The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy Rating :
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Thorough analysis of the issues
By Bobby Boylan
This book, edited by two notable LDS historians (Newell Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster) is perhaps the single best volume on the issue of Mormon polygamy I have thus far encountered. It is a thorough volume that is scholarly, and eludicates many important issues that, unfortunately, are often distorted in more polemical works.
Topics discussed in this volume includes Joseph Smith's marriage to Fanny Alger; the age of Joseph Smith's plural wives; the very-difficult topic of polyandary (perhaps the most difficult issue to deal with when discuss Joseph Smith's plural marriages); recent genetic studies and purported off-spring of Joseph's plural marriages (recent studies show that the purported progeny are not Joseph's biological children); and many other issues.
The issue of plural marriage is a difficult issue to get one's head around in Mormon studies. However, Foster and Bringhurst and the other contributors to this text have to be congratulated for producing a volume that deals with the difficult issues head-on, as should any difficult issue should be dealt with, and shows the real facts and real history, as opposed to the gross media caricature of early LDS polygamy.
I think the highest compliment I can pay this text is that this is the first book I would suggest to anyone interested in Mormon polygamy.
Robert Boylan
13 of 17 people found the following review helpful.Great source of 19th century marriage statisitics
By David R. Keller
I apologize in advance for the length of my review here. I hope those considering purchasing this book will find it worth the read.
As a minor contributor to this volume, I am pleased with how it all turned out. These are ground breaking essays: five explore interesting subsets of Joseph Smith's plural wives (first wife, polyandrous wives, wives alleged to have borne his children, and teenage brides) and three explore the significance of the founding revelation contained in the Utah LDS Doctrine and Covenants section 132, especially in regards to its impact on various factions (Utah LDS, Reorganized LDS, and Fundamentalist LDS).
I would like to comment on the pair of chapters on teenage marriage, which I consider to be a timely given heightened media awareness (during Romney's campaign and the Smart kidnapping trial) that Joseph Smith married brides as young as 14.
Craig L. Foster, David Keller, and Gregory L. Smith, "The Age of Joseph Smith's Plural Wives in Social and Demographic Context." p. 152-183
Todd M. Compton, "Early Marriage in the New England and Northeastern States, and in Mormon Polygamy: What Was the Norm?" p. 184-232
Foster, myself, and Smith find Joseph's marriages to 10 teenagers within the norms of statistics and inherited biological and legal traditions in Joseph's environment. In contrast, Todd Compton disagrees that early marriages to brides as young as 14 are statistically defensible. However, he presents evidence that marriages such as that to Helen Mar Kimball were dynastic (binding prominent families) rather than sexual.
I am generally favorable towards Compton's contrasting essay. If readers come away holding a position somewhere in between Compton and my co-authors, I will consider it time well spent. For me the goal was to counter the bad media commentary (Hitchens, O'Donnell[1], Egan) and some of the sloppy statistical analyses at critical websites.
In the interest of transparency, I have put online a detailed description of the methodology behind the statistical results I contributed to the essay[2]. Skeptics are welcome to reproduce my numbers from IPUMS.com and to try to demonstrate any flaws in how I processed them.
I do find Compton's focus on Northeastern states' statistics (which tended to be higher than the US as a whole and much higher than frontier areas like 1840s Illinois) a little unfortunate. While one might expect that children will follow their parent's example even after moving away from their birthplace, I found that migrants to the Midwest quickly adapted in order to be competitive in their new marriage market.
Compton's statistical method has the genuine advantage of being easier to follow than mine, but his data is also more noisy (under-sampled) and can't distinguish between first and second marriages. Some of the choices I made create a more favorable comparison to the age profile of Joseph Smith's wives (like throwing out Census brides over 50 or on their second (or higher marriage)). In my defense, that is standard method for academic demography publications.
Unlike our essay, Compton covers Utah marriage statistics. He asserts that artificial sex ratios created by polygamy drive marriage ages down, creates lost boys, and increases the age gap between spouses. While the last is no doubt true, I have contested the first two items relative to non-Mormon peers in online blog essays analyzing the 1880 census. However I don't know how well my observations hold up for 1860 when polygamy rates were near their peak and online Census samples at IPUM.com are currently too limited to work my magic.
