Polygamy skeptics reject the idea that Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage, pointing to his public denials, lack of children with wives other than Emma, and doubts about documents like William Clayton’s journals and D&C 132. Once championed by the Reorganized Church, this “Monogamy Model” has gained renewed interest among modern believers who see Brigham Young as the true originator of plural marriage. In this interview, attorney and historian Mark Tensmeyer examines their central arguments and the historical roots behind the resurgence of polygamy skepticism.
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Why do many Latter-day Saints want to separate Joseph Smith from plural marriage?
Latter-day Saints love Joseph Smith, and reasons for not liking plural marriage are obvious. For many polygamy skeptics, it isn’t polygamy itself that most bothers them. Rather, it’s the fact that polygamy started in secret while being denied openly. This seems to many to be completely out of character for Joseph Smith and contrary to his calling as a prophet.
To be fair, the beginnings of plural marriage in the Church is an unusual scenario. Joseph and Hyrum died years before the Church publicly acknowledged plural marriage. At the time they were involved, plural marriage was an intentionally hidden history that the participants were actively trying to hide.
Plausible deniability was the goal. Even mainstream historians today acknowledge the fraught difficulties of reconstructing history using the historical record we have. It should be no surprise that a segment of believers today do not believe he is involved.
What is the Monogamy Model?
The Monogamy Model is simply the historical model that Joseph Smith was not the founder or a participant in plural marriage, and its introduction into the Church came against his wishes.
The basic argument for why Joseph Smith was not a polygamist has essentially been the same since Joseph Smith III and his brothers promoted it in the 1860s:
- All revelations and statements on Church policy issued during the prophet’s lifetime prohibited polygamy.
- Joseph had denied being involved in secret polygamy several times, especially towards the end of his life.
- It would have been out of character for Joseph both to have practiced polygamy and to have been dishonest about it.
- Emma, their sons, and Joseph’s surviving siblings denied he had other wives.
- There is no evidence that Joseph fathered any children with any women other than Emma despite both he and most of his supposed wives being fertile.
Where versions of the Monogamy Model vary is how they explain where Mormon polygamy came from and why people attributed it to Joseph Smith.
Since the 1980s, all models hold that Brigham Young and a close group of followers were a rogue cabal practicing and promoting plural marriage behind Joseph’s back. The traditional position of the RLDS Church was that plural marriage and sealings were inventions of Brigham Young.
Polygamy skeptics today have shifted to believing those practices were corruptions of things Joseph was teaching. Some have argued Joseph was sealed to the women for wives only in eternity or that he was sealed to them and possibly some men in non-marital sealings.
The most prominent model today is that Joseph Smith taught monogamous sealings and that this doctrine and practice was hijacked into plural marriage.
What has caused a resurgence of the Monogamous Model?
That is a big, controversial question. Until recently, the Monogamy Model was only believed by Restoration traditions outside the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Significantly, the RLDS Church/Community of Christ stopped promoting it in the 1980s after a century of being its biggest advocate. It has persisted among some conservative members of that church and separatist groups.
Uncomfortable aspects of Joseph Smith’s polygamy are more visible.
The recent resurgence started in 2015 among a movement of disillusioned members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who came to believe, for reasons unrelated to polygamy, that today’s Church has fallen from its spiritual roots and that the fullness of the Restoration is to be found outside an institutional church. Not everyone who ascribes to the Monogamy Model identifies with this movement, but it played a major role in the resurgence.
If you were to ask a polygamy skeptic, they would say this resurgence came because they have access to more information.
I partially agree. As I stated earlier, the circumstances of Mormon polygamy’s origins are unusual, and the historical record for it is different from what most would expect. On top of this, there are uncomfortable aspects of Joseph Smith’s polygamy that are more visible to everyday members than they were a decade ago.
More than a few people have also noted that the resurgence correlates with an overall rise of distrust of academia and experts in any field, such as history, science, and medicine.
Most would call this a conspiracy theory mentality, but supporters of the Monogamy Model see it as an awakening. Indeed, there is a strong overlap between promoters of the model and promoters of other narratives that mainstream society calls conspiracy theories. I agree that this is at least a partial cause.
What is your standard for objective history?
Objective standards in historicity is another big, controversial question, and there are many schools of thought.
I took inspiration from the way Justice Charles Gray handled the Irving v. Penguin Books case, where he adopted criteria that included giving appropriate weight to evidence, identifying speculation, giving proper consideration to counterevidence, and avoiding cherry-picking. Justice Gray took David Irving’s claims seriously and delivered a decision totaling more than 300 pages going over Irving’s main claim. In many cases, Justice Gray acknowledged that Irving made valid points but that they were outweighed when looking at the evidence as a whole.
