“I couldn’t imagine loving anyone the way that I loved Rebecca,” he continued with a hand to his heart.
She was looking down, whatever spell he had temporarily cast over her now apparently gone.
“But you eventually found someone?” asked Kurt with a touch of sarcasm.
“What happened was that Rebecca and I knew Jennifer already through her work for us as an investment broker, but it was Rebecca who first thought of her in the role of one of my wives. It took some months before I felt the Holy Spirit whispering its confirmation to me.” He was speaking as earnestly as if in prayer. Oh, yes, he was the devout and righteous man in all of this. He could never do anything manipulative or self-serving. It was all about God’s will.
I couldn’t help but wonder what Jennifer was like, and how this conversation had gone with the three of them. Had Stephen had Rebecca start the ball rolling, so to speak? How do you say to someone in an inoffensive way, I think you’d make a good second wife for my husband?
“I prayed night and day for several months before I found the courage to speak to Jennifer about the possibility of a second marriage. But then she agreed to study the scriptures herself, and found her own testimony, both of Mormonism and the Principle, which was proof that I had been right all along,” said Stephen.
So Jennifer hadn’t originally been Mormon. Interesting. That seemed to put Stephen in a position of ecclesiastical power over her. Did she defer to him on all gospel points? Was that Stephen’s attraction to her, that she was a child in the gospel if not in reality?
Kurt asked, “Just out of curiosity, if you weren’t married in the temple or a church building, who married you? It couldn’t have been a civil ceremony, either, I assume.” Since then Stephen could have been arrested for bigamy, was the unspoken end of Kurt’s sentence.
“Rebecca did it,” Stephen said with head held high. “I thought it was appropriate, even necessary. She has performed all of the spiritual weddings to make it clear she approved of them all.”
“But she doesn’t have the priesthood!” Kurt objected.
He was hung up on the fact that a woman was performing ordinances? It was kind of amusing, considering the fact that Kurt wouldn’t have thought anyone, male or female, had the power to perform an eternally binding polygamous wedding ceremony.
“All women hold the priesthood,” Stephen said, to my surprise. “It is part of the temple rites. They are ordained as priestesses and queens and they do the washings and annointings in the temple, as you must know. The priesthood is simply the power of God, and it flows through women as much as men.”
I had not expected Stephen Carter, of all men, to start talking like a Mormon feminist. Maybe that was one of the ways he convinced women polygamy was going to be good for them.
I knew Kurt, who believed devoutly that only men could be endowed with the Mormon priesthood, was angry about this, even if it was a marriage ceremony he considered a sham anyway. “You know, you can’t just change the doctrine of the church because you think you’re right. You’re not a prophet. You haven’t been called to that authority.”
Of course, the only authority in Kurt’s mind were the fifteen men, apostles and prophets, who had all agreed with President Nelson’s revelation on the new policy.
“But I don’t think that the church’s doctrine has changed,” Stephen said patiently. “It is the same as it always was. If a man wants to be in the highest order of heaven and become a god, he must follow the higher law. If a man expects to rule worlds, he must have wives to serve as Heavenly Mothers for each of them, as God Himself does now.”
Kurt’s fists clenched and unclenched.
Finally, Rebecca spoke up, trying to lessen the tension. “Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this for now.”
“It’s interesting seeing how the same history has led us to different points in the present,” I added, to go along with her.
At that moment, Sarah came in from the backyard then, a bit of red paint on her nose. “All finished with the indoctrination?” she asked with that same false smile.
“Sarah, please,” said Rebecca, clearly embarrassed.
“What? I should have waited longer? I can go back out and do more painting. You know I’d rather be there than here. But I thought Stephen wanted an official appearance from all of us. All the adoring wives, right in a row.” Her tone was acid and I would have sympathized with her more if she hadn’t seemed so determined to antagonize everyone.
“Sarah, you can go to your room and stay there,” Stephen said, his stern tone like a father to a small child, not like a husband to his wife.
Rebecca looked back and forth between them but did not intervene.