Introduction and Episode Overview

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 402

Guest [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We are recording this interview both in audio form and also in video form. We're going to be posting it to YouTube@YouTube.com mormonstories but today we have with us Dr. Brian C. Hales. Dr. Hales is an anesthesiologist living in the Salt Lake area and he's also a noted author. But the topic of today's presentation is a response to Grant Palmer's claims of sexual allegations against Joseph Smith. Before we dig into that, I just want to talk to you a little bit about Brian Bryan, as I mentioned, is the author of several books. The Priesthood of Mormon Polygamy, Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism and Setting the Record Mormon Fundamentalism. Those are three books that he's published. He also is the owner of two websites. One's called Mormon fundamentalism.com and the other is Joseph Smithspolygamy.com. you can see the URLs on the YouTube presentation, but we'll post those as well on the Mormon Stories post up on MormonStories.org but one of the, one of the most exciting things about Brian is that he's about to release, along with Cofford Books, Greg Coford Books, a three volume series on Joseph Smith's polygamy. Volume one is dedicated to history. Volume two is dedicated to. What is it? History as well?

Brian C. Hales [00:02:10] Yeah, the first the histories had to be split into two.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] Okay. And then the volume three is Theology. These books are being released on February 26, 2013. That's in six days. From the recording of this episode. You can buy these books at either Benchmark Books at Cofert Books or on Amazon. And at least two of those outlets are offering sort of a pre release sale. If you want to order these books early, you might get a discount. So very exciting books. I think I read some of the reviews and I think Richard Bushman wrote a really nice review. I think Todd Compton wrote a review. So you know you're getting a lot of respect and praise for these books. Right? Right, Brian?

Brian C. Hales [00:03:02] Yeah, we had reviews from Richard and Todd Compton, also Larry Foster and Dan Bachmann. What's interesting though, is that while they praised the books and Larry Foster said they're must haves, several of these authors acknowledge that my position is not something that's agreed with by all scholars. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of pushback I get over the years.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] Sure, sure. Yeah. I noticed that both Compton and Bushman wrote, I don't always agree with his conclusions, but he's a great scholar and that's fine, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:03:36] Yeah, no, that's great.

John Dehlin [00:03:39] So this interview is actually going to be part of a four part series, I'll call it. As you know, the Open Stories foundation sponsors both Mormon Stories and several other podcasts, including a podcast called A Thoughtful Faith. And Sarah Collette, who's one of the main interviewers on A Thoughtful Faith, has already done a two part interview which we'll just call a deep dive into Joseph Smith's polygamy. You can access that@a thoughtfulfaith.org this second part is going to be on Mormon Stories and it's going to be specifically a response to Grant Palmer, which we'll talk about in a second. And then Brian and I Hope to record two more episodes, one that we're going to call Top 12 Myths About Joseph Smith's Polygamy. And then the final one will be something along the lines of reconciling polygamy with faith. So for those who desire to, you know, maintain some type of a testimony in the LDS Church, you know how Brian's able to do that and maybe some ways to look at polygamy to where it doesn't have to be incompatible with faith. So that's kind of what we have in store. But today we're going to be focusing specifically on something Brian felt really strongly about. In February of 2012, I interviewed Grant Palmer for the second time on Mormon Stories. And this time he, he wanted to announce his resignation from the church. But also he wanted to talk about some history that he had felt he had, you know, some historic history performed. I don't know the right verb to use there, but he had done an analysis, a historical analysis of sexual allegations against Joseph Smith. And then he also wanted to talk about William and Jane Lawrence, William Law having been one of Joseph's members of the first presidency in Nauvoo prior to Joseph's assassination. And he wanted to give his perspective historically on these sexual allegations and on William and Jane Law. It was definitely a controversial podcast and it caused a lot of people to feel some pretty strong things. And so, Bryan, why don't we start with you just telling us why you felt so strongly about wanting to respond directly to Grant. Because normally we don't. We don't do responses sort of in a direct way. And I, and I certainly have a lot of respect for Grant Palmer and don't want, you know, to feel like we're attacking him in any way. I know, Brian, you're not. That you're not. That's not your style. I have it. I did invite Grant to be on this podcast. He didn't think it would be constructive to have sort of a back and forth kind of thing. I've given him an open invitation to come back on the podcast later. I just want to say all that up front, but, But, Brian, why don't you tell us why you wanted to respond to this podcast?

Responding to Grant Palmer's Allegations

Brian C. Hales [00:06:32] Well, I felt like Grant spoke for nearly an hour and talked about five allegations against six women. And we'll review some of his, his own words here. But as somebody who studied the actual evidence behind these alleged allegations, I thought he was embellishing the evidence beyond what is really a good scholarship. And again, I don't want to be negative on Grant. He's a really nice guy and he's always been kind to me. But in the interest of just getting good history out there to our listeners, I felt like we needed some more clarification.

John Dehlin [00:07:10] Okay, so why don't we jump in. And it looks like in your PowerPoint presentation, which again is on YouTube.com Mormon stories, or you'll be able to download this from mormonstories.org it looks like you. You start with some actual time codes from the podcast that you wanted to sort of lay out some of his, his actual verbiage. Is that right?

Brian C. Hales [00:07:32] Well, yeah. And again, I don't want to make him an offender for a word, you know, using Isaiah's words. But, and let me just say at the outset, we all, when we're interviewed, make misstatements. And if he comes back and says, look, I really didn't mean that, I fully understand that. Cause I hope to have that same benefit, should it, during this interview. So that's not the point. But I want to draw a nice picture for the listener, especially if they haven't heard his interview, to let them know what I'm responding to. So we're kind of on the same page.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] All right, well, let's let it rip.

Brian C. Hales [00:08:06] Okay, great. And thank you, John, for letting me participate. You do amazing interviews. I've listened to several of them, many of them, actually, and I appreciate the opportunity to respond to Grant here and have these other podcasts, but to get the story out there of what we're talking about, you can see on the slide. But he makes three statements. And then in his article, and for those who aren't familiar with his article, you can go just Google his name. And it's on Mormon stories, I think. No, it's on mormonthink.com grant6htm.

John Dehlin [00:08:48] We'll include a link on Mormon stories to that article.

Brian C. Hales [00:08:51] Okay, sorry, but I'll be talking about the article as well as what he said during the interview. But he says, and I'm going to make the, I'm going to quote all three of these, he says, six allegations in a three state period over a five year period. He said Joseph Smith must have been mortified to be accused of sexually improper conduct by at least four women during a six year period in three states. And then later he says, all I can say is that I would be mortified and I'm sure any person would be if they were accused over a six year period of having unwanted sexual advances against four or five teenage girls in three different states. That is a mortifying thing. And then later he says, as a married man, Joseph Smith must have been mortified of being accused of improper sexual conduct with at least four young women during the six year period. And then in his article he said it is generally unknown that he was accused of illicit sexual conduct with six young women from 1829 to 1835. Okay, so this is kind of what we're talking about.

John Dehlin [00:09:54] All right. And do you see, though, you're not trying to highlight inconsistency between those statements, are you?

Brian C. Hales [00:10:01] No, no. And this is why I said I don't want to make him an offender for the word, because I think what he's talking about are five allegations against six women. There is the one statement where he says he was accused by at least four women. I am going to come back to that, but I'm guessing that was just a misstatement on his part. As you will see, there's certainly evidence for even one of those. But we'll get into the evidence and then the listener can kind of make their own decision.

Levi Lewis and Eliza Winters Claims

John Dehlin [00:10:27] Okay. All right, let's do it.

Brian C. Hales [00:10:29] All right. Regarding the first allegation and the first woman. And we go to. Oh, and I also, you'll maybe want to put a link to my article from the Journal of Mormon History 2009. You can download the whole issue for free since it's three years old. But I have an article there that comprises nearly 80 pages. And it deals with all of these allegations and these episodes, plus a number more that I, that I deal with there. So somebody can get the details if they don't want to try to transcribe things. I'm saying you can certainly get the article for free and look it over.

John Dehlin [00:11:07] It's called Fanny Alger and Joseph Smith's Pre Nauvoo Reputation.

Brian C. Hales [00:11:11] Right.

John Dehlin [00:11:11] All right.

Brian C. Hales [00:11:12] And you can get that at the Utah state website where they've got everything

John Dehlin [00:11:19] archived, the link to it as well.

Brian C. Hales [00:11:21] Super, super. Well, if we go to the next slide, then what I've done is here's what Grant says as an introduction regarding a woman named Eliza. And I think her name is Elizabeth, but we all call her eliza Winters. At 18 minutes in, he says when Joseph Smith was in harmony, Pennsylvania in 1828, 29, translating the book of Mor, some of Emma's cousins, Emma Smith's cousins, and the Lewis's, that's who her cousins were, the Lewis's, they make this accusation that Joseph Smith had been familiar with 16 year old Eliza Winters, who was a very good friend of Emma Smith's. And then some of the neighbors say a few things and it is kind of neighborhood stuff. And so that sounds pretty bad. Sounds like Joseph did something. Everybody in the neighborhood knows about it and so he's embarrassed. And golly, why would Joseph do this? This is not good for those of us who are believers, you know, that's how we might respond. Well, actually, when we get into the evidence, it appears that Grant has kind of embellished things just a little bit because there is only one single sentence in the entire historical record that ties Joseph Smith to Eliza Winters. And if you look on the slide, it's that which is underlined in yellow. And here, here's what it says. Harris. And he's talking about Martin Harris. One of the three witnesses said that he did not blame Smith for his Smith's attempt to seduce Eliza Winters, etc. So there's a couple of problems. First off, this is not a firsthand accusation. Levi Lewis does not accuse Joseph Smith. Neither do any of Lewis's family or any of Emma Smith's cousins, so far as this evidence goes. And so I would invite Grant if he had actual evidence that these individuals were accusing him. And you may think that this is just hair splitting, but this is repeating an accusation that allegedly came from Martin Harris. And if we look at the paragraph, it comes from a book called Mormonism Unveiled. It's back on page 268. And it's a paragraph where the author, Ed Howe, or it may have been Philastus Hurlbut. I'm not sure who Levi Lewis was talking to, but they just write down all these accusations from Levi Lewis regarding Joseph Smith and the Smith family. But what's interesting is if you read the very last sentence of that paragraph, it says, with regard to the plate, Smith said God had deceived him, which was the reason he, Smith, did not show them. Well, anybody who's looked at even an 1830 Book of Mormon knows that there is a testimony at the back of the book. That's where it was then, of eight witnesses who saw the plates who said they did, and three witnesses who said they saw the plates, and an angel. So you can see Levi Lewis is not really very close to what's going on with Joseph Smith. But when you find this blatantly false statement in the same paragraph, it doesn't really lend a lot of credibility to earlier sentences, including the one that he quotes here about Harris and this accusation with Eliza.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] So it's saying that Smith. So what's your understanding, again, of what that sentence says about Smith? That the sentence is claiming that Smith said God deceived him, as in Joseph Smith.

Brian C. Hales [00:14:33] Right. Levi Lewis is, I believe, talking about the golden plates. Sorry, I kind of ran through that quick, John. And then he quotes Joseph Smith as saying that God had deceived him regarding the golden plates, which is why Joseph Smith never showed them to anybody. But again, that's just false.

John Dehlin [00:14:52] This book is claiming that Joseph Smith said that God deceived Joseph Smith.

Brian C. Hales [00:14:57] Well, the book isn't so much as Levi Lewis is the only person we have saying anything about Joseph Smith being involved with. Eliza Winters is also saying that Joseph Smith said that he didn't show the plates to anybody. See, it's a problem. It's just not credible. Okay, all right, but then if we look at the actual sentence, he's quoting Martin Harris, and this is curious, because Martin Harris in the early 1830s, was a very devout, aggressive Mormon missionary. And we've got that documented quite well. So what we have to believe, if this is true, is that Martin Harris saw Joseph Smith try to seduce Eliza Winters, which in Book of Mormon, sexual immorality is ranked next to murder. And I know that's controversial, but Heber C. Kimball read it that way in 1857. Orson Pratt read it that way, too. So you have this very serious sin, and Joseph is supposed to have tried to seduce Eliza, and then Martin Harris is supposed to just ignore that. And go off and be a very devout Mormon missionary promoting Joseph as a prophet. It's just a little less plausible. And then the other problem is that Eliza winters herself, in 1833, was accused by Martin Harris of giving birth to a bastard child. Now, Eliza wasn't a woman to take things sitting down. She took Martin Harris to court for slander during the whole proceedings, and we have a number of notes about it. There's no mention of Joseph Smith trying to seduce her or in any way having done anything that was a problem for her. So she had an opportunity to disparage Joseph and didn't take it in 1833. But even more significant is that nearly 50 years later, Eliza was 70 years old. A newspaper man named Frederick Mather interviewed her and a bunch of other people from the Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, area, and he was specifically trying to get derogatory statements about Joseph Smith and his family from former acquaintances. And in that interview, Mather recorded Eliza Winters saying, joe Smith never made a convert in Susquehanna. So here you've got Mather looking for dirt, and Eliza says, yeah, he didn't get any converts here. But she doesn't mention anything about Joseph trying to seduce her, even though it was the perfect scenario, the perfect environment for her to have corroborated this earlier claim. And personally, I think Mather probably brought it up and that Eliza couldn't verify that, and that's why he didn't mention it. But again, that's speculation on my part,

John Dehlin [00:17:39] and let me just be clear. Who knows what really happened? Right? So, you know, there's always a possibility that she didn't want to talk about it, or she was uncomfortable or she even feared for her life or something like that. But that's not what we're trying to do here. What we're trying to do is what? Look at the evidence.

Brian C. Hales [00:17:58] Well, if we laser in on the evidence, all we have is one single sentence that has some plausibility problems. But I appreciate you giving it some context. You know, what you said is absolutely right. Maybe there were other reasons, or maybe she was, at 70 years old, forgetful. But since this is the very best evidence and the only evidence we have with Eliza Winters and Joseph Smith, it just doesn't come across as really very strong. In fact, Richard Bushman said, considering how eager the Palmyra neighbors were to besmirch Joseph's character, their minimal mention of moral lapses suggests libertinism was not part of his New York reputation. Martin Harris. I'm sorry. Marvin Heel, the historian, also concurred. He said it is a fact that none of the earliest anti Mormon writers, neither Dogberry nor Ed Howe, who was the author of this book, charged Smith with sexual immorality. So I just am saying that we have one single sentence attaching Joseph and Eliza. But you didn't know that from listening to Grant talk about Eliza. I mean, going back to what he said, he said that it was a whole neighborhood thing and that it was Emma's cousins and the Lewis's. I mean you come away thinking there's all these testimonies and all this good contemporaneous evidence that are first hand accounts and yet there's none of that when you actually get into the evidence.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] So is this the reference that he uses in his paper to, to talk about Eliza Winters?

Brian C. Hales [00:19:22] Yeah, it's the only one that he uses and to my knowledge it's the only one in existence. But I would invite Grant or any of the listeners if you have any other evidence tying Joseph to Eliza Winters, I'd love to see it because I haven't been able to find any.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Okay, got it. So for you, the claims regarding Eliza Winters are weak or feeble or just not credible.