It simply is not plausible that a rogue conspiracy led by Brigham Young could have produced all this.
I did not have 300 pages to go through every argument raised by polygamist skeptics. I focused on the central question of whether a conspiracy led by Brigham Young could have created the source record that we have. In doing so, I applied Occam’s Razor—or the principle that where two explanations exist, one ought to adopt the option that requires a lesser degree of speculation. Stated otherwise, if a narrative requires assuming several facts beyond what the evidence shows, it should not be adopted over a narrative that requires relatively fewer assumptions beyond the evidence.
Historical method is the real core of this discussion and is just as important as familiarity with the sources. A resource I recommend for anyone interested in this topic is the Our Fake History podcast by Sebastian Major, which covers similar cases.
What evidence types indicate that Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage?
Circumstantial Evidence
In the first place, there is the larger circumstantial evidence. The initial Mormon polygamists were not a small group of close associates of Brigham Young.
We know that some of these marriages took place as early as 1842. The first children born to plural unions were born no later than February 1844. We cannot tell how extensive the acceptance of plural marriage was before Joseph Smith’s death.
We do know hundreds of Church members were sealed in plural marriages when the temple was open for ordinances in January and February 1846. Many of these sealings were previously entered into and were then being renewed now that the temple was operational. These saints had all been converted to the principal for some time by this point, as entering into a plural marriage could take months or years of preparation.
These Nauvoo polygamists were some of the most dedicated Church members with strong histories of loyalty to Joseph Smith. Included in these were devotees such as Lyman Wight and George Miller, who did not follow Brigham Young. This happened despite the vehement public denials by Joseph and Hyrum. It is far more likely that this group had been converted to the principle by their own interactions with Joseph than it is that Brigham Young convinced them.
Additionally, Joseph Smith’s vocal opposition to plural marriage did not materialize into action. He had effectively investigated and put down the spiritual wifery ring headed by John Bennett in early 1842. If Brigham Young and his associates had similarly a rogue pact, it would have been virtually impossible for it to have gone undetected and unaddressed by Joseph Smith.
Direct Evidence
For direct evidence, I classified accounts connecting Joseph and Hyrum Smith to plural marriage into four categories.
1. Public Contemporary Sources
These are pre-June 27, 1844, accusations by dissenting members, and publicly known incidents connecting Joseph to plural marriage. These include the April 1842 accusations by new convert Martha Brotherton that Brigham Young proposed to her with Joseph’s assistance. Other sources in this category are John Bennett’s letters and book and the affidavits in the Expositor describing the plural marriage revelation.
2. Utah Accounts
There are hundreds of first and secondhand accounts from Church members in the Utah period. Many of these came from organized efforts to document Nauvoo plural marriage such as Joseph F. Smith’s affidavits. Many other accounts came from published and private personal histories and letters.
3. Contemporary Accounts
There are several journals, letters, family records and other private documents that are contemporary to Joseph Smith’s life and were kept in personal possession until after the Saints left Nauvoo and settled in Utah. One of the highlights of the chapter is an appendix with a comprehensive compilation of these sources along with the public contemporary sources.
4. Third-Party Evidence
These are witnesses who were neither dissenters nor followers of Brigham Young, who nonetheless affirmed that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. Among these are the accounts from William Marks and Ebenezer Robinson. I included a discussion of as many of these as I could find in the chapter.
Combined Evidence
The certainty of Joseph Smith’s polygamy does not rise or fall on any one piece of evidence or any one kind of evidence. Rather, the diversity and interconnectedness of the evidence exclude any possibility a conspiracy led by Brigham Young falsified it all.
The circumstantial evidence alone makes a cogent case that Joseph introduced plural marriage to the Church. The volume, diversity, and interconnectedness of the direct evidence remove any reasonable doubt.
It simply is not plausible that a rogue conspiracy led by Brigham Young could have produced all this.
What documents written by Joseph Smith reference polygamy?
Joseph Smith rarely took pen to paper. He relied on scribes and was able to employ a secretarial staff in the Nauvoo years. One of the few documents from the Nauvoo period in his handwriting is a letter written to Bishop Newell K. Whitney, his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Sarah Ann.
While not explicitly mentioning Joseph’s marriage to Sarah Ann, contextual clues in the letter strongly support what other sources state about the marriage.
Polygamy skeptics have offered other explanations that I respond to in the chapter. Another document is a blessing written to Sarah by Joseph also hints at the dynastic nature of their sealing.
