LDS Church Not Affiliated with Polygamy
Thursday June 26, 2008
One issue that draws an incredible amount of attention to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that of polygamy. Media coverage regarding polygamy, or polygamous groups, is often confusing and misleading. Learn how polygamy is not practiced within the LDS Church and how members found practicing polygamy are excommunicated, or read an official LDS Church statement about polygamy.
Regarding the polygamous group in Texas that calls itself the FLDS, Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said:
Regarding the polygamous group in Texas that calls itself the FLDS, Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said:
"Mormons have nothing whatsoever to do with this polygamous sect in Texas. The fact is that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially discontinued the practice of polygamy in 1890: 118 years ago. It's a significant part of our distant past, not of our present" ("Church Seeks to Address Public Confusion Over Texas Polygamy Group").This above article from the LDS Newsroom also has several video interviews from local members of the LDS Church in Texas. Also see "Clarifying Polygamy Confusion" for videos from LDS Church leaders denouncing the practice of polygamy.
Personally i am ok with polygamy as long as it respects everyone and that no minors or anyone is forced into it.My study of the bible concludes me to believe that Polygamy is neither condoned or condemned in either the OT or the NT.
For many Latter-Day Saints, to distance yourself from polygamy is to distance yourself from your heritage. I came from one of those families that practiced this in the 1800’s. The church did practice polygamy until the early 1900’s. It is still found in the scriptural canon of the church. One cannot escape those facts. Could the Lord reinstate polygamy in the future? What happens to all the rhetoric then???
Spektator makes a great point about culture. Although I am not LDS myself (my parents quit the church in grad school, before I was born, because they could not reconcile their activism in the Civil Rights Movement with the church’s denial of the priesthood to men of color), I trace my ancestry directly to Brigham Young by his first plural wife, Mary Ann Angell.Although I strongly doubt I’d ever practice The Principle myslef, even were it a legal option, I see nothing to condemn in polygamy and much to admire — so long as, as Tom remarks, no-one iunvolved is coerced an everyone involved is a legal adult.BTW, hats off to the HBO drama series “Big Love” which portrays a [fictional] polygamous family as having all the same joys and sorrows as any other marriage in today’s complex world. I never miss an episode…and it has opened up many valuable discussions between me and my husband, to whom my polygamous heritage was previously exotic at best and dangerously deviant at worst!
Spike,
So you must have some good genes then. The thing about polygamy is that it cannot work in a closed society. Since roughly all births result in a population roughly 50/50 between male and female, how does one operate where multiple females are connected to one male. The fundamentalists are ‘forced’ to push young males out of their community in order to make multiple wives available to the fewer men. That part just doesn’t make sense to me. So polygamy can operate in a limited sense if the balance between husbands and wives is accomplished by bringing in outsiders. How does that all work? I don’t have the foggiest…