Brian C. Hales [00:19:50] Right. They're problematic at best.

John Dehlin [00:19:51] Okay. Okay, let's. Let's go to Miriam and Rhoda Stoll. Is that next?

Brian C. Hales [00:19:57] Yeah, that is next. And here's at 19 minutes, here's what Grant said. He said evidence comes from two of the 12 witnesses which were called in the trial 30 June 1830. That is the court record on that one. That is Josiah Stowell's daughters, Miriam and he couldn't remember Rhoda. They are 18 and 20 respectively. He says there had been rumors against Joseph and so forth. And so the prosecutor, I think based upon what happened to Eliza Winters in 1828, 29, and I think the witnesses are being asked by the prosecutor and I think it is a flat fishing expedition in this case because nothing really came of it. There is an accusation there by at least the prosecutor. So I mean, he's kind of vacillating. Is this a fishing expedition? He calls it very plainly an accusation and an allegation. But there are some real problems with bringing this up at all. To give you a little bit of history though, the hearing was called because Peter G. Bridgman, who was a nephew of Josiah Stowell, was worried that Joseph Smith was trying to dupe his uncle out of his money. The problem with Grant's report is there are no trial records. And I emailed Dan Vogel, who Is, I think, unarguably the expert on documents from this period. And he said, no, we don't have any records from that particular court case. But if you listen to what Grant said, he said, that is the court record on that one. And again, I don't mean to make an offender for a word, but he says there's a court record and there isn't. And if there were, at least if there is, I would invite him to produce that record that shows that anybody accused Joseph Smith of anything that was immoral at that time. We have an account From Josiah Stoll, Jr. He never joined the church, but he later was approached by a Mormon missionary, John Fulmer, to respond to, you know, what do you remember about Joseph Smith? And here is what Josiah Sowell Jr. Said. He said, I have been intimately acquainted with Joseph Smith about two years. He then was about 20 years old or thereabout. I also went to school with him on winter. He said he was a fine, likely young man and at the time did not profess religion. He was not a profane man, although I did once in a while hear him swear he never gambled. To my knowledge, I do not believe he ever did. I well know he was no horse jockey, for he was no judge of horses. I sold him one. That is all I ever know. That he dealt in the kind. I never knew him to get drunk. I believe he would now and then take a glass. He never pretended to play sleight of hand, nor Black Lake. So here you've got someone who was there. It's a late recollection. It's kind of entertaining. That's why I included it. John, to hear this guy talk about Joseph in the 1829 time period. But he didn't remember anything negative about Joseph or anything regarding his own sisters being in any way, I don't know, approached by Joseph for some immoral kind of behavior. But what's really problematic with Grant's presentation is that Grant does quote a later account and it's Joseph Smith's account. And here's what Joseph Smith said about this. We don't have the actual court record, so we don't know what was there. But Joseph Smith recalled, and this was printed in the Times and Seasons, he said, the young women arrived. This is both Miriam and Rhoda, and were severally examined, touching my character and conduct in general, but particularly as to my behavior towards them in public and private. Well, it's unfortunate because Grant stops quoting right there and then. He goes on and implies that this was to determine Things about sexual behavior. In fact, in the written version at this point is where Grant interjects with brackets sexual behavior. The problem is that it's mid sentence where Grant starts. If you quote the rest of the sentence, here's what it says. When they both bore such testimony in my favor as left my enemies without a pretext on their account. So what we have in this case is, and Grant does in his own defense, call it a fishing expedition, but we have no record of anybody accusing him. We can assume or speculate that it happened, but there is no evidence to that effect. But what we do have as far as the evidence is no evidence, it's non evidence. And then we have a later account from Joseph Smith which is actually in his favor regarding this particular episode. But Grant has, through his, his discussion turned non evidence and favorable evidence to Joseph and turned it 180 degrees as an account that is negative to him. To me, that's just problematic.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] Okay, all right, so that's down with Miriam and Rhoda Stowell for you as well.

Brian C. Hales [00:24:55] Right. And again, I'm trying not to misrepresent what Grant said, but that's particularly kind of egregious or problematic to me.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] And we'll invite our listeners if they want to tell us where we're wrong or where we got it wrong or if anyone wants to produce evidence, we will want to share that as well.

Brian C. Hales [00:25:14] Well, and let me add that Juanita Brooks, you know, a Mormon historian, excellent, made the comment, you never get it all. She was talking about historical sources and I fully believe that. And so if somebody has additional evidences I've missed, which is entirely possible, I would appreciate it. By all means, please speak and let's get the evidence out there. That's what I want.

John Dehlin [00:25:38] We'll invite our listeners to post their comments to the MormonStories.org page for this podcast where others can go and reference any follow up responses.

Brian C. Hales [00:25:49] Fantastic. That would be great.

Nancy Miranda Johnson Case

John Dehlin [00:25:50] All right, let's go to Miranda Nancy Johnson.

Brian C. Hales [00:25:53] Okay. And Miranda is actually the third woman, sorry, the fourth woman in the third allegation.

John Dehlin [00:26:03] Is it Mirinda or Miranda?

Brian C. Hales [00:26:05] It's Mirinda.

John Dehlin [00:26:07] Okay.

Brian C. Hales [00:26:08] And in fact, Grant calls her Nancy Miranda Johnson. It actually is Mirinda Nancy Johnson. And the reason I know that is that she signed her affidavit in 1869, capital M, capital N. But Grant isn't the only one to get those names mixed up.

John Dehlin [00:26:28] But here I think the slide says Miranda instead of Mirinda.

Brian C. Hales [00:26:31] Oh, did I? Well, see, didn't I tell you that?

John Dehlin [00:26:34] But it's okay. It's okay. I'm just acknowledging it for the listeners.

Brian C. Hales [00:26:38] And for the listeners. See, I told you. Other people get it mixed up because it's Mirinda and. But sometimes people juxtapose Nancy and Marinda.

John Dehlin [00:26:46] Okay,

Brian C. Hales [00:26:50] what Grant says here at 34 minutes is there is a question about Joseph Smith making advances against their sister, Nancy Mirinda Johnson. And the next thing we know is that in the middle of the night, at least four or five people appear, including Eli Johnson. And he is the uncle of Nancy Mirinda. And, you know, and I may have heard him wrong. It should be Nancy Miranda, but. And they think that there are some sexual things going on there. And I don't know how, and I don't defend it, but they take Joseph Smith out in the night, and they have a Dr. Dennison there, and he is there for the purpose of castration of Joseph Smith. So that's how Grant kind of deals with this.

John Dehlin [00:27:31] And this is a story that I've heard a lot that, again, that a mob in 1832 felt like Joseph had taken advantage of somebody and they pulled him out of his house with the attempt to castrate him.

Brian C. Hales [00:27:44] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:27:46] And is that the same event when somebody tried to pour a vial of poison down his throat? Is that.

Brian C. Hales [00:27:53] Yes, yes. It was nitric acid and chipped his tooth. Somebody scraped, you know the story. They scratched him, saying, that's the way that the Holy Ghost falls on you. And then they tarred and feathered both Joseph and Sidney Rigdon.

John Dehlin [00:28:08] Okay, so that. Yeah, so. So that's a story that's told a lot. Are you saying that you have a different perspective on that story?

Brian C. Hales [00:28:16] I'm just saying let's. Let's identify the evidence that that story is based upon and just see where it leads us.

John Dehlin [00:28:24] All right. Okay.

Brian C. Hales [00:28:25] What we find is that the account of the mobbing was first published in 1842 in the Times and Seasons. Now, nothing was said in that account about Joseph and Miranda being involved with each other, and nothing was said in that account about a doctor being there to castrate Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:28:43] But then would it. That would be a more. That would probably have a point of view. The Times and Seasons, because it's a church publication, if there were some impropriety, they probably wouldn't want to be printing that. Is that a fair statement?

Brian C. Hales [00:28:58] Oh, absolutely. No, you're. You wouldn't expect those things to be in there. But as we're trying to trace those two details, when were they first mentioned? I mean, that's. That's the question I'm trying to answer here. So I'm just saying they weren't in that account, which is something we would not expect. A good point.

John Dehlin [00:29:14] Okay,

Brian C. Hales [00:29:16] then in 1858, Luke Johnson, now Luke is Marinda's brother, and he was one of the first quorum of the 12 apostles. But he is excommunicated, comes back to the church, goes to Utah, becomes a bishop. But in 1858. And he's obviously biased, but he recounts the mobbing, even though he wasn't there. But he knew what has happened because it was at his father's home. But he is the one who first mentions that there was a doctor who was going to castrate the prophet. So the first time that we find anybody talking about that particular detail is 1858. He doesn't mention anything about Marinda and Joseph being involved with each other. Marinda is not part of the discussion. And just so that, you know, if you go to Grant's written version, he's got the reference at the bottom and it's not correct. This account was published both in the Millennial Star and in the Deseret News. And you have to go to the. It was a serial. And you have to go to the previous one to get this particular account, just for those who may want to look it up. But the real problem with Grant's view is that nobody mentioned any involvement between Joseph and Marinda until 1884. And the first person that I've been able to find. And again, if somebody has other evidence, please bring it forth. Let's hear it. Let's deal with it. But it seems to be Clark Braden in 1884 was debating E.L. kelly. He was a future Presiding Bishop of the RLDS Church. Clark Braden was a Church of Christ Disciples minister. And the guy was against any church, every church but his own. And he was a very aggressive debater. He was willing to debate anyone. And other churches, not just the rlds, didn't like to debate this guy because he was so free and easy with his facts. In other words, he'd come out in a debate and throw out all these ideas and claims, most of which just weren't true. And the poor opponent, whatever church they were belonging to, would be back reeling because he would have to try to just set up what was true and what was not true according to Clark Braden. So people didn't like to debate this guy. But in the 19th debate, and you've got it there in the slide, and this went over the course of several days in Kirtland in the 19th debate, he comes out with this rapid fire list of allegations of sexual impropriety against Joseph Smith. And some of them are pretty amazing. But he is the first person to mention anything about Joseph being involved with Miranda. And here's what he said. In March of 1832, Smith was stopping at Mr. Johnson's in Hiram, Ohio. Actually, he was living there for a year and was mobbed. The mob was led by Eli Johnson, who blamed Smith with being too intimate with his sister Mirinda. Now, we know this is a secondhand account because Clark Braden was born in 1831. We don't know who his source was. He didn't give a source. And neither have I been able to find anybody else associating Joseph Smith and Mirinda, except for this one account. And what's interesting, John, is that between 1832 when this happened, and 1884, when Clark Braden first mentioned it, we find several anti Mormons talking about the mobbing. Not a single person mentions it being because Joseph was involved with Marinda. They all attribute it to the law of consecration that was then being implemented and the fear from Eli Johnson and others that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were trying to get their property. Also on this account we have in 1877, Mirinda is giving her own history and she says, at this point, I feel like bearing my testimony that during the whole year that Joseph was an inmate of my father's house, I never saw odd in his daily life or conversation to make me doubt his divine mission. So here we have now, she was a devout member. She had every reason to want to remember positive things about Joseph. But she gives us this testimony that contradicts Clark Braden flat out. And another problem is that we have Grant presenting at 37 minutes. He said the person reporting this information is Luke Johnson. It is the brother of Nancy Miranda Johnson. No, as I mentioned, Luke Johnson doesn't mention anything about Joseph and Miranda. So you come away after hearing Grant thinking that there's all this evidence about Joseph and Miranda, when really you have a single secondhand sentence in an 1884 debate that was later published supporting this connection.

John Dehlin [00:33:55] Right, okay, that appears problematic from what evidence you do provide. You know, this reminds me of, you know, you know the story of Sidney Rigdon and Brigham Young both giving up to give their speeches in front of the city of Nauvoo to try and claim succession. And you know, the famous story about whether or not Joseph's countenance was transfigured or Brigham's countenance was transfigured. During that talk. Right?

Brian C. Hales [00:34:24] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:24] And skeptics, you know, skeptics claim there was no contemporary evidence supporting that interpretation and that instead it was a story told 10 or 20 years later that then sort of caught on. But, but I guess it's fair to say that if critics are going to discount a story like that based on lack of contemporary evidence, they would probably, in all fairness, need to look at. At this with the same level of suspicion. Is that fair to say?

Brian C. Hales [00:34:53] Well, yeah. In fact, in our next interview, I want to kind of touch on what kind of guides our beliefs with respect to Joseph Smith and plural marriage. And we'll deal with some observations, but, you know, we would like to be constant with our skepticism. And I think. An excellent analogy, I think, John.

John Dehlin [00:35:14] Okay. All right. Well, that's really interesting because that's. I would say that's in the top 10 or 20 most problematic historical events that critics of the Church are likely to quote. And it sounds like maybe people have been taking a story at face value that might not deserve that based on the evidence.

Brian C. Hales [00:35:37] Again, I think if we get back to the evidence, we may not agree, but everybody wins. And when it comes to Joseph Smith and polygamy, that's my plea. Okay, I don't expect you to agree with me, but let's just be quoting evidence when we disagree.

John Dehlin [00:35:49] Okay. All right, who's next?