Are William Clayton’s diaries evidence for Joseph Smith’s polygamy?
The William Clayton journals are by far the most detailed contemporary records of plural marriage in Nauvoo and include much about Joseph’s involvement. Anyone arguing Joseph was not a polygamist would have to discount them.
Polygamy skeptics’ basic theory is that Clayton was unreliable and a co-conspirator with Brigham Young. His journal is not actually a daily journal. He created it as a “clean copy” of earlier notes interspersed with invented text about Joseph’s polygamy.
Polygamy skeptics point to evidence of journal timing in support of this theory. Clayton started keeping his journal in a new notebook, “Notebook 2,” the day after he took a plural wife. He continued keeping that journal until 1845, when he reverted back to his first notebook.
Polygamy skeptics find the timing of this journal suspicious and point out how clean this particular notebook is compared to Clayton’s other documents. Clayton had a habit of creating new record logs that altered the text to align with a current agenda.
As acknowledged by himself and Church leaders, William Clayton was a man of many faults. He was, however, steadfastly loyal to Joseph Smith. The Clayton journal presents as a contemporary source with several references to financial and other events that are consistent with outside documentation.
All diarists have their idiosyncrasies, and the seeming anomalies of this journal are consistent with Clayton’s record-keeping habits. It is apparent that Clayton took extra care with this notebook and copied parts of it, such as his reports of Joseph’s sermons, from handwritten notes. Clayton’s fair copies of other works had only minor corrections and were made close to the events they recorded.
Clayton’s journals are often unflattering.
Even if the entire notebook is a fair copy, the entries were still written in close proximity to the events as they happened. Academic historians who have studied the physical journal have not found a reason to find the journal fraudulent.
More to the point, Clayton’s journals are often unflattering to himself, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young. In particular, it does not anticipate Brigham Young’s ascendence to the presidency of the Church following Joseph’s death.
We will understand these things better with the upcoming release of the journals. As it stands, the case against the authenticity of the Clayton journal is highly speculative and the balance of the evidence strongly favors its reliability.
How did William Smith change his story about Joseph Smith’s polygamy?
William Smith was a complex person who deeply believed in the Restored Gospel and in his brother’s prophetic calling. He was a man who needed community and craved prominence. He also had a sincere belief that, as the last son of Joseph Smith Sr., he had the right and responsibility of serving as patriarch, and the Restored Church, wherever it may be found, would be incomplete without it.
He was also a man of major character flaws and general unstable behavior, which caused major clashes with every social circle he was ever part of. The Church frequently disciplined him and had a tumultuous relationship with Joseph. He was excommunicated from the Church in 1845 and drifted in and out of various Restoration churches, including one he founded himself, before settling in the RLDS Church late in life.
William was a polygamist while Joseph was alive and had short-lived plural marriages at various points in his life. This was the cause for his excommunications by Brigham Young, James Strang, and even the church he founded.
After his 1845 excommunication, William would “make war” against Brigham Young and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by making serious accusations, including that they murdered his brother Samuel. He would then make apologies and request to be reinstated, only to go back to these accusations after his overtures were denied or ignored.
Save for a single quickly retracted statement in Nauvoo, William was never intentionally public about his involvement in plural marriage. His teachings and implementations are known through snippets of his available writings and a few recollections from detractors. There were times when William would deny that Joseph had been a polygamist while also denying that he had been as well.
However, in his 1845 Pocket Companion, a personal reference book similar to modern-day missionary’s white binder, William wrote that plural marriage was something he was doing in the name of Jesus Christ and his brother Joseph Smith. Jason Briggs was a member of William’s church and was one of the ones who exposed his secret polygamy. Briggs went on to be one of the founders of the RLDS Church. Briggs confirmed that William had attributed the practice of plural marriage to his brother.
What did William Marks claim about Joseph Smith’s polygamy?
William Marks was the stake president of the Nauvoo stake at a time when that was a general authority position directly under the First Presidency. Marks participated in the esoteric councils of the Church, including the Anointed Quorum and the Council of Fifty. Despite this, he preferred the early version of Mormonism of the Kirtland era. He was a close, personal friend of the Smiths and was Emma’s choice as president of the Church after Joseph died.
An unassuming man who never sought a position, Marks supported Rigdon’s leadership and reluctantly accepted the Church’s choice of the Twelve. After a year of tension, he left Nauvoo. Marks played an important role in the founding of the RLDS Church and served as the first counselor in its First Presidency until his death.
