Mormon Church Hypocrisy: Mormon Founder Had Up to 40 Wives

Joseph Smith and one of his many, many wives

Remember how the Mormon Church was the largest backer of the Proposition 8 movement in California a few years ago proclaiming that marriage was a God ordained institution between "one man and one woman."  In doing so, of course, the Mormon Church ignored its own history or its former claims that polygamy, not monogamy, was the biblical form of marriage.  Now, just to put the icing on the cake of the Mormon Church's rank hypocrisy, the Mormon Church has belatedly admitted that its founder, Joseph Smith had up to 40 wives.  Smith apparently saw himself as the new Solomon.  Now if only the Christofascists and bitter old men in dresses in Rome would likewise come clean and admit that their "one man and one woman" campaign is factually incorrect and contrary to true biblical marriage.  The New York Times looks at the Mormon Church's much belated honesty about marriage.  Here are highlights:

Mormon leaders have acknowledged for the first time that the church’s founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, portrayed in church materials as a loyal partner to his loving spouse Emma, took as many as 40 wives, some already married and one only 14 years old.

The church’s disclosures, in a series of essays online, are part of an effort to be transparent about its history at a time when church members are increasingly encountering disturbing claims about the faith on the Internet. Many Mormons, especially those with polygamous ancestors, say they were well aware that Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, practiced polygamy when he led the flock in Salt Lake City. But they did not know the full truth about Smith.

“Joseph Smith was presented to me as a practically perfect prophet, and this is true for a lot of people,” said Emily Jensen, a blogger and editor in Farmington, Utah, who often writes about Mormon issues.

She said the reaction of some Mormons to the church’s disclosures resembled the five stages of grief in which the first stage is denial, and the second is anger. Members are saying on blogs and social media, “This is not the church I grew up with, this is not the Joseph Smith I love,” Ms. Jensen said.  

[F]or his first wife, Emma, polygamy was “an excruciating ordeal.”  The four treatises on polygamy reflect a new resolve by a church long accused of secrecy to respond with openness to the kind of thorny historical and theological issues that are causing some to become disillusioned or even to abandon the faith.

The essay on “plural marriage” in the early days of the Mormon movement in Ohio and Illinois says polygamy was commanded by God, revealed to Smith and accepted by him and his followers only very reluctantly. Abraham and other Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives, and Smith preached that his church was the “restoration” of the early, true Christian church.

For Mormons disturbed at leaning the truth - and that the Church leaders lied to them for many years - they need to get over it and join the ranks of Catholics who have been lied to and manipulated by Catholic Church leaders for many centuries.  Institutional religion has always been about money, power and control.  Thankfully, the Internet is making it increasing difficult to perpetuate the lies and untruths.