The Ms. Hill Allegation and Source Problems

Brian C. Hales [00:35:52] Okay, now we're talking about the fourth woman, and this is the third allegation, and it's Ms. Hill. And at 41 minutes, Grant said this. He said a servant girl living in Joseph's house. All we know her by is Ms. Hill, and that improper procedures were made, and that comes from reported by Benjamin F. Winchester. Now, right at the outset, this is problematic because there is no Benjamin F. Winchester. And again, I don't want to get nitpicky. There's a Benjamin Winchester and there's a Benjamin F. Johnson. But the problem compounds because neither one of them mentioned Ms. Hill in any context that I've been able to discover. So I would invite Grant or any other listener to produce anybody besides William McClellan. He's the only person to talk about a Miss Hillary in any correspondence in any historical document that I am aware of. But if somebody has other evidence, then let's deal with it. So, anyway, we've got a misstatement here on the part of Grant regarding who said it. Now, if you are able to go to the slide for Ms. Hill, I have to read part of a letter, and this letter is from William McClellan. William McClellan was one of the original apostles who apostatized from the church. He was very gifted guy, very smart, very bright, and he had a love hate relationship with Joseph Smith after the martyrdom, as near as I can tell. But he wrote a letter to Joseph Smith III in 1872. So we're out quite a ways. 37 years after this described Ms. Hill event. And he's writing to Joseph Smith III to convince Joseph Smith III that his father, Joseph Smith the prophet, was in fact practicing plural marriage. And here's an excerpt from the letter. It's actually a very long letter. It's been reproduced a number of times, number of places, but here's what he wrote. He said, now, Joseph, Joseph Smith iii, I will relate to you some history and refer you to your own Dear mother Emma, for the truth, you will probably remember that I visited your mother and family in 1847 and held a lengthy conversation with her retired in the mansion house in Nauvoo. I did not ask her to tell, but I told some stories I had heard and she told me whether I was properly informed. Dr. Frederick G. Williams practiced with me in Clay County, Missouri during the Latter part of 1838. And he, Frederick G. Williams, told me that at your birth, That's November of 1832, your father committed an act with a Miss Heel, a hired girl. Emma saw him and spoke to him. He desisted, but Mrs. Smith refused to be satisfied. He called in Dr. Williams, Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon to reconcile. Emma. But she told him just as circumstances took place, he found he was caught. He confessed humbly and begged forgiveness. Emma and all forgave him. She told me this story was true. Then he says this again. Again I told her I heard that one night she missed Joseph and Fanny Alger. She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction. She told me the story too was verily true. So this is the only sentence in any historical document that I'm aware of that ties Joseph Smith to a miss Heel. It's obviously secondhand because he's apparently quoting Ms. Smith on this particular issue. Now the question comes up, is he talking about first an episode between Joseph and Ms. Hill and then when he says again, he's then switching to a second event with Joseph and Fanny Alger? Or is he just getting confused with a Fanny Hill and a Fanny Alger and simply repeating the previous allegation for emphasis purpose? Well, I believe Linda Keane Newell and Val Tippetts Avery, who wrote, perhaps in his old age, William McClellan confused the hired girl, Fanny Alger, with Fanny Hill of John Cleland's 1749 lewd novel and came up with the hired girl, Ms. Hill. And here's some of the reasons why I believe that this is just talking about Fanny Alger. And of course, we're going to talk about her in just a minute. But the first part of the paragraph specifies that Emma saw an interaction between Joseph and a hired girl identified as Ms. Hill. And then in the second half of the same paragraph, McClellan states that Emma saw him and Fanny in a barn together. So if there were two separate encounters, Emma apparently witnessed both of them. McClellan related that when Emma learned of the relationship, she refused to be satisfied, requiring immense efforts from Joseph to assuage her distress. And then. So it's a little strange that after this occurred that he would go out and do the exact same thing and be caught in the exact same place with a second woman. You know, he said he had to get Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams to take care of the first issue with Ms. Hill. But if they were thinking that this is two accounts that he's relating, then sometime thereafter, Joseph goes right out and does it again. Now, a lot of people think, well, you know, Joseph had a lot of libido, so that's easy for me to believe. But put in context, I think it's somewhat less likely in light of how hard it was. But in an interview three years later, 1875, McClellan is approached by J.H. beadle. He is the author of Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism. You know, there were a lot of these being published, and that was in 1870. He wrote this. Beadle did, but he interviews McClellan. He goes back to Missouri and interviews him, and then he says this. McClellan also informed me of the spot where the first well authenticated case of polygamy took place, in which Joseph Smith was sealed to a hired girl like Ms. Hill. In the 1872 letter, the sealing took place in a barn on a haymow, like Fanny alger in this 1872 letter, and was witnessed by Mrs. Smith through a crack in the door. So see, what we have in 1875 is William McClellan giving one story with characteristics of both Miss Hill and Fanny Alger. And I would believe that if McClellan had known of two women and two indiscretions, he would have been very happy to share that information with Beadle. I just think that we have. Ms. Hill is a she is a cypher. Nobody can find any reference. Grant gives her credibility by saying that she was a hired girl in the Smith home. And I would invite Grant or anybody listening to provide some documentation of a Ms. Hill in the Smith home or a Ms. Hill in the Kirtland area during the 1832-1836 period in any kind of a capacity. We can't find this woman. And lots of people have looked very hard. So that's the thing. And it's a single sentence. It's a secondhand source. And to my mind it's in a confusing letter. Not the best evidence of some impropriety of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:43:00] And is it saying here that Frederick g. Williams told McClellan?

Brian C. Hales [00:43:05] Right, that's what he quotes anyway. And that's why he brings it up to emma in the 1847 interview.

John Dehlin [00:43:13] Okay, so it's. Tell me if I'm wrong here. It's McClellan writing to Joseph Smith III saying that he heard from Frederick G. Williams that Joseph Smith committed an act with a Ms. Hill.

Brian C. Hales [00:43:28] Yes, but that was verified. Oh, I see what you're saying. Whatever he was talking about was verified by Emma Smith. So either he's quoting Frederick G. Williams and or Emma regarding Ms. Hill. Unless he really meant Fanny Alger.

John Dehlin [00:43:45] Okay. Yeah. And so we can't find any existence of a Ms. Hill. You would think that if Emma had learned about Ms. Hill and a Fanny Alger so early on that. That we would have heard of that at some way or that Oliver Cowdery, who knew about Fanny Alger, might have also heard about this Ms. Hill, that somehow it would have been, you know, known. Is that fair to, you know, to suspect?

Brian C. Hales [00:44:19] Well, it'd be pretty sensational gossip for somebody to have remembered. And yet the only reference that I have found is that single sentence about Ms. Hill. But again, when you listen to GRANT Talk about Ms. Hill, you get the impression that there's a lot of pretty good evidence that this actually occurred. You don't realize this is a confusing letter about a woman that we can't identify in any other situation. That anyway seems to be confused with Fanny Algeria.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] And again, I'm just. I want to make sure that I understand this. Am I reading this to say that it's Frederick Williams that McClellan is claiming that he heard this from Frederick Williams? Is that true?

Brian C. Hales [00:45:00] Well, the letter says that Williams told him about this. So then in 1847 he repeats it to Emma and Emma valid. Verily told me it was true. I think is the language that he used in the Letter.

John Dehlin [00:45:14] Okay. But he's claiming that he heard it from Williams originally.

Brian C. Hales [00:45:17] Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, actually. Hadn't thought about that distinction, but yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:22] So it's allegedly, you know, Williams telling McClellan, and then McClellan is reporting this. How many years later?

Brian C. Hales [00:45:32] This is 1872, the letter.

John Dehlin [00:45:34] Yeah. So that's decades, decades later when he's much older. And there's good reason to believe, based on this quote, that he really is talking about Fanny Algeria versus someone named Hill.

Brian C. Hales [00:45:49] Well, again, I'm just presenting the evidence, John, and people can believe what they want to believe, but what I think is important that we didn't get from Grant's interview is just how tenuous the basic core evidence is for all of the discussion about Ms. Hill that he provided.

John Dehlin [00:46:10] And again, it's difficult to know whatever really happened in history, but the little that I know about the craft of history is that it's messy and that people do try and assassinate other people's character, especially during this time period. And if you want to be fair, you can't take everything said, every statement made at face value.

Brian C. Hales [00:46:39] Well, and that goes both ways for the apologist and the antagonists on this. But when you've got. And in fact, if you can go to the next slide, because to this point, we've talked about four of the five allegations that Grant presents that involve five of the six women. And if you look at the evidence, I mean, he talks for over 40 minutes about these four allegations, and if you look at what evidence is supporting it, you have a single secondhand statement regarding Eliza Winters that is dubious. I think at best, there's no evidence for Miriam. It's just conjecture. And Rhoda stole. If you look at Mirinda, Nancy Johnson, it's a very late secondhand claim from Clark Braden, who you wouldn't really list as being that credible just because of the way he attacked every religion. And then the last one is a secondhand account in a very confusing letter from William McClellan. Now, McClellan is credible, but the letter and the way it's presented leaves you really wondering, okay, is he talking about Fanny Alger and thinking of her as Fanny Hill, or is there really this mystery woman that nobody's ever been able to find anything else about? Is that the second woman that Joseph was involved with? So I'm just saying for 40 minutes, we hear some pretty nasty stuff about Joseph from Grant Palmer, but the evidence may not necessarily justify that level of condemnation that that seems to be presented in those discussions about these individual women.

John Dehlin [00:48:10] Okay? Got it. So in the next slide, you talk about what Grant said about having one source. Why don't we talk about that?

Brian C. Hales [00:48:20] Well, I kind of needed to throw this in because at 27 minutes, Grant says if I only have one source on something, I generally do not use it. And if one of them is an unsaved resource, I try to use that just as a backup. And he also said, you know, I try not to use Ed Howe's book Mormonism Unveiled. Or he says he tries to be real careful. And so when you get that preliminary and then he starts talking about all of these allegations against Joseph, you're assuming that Grant has more than one source just because he's prefaced things by saying if he only has one, he wouldn't be presenting what he's presenting. And so the poor listener is thinking, wow, there's all this evidence against Joseph with Eliza and with Miranda, Mirinda and with, you know, Ms. Hill and these Stoll sisters, when in fact, when you get down to it, unless I've missed something, and maybe Grant will come back with this, you know, all this extra evidence, but, you know, I don't think that it exists, but it just is kind of a little bit unfair to the poor listener who doesn't realize that each of these allegations is based on either no evidence or one single, somewhat problematic source.

John Dehlin [00:49:30] Okay, got it. So what, you've got a few more slides here, beginning with one about Fanny Alger. What? How does Fanny Alger tie into all this?

Fanny Alger and the Evidence for Early Polygamy

Brian C. Hales [00:49:40] Well, the fifth allegation that Grant presents, and he presents more than one source for this to his credit, but it's Fanny Alger. And I spent several chapters in my book on this. And the article also has some extended discussion about Fanny and what I've discovered. And this was with the help of Don Bradley, who I hired to help find all of the documents from any source, whether they were anti Mormon or apologetic, and everything in between dealing with Joseph Smith and polygamy. What we found was 19 different references from individuals who were either involved directly or knew somebody who were involved. And they talk about Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger. And that's the chart there. And it's in. I have all of the accounts in Appendix D in my second volume of my books. But the reason that this is important is if you go to the next slide, and this slide is available on my website and you can go to the website and click on these individual persons and observations and you can get the actual evidence. So it's all there on the website, but the evidence comes in in three different. With respect to Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger, the evidence supports three different aspects. Several of them are just ambiguous, but several of the statements are supporting adultery, that Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger committed adultery. And it's very plain that Oliver Cowdery, who said that it was a dirty, nasty, filthy affair. And actually the word that we trace back to Oliver is not affair, it's scrape. And I talk about that in my book. Don Bradley's the one who figured that out and Chris Smith actually. But there's a statement by Fanny Brewer. Emma's actions show very plainly she didn't think it was a legitimate plural marriage. She threw Fanny right out of the house at night. According to one of the accounts, of course, Clark Braden weighed in with his view of it. And then there's a person that we've yet to identify, Historicus, who wrote in 1881 calling it free love isn't. So we've got this evidence that it was adultery, but there's also some pretty significant evidence that it was a plural marriage, or at least that a marriage ceremony was performed. Now, Oliver may have known this and just says, baloney, I don't believe it's legitimate, but I think most of us are familiar with Todd Compton's book. And Todd was the first to report the Mosiah Hancock statement, that Mosiah related how Levi had performed a marriage ceremony with Joseph Smith, telling him what to say and giving him priesthood authority to perform it. It would have been a time, only it wasn't a sealing, and nobody said it was a ceiling, but it would have been a priesthood marriage, just like he had performed for other monogamous couples before and after. But there is a new evidence that's been found. Again, this is by Don Bradley. And if you go to the next slide here, this is kind of real quick. Oh, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:52:32] It's fair to say that that Mosiah Hancock reference is like, way. I mean, it's like more than 50 years after the event, probably what, 1896. Is that what's on the slide?

Brian C. Hales [00:52:45] Yeah. And in fact, maybe I should go over this for the people who don't have the slide in front of them. There's quite a number of observations about that this, in fact, was a marriage ceremony, that there was one performed. Chauncey Webb is who Fanny went to live with for a few weeks after Emma Smith threw Fanny out of the house. And they later recalled that it was a sealing or marriage was performed. And then his wife, Elijah Jane Churchill Webb, also quoted it as being a sealing or a marriage. And then their daughter, Anna Eliza Webb Young, who wrote an anti Mormon book called Wife 19, but she also referred to it as being a marriage. Their actions are also consistent with that because they followed the Saints to Nauvoo and even later to Utah. But interestingly enough, both Chauncey and Eliza, Jane and Ann Eliza, all apostatized, but they didn't see anything in what was happening in Kirtland as a reason to apostatize at that time. In addition, Fanny Alger's family followed the church clear into Utah, and it wasn't her brother, John alger apostatized in 1891 because he couldn't accept the 1890 manifesto, but he didn't see anything in what was going on with his sister and Joseph as a reason to apostatize. Then we have statements from John Hawley and Benjamin F. Johnson verifying that it in fact was a plural marriage. Let me just say before we look at the Eliza R. Snow account, that what Grant Palmer has done as he discusses Fanny Alger is simply discuss the evidence supporting adultery and ignore the evidence supporting plural marriage. And then getting back to your actual comment, John. Yes, the Mosiah Hancock statement is far from the most credible. Further on, in the particular document where Mosiah is writing, there's some just really crazy stuff that he writes. So it isn't as solid a support as you would like. But I believe that there's some new evidence that is even more significant. And that's what I wanted to talk about. So did that address your concern?

John Dehlin [00:54:49] Yeah, I'm just saying that. I guess what I hear you saying, as I'm trying to understand it, is just that we don't know for sure what happened, whether a marriage ceremony happened or not. But if we're going to say that it was. If Grant Palmer, for example, is going to say that it was just adultery or with some of these other women, he's going to pull up references that are 50, 60, 70 years after to support something that happened much previously, even from questionable sources, to be fair and consistent. You know, it should also be noted that lots and lots of people wrote down that they understood Joseph to have married Fanny Alger before any sexual impropriety happened. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Brian C. Hales [00:55:40] Yes. And to be honest with you, that's what I'm trying to do in my books and on my website is to provide both sides of this issue. I don't want to have people accuse me doing that very thing. And if I've done it. I would welcome your readers to write in and say, you know, you're not being fair with the evidence. Hales, you need to talk about this evidence that you didn't talk about. Because in each. In my books, I start the chapters with the alternate perspective from what I think is the most accurate. And I list all of the evidence there. Richard Bushman reviewed some early chapters, and he commented, brian, this is going to make it stronger than it would have otherwise been. And of course, I'm sure I stumbled and there'll be lapses. You know, nothing's perfect. But I want people to know that I'm not afraid of the evidence that supports the position opposite of that, which I believe to be the most accurate.

John Dehlin [00:56:30] Okay, got it. Okay, keep going.