Marks said two things about polygamy. The first is that Joseph Smith approached Marks shortly before his death and charged him to remove polygamy from the Church and put those doing it on trial. In some of his related statements, Marks was intentionally vague about whether Joseph was involved. In other accounts, Marks was clear that Joseph was the originator.
It is debatable whether Joseph really did regret plural marriage.
In the most detailed account, Marks clarified that Joseph acknowledged his part in polygamy and wanted Marks to discipline those who refused to give it up after he instructed them to. It is debatable whether Joseph really did regret plural marriage and intended to give it up, whether he meant this only at the moment, or if he was saying this to placate Marks.
In any case, Marks indicated that Joseph implicated himself as the founder of polygamy.
Marks also reported on at least two occasions that Hyrum Smith had been a staunch opponent of plural marriage before presenting to the high council a revelation authorizing it. This confirms what other sources say, namely that the revelation Hyrum showed the high council authorized plural marriage.
Marks is perhaps the most important of the “third-party” witnesses. He was well-positioned to know Joseph’s doings in the last years of his life and his accounts show clear first-hand knowledge. Marks had no reason to be dishonest as he was both an ardent believer and was firmly against polygamy.
Falsely claiming Joseph was a polygamist would further no personal or institutional agenda. His only motive could have been to tell the truth.
Given that his knowledge was first-hand and that he was close to Joseph and Hyrum, I do not see any room for argument that William Marks had, as some polygamy skeptics have suggested, been deceived or misinterpreted things.
What evidence do we have that Louisa Beaman was a plural wife of Joseph Smith?
This is an excellent example of corroboration by a diversity of sources. John Bennett identified Louisa Beaman as a wife of Joseph’s and her brother-in-law Joseph Bates Noble as the officiant in the ceremony in his book History of the Saints, published in October 1842. Oliver Olney also included her name in a list of wives in 1843. Brigham Young referred to her as Louisa Smith in his journal in September 1844.
Like many of Joseph’s wives, she married Brigham Young around that time and was resealed to Joseph for eternity in the Nauvoo temple in 1846. She died in 1850, leaving behind few writings and no surviving children. During the Utah years, Noble gave several accounts of arranging and performing the sealing ceremony. Beaman’s sister Artemisia Snow also attested to the marriage.
Accounting for diversity and convergence of sources like this is one of the fatal flaws of the Monogamy Model. One might discount the sources individually, such as dismissing Bennett and Onley as discredited apostates or Noble as a late, biased account.
Dismissing these sources taken together is a very different manner:
- If Beaman had not been a wife of Joseph’s, where did the story come from?
- Who invented it, and when?
- Why did she and Noble go along with it?
Any theory requires assuming that the story was planned no later than 1842, and creating the historical record required the cooperation of enemies as well as counting on Beaman to agree to become a plural wife and her family would support the story.
Is D&C 132 Authentic?
Polygamy skeptics agree that Joseph did have a revelation on eternal marriage that contains elements of D&C 132. Hyrum shared a revelation on marriage to the high council in August 1843. There are various public and private sources dating between July 1843 and June 1844 claiming the revelation authorized plural marriage.
This was one of the major accusations in the Nauvoo Expositor. In the city council meeting where they made the decision to destroy that newspaper press, Joseph and Hyrum confirmed the existence of the revelation but claimed that it only pertained to ancient times and that the subject was eternal monogamous marriage sealings.
Polygamy skeptics’ overall theory is that there was a monogamy-only revelation that was, as Joseph and Hyrum described it, to the city council. Brigham Young and his clique took the text of this revelation and, at some point, added to it and rearranged it to be D&C 132.
I find for several reasons that the preponderance of evidence directs the conclusion that the revelation authorized plural marriage. A few that I will mention briefly here start with there being additional contemporary sources and later sources claiming Joseph and Hyrum were circulating a revelation on plural marriage. There are third parties, including William Marks, who confirmed the revelation did authorize plural marriage. On the other hand, there is virtually no support for a monogamy-only revelation from the anti-polygamy faction of Mormonism. The only other source on a monogamy-only revelation is the highly problematic James Whitehead accounts I account for in the chapter.
This is also a case where alternative narratives are overly speculative. There are too many contemporary and third-party accounts for a plural marriage revelation to be an after-the-fact reinvention. The other theory is that Brigham Young and his conspiracy were circulating their version of the revelation as early as 1843 and were convincingly passing it off as Joseph’s. There is no direct evidence of there being two versions of the revelation going around Nauvoo at the same time. If there were, people such as the members of the high council would have known the plural marriage version was a falsification, having been shown the authentic revelation by Joseph or Hyrum.
