Polygamy Overview, Part 3: Spiritual Wifery, the Denials, and a Scholarly Conclusion

A point-by-point response to ldsdiscussions.com — examining the authorized/unauthorized distinction, Joseph Smith’s public denials, D&C 132, and the apologetic record.

Introduction: What Is Actually Being Argued

The ldsdiscussions.com “Part 3” overview (published at ldsdiscussions.com/polygamy-final) covers four main areas: (1) the church’s distinction between “spiritual wifery” and authorized plural marriage; (2) Joseph Smith’s public denials; (3) several subsidiary apologetic responses in the Gospel Topics Essay; and (4) a personal conclusion characterizing Joseph Smith as a predator. Each claim deserves a direct and evidence-based response. What the overview presents as settled history is, in critical respects, a selective reading of the documentary record that ignores substantial contrary evidence and the most rigorous scholarship in the field.

This response does not ask readers to accept every apologetic argument uncritically. It does ask readers to weigh evidence on both sides — and when both sides are weighed, the case against Joseph Smith collapses on the most fundamental points.

I. The Authorized / Unauthorized Distinction Is Not Apologetic Spin — It Is Primary History

The overview asserts that the church’s distinction between Joseph Smith’s “plural marriage” and John C. Bennett’s “spiritual wifery” is a modern apologetic invention designed to “preserve Joseph Smith as being the most righteous person possible.” This characterization inverts the historical record. The distinction is contemporary — it was made in Nauvoo in 1842, in real time, by the people directly involved.

A. What John C. Bennett Actually Did

John C. Bennett arrived in Nauvoo in September 1840. He rapidly rose to become the city’s first elected mayor and was briefly appointed as assistant to the First Presidency. He was also, at the time of his arrival, a married man who concealed that fact from the Saints — a detail that reveals his character before any theological dispute began. His conduct in Nauvoo is not disputed: historian Andrew F. Smith concluded from primary sources that Bennett “had seduced six or seven” women by the time of his excommunication in May 1842, doing so through false promises and predatory manipulation.

Catherine Fuller’s testimony — which the ldsdiscussions overview quotes at length regarding William Smith — is actually evidence for the authorized/unauthorized distinction, not against it. Fuller explicitly stated that when William Smith proposed illicit relations, she “told him that it was contrary to the teaching of Joseph on the stand.” She understood there to be a public standard and a private one, and she knew the propositions she was receiving violated even the private standard. The seducers she describes were not implementing Joseph Smith’s plural marriage system; they were freelancing while invoking his name — precisely what the authorized/unauthorized distinction identifies.

“No primary evidence has been presented indicating that Bennett was officially involved in the evolving practice of polygamy at Nauvoo.”
— Andrew F. Smith, scholar, cited in josephsmithspolygamy.org

B. Seven Structural Differences Between the Two Systems

Brian C. Hales — the most exhaustive documentary historian of Nauvoo plural marriage, having personally examined and transcribed every known primary document — identifies seven structural characteristics that differentiated Joseph Smith’s New and Everlasting Covenant from Bennett’s spiritual wifery. FAIR Latter-day Saints summarizes these as follows:

Theological basis: Plural marriage was grounded in a specific restoration theology linking it to Abrahamic covenant and priesthood sealing keys. Bennett’s system had no theological content — it was simple secrecy.
Ceremonial requirement: Joseph’s plural marriages were solemnized by a formal religious ceremony. Bennett’s system required no ceremony — only mutual secrecy.
Priesthood authorization: Plural sealings required the authority of the one man holding the sealing keys. Bennett operated outside any priesthood structure.
Eternal permanence: The covenant was intended to bind for time and eternity. Bennett’s liaisons carried no eternal dimension.
Institutional oversight: Joseph Smith’s practice, though secret from the general public, was accountable within a growing institutional structure including the Anointed Quorum. Bennett operated individually.
Sexual exclusivity per partner: Joseph’s system, however imperfectly implemented, involved covenant marriage. Bennett explicitly taught that any man and woman could be intimate so long as it remained secret.
Invented terminology: Bennett fabricated categories like “Cyprian Saints,” “Chambered Sisters of Charity,” and “Cloistered Saints” — none of which appear anywhere in Joseph Smith’s teachings or documents.