Andrew Jensen's List and Eliza R. Snow

Brian C. Hales [00:56:33] Okay. Well, this is kind of fun going back to this Eliza R. Snow slide. There's a guy named Andrew Jensen, and he became an assistant church historian in 1891. But in 1887, he was an independent historian, just like me, except I'm sure he's a lot better. But he went around to Joseph Smith's plural wives who were still living, and was trying to get a list of all of Joseph Smith's plural wives for an article that he was writing in the historical record. The historical record. He had authored it, and he was writing it in Danish, if I remember correctly, volumes one through four. And then in volumes five through 10, he writes in English. And those are books you can buy. They're collector's items, but they're out there. And in fact, you can Download them as PDFs now. But I spent a lot of money for my copy. But anyway, he writes this article on Joseph Smith's plural marriages, and it's an incredible treasure trove of information. But what we haven't had and what Todd Compton didn't have, and Michael Quinn and Michael Marquard and these other scholars who've written on polygamy, they didn't have access to his notes. And his notes are equally another treasure trove of information and help clarify some question marks that we didn't know. And one of them has to do. How did he come up with his list of 26 wives? And what we find in document one is that he went and interviewed Melissa Lott. And it's Don Bradley who did all of the detective work on this. But he figured out that he went down to Lehigh and met with Melissa Lott, one of Joseph's plural wives. This is in early 1887. And he gets from her, or he writes down in his own hand 13 different names. And then sometime thereafter, he meets with Eliza R. Snow. And apparently he took the same piece of paper that he'd been writing on while he was talking to Melissa Watt, and he hands it to Eliza R. Snow. And Eliza writes 13 more names. And one of those names is Fanny Algeria. But what's also important is that he starts a biographical sheet on Fanny Alger. And in that biographical sheet he records that Eliza R. Snow was well acquainted with Fanny Alger and that Eliza was there when Emma Smith made such a fuss about Fanny Alger. So we don't know when this relationship, marriage began. Todd Compton is still affirming 1832, 33. I think that's way too early, but there is evidence supporting that. I think it was later, 1835, maybe even 36. But what we can say is that it ended that the, the big explosion and the problems occurred in the spring of 1836, because that's the only time that Eliza was there living in the Smith's home, or at least that's when she went to live there. So we don't know when it started, but we should be able to agree that it ended sometime after the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, probably just weeks later. And Don Bradley's written a very nice article on that in the Persistence of Polygamy. But what is important is that Eliza wrote down Fanny Alger's name. And I believe if it had been adultery, I believe Eliza would have known it and she wouldn't have included this name because she didn't need to cover anything up. She was just writing the plural wives and put Fanny's name down there because she knew what was going on. She talked to Fanny and she knew that a marriage ceremony had been performed. So I think this is one more fairly important evidence supporting the interpretation that a marriage ceremony was performed between Joseph and Fanny.

John Dehlin [01:00:13] Now, is it. What if someone were to say, well, well, you know, Joseph just later told Eliza that he had married Fanny, you know, to cover his tracks and to try and retroactively make what was, you know, adultery more legitimate by retroactively referring to it as the first of his plural marriages. I mean, that's possible, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:00:40] No, I think it's a very, very good observation. In fact, I've had people ask me that before. And what I would say to that is, if we believe what Andrew Jensen wrote, that Eliza was well acquainted with Fanny, I think that makes it a little less likely that she would have been well acquainted with Fanny, been there for the blow up, and never asked the question, well, was it a marriage or was it adultery? And if it was adultery, would we expect Eliza to hang on? I mean, Eliza was a discerning lady and in my view, would not have hung on to a prophet, Joseph Smith, who had been committing adultery back in Kirtland. I think that's less likely. But again, it's not a bad interpretation, and I welcome, you know, alternate views.

John Dehlin [01:01:24] Yeah. So if. I guess I'm. Again, I'm not as familiar with this as you, but if it's true that. If it's true that Joseph had just committed adultery with Fanny, would it make any sense that Fannie's family would have followed the saints all the way out to Utah and remained active, faithful members? You would think that Fannie would have told her parents whether or her family whether or not a marriage had occurred, and that somehow it would have been revealed to have been fraudulent and that Eliza R. Snow probably would have asked these questions as well. Is that a fair consideration of what might have happened?

Brian C. Hales [01:02:17] Well, I certainly see it that way. You know, when I read Fawn Brody's version, and I could add several other authors, I won't mention them by name, but when you read about Joseph Smith's alleged behavior and then read about how Brigham and John Taylor and Eliza and Zina reacted to. To this alleged hypocrisy, which is the Fawn Brodie version, they really are describing them as comic book characters. They aren't behaving like you and I are. And this is what I hope people will get out of my books, because they will hear the stories of the Nauvoo polygamists themselves, and they'll discover, I hope, and I think that these Nauvoo polygamists were just as skeptical, if not just as cynical, as you and I are about this polygamy. Yeah. Oh, right, Joseph. You're just wanting sex. But that isn't it. They were convinced that this came from God. And to hear their stories just completely, I think, contradicts the Fawn Brody caricatures that she describes when it comes to polygamy in her book. No man knows my history.

John Dehlin [01:03:17] Okay. All right, so it looks like the next slide is kind of a summary again.

Brian C. Hales [01:03:22] Yeah, well, I'm just going back to, you know, Grant really sold these five allegations. I'm sorry? Yeah. Five allegations against six women as being embarrassing. And, you know, you have a disclaimer to people before they listen to Grant's discussion about these things. You know, basically, if you got a weak testimony, don't listen. And I think that was nice, John. That's not a criticism. But when you look at what evidence was actually there and that these things are kind of somewhat dramatically described about being mortified, well, you know, would you really be mortified to have Levi Lewis's account out there? Would you be mortified to have Clark Braden's, you know, accusation out there? And what about this confusing letter? And how about the allegations of adultery? As Fanny, when you're ignoring the evidence of a plural marriage? See, nothing that's there would make me the least bit mortified. And Joseph was a religious figure. Every other preacher, every other minister saw him as a competitor. They felt that they needed to let their flocks know that Joseph was an imposter. So they were very willing, like Clark Braden, to kind of, you know, stretch the truth or, you know, falsify things, because the ends would justify the means. You got to show this Joseph Smith is really a bad guy. And if it's sexual immorality, well, let's throw that in. But what's interesting is you got to ask. And if you go to the very last slide, you just say, if this is the best evidence that Grant Palmer can find. And Grant's not alone. I mean, if you try to find anything there, and if you read my article, you'll find there's just not a lot of evidence that's the least bit credible that Joseph was a libertine or at least had that reputation in the 1830s. And if this is the best evidence that anybody can find of sexual improper conduct, just how likely is it that that behavior actually occurred? If this is the best evidence anybody can come up with it? Just, you know, it may be a valid question for some.

John Dehlin [01:05:16] Okay, so just to. To try and represent a skeptic's point of view, you know, we're never going to be able to know, you know, who had sex with who and who's really telling the truth or not. All we have is a historical record that I will agree. You know, at least I haven't always been as conscientious as relying on primary sources as I should. And I'm sure that there are many people in these debates who also have not been as conscientious. But the angle that I often like to take, I don't know if I want to call it Occam's Razor, just this notion of what's plausible. What mosaic can we paint from the evidence that we have? And. And a skeptic is going to say, where there's smoke, there's fire, right? They're going to say, look, all you have to do is go to Nauvoo and see that Joseph was. And we're going to talk about this in the subsequent episodes. But what they're going to say is he wasn't telling Emma about all his marriages. He, you know, some feel he was pressuring these women, using his power over them to pressure them to be his wives. You know, he was having sex with lots and lots and lots of women in the 1840s. So, you know, these, these things that happened previously were just kind of the precursors. And, you know, because he was a man of power and status, maybe he was able to suppress some, maybe he was able to pressure people or buy people off. But if a skeptic would look at the Nauvoo time period and say he was clearly going crazy sexually with lots of women, then it would make perfect sense that prior there would be evidence, even if second or third hand, that he was sometimes getting caught, let's say, with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. So, you know, what would you say to someone who, who would just kind of want to believe Grant and even these second or third hand allegations just because where there's smoke, there's fire.

Brian C. Hales [01:07:45] Great question. The way I would respond is, first off, we'll talk about this more. But you portrayed Joseph as getting all this sexual relations. We're going to have to talk about the evidence for that in the next one because I don't see that.

John Dehlin [01:08:01] But I'll be a teaser. That'll be a teaser for the next episode, but keep going.

Guest [01:08:05] There you go.

Brian C. Hales [01:08:06] There you go. The evidence for sexuality just. He did consummate 12 of the marriages, but the evidence that he was having a lot of sex, like some people have been portraying, I just don't find it there. And there's some observations that are really important. But what was your. Oh, was Atkins razor. I'm working at a very big disadvantage because I would argue there's only two explanations to why Joseph established plural marriage. One is that God commanded him to do it. The second one is libido. Really? That's it. I mean, we could come up with, oh, he was trying a social experiment or something, but that's just not going to fly. The problem is that I sit here as a believer and I say God commanded it. But the only people who can believe that God commanded Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy are the people who believed Joseph Smith or that God was talking to Joseph Smith in the first place.

John Dehlin [01:09:01] Yep, that is fair. That's fair, See?

Brian C. Hales [01:09:04] So when they hear about novel polygamy and they hear me say what I say, and they say, oh, Brian's just an apologist, and we know it was libido. And so they look back in the 1830s and they say, well, you know, it must have been libido back then. So there's just absolutely a disconnect there. There's no way for them. And I understand that this, again, is not a criticism of the people who don't believe Joseph was a prophet. For them to conclude it was libido driven, well, what else are they going to think? I mean, that's just human nature. And so it becomes a little problematic. But the issue of Occam's Razor, which, as I understand it, is the fewest number of assumptions, is probably going to lead you to the true interpretation. Is that how you understand it?

John Dehlin [01:09:46] Yeah, that's probably more eloquent than I would have been able to describe it.

Brian C. Hales [01:09:49] Yeah, well, and you can assume, well, Joseph wanted sex, therefore he brings in polygamy and he brings in polyandry because he wants sex. And that's very simple. There's just one assumption there, and it sounds like it's going to be the best argument. In fact, there are entire books on Nauvoo polygamy that use that as the premise. But the problem with that is it doesn't describe what the Nauvoo polygamists themselves were experiencing. In other words, they would not have accepted that for one second. The 114 polygamists besides Joseph Smith, these are men and women who had entered into polygamous relationships at the time of the martyrdom. If any of them had thought for one second that Joseph just wanted sex, they would have dumped him. They would have jumped ship. They might have rebelled against him. So, see, there's a whole other story, and that requires us to introduce God, his teachings, his theology, all of this accompanies it. And then you've got to also remember that these men and women are watching Joseph very carefully. They're just as skeptical as you and I are. And so we can't make this assumption that sex was driving the process, because that is an artificial reconstruction. We have to include the reactions of the people who are watching him. We have to include his teachings to them. And then when we get that put together, we have a more accurate historical reconstruction. And then we have to look at how many assumptions are going to get us to a proper interpretation.

John Dehlin [01:11:14] Okay, but. Okay, Brian, so before we end, was there one other thing you wanted to say about Fanny?

Responding to Challenges About Fanny Alger

Brian C. Hales [01:11:19] Well, yeah, out of respect for Grant, he throws out a challenge as he's talking about Fanny Alger. And I just wanted to respond to what he had challenged us regarding. He said, one moron scholar has claimed that Fanny Alger was Joseph's first polygamous wife. He's talking about Todd Compton in his book In Sacred Loneliness. However, Grant says to make the case compelling, the following observations need to be addressed, and he lists four. So I'm going to mention those and then respond to them. First, there is no marriage license or record of the ordinance. And I have to tell you, there is no marriage license for any of the polygamous marriages, the one in Kirtland or any of them in Nauvoo. These marriages were bigamous marriages at best, and they would have been against the law. That's why they are not recorded in any kind of an official document. Likewise, we have found no official church record either. These things were so secret that the only thing we find is that with the exception of Joseph sealing to Sarah Ann Whitney, which was dictated as a revelation, there's just a few little references here and there in some coded language, and then there's nothing. So for Grant to demand that there be a marriage license or a record is just totally inconsistent with even later Nauvoo polygamy.

John Dehlin [01:12:36] That makes sense.

Brian C. Hales [01:12:38] And then the second one, he says there is no revelation authorizing polygamous marriages until 1840. I'm not sure what Grant means by this because the revelation wasn't written until 1843, but you don't need a revelation to practice plural marriage. There was no revelation authorizing baptism, but they were baptizing before that. So this, to me, is just kind of a red herring. Why he would require a written revelation to do this is unclear to me.

John Dehlin [01:13:03] Well, I mean, I think the average member of the church who probably doesn't know about the details of the history would hope that Joseph received a revelation before he started practicing polygamy. That's fair, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:13:19] Yeah, and that is fair. And if that's what he's coming from, I understand. But Joseph Smith taught as early as 1831 that plural marriage was a correct principle and authority was restored to do it. I don't know why we have to have something written down.

John Dehlin [01:13:33] When you say authority, which authority do you mean?

Brian C. Hales [01:13:36] Well, he apparently was just using regular priesthood authority, like he had used to marry Lydia Braithwaite and Newell Knight in Kirtland. That was priesthood authority, not from the state, and it married them in A monogamous marriage. But apparently he could use that as well to make a plural marriage. We don't know those details, but people often ask. Well, he didn't have the sealing authority, so how could it have been a marriage? Well, he was performing marriages, and the priesthood authority would have allowed a polygamous marriage if God had commanded it or allowed for it. And then later in 1836, in April, he gets the visitation from Elijah and gets the sealing authority that he sits on for five years, doesn't use until 1841.

John Dehlin [01:14:18] Okay, and again, what year was that? The Elijah?

Brian C. Hales [01:14:21] That's April 3, 1836, in the Kirtland temple.

John Dehlin [01:14:25] That would have been after his experience with Fanny, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:14:29] I believe so. I mean, you might make a case that Fanny Algermeridge was after that. I don't think so.

John Dehlin [01:14:35] And so how could he be legitimately marrying Fanny without having received the keys to sealing?

Brian C. Hales [01:14:44] Well, it wasn't a sealing. This is a very good question. It comes up quite often. Nobody has said it was a sealing. I'm unaware of any church leader or anybody who says this was a sealing. And Joseph had priesthood authority to marry, at least in his mind, to marry monogamous couples during this period. And so the conclusion I've drawn, again, we've got no documentation. And those that are really skeptical will say, well, I don't believe it could be used for that. But clearly, if it could, I believe it's clear that if he could perform the marriage using priesthood authority of, say, Newell Knight and Lydia Braithwaite in Kirtland, that that same authority would have allowed him to be married to Fanny Alger. It wouldn't have been an eternal marriage. It's something they would have needed to perform again down the road. But if it was going to be lasting for eternity, but that would have been the authority that was available to them then.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] So are you guessing that in his mind it was the marriage to Fanny was a time only, not a time in eternity marriage?

Brian C. Hales [01:15:46] Well, the timeline would have only allowed for that. See, one thing I haven't mentioned is that we have 22 accounts talking about an angel. Most of them mention a sword commanding Joseph Smith to practice plural marriage. One of those who related this is Mary Elizabeth Rawlins Lightner. And she said there were three visits from the angel, and the first One was in 1834. And if she's right, what I believe is the angel came and said, joseph, we want this restored now. And Joseph's saying, well, how do I do that? He says, well, you have priesthood authority. And so I believe it was the next year, sometime at least after the angel visit of 1834, that Joseph Smith was married using priesthood authority to. And this would have been authority he got from Peter, James and John, that he used that to be sealed to Fanny probably in 1835, and in his

John Dehlin [01:16:45] mind, not as an eternal marriage at the time.

Brian C. Hales [01:16:48] Right. There are some allusions to there being eternal marriages in things written by W.W. phelps in 1835, but there was no special ceremony or anything mentioned how much Joseph knew when he found it out. You know, some people say they have a good idea. I disagree. I don't think we have any idea when Joseph came to know all that he knew.

John Dehlin [01:17:08] Okay, right.

Brian C. Hales [01:17:09] Line upon line.

John Dehlin [01:17:10] Yeah. I mean, it seems like this in his mind was some unfolding that where he kept. Where he kept increasing or becoming more specific about what he was revealing. But at any point in time he had a real incomplete knowledge of what the end result would be.

