholars have mustered. But in terms of feelings, these are honest conversations that have to be had among the Saints.

Tom

Thanks for the clarification. I originally took the comment as your follow up suggests, observation and not a value statement. I also agree that in many cases the Church both socially and institutionally encourage absolute thinking. I have wondered if that influence hasn’t contributed to my own inability to reconcile eccentricities of early Church history. That is what I meant in drawing the dichotomy between you and I. Respectfully, I did not intend for that to come across as a value statement either. I have taken my position as have others, but I do not see my self as superior to even those who I disagree with.

“From this comment and others it would seem that I have the brittle view on prophets while you take the flexible position. These differences notwithstanding, I think your comments are insightful and reasonable.”

That may be so, I can’t speak for you.

I don’t mean that as a value judgment, either, about one approach being morally superior or better or whatever else. I’m just saying it as a descriptive observation. In discussions about Joseph Smith and polygamy, the more that a person seems to focus on black-and-white statements — “either he was a prophet, or he wasn’t”, “either God revealed polygamy, or Joseph made it up” — the more likely it is that they will find it not reconcilable with LDS belief. On the other hand, the more likely a person takes a flexible approach to prophetic roles — “Joseph was a person who communicated with God, but filtered those communications through his own cultural understandings” — the more likely it is that a person will find polygamy not to be a deal-breaker.

Ironically, there are a lot of things in mainstream LDS culture that encourage a black-and-white mindset; while that very mindset seems at least somewhat correlated with an inability to tolerate information about JS polygamy.