These are not theological preferences. They are documentary differences. The assertion that the two systems were “not all that different” requires ignoring the structural content of each.

C. Bennett Was Not a Reliable Witness to Authorized Plural Marriage

The overview treats Bennett’s proximity to Joseph Smith as evidence that he understood the inner workings of plural marriage. The documentary record contradicts this. Brian Hales’ analysis of the primary sources reveals that Bennett held a title as “assistant president” that was “devoid of authority, responsibility, or privileged access” to Joseph’s inner teachings. Joseph Smith’s own diary mentions Bennett only three times between December 1841 and May 1842 — compared to twenty-one references to Brigham Young during the same period.

More telling is a letter Bennett wrote in December 1843, seven months after his excommunication, in which he describes “marrying for eternity” as “an entirely new doctrine” to him. If Bennett had been an insider to Joseph’s authorized plural marriage system, the foundational doctrine of eternal marriage — the very premise of every celestial plural sealing — would not have been news to him. His ignorance of this core teaching is decisive evidence that he was not initiated into the authorized system he later claimed to expose.

“No statement that he [Bennett] makes can be received with confidence.”
— T. B. H. Stenhouse, 19th-century anti-Mormon critic, cautioning even critics against relying on Bennett

D. The Testimony Problem: Seducers Invoking Joseph’s Name Proves Nothing About Joseph

The overview leans heavily on testimonies from women who reported that Chauncey Higbee, William Smith, and others claimed their practices originated with Joseph Smith. This is treated as strong evidence that the practices did originate with Joseph. But this inferential move is elementary to refute: the fact that a predator invokes an authority figure’s name to coerce victims says nothing about whether that authority figure actually taught what the predator claimed. Margaret J. Nyman’s own testimony acknowledges she “has since learned” Higbee’s claims about Joseph were “totally false and unauthorised.” She does not say she later verified them.

The Nauvoo legal record confirms this: when these men were exposed, they were tried and cut off from the church. If Joseph Smith were the source of their teachings, there would be no reason to discipline them. The excommunications are direct institutional evidence that their practices were unauthorized.

II. The “Carefully Worded Denials” Argument: What It Actually Proves

The overview dedicates substantial space to Joseph Smith’s public statements denying polygamy, arguing these were outright lies. This is the strongest section of the overview, and it deserves a direct response — not evasion.

A. What the Denials Actually Said

The Gospel Topics Essay acknowledges: “The rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated ‘celestial’ plural marriage.” The essay further clarifies that in these denials, “‘polygamy’ was understood to mean the marriage of one man to more than one woman but without Church sanction.” The overview dismisses this as a lawyer’s trick. But the definition the essay invokes is the period definition. In the 1842 context, “polygamy” and “spiritual wifery” were understood as unauthorized, illicit arrangements — specifically the Bennett system. Denying that was not technically false in the period framework, even if it was deliberately silent about something else.

The October 1843 journal entry case is more serious. The overview correctly notes that the original entry (“No man shall have but one wife”) differs from the later History of the Church version, which added the qualifier “unless the Lord directs otherwise.” This is a genuine historiographical problem. However, the overview presents this as unique evidence of Joseph’s dishonesty without noting that emendation and retrospective editing were standard practices in 19th-century ecclesiastical and political record-keeping — the History of the Church itself was compiled posthumously from multiple sources. The emendation is a legitimate historical problem that warrants scrutiny, but it is not the smoking gun of personal deception the overview implies.