Brian C. Hales [01:17:29] Yeah, yeah, that's very good summary, I think.

John Dehlin [01:17:32] Okay, so you were going to say two other things that Grant Palmer said about Fanny. Is that right? Or challenges he made.

Brian C. Hales [01:17:39] Yeah, he said Joseph Smith did. And we just actually discussed the third one. Joseph Smith did not claim the power to bind on earth and seal in heaven eternally until Elijah appeared to himself and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple. And I'm just saying that nobody claimed it was a sealing. Again, we're setting up a straw man here with that. Joseph clearly had, based upon his behavior in performing priesthood marriages, he had authority to perform a marriage and not a ceiling at that time. And that's all he would have needed.

John Dehlin [01:18:11] And I'll just say most Mormons are not going to envision the possibility of a polygamous marriage. That is for time only. So, I mean, that's a fair thing to point out, but it's also fair for you to say that no one's technically claiming it as an eternal marriage.

Guest [01:18:28] Right.

Brian C. Hales [01:18:28] And we'll talk more about that.

John Dehlin [01:18:30] Okay. In our next episodes. Okay, what else you got?

Brian C. Hales [01:18:34] The last one is simply that Fanny left the state and quickly rejected counsel by marrying a non Mormon, something one would not expect from a Mormon plural wife. And this is really out there. First off, I would challenge him to find any counsel that was given to her. In fact, I think Joseph probably did counsel her to go ahead and leave him because Emma was making such a fuss about what was going on. As you read the few accounts that we have, Fanny is not upset with Joseph. She's being cast out by Emma, and Emma's having nothing to do with her. And so to say that Joseph didn't counsel her or that he told her to stick around is just undocumented. And again, I challenged Grant to document that we know in Nauvoo, and this will be new to many of your listeners, that Joseph did allow one divorce from Flora and Woodworth. And that's a whole interesting story by itself. But you know, it isn't unprecedented in Joseph Smith's plural marriages for him to have said, okay, this isn't working out. You know, undo this priesthood marriage that we have entered into. Also, he says this is something one would not expect from a Mormon plural wife. Well, to compare her to any other plural wives, even in Nauvoo, is just very artificial. I mean, this was incredibly secret. When it was found out, it was rejected by many of the people closest to it. And to expect her to have hung around like a Mormon plural wife to me is just, just superimposing some really unrealistic expectations on this very first Kirtland

John Dehlin [01:20:11] plural marriage, given the fact that there was no sort of communal, I mean, there's probably little communal support for polygamous marriages in Nauvoo because it was so small, such an inner circle and kept such secret. But back in 1835, 1836, there would be pretty much none. Right.

Brian C. Hales [01:20:31] Well, that's how I read it, John. Yeah, I like that review. So.

John Dehlin [01:20:35] Okay. Okay.

Guest [01:20:37] So.

John Dehlin [01:20:39] All right, Well, I guess just to summarize, I'm going to go back to. I'm going to go ahead and go back to this slide about your books. And I'm just going to say, you know, Brian Hales again is coming out in just a few days with the via Greg Crowford Book Books, a three volume set on Joseph Smith's polygamy. You can get it at Benchmark Books at Coford Books and at Amazon. Also, Lloyd has asked me to publicize some book signings that are happening soon. So I'm going to go ahead and let everyone know that on February 26th. No, I'm sorry. On February 27th you will be speaking about your research and signing copies at Benchmark Books. We'll put the address up on the podcast at 5:30 and then at 7:30 at Pioneer Book in Orem and then in March 9th at 7pm you'll be doing a book signing as well. So it looks like there's three book signings coming up. I'll put the details to those book signings up. Will you be giving presentations or speeches before the book signing or not.

Brian C. Hales [01:21:55] The benchmark and pioneer book. I'm planning just to talk about how the books came to be. There won't be a PowerPoint, but also which I'm excited for. Don Bradley I think is going to be at both of those. And we'll turn a bunch of time over to him because he did the research. He was the one looking at the dusty manuscripts and making the bigger books possible. And don't be there. And we'll get to hear from him as well on this topic.

John Dehlin [01:22:19] Okay, great. All right. And I'll just remind our listeners that our plan is for this to be sort of part two of a four part series, if you count the a Thoughtful faith interview where we're going to dig deeply into some of the myths about Joseph Smith's polygamy. And then also, you know, how you and others have kind of reconciled polygamy with their faith. Not in an attempt to convince people to believe, but for those who desire to believe, just some frameworks for making this all work. How does that sound, Brian?

Brian C. Hales [01:22:52] Sounds great. Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:22:54] Okay, so listeners, thanks for joining us to check out the video for this. If you're just listening, it's@YouTube.com mormonstories to discuss this podcast, go up to mormonstories.org and you'll find the episode there. Please leave comments for Brian. He's very interested in responding to as many as he can. If you or anyone else has evidence to, you know, sort of provide a counter, counter evidence to Brian's discussion, you can post it there. We did, we did ask Grant Palmer to be a part of this episode. He wasn't interested in the back and forth kind of thing. But that invitation is open as well to have Grant respond or to even bring Grant and and Brian on for a conversation. So we invite that as well. But thanks to all the listeners for your support of Mormon Stories and we look forward to the next episode. So, Brian Hales, thanks so much for coming on Mormon Stories.

Brian C. Hales [01:23:51] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [01:23:52] All right, thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check out them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Part One Summary and Closing

Guest [01:24:10] Come, come ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way Though hard to hear, this journey may appear. Grace shall be as your day. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the sand Joy, oh, your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, all is well? Why should we mourn? I think our lot is high? Tis not so, all is right? Why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your lo? Fresh courage take I Our God will never us for sake? Soon we'll have tale and tale? Oh, all is well? All is well? Oh, all is well? All is well? And should we die before our journey's through half a day? All is well? We then are free from toil and sorrow? With the just we shall dwell? But if our lives are spared again to see the saints the rest obtain? I will make this corridor Is well. Oh, all is well? All is well? All is well? All is well? All is well? Oh, all is well? All is well? All is.

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 403

Brian C. Hales [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. As always, I'm your host John Dehlin and I'm here for part two of my interview with Brian Hales. Brian is the author of several books, but the books that we're going to be talking about today are three books that are set to release six days from the recording of this podcast. On February 26, 2013, Greg Coford Books will be releasing a three volume series called Joseph Smith's Polygamy that deals with the history of Joseph Smith's polygamy and the theology of it. You can buy these books at Benchmark Coford and at Amazon. We encourage you to support these great books and to support Brian and Greg Coford books. I'll also say just for my good friend Lloyd, that Brian will be involved in two book signings on February 27th from 5:30 to 7:30 at Benchmark Books in Salt Lake City and March 9th at 7pm at Pioneer Book in Orem. Brian and I believe his researcher Don Bradley will also be in attendance to discuss and answer questions about this book. Just, just for our listeners. This, this is also a video presentation which we're releasing on YouTube.com mormonstories or you can probably get a link to it from MormonStories.org, the video portion. But, but there's, you know, 81 slides in this presentation that, that you'll be listening to today. So for those of you who are visual learners want to see the visuals, you can either watch this on YouTube, watch watch the YouTube video on Mormon stories or we'll allow you to download the PowerPoint presentation and you can have that for your reference. The only other thing I'll say before jumping in is that this is a four part series if you count the interview on a thoughtfulfaith.org that the wonderful Sarah Collette did, which you can think of as a deep dive into Joseph Smith's polygamy. Sarah's a great interviewer, she's much more knowledgeable about this topic than I am and she and Brian do a two to three hour deep dive. The second part is something Brian and I just recorded which was a response to Grant Palmer's allegations of Joseph of sexual improprieties against Joseph Smith. We just recorded that. That's also available on YouTube and on Mormon Stories. You can watch that as well. This part three for the overall series is going to be dealing with the top 12 myths about Joseph Smith's polygamy. And then next week, we hope to record with Brian a final sort of episode on how Brian reconciles polygamy with. With his faith. So that's the overall part of the series. Brian Hales, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Brian C. Hales [00:03:25] Thank you, John. It's great to be back.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] Thanks, Brian. I should also mention that Brian is a anesthesiologist who lives in the Salt Lake City area, but I think at least one of your books received the coveted John Whitmer Award for historical books. Is that right?

Brian C. Hales [00:03:44] Yes. The book Modern Polygamy and Mormon the Generations after the Manifesto received the 2007 Best Book Award from John Whitmer.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] Yeah. And we love John Whitmer here on Mormon Stories podcast, the John Whitmer Historical association, and John Amer and all the great people at the community of Christ. So. All right, Brian, so I asked you to put this together because I want to do all we can to clear the air about what is and isn't factual about Joseph Smith's polygamy. Now, I guess I want to give a disclaimer similar to the one that I gave before, which is that none of us are ever going to know exactly what happened with Joseph Smith and polygamy and all the other things. I mean, all we have is the historical record and then people's, you know, conversations and perceptions about what happened. What I like about Bryan and other historians is that they put a heavy emphasis on the original historical documents upon which we have evidence to make claims about what did and and didn't happen. So the purpose of this episode isn't to, like, prove people. Prove to people the church is true, to sort of prove what did or didn't happen. It's just to say, if we're going to talk about polygamy, let's have our conversation be based on the historical record. Is that fair, Brian?

Twelve Myths About Joseph Smith's Polygamy

Brian C. Hales [00:05:12] Yes. I think if we, and I said this in the last interview, that if we stay close to the evidence, everybody wins. We may not agree, and we'll talk a lot about that as we talk about these myths and what defines a myth. But I. I think if we stay with the evidence, everybody will win, even if we don't agree.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] All right, so on the screen now is the full list of the 12 myths regarding Joseph Smith's. Polygamy. I'm not going to read them all ahead of time. Maybe I don't think we should. Our listeners can pause the video if they want to, but why don't we go ahead and dive into first point? Does that sound okay?

Brian C. Hales [00:05:50] Yeah, yeah. And I just put that there to let people know where we're going. And for those who are just listening, we'll try and include enough description here so that you won't be missing out completely. The slides just give you some comprehensive overviews of several of the topics that we're dealing with. So the first myth, and let me just do my own disclaimer as we talk about these myths, I'm interjecting my own judgment, and not everybody's going to agree with my reading of the evidence, and I respect that. So when I say that this is a myth, I'm just saying I've seen all the evidence and this is my conclusion. Keep in mind, I am a believer. And so there are others because the evidence is not conclusive in every case. There are some of them where it's far more conclusive than others. And if people want to disagree, that's just fine. And for heaven's sake, if somebody has evidence that's pertinent and I've missed it, please, let's get that out there. But the first myth is that Joseph Smith had a reputation as a womanizer. And Gerald and Sandra Tanner, they wrote in their book on Joseph Smith and polygamy, which actually is quite a remarkable collection of data on this topic. And it was published in the 1970s. They don't have a copyright date in the book, but anyway, they said the charge of sexual immorality was probably one of the most frequent charges made against Joseph Smith. And I would argue that that is just not supported by the evidence. Certainly it would be supported by things that were said about Joseph after his death. But as we discussed in the last interview, if you look at the evidence between Joseph's birth in 1842. 1842 is when John C. Bennett came out with all of his propaganda. What we discover is there's only one published allegation against Joseph Smith, and that's the Levi Lewis one, which I judge to be very dubious. And then you have some private writings around the time of Fanny Alger which can be read either way as a plural marriage or as adultery. And then that's all that I've been able to find.

John Dehlin [00:07:58] So what's this big table that you have here after the Gerald and Sandra Taylor quote?

Brian C. Hales [00:08:04] If you Go to my website, you will find that. And when I started with my research and I hired Don Bradley to help me, I just said, we want to get every single account, anything dealing with this topic, Joseph Smith and plural marriage. And even if it's an accusation of fornication, adultery, or if it's documentation of a marriage, everything. And as I've gone through all of these, I've identified certain allegations against Joseph Smith and I've classified. I found, if I think I remember correctly, 54 of them, if you, if you want to count Fanny Alger and things. But some of them are reports that he had sexual relations with non wives. And there's nine reports of polyandrous sexuality. There's 16 reports of immoral proposals. But anyway, if you go to my website, you could look at all of this and quite honestly, when you get that many things out there and somebody somewhere said that Joseph was involved with some improper behavior involving marriage and or sexuality, and there's 54 of them, most people are going to look at this and say, whoa, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. You know, at least one of them is going to be true. And so when I uploaded this, I thought, you know, should I really be doing this? Because I have analyzed every single one of them and you can go to the website and click on any of these names and it'll come up with the original evidence. I'm not pulling any punches here. The original statements and then I do my own analysis. And I don't think any of them are credible, which is a remarkable conclusion. But I would invite anybody to go to them or others if I've missed them, and I'm sure that I have, and then bring it on and let's discuss it if they think there is something credible. But what's interesting, if you look on the fourth column over or fifth, actually there's some dates there and this, all of these accusations, there's only one at the very top one that's 1834, and then there's nothing until 1842. And then all of the other ones are printed by John Bennett. So if you took Bennett out in Joseph Smith's lifetime, these accusations, the only one that was printed during his lifetime is Eliza Winters that we talked about in the last evaluation or the last interview. And then if you throw Bennett in there, you can get four or five more. But Joseph did not have a reputation of being a womanizer based on the evidence that I've been seeking to find.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] So, Bryan, right off the bat, I don't mean to slow you down, but as I'm looking at this list, you're on the one hand trying to make the point that. Joseph Smith didn't have a reputation as being a womanizer. And yet Here you're listing 54 allegations of him having sexual relations with people that weren't his wife. So I just want to make sure we're really clear what you're doing here. Does that make sense?

Brian C. Hales [00:10:58] Yeah. No, It's a very good question. As I said, when I uploaded this, I had some second thoughts, because just looking at it, people will say, well, some of them are going to be true. Joseph was a womanizer. But there are some important points to make as you look at it. First off, I had to look at all of these if I was going to be comprehensive. You know, when I started this project, I wanted to see every bit of dirt and every bit of positive on Joseph Smith, because how are you going to know where the truth is? And so you analyze every bit of evidence that comes through. And one important point is that there's only one of these things published between in Joseph's lifetime up to 1842, only one. That's an important observation. And see, after he died, there is a desire among the people who don't believe in Mormonism to try to vilify him or to incriminate him in any way they can. And so what you find is, after Joseph's death, all these people are generating all these recollections and things, and you try to put them together and they're going different directions and they're contradicting each other, and that's really what we have. But the 54 of them, if you look at how I broke them down, there are 25 that he was sexually involved with non wives. But it's curious that we don't have any firsthand reports of a woman saying, joseph seduced me. Among them all, there's not a single one. We also have on the chart, for those that are looking at it, nine reports of polyandrous sexuality. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. There are 16 reports of just proposals, immoral proposals, which could have just been discussions of plural marriage, that women are sensationalizing, saying, oh, he wanted to have sex with me when all it was was a ceiling, perhaps for eternity. And we'll talk about that. And then four of them come about Fanny Alger. And we've already mentioned how there is evidence for adultery there. But there's also better evidence, in my view, that it was a plural Mary. So I just tried to be comprehensive, then go all the way over to the right hand column. And this is a very subjective thing, but I put there credibility scores. Now, that's Brian Hales's version. And people may disagree, but I just don't think any of them, on a scale from 1 to 10, rise above maybe a 4. And those we've already talked about the 1, and they're all just not very credible. But again, I put them out there. If people want to disagree with me, fine. I'm not afraid of what they're going to conclude. Let them look at it. Let them draw their own conclusions.