The text of D&C 132 comes from a copy made by Newell K. Whitney and Joseph Kingsbury of the non-extant original manuscript. Whitney was known to keep a collection of manuscript copies of Joseph’s revelations and his collection was used in compiling the contemporary and later editions of the Doctrine and Covenants. A number of people attested to the authenticity of this copy to the original.
I wish I had more space in the chapter to address the issues polygamy skeptics have raised about the physical characteristics of the manuscript. Then and now, I refer the reader to fellow Secret Covenants contributor William Victor Smith and his book Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation.
While not in response to those objections, Smith’s effective document analysis answers most of the objections of polygamy skeptics.
Why do you say that “the Monogamous Model ought to be treated as a religious apologetic and not as a viable, objective narration”?
There is simply too much evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy coming from too many different places, and no alternative narrative explains the origins of Mormon polygamy without excessive assumption of hypothetical facts.
When it comes to religious truth claims, the presence of faith changes the analysis. A person might believe a fact based on faith. Personal revelation or other faith factors supply the evidence that would otherwise be speculative.
I do not fault those who believe on faith that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist. This is especially true of RLDS/Community of Christ traditionalists, for whom this belief is a historical tenet. I believe historians ought to be sensitive to these beliefs while maintaining where the weight of the objective evidence lies. I hope both sides will come to better understand this.
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About the Interview Participant
Mark Tensmeyer is one of today’s leading voices addressing the issue of polygamy skeptics. He is an attorney and an independent historian who has published multiple pieces on Joseph Smith’s practice of polygamy, including a chapter in Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy that addresses the Monogamous Model.
Further Reading
- What Was Mormon Polygamy?
- Who Were Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives?
- Who was Fanny Alger?
- How Did the Mormon Reformation Affect Plural Marriages?
- How Did Members React When Plural Marriage was Announced in 1852?
Polygamy Skeptics Resources
- Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy (Signature Books)
- Joseph Smith: Monogamist or Polygamist? (Interpreter Foundation)
- Joseph Smith’s Polygamy (Hales Website)
- Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation (Greg Kofford Books)
- Joseph Smith and Plural Marriage (Gospel Topics)
7 replies on “Why Don’t Polygamy Skeptics Think Joseph Smith Practiced Plural Marriage?”
How do you reconcile Hyrum’s statement regarding a polygamy revelation of “I know nothing about it” in his April 8th 1844 speech when he allegedly presented a polygamy revelation 9 months prior?
It’s pretty easy to reconcile those from a historical perspective. They were engaging in an illegal and controversial practice, so they did it in secret and when confronted in public tried to deny it.
Key Arguments for Joseph Smith’s Monogamy and Associated Evidence/Proponents
Public Denials by Joseph Smith – May 26, 1844, speech (“only find one” wife) ; Oct 1843 journal entry forbidding plurality of wives ; Times and Seasons articles
1835 Doctrine & Covenants Section 101 – Text of Section 101 affirming “one man should have one wife” ; Its status as official, published Church doctrine during Smith’s lifetime
Emma Smith’s Testimony – Lifelong and deathbed denials of Joseph’s polygamy ; Claim of first learning about polygamy revelation in 1853
No Documented Offspring with Plural Wives – Lack of genetic or undisputed historical evidence of children from plural unions ; Questioning the probability of no offspring from multiple fertile wives
“Spiritual” or “Non-Sexual” Sealings – Interpretation of sealings as “eternity only,” non-conjugal, or for dynastic purposes ; Argument that some sealings were not for procreation
Joseph Smith’s Public Statements on Monogamy/Polygamy
Date of Statement/Event Joseph Smith’s Public Statement/Denial or Official Church Publication
1835 Doctrine and Covenants (Sec. 101) published: “one man should have one wife”.
Oct 1, 1842 Times and Seasons publishes statement affirming monogamy as per D&C.
Oct 5, 1843 Joseph Smith’s journal entry (by scribe): “Joseph forbids it [plurality of wives] and the practice thereof— No man shall have but one wife”.
May 26, 1844 Joseph Smith states: “What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one”.
Crickets…
Also, Jacob Chapter 2 is, by no means, a “loophole” for God allowing polygamy.
Yeah, I mean the Lord saying that there are times and circumstances under which He would command His people, and the fact that there were times and circumstances under which He DID command his people, definitely don’t provide a “loophole” through which He could or would do it again. Makes sense!
What do you make of Hyrum teaching about Levirate marriage in a high council meeting in August of 1843 merely weeks after Joseph dictated D&C 132 in the presence of Hyrum in July?
He didnt