B. The Emma Problem Requires Contextual Honesty

The overview’s treatment of Emma Smith is genuinely moving, and the historical sympathy it expresses is warranted. Emma’s suffering is not in dispute. But the overview uses Emma’s pain to prove a theological conclusion — that plural marriage could not be from God because it caused suffering. This argument proves too much. By that logic, virtually every divine commandment recounted in scripture was fraudulent, because virtually every one caused suffering to real people. Abraham’s commanded sacrifice of Isaac caused suffering. Moses’ call caused suffering to his family. The argument from suffering is an emotional one, not an evidentiary one.

More directly: the fact that Joseph Smith concealed plural marriage from Emma, and that this concealment was dishonest by ordinary marital standards, is entirely consistent with the LDS theological claim that he was implementing a divinely commanded but humanly difficult practice under conditions of significant external persecution. The dishonesty toward Emma is real. It does not by itself refute the divine origin claim — it is precisely what one would expect from a man trying to implement an enormously controversial new practice while surrounded by hostile critics ready to use any public acknowledgment against him and his community.

III. D&C 132 and the “Instructions Were Not Clear” Claim

The overview argues at length that Joseph Smith violated the specific rules of D&C 132, particularly regarding virgins, Emma’s consent, and the sealing of already-married women. This is a substantive argument that deserves a substantive response.

A. The Polyandrous Wives Question

The overview correctly identifies that Joseph Smith entered into sealings with women who were legally married to other men. This is the most genuinely difficult issue in Nauvoo polygamy, and it should not be minimized. Brian Hales’ analysis of this issue — the most detailed in the historical literature — identifies two categories of these sealings: those that were “eternity only” with no implication of sexual relations during mortality, and those involving full conjugal marriage. Hales acknowledges the complexity and argues that the “virgins” requirement in verse 61 of D&C 132 applied specifically to the procreative mandate of multiplying and replenishing, not to the eternal sealing category. This is a contested reading, but it is a coherent one supported by the documentary record of many of these sealings being designated “for eternity only.”

B. The “One Man” Principle Is Not a Rationalization

The central organizing principle of Hales’ historical work is what he calls the “One Man” principle: that LDS scriptures identify one individual at a time who holds the sealing keys, and that only this person can authorize plural marriages. This principle is not a post-hoc rationalization — it is embedded in D&C 132:7 itself (“there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred”) and is consistently applied in the historical record. When Hiram Brown taught unauthorized plural marriage, Joseph Smith publicly condemned him. When William Smith practiced spiritual wifery, he was disciplined. The institutional application of this principle throughout the Nauvoo period is precisely what the authorized/unauthorized distinction rests on — and it is a distinction the overview never directly refutes.

The overview’s counterargument amounts to: since Joseph violated some rules in D&C 132, the entire system was his personal invention. But this non sequitur ignores the possibility that a divinely-revealed institution can be imperfectly implemented by its human custodian. The LDS claim has never been that Joseph was sinless in his implementation — the Gospel Topics Essay explicitly acknowledges human failure. The question is whether the institution itself was divinely authorized. The evidence of consistent institutional discipline against unauthorized practitioners is affirmative evidence that it was.

IV. The Reluctant Polygamist Argument

The overview makes two incompatible arguments simultaneously: first, that Joseph Smith eagerly desired polygamy (citing D&C 132:1, the Happiness Letter, and the Fanny Alger relationship); and second, that the “reluctant polygamist” apologetic is a transparent fiction. The problem is that these arguments are mutually weakening. If Joseph was a calculating predator who built an entire theological system to satisfy his desires, he had no need to construct an “angel with a drawn sword” narrative for his own private journal — he would simply do as he wished. The existence of the drawn sword narrative, recorded privately in multiple accounts from women who had no reason to fabricate it, is more consistent with a man genuinely wrestling with a difficult divine command than with a cynical manipulator who built every element of the system for personal gratification.

The overview also argues that D&C 132:1 shows Joseph “initiated the request about polygamy,” undermining the reluctance narrative. But inquiry and reluctance are not mutually exclusive. A man can ask a theological question and still be profoundly reluctant to act on the answer. Joseph’s documented hesitation — corroborated by multiple women who reported him saying he resisted before being compelled — is not invalidated by the fact that he had earlier inquired about the subject.