John C. Bennett's Reputation and Conduct

John Dehlin [00:13:23] And again, your main point here is that at least while he was alive, he did not have a reputation as a womanizer, at least in print. Is that right?

Brian C. Hales [00:13:33] Well. And I can't find anything privately written either. I mean, it just doesn't exist there. You know, if people want to say he had a reputation like Gerald and Sandra Tanner wrote. I'm just saying it's not supported by any documentation, public or private, that I can find prior to John Bennett writing all of his stuff.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] Okay. And. And of course, some would say John Bennett had an axe to grind, because what he was. He was excommunicated and kicked out.

Brian C. Hales [00:13:59] Yeah, we're going to talk about him. He's one of the myths.

John Dehlin [00:14:02] Okay. All right, so. And what was the one published report before 1842?

Brian C. Hales [00:14:09] It was the Levi Lewis claim that he's quoting Martin Harris, that Joseph tried to seduce Eliza Winters.

John Dehlin [00:14:17] And we talked about that last episode. But for those who didn't hear that, what was it for you that made that a little bit dubious?

Brian C. Hales [00:14:25] Well, Levi Lewis is not the best source, because in the same paragraph, he tells us that Joseph didn't show the golden plates to anybody. And we know we have testimony from 11 people that he did. But then you also look at the

John Dehlin [00:14:39] Book of Mormon even says that.

Brian C. Hales [00:14:40] Right, right. It's in the testimonies that they have in there. Well, yeah, and there's chapters that talk about it happening, too. But then if you look at Martin Harris, it just doesn't seem real plausible that he would see Joseph trying to seduce Eliza and then Martin Harris would continue to be this devout missionary telling people Joseph was a prophet. And then you look at Eliza, and Eliza had two very good opportunities to repeat this allegation and didn't do it. Didn't even mention it.

John Dehlin [00:15:09] Eliza Winters. So she never. She never made that accusation herself.

Brian C. Hales [00:15:15] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:15:16] And that person who published it claimed he was quoting Martin Harris.

Brian C. Hales [00:15:22] Right. It's not even a first hand accusation.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] And you would wonder if Martin Harris would have been down with that.

Brian C. Hales [00:15:28] Right?

John Dehlin [00:15:28] Okay. And people are gonna argue that some people like to make Martin Harris out to look like a buffoon. And I have no way of knowing, you know, what Martin Harris was like. But, you know, I think you're making some fair points that deserve consideration. What's this other table that comes before myth, too?

Examining the Plural Wives: Numbers and Evidence

Brian C. Hales [00:15:49] This is a table from an article that is just barely published in Mormon Historical Studies, just came out last week. And what I did is I followed the 35 plural wives, and I take Todd Compton's 33 and I add two more, Esther Dutcher and Mary Heron. And I followed them after the martyrdom to try to figure out, okay, what did they do? Did they, you know, strike out against Joseph? Did they, you know, claim he'd abused them? And frankly, 25 of the 35 made it to Utah. And there they apparently, according to Todd Compton's biographies, they remained active in the church. We have three of them, actually, four of them that die apparently in the faith before they make it to Utah. So that leaves six more. And of those six, five of them joined another church. And then one of them, we. We just don't know, we lose track of her. That's Lucinda Pendleton. But the interesting observation is that of these 35 women, none of them wrote an expose. None of them left any criticism of Joseph Smith saying that he'd abused them, that he treated them like chattel, that it was all about sex. Nothing like that exists in any of the writings that we have from these women. And I just thought that was an interesting observation because if any of them, after they'd remarried, after they'd had experiences with their new husbands and everything, if any of them had looked back to say, you know, Joseph was just a womanizer, you know, at least some of them, especially those who left the church, you might have expected them to have struck back because they felt abused and left some negative recollection, but it's just not there that I've been able to find.

John Dehlin [00:17:30] And that's something even Brigham Young can't claim. Right. Because he did have wives who divorced him and wrote exposes. Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:17:37] That's a very good observation, John. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] Yeah. Is that true? Yeah.

Brian C. Hales [00:17:43] Oh, yeah. Because we already quoted Ann Eliza Webb Young and her books.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] Okay. That's myth number one. Anything else about myth number one?

Brian C. Hales [00:17:51] Nope. I think he had a pretty clean reputation as far as sexual morality goes up until Naboo and you do have

John Dehlin [00:17:59] to ask how he would have amassed such a loyal, devout following, willing to die and traverse, you know, frozen planes, you know, to pursue their beliefs. How he could have engendered such loyalty if he was, if there was lots of evidence for him being, you know, sexually immoral, I guess.

Brian C. Hales [00:18:24] Well, you know, and I've done a little reading on Jim Jones and Vernon Howell, you know, Jim Jones of Jonestown, Vernon Howell of Waco. And because people will compare Joseph to them, you know, people get a lot of religious power and then their sexuality goes bonkers on them. And it's very different. Joseph Smith established in the Book of Mormon that sexual immorality was next to murder. And yet Jim Jones, Vernon Howell, these guys were just having sex with anybody because they could. And there was no attempt to maintain a moral standard. And yet with Joseph Smith, you've got this standard set up and nobody's complaining that he's breaking it at all until you get some of the anti Mormon stuff way late in Nauvoo, just a year or two before he's martyred. So I don't find a good parallel between Joseph and men like that.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] And if anyone can find any history, historical evidence to counter what Brian's saying, we invite you to post it@mormonstories.org and you know, we'll respond or Brian will respond or whatever.

Brian C. Hales [00:19:22] Yes, that's absolutely true. We, like I say let's get the evidence out there.

John Dehlin [00:19:26] Okay, Myth number two.

Brian C. Hales [00:19:27] I'm Joseph Smith. Fanny Alger relationship was not a plural marriage. And you'll see I've just put my chart there from our last interview. And for those who didn't listen to it, I'm going to leave that discussion to, to that interview. We won't repeat it all here, but there's evidence that it was adultery. There's evidence it was a plural marriage. I think the evidence it was a plural marriage, including the new discovery that Dawn Bradley made regarding Liza R. Snow declaring in her own handwriting that it was that she was a plural wife. I think that's significant and makes it very easy for me to believe that they saw themselves as plurally married and it wasn't just some tryst that Joseph was involved with.

John Dehlin [00:20:08] And again, we can talk about this later, but I think what makes people really concerned about Fanny Alger is again that they don't find a revelation for plural marriage until what I think you said, 1843. And he didn't tell Emma and apparently he was, if it's true, he was caught in the barn With Fanny. Now tell me if that's true. And, you know, if people have cause to be alarmed by sort of the way that it was discovered that Fanny and the fact that he hadn't told Oliver, you know, if it was true, that Joseph felt like he was operating under some type of divine law, that the people closest to him, not only Emma, but Oliver and others, weren't clued in on it, you got to admit that's a problematic scenario for Joseph to be in, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:21:04] Yeah, it is a problem. If we recall Mary Elizabeth Rollins, if you want to believe her account, said that the angel came in 1834. And so the way I would construct it, the angel shows up and says, we want you to practice plural marriage. And Joseph is going. And we have accounts that he argued with the angel, that he got the Book of Mormon out and showed the angel the Book of Mormon, saying, look, it's condemned here. And how he pleaded with the angel, whether that was the first visit or the second or the third, we don't know for sure. But the angel is actually commanding it, if you believe that in 1834. So you can see where his compulsion comes rather than the common notion that he just wanted to have sex with her because she was apparently a very pretty lady and she was young. But there is another version, and that is the angel commanded it. And so he's trying to figure out how to make this work, and he stumbles with it. He should have talk to Emma, tried to get her involved early on. In retrospect, certainly that's what I think Joseph Smith would have agreed with. But instead, he goes secretly to Levi Hancock and there's some other dealings because Levi wants to marry Clarissa and he helps broker that, though they were already in love. And then Levi brokers the discussion with Fanny and performs the marriage ceremony. This is done without Emma's knowledge. And whether the angel had weighed in on whether he should do it that way or some other way, my guess is there was no input, that Joseph just made his own decision that turned out in the end to be the wrong way to handle it. And I'll be honest with you, in all of my research, John, the only question I can't adequately answer is why did God command it? I can understand, and we'll talk about it in a minute, why it was needed, Joseph's theology, but why God commanded it. Just. I don't understand it. And why he would have commanded Joseph at that time. Just. I don't. I just don't get it. That's the one question I haven't been able to adequately answer.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] Don't you wish he had? He had been up front with Emma from the start and been up front with Oliver from the start, though.

Brian C. Hales [00:23:11] Well, he probably was caught between the angel and Oliver. He probably did broach the topic with Oliver enough to know that Oliver wasn't going to go for it. He may have done the same with Emma. In fact, you know, you could certainly imagine he would do that. But upon learning that neither of them was going to support it, plan B could be, well, the angel's making me do this. So he goes forward and tries to do it, you know, at clandestine, and that doesn't work out. And that's why I think even though he had the sealing authority in 1836, he didn't use it for five years. See, I read into that that Joseph didn't want to seal any kind of a marriage because he knew they'd ask about plural marriage. So I see in Joseph's behavior after Kirtland, after this blows up in his face, him not wanting re enter polygamy, and so the angel has to come again a couple more times to really get him to get involved.

John Dehlin [00:24:00] And just two more quick things. You mentioned that in 1831 is the first indication that Joseph believed in plural marriage. Is that right?

Brian C. Hales [00:24:08] Yes, it's a late recollection from W.W. phelps. It's written in 1861, and he remembers a revelation given in 1831, and he remembers it very literally. So we're wondering about whether he had written it down and he's just copying it. He sent it to Brigham Young. But in that revelation is the one about, you should take wives of the Lamanites. And we later find out, just like, you know, Abraham took Hagar would be plural wives.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] Okay. And then the only other thing that's a little bit problematic for some, and we talked about this in the last podcast as well, is that Joseph apparently didn't claim to have received the keys of sealing until 1836, which would have meant that when he did enter into a relationship with Fanny Alger, even if he felt like he was doing it under God's approval or by an angel's death threat, there's no way to really perceive it as an attempt at an eternal marriage or celestial marriage, because he hadn't received those keys yet. So it would have been a plural marriage, but for time only in your interpretation.

Brian C. Hales [00:25:25] Yeah. Yeah. It would have been strictly obedience. And again, that's the one question that's hard for me, is why did God command It not just of Joseph then, but why in Nauvoo and then why in Utah? It brought so many problems. Now, I have some partial answers for it, but it just seems like, you know, life was hard enough and getting the church established was hard enough. And though it did bring the saints together, it certainly brought a lot of persecution on. And that's just a puzzler for me.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] Okay, let's go to myth three.

Brian C. Hales [00:25:52] All right, myth three is that Joseph Smith's polygamy was all about sex. There's a book written not too long ago, and that's a quote right out of it. Joseph Smith's polygamy was all about sex. Or in other words, multiply and replenish the earth. In fact, if we go to the next slide, Joseph Smith gave three reasons for plural marriage. They're all found in section 132. But he also talked about at least the first two independently. We have other witnesses who remember him talking about it. And the first was simply to restore Old Testament polygamy as a restitution of all things. Acts 3. Now, the second reason is to provide righteous.

John Dehlin [00:26:25] Real quick about that. A lot of people say, no, no, no. Christ came to fulfill the law of Moses. He got rid of an eye for an eye. And, you know, the ten Commandments in the sense that they were replaced with love, love God, and love man. Why the need to restore everything? Why not? You know, what about Christ replacing the old law? I guess that's a huge topic. But. But any quick answer on that? Well, actually, yeah, because he wasn't bringing back animal sacrifice. He wasn't bringing back a lot of those. Don't eat shrimp and shellfish. So it wasn't a restoration of all things, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:27:09] Correct. But in answer, probably the easiest answer is that Abraham, of course, didn't live under the law of Moses. He lived the gospel, ostensibly the same gospel that was lived in the New Testament. But Abraham, Jaco, Moses were. Well, not Moses, but Abraham and Jacob lived the higher law, the full gospel. And that is what actually Joseph needed to restore. Not the law of Moses version, which allowed plural marriage, but did not encourage it. The law of Moses didn't.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Okay, so you're saying that even by the time we hit Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they're living a higher law in your view.

Brian C. Hales [00:27:45] Right, Right. And there's a few scriptures we could pull in to show that they had the same gospel as Paul was preaching, and yet they were allowed plural marriage. So your question, whether New Testament saints were allowed to do it, there's certainly no Evidence that they did.

John Dehlin [00:27:58] Okay, all right, so restore Old Testament polygamy. What else?

Brian C. Hales [00:28:01] And the second one is to provide righteous families for premortal spirits. In other words, multiply and replenish the earth. Joseph did teach this. It's in section 132 that. And this is probably the best answer that I would tell people if they said, well, why did God command it? Well, it would be because they wanted to jump start some of the families and the offspring that were coming into the church. But we haven't done the study to determine whether these plural wives really brought more offspring than if we'd have just been living monogamy. I know they've done some of that in some specific areas, but I don't think anything's been done church wide. One study suggested that a plural wife in Utah would have about six children, whereby a monogamous wife would have eight. So you look at a community and say, well, there's no spinsters here. Everybody's having children. So does that produce more children than monogamous society of having more kids per wife, but also with the number of women who are unmarried in that community? So those are things we don't know. But clearly Joseph taught that we needed to have plural marriage to provide devout families for these premortal spirits.

John Dehlin [00:29:11] And is it meant in point two that there weren't enough righteous families to go around. And so we needed these spirits to come through a smaller set of families that would be more righteous. I mean, it's almost indicating that there weren't enough righteous men.

Brian C. Hales [00:29:35] Well, and it even gets worse than that because the more wives and children you have, the less time that the father has to spend with each of his offspring. So there is some irony in that. But again, I'm speculating beyond just the fact that he said that multiply and replenish is one of the reasons. And he did tell one or two people about how there are premortal spirits that need to come down to these families.