With that caveat in mind, 1880 Census analysis shows that Utah's female teenage marriage rates were not significantly different than the western states (but much lower than national stats)[3]. There were also significantly less "Lost Boys" in Utah than in the western states but about the same as those nationally [4]. This was quite an accomplishment considering that Utah was over 20% non-Mormon at the time, many of which were young men willing to risk lowered marital prospects for increased economical opportunities.
Both Compton and I agree that engaging in missionary work was a way that a young Mormon could increase his marital prospects. The parts of Europe that missionaries had success with had favorable ratios for plural marriage and that seems to be borne out by a breakdown of the Mormon Immigration Index[5] and Kathryn Daynes's (in "More Wives than One") linking periodic increases in marriage activity with immigration waves.
Despite my criticism here, let me re-emphasize that I highly respect Todd Compton as a foremost historian of Mormon plural marriage. I can appreciate Compton's moderate voice on this subject, while recognizing my own apologetic tendency to defend my church and Joseph Smith.
The following essays of mine can be googled at the fairblog.org site for more information.
[1] "Lawrence O'Donnell's Charges of Rape"
[2] "Timely Statistics Vindicate the Prophet"
[3] "19th Century Nuptiality and Propaganda II"
[4] "Where the Lost Boys Go"
[5] "'Go west young man' and Sex Ratios"
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful.One of the best books on polygamy in the early LDS Church to date!!!
By Kevin S. Kopp
Having read a LOT of books on the issue of polygamy in the LDS Church, I can easily say that this is one of the most comprehensive and relevant ones that I've ever seen. Most books on polygamy tend to focus on one aspect of polygamy, such as the reasons why it was done, how many wives Joseph and Brigham had, etc., and this quickly made finishing the book rather tiresome. However, Bringhurst and Foster have nicely cut out all of the irrelevant fluff and given us new facts on the topics that seem to cause the most controversey with regard to the practice of polygamy by the early Saints. In addition, they bring in fresh new evidence from other scholars which also makes reading the text an exciting and enlightening experience, rather than a dry review of the same topics that have been continually rehashed by different authors over the years. The information on Fanny Alger and Joseph Smith's involvement in polyandry were especially valuable as these have always been difficult topics in this area. Wonderfully referenced and easy to understand, the book will prove to be a valuable asset to all those who want to know more about the history of polygamy in the Church. I have already referred it to several people who have questions about these issues. WELL DONE!
Product Description
The first of three volumes dealing with the controversial topic of polygamy and its history in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its many branches, this collection of eight essays advances the scholarship on the topic beyond what is otherwise available. The essays, by some of the foremost scholars in LDS history, deal with a wide range of subjects and viewpoints. The volume opens with an examination of the relationship between Fanny Alger and Joseph Smith and the question of whether they were truly married or not by Don Bradley, then continues with two essays by the editors concerning Doctrine & Covenants Section 132 and its role in the viewpoint church members held and still hold toward plural. It continues with a very interesting essay by Brian C. Hales about polyandrous marriages of Joseph Smith, a topic otherwise unaddressed in the study of church polygyny, and then another paired set of essays concerning whether or not Joseph Smith's marriage to young girls, which some modern critics call pedophilia, was normal and expected for the time -- each essay, one by Craig L. Foster, David Keller, and Gregory L. Smith and the second by Todd M. Compton, takes an opposite viewpoint. Then Ugo Perego, one of the foremost researchers in the field of family genetics, discusses the DNA evidence available to prove or disprove the paternity of many children born to Joseph's wives. The volume concludes with yet another essay concerning D&C Section 132, this time an analysis of how the section was received by the RLDS Church (now Community of Christ) as they did not believe in or practice polygamy. With a Foreword by Linda King Newell and an Afterword by Jessie L. Embry, this volume provides some brilliant new insights into this fascinating subject.
If you enjoy this volume, as we hope you do, please watch for the second and third volumes due in 2011 which will concern polygamy in the LDS Church from the time of Brigham Young up through the first and second manifestos and beyond and then the third which will deal with the topic of fundamentalist polygamy and why this principle has been so "persistent."
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #419923 in eBooks
- Published on: 2010-11-17
- Released on: 2010-11-17
- Format: Kindle eBook
- Number of items: 1
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