I looked at Rebecca, who was waving at one of the children in the backyard, trying to mouth some encouragement. It was exactly what I thought a good mother would do, but Stephen’s body language showed irritation at the distraction for a moment before he decided to ignore her and focus on me and Kurt again.
“Joseph Smith said, ‘a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.’ And Brigham Young took up that challenge. After the Saints were chased from their homes in Nauvoo in 1844 and so many died that terrible winter waiting by the Mississippi River for spring, Brigham Young was inspired by God to lead his people to a place where they could practice the Principle in peace. And under his leadership, they made the desert blossom as a rose in the great new state of Deseret.”
Brigham Young had been a great secular leader. The American Moses, some called him. His spiritual ideas had been downplayed by church leaders since then, from the Adam-God doctrine—the belief that Adam was himself God, an idea the LDS church has rejected—to his insistence that black skin was a sign of a curse from God and that no white person could ever marry someone of any other race without losing their temple blessings.
“Brigham Young thought he had left the government that had rejected his people and his religion, but the United States could never stop pressing its borders. And so the only hope for statehood and real political power for the Saints was to give into the demands of an ungodly government. That was why John Taylor, the third president of the church, gave the priesthood keys to the Council of Seven Friends, who continued to practice the law of the celestial kingdom secretly.”
What? I’d never heard about any Council of Friends, but I figured this was something else that Stephen had invented and pressed into the history of the church to support his own choices.
“Wait. What about Wilford Woodruff?” Kurt asked. “He was the next president and had all the keys of the church.”
“No,” explained Stephen patiently. “After John Taylor gave the keys of the priesthood to the council, Woodruff only had the keys of the presidency of the church, which is why he had no power to alter the true and everlasting Covenant when he gave the unholy Manifesto of 1890, which banned polygamy.”
This was complicated and unconvincing and I looked around the room. Rebecca looked distant, and I suspected she was impatient and wished that she could be doing something useful, like laundry or dishes or food prep, instead of listening to this long conversation for what must be the upteenth time for her.
“The Manifesto of 1890 was a revelation from God,” Kurt argued, “recorded by His only true prophet on the earth at that time. It was the will of God for us to practice polygamy until 1890, and then it wasn’t His will anymore and anyone who continued practicing it was going against not only the precepts of the church, but against God Himself.”
“You say that when the very apostles of the church were continuing to practice polygamy themselves?” Stephen asked. “And when they continued to perform temple marriages for other polygamists for at least another decade?”
“That’s a convenient story promulgated by polygamists and enemies of the church,” Kurt said.
Was it? I’d heard that Mitt Romney had ancestors in Mexico practicing polygamy after 1890. Maybe there were others, too.
“Have you never heard of the Second Manifesto given in 1904 by Joseph F. Smith? Why did there have to be a Second Manifesto if the apostles were obeying the first one? John W. Taylor, the son of John Taylor himself, was excommunicated along with Matthias Cowley, both in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, because they believed that the 1890 Manifesto was a political document only, meant to deceive the United States government until the Saints could continue to live the Principle openly.” Stephen’s tone was smug.
“Even apostles can be deceived at times,” said Kurt stiffly.
I thought of the recent policy that so harmed LGBTQ members. If Kurt could admit the apostles could be wrong about polygamy, why couldn’t he admit they could also be wrong about that?
“Deceived? But the many polygamous marriages in Mexico and Canada after 1890 were done officially by men authorized by the presidents of the church, from Wilford Woodruff to Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith. George Q. Cannon, who performed these marriages, was a counselor in the First Presidency, and Brigham Young Jr. was also officially asked to do marriages in Mexico and Canada for those Mormons who still wanted to live the Principle after Utah was made a state,” said Stephen.
He was throwing names at me too quickly for me to process. I felt overwhelmed by his information; I had no idea if he was making it all up or not.
But Kurt said, “It was unclear for a time if the Manifesto of 1890 was only meant to rescind polygamy where it was illegal. It was not illegal in Mexico or Canada.”
That sounded like a weak excuse to me, but Stephen was ready with a reply.