John Dehlin [00:30:01] Okay, all right, so we're talking about his reasoning, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:30:04] Right. And in, in my book, I talk about other reasons that have been put forth. We don't have time for that. But there's. Some of them are kind of entertaining. But these are the ones that go back to Joseph Smith. And there's only three that I found. And the is one that's taught very plainly in section 132, but it's not one that we really talk about. And ironically, it is the most important in my view, and that is simply to allow all worthy women to be sealed to an eternal husband, making them candidates for exaltation. If you go to the next slide, what we have is the. This is the course, one eternal round of the plan of salvation, where we began as spirit children of heavenly parents. We go to the earth as a probationary state, then into the spirit world and judgment and resurrection. And then only couples that live worldily are able to be exalted to the top of the celestial kingdom. The others remain separately and singly, without exaltation in their saved condition to all eternity. And what this requires, though, when Joseph Smith revealed that exaltation occurs only to couples, and by that I mean there's no single man, no single women in Joseph Smith's highest heaven. They just aren't there. And so once you reveal that, you've either got to have equal numbers of worthy men and women, or you got a problem. And apparently he anticipates that there would be more worthy women than men. That's the second slide there. And so these women need to have a husband to be sealed to an eternal spouse. And so that's what polygamy allows to have happen, is that these single women can be sealed to a husband and be exalted in Joseph Smith's theology. And I'll just tell you up front, I don't think every man in the celestial kingdom is a polygamist. I don't think there's enough women to go around. I don't think that every woman's going to have to share her husband in eternity. I just don't see that being part of the theology. But I think we can see from this reasoning that this type of a teaching needs to exist. The minute that you say exaltation occurs to couples, you've got to either have equal numbers or make arrangements for there to be equal men or to be excessive men or excessive women. And in this case, the only option is excessive women with polygamy, which we call polygyny.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] Okay, now, are you. This is totally off topic, but is the arrow going back down to heavenly parents indicating this idea of theosis, that the exalted couples become God someday and then have their own spirits? Are you trying to tie that around as if the church is kind of still teaching the idea that we can become gods and father our own planet someday?

Brian C. Hales [00:32:43] Oh, yeah. In fact, I had an article in the Journal of Mormon History. I think it was summer, fall of 2012, where I talk about spirit birth and this whole concept, because there's been a traditional view that basically Brigham Young taught it. But Joseph Smith didn't. And I disagree. I find in a number of places during Joseph's lifetime this teaching popping up. And some come right from Joseph Smith. And so I believe he taught that exaltation is where we eventually become like our heavenly parents, exalted. And in some way we give birth to our own spirit offspring who then can become heavenly parents. The course is one eternal round, which is an interesting statement because it's not in the Bible that God's course is one eternal round, but it is in the Doctrine and Covenants and it is in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:33:32] But isn't this when. When President Hinckley was asked about this, he said, I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. Isn't that the same doctrine that he seemed to be distancing us from?

Brian C. Hales [00:33:44] Well, he was talking to unbelievers, and I don't mean that as a criticism, but that was the primary audience there, and he knew they weren't going to accept it. And Joseph Smith was warned in 1830, you don't give meat to those who need milk because they'll perish. There was nothing positive to be gained by talking about it. And even John, in this forum, you'd have to ask ourselves, is this really. I mean, do we have any milk drinkers out there? And if they perish, Brian Hales's going to be responsible because it's just too much. But I think that's all that it was. If you look at the new Lorenzo Snow teachings of the Church President's Manual for the Relief Society and the High Priests, that statement is in there and it's discussed. It's the focus of a whole lesson.

John Dehlin [00:34:28] Well, I don't want to totally derail us, but I mean, some would perceive that as misleading. Then that kind of statement. Do you think that would be a fair sentiment to feel like that's a little bit misleading? But I'm not trying to. Don't feel like I'm trying to make you call the prophet a liar or anything. I'm just. Can you see how some people see that as deceiving a little bit?

Brian C. Hales [00:34:48] Well, sure. But again, he's caught because he doesn't want to give meat to those that are milk drinkers. So you try to use veiled language. And it's not part of this discussion. But we probably should address, you know, Joseph did deny polygamy publicly while he was practicing this privately. And that's one of the big things. People have problems with Joseph Smith and what was going on there. But I just see it as the same kind of a thing where you throw the meat out there, it's just going to come back and bite you. And so they're trying to do everything they're supposed to, and it becomes very difficult.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] And it's tricky because you want to think that we're always going to be totally honest and upfront about everything. So that's a stickler for some people. And I guess as an interview, I just want to be fair about these things as they come up, but I hope I haven't derailed us too much. Let's go to the next.

Brian C. Hales [00:35:36] It's a good comment.

The Revelation on Celestial and Plural Marriage

John Dehlin [00:35:36] Okay, so. So the next slide.

Brian C. Hales [00:35:39] Well, I just. The revelation on celestial and plural marriage indicates that Joseph Smith's polygamy is not about sex. It's about eternity. It's about allowing all worthy women to have a spouse. And it's very plainly taught in section 132, but ironically wasn't really spoken about much during the 19th century. Primarily, I think, because it tells about why plural marriage is needed, but not why it is commanded. See, they were supposed to live it as an item of obedience. And yet when you teach this kind of doctrine, it shows you plainly that not everybody's got to be a polygamist. And that wasn't a message the leaders wanted to send. And so I think we just kind of ignored this. And yet, as you read section 132, it comes through loud and clear.

John Dehlin [00:36:23] Yeah. And I just want to say that I don't know if you're going to touch about this later in one of the myths, but. But I think Joseph's desire to seal all of humanity together in one large family, it feels like that has to be factored in to this concept of celestial marriage and polygamy and sealings. It feels like there's more to it than sex. Even for someone who thinks sex was probably a part of it. Do you see that sort of sealing and almost the dynastic teachings as being a part of this whole thing? In some ways,

Brian C. Hales [00:36:59] I would agree. In fact, it's pretty amazing when you think about how you. If we follow our theology. And let me just add, John, that Fawn Brodie talked about how Joseph had this conscience and couldn't just go out and do polygamy, so he created this grand theological edifice to justify it. I so wholeheartedly disagree with Von Brodie on this. See, in the Old Testament, Abraham and Jacob, they practiced plural marriage. Abraham was a friend of God. Clearly, this is not a sinful. Behavior. And neither one of them, none of the polygamists in the Old Testament gave us any theological justification at all. There is no theology of marriage really in the whole Bible, but especially in the Old Testament. And so when Joseph Smith, if he had wanted to just do polygamy, all he had to say was, they did it. I'm a prophet, restorer, I'm restoring it. That's the end of the discussion, that he didn't have to give us eternal marriage. He didn't have to give us any of this stuff that is shown in those diagrams. None of that needed to come out at all. And for Fawn to say that he did it to assuage his conscience is nonsense. All he had to say is, they did it. I'm restoring it. End of discussion.

John Dehlin [00:38:03] Unless he didn't feel like they would buy it, that it would need to have a revelation for them to buy it. Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:38:11] Well, he could have had a revelation, but it could have been a very short one, saying, look, they did it and I'm doing it. But instead, what we get is eternal marriage. See, when Joseph Smith asks the question, why polygamy? In section 132, the Lord says, we're going to give you a new and everlasting covenant. And then the Revelation talks about authority. I mean, here we are heading off in the north 40 here, well, what's authority got to do with polygamy? Well, it becomes plain because one man controls that authority. And then God gives us four examples. He says, if you make an agreement but it's not by the right authority, then it's not valid. And then he gives us a second example, that if you have a marriage and it's not by the proper authority, that it is not valid. In fact, he says then that people who are not married by the proper authority live singly and separately in their saved condition through all eternity. And then he gives us a third example where he says, you can even use the right prayer and you can be sincere and you can have a tradition, but if it's not by the authority of the one man, it's not valid. And then the fourth example is verse 19, where a man marries a wife, live worthily by proper authority, and they become gods. And so you're asking, well, what's that got to do with your original question of polygamy? Well, it's establishing this huge theology that I argue Joseph did not have to concoct if all he wanted to do was practice polygamy. Now, I don't know. What do you think yeah, so.

John Dehlin [00:39:29] So there's a chance that. That he. That he elaborated a big theology to justify sex. But anyone who claims that it was only about sex is probably missing a lot of data that suggests that for him, it was. It was about whether or not it was about sex or to what extent it was about sex. It was also about his love for all mankind, his desire for inclusion, his desire for everyone to be sealed together into one big, large family that can all return to Heavenly Father, you know, in his view. And you do get a sense that he just loved people, that he was pained about the risk of his father not being in heaven with him, that he was wondering about Alvin. And that on his mind, just sincerely within his heart, is this desire for everyone to make it back if possible. That's. I guess that's my interpretation a little bit.

Brian C. Hales [00:40:25] No, I think it's great. His most darkest hours were when he was alone. He hated to be alone. He was very gregarious. He loved to be around people. And the chain of belonging that Sam Brown talks about, this chain back to Adam, is the church of the firstborn. I mean, you've got to be in that chain or you're not a candidate for exaltation, as I understand his theology.

John Dehlin [00:40:47] So it was about a lot more than sex. If it was about sex, it was about sex, plus a lot of other things. If it was about sex at all is kind of what I'm hearing you say.

Brian C. Hales [00:40:57] Well, sex was part of it. Multiply and replenish was part of it. And I don't actually have it in here, but I've got evidence, it's on the website, that he consummated 12 of the marriages with possibly three more. But I would argue that sexual relations were not common. And that brings us into the next myth.

Children, Sexuality, and the Plural Marriages

John Dehlin [00:41:14] Okay, next myth.

Brian C. Hales [00:41:15] The next myth is Joseph Smith had no children by his plural wives. And if you go to the next slide, what I've done, and this is an older slide, I actually have 18 on the bottom part. But I identified two children to Joseph's plural wives. One is Josephine Lyon. And there's a whole chapter on this relationship in my book. But what happened was Josephine's mother, Sylvia Sessions, her husband, Windsor Lyon, was excommunicated in November of 1842. Joseph was sealed to her after that, and she ceased conjugal relations with Windsor. And. And then she became pregnant, and she delivered Josephine on February 8th of 1844. And what's interesting is that they've done DNA testing, which is very difficult to verify the paternity of a daughter. But Hugo Perrigo has done this. And there is a correlation between Sylvia and Joseph's lines. The problem is there's cross marrying before them. So in Hugo's words, we're just never going to know, at least from genetic testing, whether or not Josephine for sure is Joseph's daughter. I believe the evidence is very strong, but not everybody agrees. Then there's a second child to Olive Frost, and we don't even have enough data to know the gender of that child because both Olive and the child died before the saints left Nauvoo. And then if you go to this chart, and it's also on the website and it's expanded in my book, But I've identified 18 different individuals who somebody somewhere said are the children of Joseph Smith. I analyzed them all. I don't think any of them are believable. Hugo Perrego has done DNA testing on six or seven of them to show they aren't. But it looks like if Joseph was in the same vicinity when some of these women got pregnant, they were going to blame the child on him. And of course, there are people outside of the church that are very willing to believe that story. But when you get into it, it's just. The evidence just is not that convincing to me.

John Dehlin [00:43:12] And your point here is your point here. You know, what is your point here? Because some would say you're arguing that there wasn't a lot of sex, but then you're also saying that there were children. So I guess you're just trying to say Joseph Smith had no children by his plural wives. But why is that an important point?

Brian C. Hales [00:43:31] Well, it's important because I think I've heard people say, well, Joseph had no children. And see, that was the position of the RLDS church for decades, that Joseph had no children. That's the evidence that these were not sexual relationships. So we're addressing that particular issue. But I also am saying that some of these women were very fertile. You know, Sarah Ann Whitney remarried after the martyrdom. She was pregnant in three months and had, like, seven children. Lucy Walker, very similar. Pregnant in less than three months. Was it Melissa Lott? Emily Partridge? Anyway, these women were very fertile. And you would argue that if Joseph was having a lot of sexual relations, there would have been more children. And we just can't find them. And we've looked pretty, pretty hard.

John Dehlin [00:44:09] Okay, so you're saying there was some sex, but not a whole lot, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:44:12] Well, Joseph had a hard time. You see, Hyrum Smith and William Law, William Law was second counselor in the first presidency. Hyrum Smith, his brother, associate president and church patriarch. Neither of these men learned about plural marriage until the middle of 1843. So if Joseph is gallivanting around from bed to bed to bed, he's doing it without his brother even knowing about it. Or his wife or as well. And then his wife found out. Yeah, exactly. And then Emma finds out in middle of 1843. So does Hiram and so does William Law. But once Emma finds out, she's got spies out. We've got couple of quotes where she's sending people out and she's looking and she's trying to prevent this. She's just having trouble with it. So to say that he's going from place to place and nobody's picking up on it, it's a little less plausible, I think.

John Dehlin [00:44:59] Okay, let's jump to myth five.

Brian C. Hales [00:45:02] All right. Joseph Smith had sexual relations with 14 year olds. Quite a number of authors have either implied or stated very plainly that this occurred. There's only two 14 year old wives. One is Nancy Winchester and she may have been 15 when she was sealed to Joseph, but the chronology would support Helena Kimball was three months shy of her 15th birthday. And let me just say here that a 14 year old wife in Joseph Smith's day was eyebrow raising. It wasn't scandalous, but it wasn't normal. If people say oh yeah, 14 year olds were getting married all the time, that's just not true as far as the evidence that I have seen. But the question still comes up, what about Helen Marr?

John Dehlin [00:45:40] Well, wait, repeat again. What's the no evidence on Nancy again,

Brian C. Hales [00:45:44] Nancy Winchester, we do not know anything really about her other than she was sealed to the prophet at some time. There is one or two sources on that and nothing that talks about their relationship, when it happened or what brought it up. We just know almost nothing about Nancy. But Helen Marr was sealed to Joseph and the evidence says that her father wanted a connection to the prophet and offered her up like a ewe lamb. That's what Helen called it later on. And people say, well see, Joseph wanted it. Joseph perpetually was the one who, who had Heber C. Kimball, who was Helen's father, do this. But the evidence is not there. That's speculation. All we know is that she was sealed to Joseph. Todd Compton wrote this and I really like this quote he said. Some conclude that Helen Marr Kimball, who married Smith when she was 14, did not have marital relations with him. This is possible as there are cases of Mormons in Utah, marrying young girls and refraining from sexual relations until they were older. But the evidence for Helen Marr is entirely ambiguous in my. And of course, there are people who look at the same evidence and say, oh, yeah, we're sure that it's true. But there is one observation. It's the next slide here that I think is important in looking at this, because in 1892, there was a trial going on between the RLDS church and the temple lot. Hedrichite Church. And what the RLDS church said was that, look, we are the natural heirs of Joseph Smith's church in Nauvoo. Therefore, we own the temple lot in Independence outright. We're the heirs. We own it. And the temple lot is, say you're not the heirs of the church. And one of the reasons you're not the heirs is because Joseph Smith taught polygamy, and you don't practice it. So even though the temple lot didn't believe in polygamy, the issue of polygamy in Joseph Smith's lifetime was a big deal. So what they did is they brought people out to Utah in 1892, and they took a bunch of depositions. At that point, Joseph Smith had nine wives that were still living. And what they did is they called Emily Partridge, who lived in Salt Lake City, she and they.

John Dehlin [00:47:51] They being. Who. Who's making these calls?

Brian C. Hales [00:47:53] The temple lot defendants.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] Okay. And why are. Why are LDS Church members supporting or participating in this investigation at all? Why are they cooperating?

Brian C. Hales [00:48:07] Well, it's a good question. And there was a lot of animosity between the Utah church and the RLDS Church. That's part of it. But. But it was more than that. They wanted to prove to the RLD that Joseph was a polygamist. Plus, they didn't want the RLDS Church to have the temple lot. So they were highly motivated. And Wilford Woodruff personally was involved with some of these, arranging for people to witness.

John Dehlin [00:48:29] So the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Basically.

Brian C. Hales [00:48:31] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's some irony there, too, isn't there?