Furthermore, the most powerful testimony against the pure-predator hypothesis is the caliber of the women who entered plural marriage with Joseph Smith and later testified to its spiritual dimensions. Emily Partridge, Lucy Walker, Eliza R. Snow, and others were not naive victims left without agency. They were, by every historical account, women of considerable intelligence and spiritual depth. Emily Partridge’s 1893 deposition stated that Joseph “was a gentleman in every way and did not indulge in liberties.” Their testimonies — sustained across decades, including periods when apostasy from the church carried social and material costs — deserve to be weighed as evidence, not dismissed.

V. John Taylor’s 1886 Revelation

The overview presents the 1886 Taylor revelation as decisive evidence that polygamy is the New and Everlasting Covenant and that the Manifesto therefore represents God reversing Himself within four years. This argument deserves careful scrutiny.

First, it must be noted that the 1886 revelation is itself of uncertain historical provenance. FAIR Latter-day Saints acknowledges it “appears to be in [Taylor’s] handwriting, and it is probably genuine.” But “probably genuine” is not “certainly genuine,” and it was used most prominently as a founding document by Lorin Woolley to justify polygamist fundamentalism — a fringe movement the LDS Church has consistently opposed. The overview effectively treats a document whose principal use has been by anti-LDS polygamist fundamentalists as authoritative evidence against the LDS Church.

Second, the theological argument that an unchanging God cannot revoke what He once commanded has a straightforward LDS response: the Bible itself is full of divine commandments that were time-bound and later revoked or superseded. The Mosaic Law was described as “everlasting” in multiple Old Testament passages and was nonetheless fulfilled and replaced by a higher covenant in the New Testament. The LDS framework has always understood the New and Everlasting Covenant as the fullness of the gospel — not synonymous with any single practice within it. The cessation of the practice of plural marriage for this life does not negate the covenant framework of eternal sealing.

Third, the overview asks rhetorically why the same God who sent an angel about polygamy never sent an angel about the priesthood ban or doctrinal errors. This is a rhetorical question, not an argument. God’s documented communications in LDS history are addressed to specific subjects at specific times; the absence of angelic intervention on a given subject is not evidence against those subjects on which angels did intervene. The argument from silence proves nothing.

VI. Spiritual Witnesses and Their Evidential Weight

The overview argues that spiritual witnesses are epistemically unreliable because people from many religions report them, and because they have been invoked for practices later recognized as harmful. This is a serious epistemological point, but it does not go as far as the overview implies.

The argument that spiritual witnesses are unreliable because they are sometimes wrong does not establish that they are always wrong or that they carry no evidential weight. All human cognitive faculties, including reason and empirical observation, sometimes lead to false conclusions. The appropriate response to the fallibility of spiritual experience is to weigh it carefully alongside other evidence — not to dismiss it entirely. The testimonies of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, sustained across decades of social pressure, constitute a body of experiential evidence that deserves serious assessment.

The overview uses a contemporary video testimony of a young woman in a fundamentalist polygamist sect to impugn the testimonies of Joseph Smith’s wives. This is a category error. The doctrinal and institutional context of a 21st-century splinter sect bears no direct evidentiary relationship to the 1842 Nauvoo context. The comparison is rhetorically effective but historically invalid.

VII. The Predator Conclusion: An Extraordinary Claim Requiring Extraordinary Evidence

The overview concludes that “Joseph Smith was a predator just as every other religious leader who preys on their followers for sex, money, and power.” This is a maximally inflammatory claim, and it should be assessed by the same evidentiary standards the overview claims to apply to apologetics.

The claim that Joseph Smith preyed on women for sex is complicated by several facts the overview itself acknowledges: that many of his sealings were “for eternity only” with no sexual dimension; that he almost certainly did not have children with most of his plural wives (a fact the overview attributes to contraception or other means, but which remains inferential); and that the women who entered these marriages and left extensive documentary records largely testified positively to Joseph’s character and treatment of them. None of this is impossible to reconcile with a predation hypothesis, but it is not what one would expect to see if the primary motivation were sexual exploitation.

The claim that he preyed for “money” is not developed with any evidence in the overview. Joseph Smith was, by the time of his death, economically marginal. The claim that he preyed for “power” is more plausible but also more complex: plural marriage made Joseph Smith’s position significantly more precarious, not more secure. The eventual exposure of plural marriage contributed directly to his imprisonment and death. A purely power-driven calculation would not have led to a practice that so dramatically increased the risk of violent opposition.

None of this proves Joseph Smith was a prophet. But it should give pause before accepting the predator conclusion as the simplest or most evidence-consistent explanation for his behavior.

VIII. What the Overview Gets Right — And Why It Still Falls Short

Intellectual honesty requires acknowledging what the ldsdiscussions overview identifies accurately:

Joseph Smith’s public statements about polygamy were deliberately misleading by ordinary honesty standards, even if they were technically confined to denying the unauthorized Bennett system.
D&C 132 contains provisions that Joseph Smith did not consistently follow, and this is a genuine tension in the apologetic record.
Emma Smith’s suffering was real, and the manner in which plural marriage was introduced caused her and others genuine anguish.
The church’s Gospel Topics Essay, while a significant step toward transparency, uses carefully constructed language that can obscure more than it reveals.

These are real issues. They deserve honest engagement. But the overview goes further — it treats these genuine difficulties as decisive proof that Joseph Smith was a fraud and a predator. That conclusion is not established by the evidence presented. The gap between “this was difficult and imperfectly implemented” and “this was fabricated by a predator” is enormous, and the overview does not bridge it.

What the documentary record shows is a man implementing an extraordinarily difficult theological practice under conditions of intense secrecy, incomplete revelation, hostile external pressure, and genuine human fallibility. The authorized/unauthorized distinction holds up under evidentiary scrutiny. The carefully worded denials, while ethically uncomfortable, were directed at specific public accusations rooted in Bennett’s fabrications. The women who entered these marriages and bore witness across decades deserve to be heard. The predator conclusion requires discounting all of this, and doing so without sufficient evidentiary warrant.

Conclusion

The ldsdiscussions.com Part 3 overview is a thorough and emotionally compelling piece of writing. It raises genuine historical difficulties. But it is not, as it presents itself, a dispassionate laying out of evidence. It is a prosecutorial brief, and prosecutorial briefs select evidence. The evidence it does not present — Bennett’s documented fabrications, his ignorance of eternal marriage, the seven structural differences between the two systems, the unanimous excommunication of unauthorized practitioners, the sustained testimony of Joseph’s wives, Hales’ documentary analysis — all points in a different direction.

The authorized/unauthorized distinction is not apologetic spin. It is the conclusion of the best documentary scholarship in the field, and it was the operating understanding of the people who were actually there in Nauvoo in 1842. The denials are ethically complex, but they are explicable within the framework of a man protecting a community under persecution — not simply a liar covering his tracks. The predator conclusion is an emotional label, not a scholarly finding.

Honest inquiry into Joseph Smith’s polygamy requires holding both the genuine difficulties and the genuine evidential weight of the defense together. The overview does the former extensively. This response has attempted the latter. Readers who weigh both, carefully and without prior commitment to either conclusion, will find that the case against Joseph Smith is far weaker — and the case for a defensible historical interpretation of Nauvoo plural marriage far stronger — than the overview leads them to believe.

Key Sources and Further Reading

Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology, 3 vols. (Greg Kofford Books, 2013)

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, “John C. Bennett and Spiritual Wifery,” josephsmithspolygamy.org

FAIR Latter-day Saints, “John C. Bennett and Plural Marriage at Nauvoo,” fairlatterdaysaints.org

Mormon Polygamy Documents, “John C. Bennett and Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Addressing the Question of Reliability,” mormonpolygamydocuments.org

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo,” Gospel Topics Essay

Brian C. Hales, “Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding,” BYU Studies Quarterly, byustudies.byu.edu