John Dehlin [00:48:34] Okay. All right.

Brian C. Hales [00:48:35] But they call Emily Partridge. She was not a polyandrous wife, and she testified a sexual relations with Joseph as a plural wife. Then they called Melissa Lott. She lived in Lehigh. And she also was not polyandrous. And she also testified of sexual relations as Joseph's plural wife. Then they called Lucy Walker. And this is curious, because Lucy Walker was not polyandrous, but she lived up in Logan, 82 miles to the north. And she also testified that she was Joseph's wife in the fullest sense. And the interesting thing is that they, they didn't call Helen Mark Kimball. And Helen Mark Kimball had written two books against the rlds defending plural marriage. She would have been a great witness if she could have testified of been a full wife meeting with sexual relations of Joseph Smith. They also didn't call the three polyandrous wives, Zina Huntington, Patty Bartlett and Mary Elizabeth Rollins. And I argue it was because they couldn't testify of having a full marriage with Joseph Smith either. But I think this observation needs to be be addressed by those who think Joseph Smith may have had sexual relations with Helen Mar. If that were true, why didn't they just call her to testify in 1892?

John Dehlin [00:49:46] Okay. And I'll just put out a call to my listeners. If anybody can provide evidence that Joseph Smith had sex with Helena Kimball, they please provide it. Now, of course, none of us know who Joseph Smith didn't. Didn't have sex with, but I think it's just fair to say that if people are going to make those type of allegations, you know, it's responsible to have data to back it up. Right. And your point is there. There are no data to indicate sexual relations between Joseph and Helen Mar Kimball. Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:50:16] Now, Helen Marr wrote a poem in 1881 that's really ambiguous. And I agree with Todd with respect to that. But I think this is a new observation that I think needs to be addressed. I think it shows that Helen Marr wasn't sexually involved or they'd have called her. But again, what else there is is ambiguous.

John Dehlin [00:50:35] Okay, all right. Well, that's interesting. Myth six.

Brian C. Hales [00:50:39] Okay, this is John C. Bennett. We, we talked about him earlier. He shows up in, in Nauvoo in 1840. The 12 are out of town. He ingratiates himself to Joseph. He lives with the Smith family for 39 weeks. And some say, see, we're pretty sure during that time, Joseph and, and John Bennett had conversations about plural marriage. There's no evidence of that, but there's an assumption there that seems pretty willing that people are willing to make. However, Bennett and Joseph undoubtedly experienced many personal conversations during that time, but polygamy would not have been discussed because Emma Smith, the prophet's wife, was not made aware of the practice until 1843. So I don't think that's a very strong supportive evidence. And then on April 8, 1841, Bennett was presented as the Assistant president until President Rigdon's health should be restored, which occurred. So people are Saying, look, if he's going to be an assistant president, we're sure he knew about polygamy. Well, records indicate that Bennett never met with Joseph Smith or other church leaders. Meetings were held by members of the First Presidency in the Quorum of the Twelve many times in the months following. But Bennett was not invited to any of those gatherings. He did nothing ecclesiastical so far as the records of the church indicate. But what's really important is the prophet successfully kept his own brother Hyrum smith unaware until 1843. See, Bennett left in 1842 and we're saying, well, Joseph couldn't have kept him out of the loop. Well, he kept his own brother and William Law out of the loop for a full another year later. So again, not a strong argument, but. And then John Bennett identified five of the wives of Joseph Smith. He identified Louisa Beaman, Prisinda Huntington, Agnes Koolbruth, Patty Sessions and Elizabeth D. And some people see, Joseph must have told him that, well, he could have got this information from other people. Also Bennett mentioned two other women that we haven't been able to identify. I think he was just wrong, but we don't know. But I think the source of this information was Nancy Rigdon. Bennett had served as her personal physician and Joseph did propose to Nancy, but Bennett was very close to Nancy and had published the letter that Joseph wrote to Nancy on happiness. So the argument that Joseph must have been the source of that information is just, I don't think, very strong. But then when you look at the writings of both individuals, Joseph Smith taught that he was restoring Old Testament polygamy. Bennett didn't mention it. The angel with the sword is Joseph but not Bennett. That there was a ceremony always required with Joseph but not Bennett. Priesthood required, worthiness required. It was a genuine marriage with Joseph. With Bennett it was just a one night stand. There was an eternal relationship anyway. There's just no similarity between what Bennett was teaching privately and what Joseph was teaching privately. It seems that Bennett had known of Joseph's teachings, he would have just simply exploited those instead of coming up with his own nonsense. But the real important evidence is that in a letter to the Iowa Hawkeye written In October of 1843, Bennett admitted he did not learn of eternal marriage while in Nauvoo in 1840-1842. He said this marrying for eternity is not the spiritual wife doctrine noticed in my expose the History of the Saints, the book that he wrote, but is an entirely new doctrine established by special revelation. The spiritual wives for time and the celestial wives for Eternity. Well, the problem with this is that Joseph Smith never taught plural marriage except within the context that those marriages could be eternal. So for Bennett, in my view, for Bennett to say I did not not know about eternal marriage is tantamount to saying I did not know about plural marriage either from Joseph because he would have known about eternal marriage. Even before Joseph taught about plural marriage, he was teaching about eternal marriage. And yet Bennett said, spiritual, wise for time, celestial wives for eternity. So I just think the preponderance of evidence is that Bennett never once sat down with Joseph Smith to learn about plural marriage. He was an adulterer before he came to Nauvoo. He just continued his adulteries there, was found out and cast out.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] Well, so on this one you lose me a little bit and so I'll just try and ask a bit of a follow up question. If I'm again trying to apply Occam's razor in my, you know, ill informed perspective, I would say what seems more likely is that, you know, we know that Joseph, we know that Joseph and Bennett were close or Joseph wouldn't have made him assistant president of the church. Right. I mean, that's fair, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:55:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:55:12] Okay, so they, they were. And wasn't Bennett, like, was he mayor or president of the Nauvoo Legion? Like was, didn't he have several important official titles in Nauvoo?

Brian C. Hales [00:55:23] Yeah, he was a general in the Nauvoo Legion and he was the first mayor of Nauvoo. He had gone to Springfield to petition for the Nauvoo charter was successful and that was kind of his reward.

John Dehlin [00:55:34] Yeah, so he, I mean he, he clearly had Joseph's confidence and they were clearly close in some ways. And Joseph clearly made him one of the most powerful men in the church for at least a year or two.

Brian C. Hales [00:55:48] No, not in the church. He certainly was in the city. But as I said, as you go through and look at the journal entries and the meetings that were held, he's not there. He's not doing anything religious. He performs a few marriages as mayor just for legal marriages, and he speaks in general conference. That's about the only things we can find him doing. But he's just not present in any of the meetings. Both Val Avery and Linda King Newell and also his biographer admit that there's just no evidence that Joseph and him had ever talked about polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:56:27] But he was co president of the church, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:56:30] Well, he was an assistant counselor to the first presidency and we're not sure exactly what that means, but when you look at the fact that members of the First Presidency, William Law, Sidney Rigdon, and the associate president, who was higher than them, Hyrum Smith, did not learn about plural marriage during this exact same period, then it's hard to say that we're pretty sure that Bennett would have learned it. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:56:51] So the only theory that comes up for me is that Joseph had learned from Oliver that even people close to him might not be okay with this teaching. And that if he were to, in fact reveal it, it would cause him a lot of problems. And so he was hiding it from almost everybody. And, and so what some would. What some would claim maybe is that he felt like Bennett would be okay with it earlier because of whatever, you know, whatever data he gathered from Bennett. So he let Bennett in early on the plural marriages, even. Maybe even before Joseph's theology was fully developed about plural marriage. And so what if, you know, let's just assume that Joseph's understanding that culminated in D&C132 was still immature by 1840, 1841, 1842. What if Bennett was running off of. Of, number one, Joseph's trust that he wouldn't freak out like Oliver did, And then, number two, Bennett was running off of Joseph's earlier theology that wasn't fully formed. And then he was running with it because Joseph was doing it and he knew Joseph was doing it. And he said, if Joseph can do it, I can do it too. But then Joseph, as he did with Hiram Page and the Seer Stone, basically throwing down the hammer and saying, hey, there's only one prophet here, he eventually saw Bennett sort of getting out of control and threw the hammer down again and said, no, what you're doing is spiritual wifery. What I'm doing is celestial marriage. That's a, you know, if I'm putting on my skeptical hat, that's a scenario that seems more likely to me. What. How does that sound me to you?

Brian C. Hales [00:58:48] Well, I don't think the timeline is very supportive of that for a couple of reasons. First off, the first person that we assume Joseph taught is Joseph B. Noble. Joseph B. Noble became a bishop in Nauvoo, but he actually lived across the river in Montrose, and he taught Joseph B. Noble because he ended up marrying Louisa Beaman, who was Joseph's sister in law, his wife's sister. And so he's not going to church leaders at that. The 12 apostles were out of town when they return in July of 1841. And in the fall, he grabs them and he teaches them all. So he's trusting the quorum of the 12. But during this period, there's no evidence that William Law or his brother Hyrum, or, I would say, John C. Bennett is being taught this. But also, if we carry that timeline clear to the end of 1842. At the end of 1842, Joseph had been sealed to several wives, but there were only three other men, men who had taken one plural wife each, and one of them had died. So you've got Joseph and his wives, and then you've got two other men with two plural wives, and that's all that there is. So the idea that there's these rumors going around during the early part of 1842, I just don't see the numbers there supporting that. But also, and this is really important, Joseph Smith had heard the rumors about John C. Bennett before Bennett had gotten very involved in the church. Now, Joseph knew that rumors aren't always true. So it's not like he's going to say, oh, well, we better not do anything about this. But when he heard the initial rumors in early 1841, just months after Bennett arrives, he sends people off to find out if the rumors are true. And he finds out a few months later that they are true, that he is an adulterer, that his wife, his former wife, accused him of breaking up seven different families. Now, this is an account that was published in the Times and Seasons, so it may not be entirely objective, but there's plenty of evidence that Joseph learned early on that Bennett had a trouble with sexual morality. So to assume that he was going to hand off plural marriage to him, I think is not a real likely, not a good assumption. I don't think that's very likely, especially since he was withholding it from so many others.

John Dehlin [01:01:07] And if we applied the same standard to Bennett that you tried to apply to Joseph about his own alleged reputation for sexual impropriety, would you say that the evidence for Bennett being sexually inappropriate is much stronger than the evidence for Joseph?

Brian C. Hales [01:01:27] Well, what we have in the end, and we can use the retrospectoscope by looking back, because we have the. After Bennett leaves, the Nauvoo High Council tries to clean up the mess, and they call a couple of dozen witnesses, and several of them, we have contemporaneous records talking about how he propositioned the woman and how some of his followers were also doing the same thing. One of the followers paid the woman $2, and his line was, if we keep it secret, it's okay. And so I think we've got really good witnesses and about Bennett being really just adultery. It had nothing to do with plural marriage because there were no marriages, there were no marriage ceremonies. It was just a one night stand. Keep it simple. And that's so different from what Joseph taught from the beginning. I mean, we don't have anybody. Of course Kirtland and Fanny Alger is disputable, but there's no one in Nauvoo saying that Joseph isn't doing marriages. Everybody's saying these are marriages. They create a marriage relationship, a husband and a wife, which was completely different from Bennett from the very beginning. Beginning.

John Dehlin [01:02:29] Okay, and so, and so for you, the evidence that Bennett was a scallywag, the contemporary evidence, even the published evidence, is much stronger than the evidence against Joseph that he was a scalawack, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:02:44] Yeah. Okay, good, good summary.

John Dehlin [01:02:46] Okay, but, but still the skeptic of me says it's hard to believe that, that Bennett didn't know anything about Joseph's polygamy. Me. And yet he just spontaneously erupted with his own version of something that he's calling spiritual wifery, you know, which means that it was more to him than just one night stands. Right. Like it's hard for me to imagine that he didn't know anything about Joseph's polygamy and that he erupted with spiritual wifery and that there's absolutely no connection. That those two things happened unbeknownst to each other in a complete vow.

Brian C. Hales [01:03:24] Ironically, I believe that's exactly what happened. They ran a parallel course. And then sometime in 1842, Bennett heard wind of it. But an interesting observation, John, is that in the fall of 1841, Joseph Smith gets up on the stand and he says, if you won't condemn me, I won't condemn you, and we'll all go to heaven together. And from that point on, we can find find Bennett using that public teaching as a justification for his sexual trysts with these women. Now, I would argue that if Joseph Smith was teaching him about celestial marriage and patriarchal marriage and eternal marriage, that instead of coming up with spiritual wifery, he would have come up with celestial wifery or patriarchal wifery or something like that. There's just no sign of this. And the term spiritual wifery was actually a term used before by. It was applied to any non monogamous marital relationship done under the guise of religion. You know, anywhere in America you can find the term used before Nauvoo, before Bennett brought it there. He's probably the one who brought it there. But there was no wifery. I mean, there's Nothing wifery about what he was preaching at all.

John Dehlin [01:04:37] Okay. And for those who want to sort of attribute any of Joseph's revelations to kind of secular contemporary events, they could say that maybe the spiritual wivory stuff got polygamy on Joseph's mind to then lead to what. But I'm guessing you're going to find that to be a weak association.

Brian C. Hales [01:04:59] Well, you know, people are going to speculate and they're certainly going to see it in a way that libido is driving the process. From my view, and I think from the view of the Nauvoo polygamist, the angel appeared a second time prior to that first Nauvoo marriage with Joseph and the wise beeman. And then. And that's actually the driving force. But you know, when, if you don't believe that that actually was going on, then you can spin it any way you know, that feels good to you. So.

John Dehlin [01:05:25] Okay, well, that's an interesting claim, but, but I respect your, you know, your, your position and so forth. So let's go on to myth number seven.

Eternity-Only Sealings and Polyandry

Brian C. Hales [01:05:36] Myth number seven is another controversial one. It is that none of Joseph Smith's plural marriages were non sexual eternity only sealings. And what this means is there's a couple of authors, I won't name them, but who have bent over backwards in their books to say that all of Joseph or to imply that all of Joseph's marriages were for time and eternity, meaning they could include sexual relations here on earth.

John Dehlin [01:06:00] So time means sex, you're saying?

Brian C. Hales [01:06:02] Yeah, essentially it means this life and the next.

John Dehlin [01:06:05] Eternity only means no sex. Sex for you.

Brian C. Hales [01:06:08] Yeah, well, it's not a marriage during this lifetime. In other words, they could be married to somebody else in this life and then be married to Joseph Smith in the next. And evidence from the Andrew Jensen paper shows that eternity only seems creating plural marriages only in the next life were performed between Joseph and women who were already legally married. And if you go to the next slide there, what this shows is it's the handwriting of Andrew Jensen. And we don't know who he's talking to, some novel polygamy. But he talks about Ruth Vose Sayers and her husband was not a member of the church, though he liked Joseph a lot because Joseph stayed there when he was hiding from the Missourians. But the account says that he encouraged his wife to be sealed to the prophet for eternity, but that he himself would claim her in this life. And so this is pretty good evidence that eternity only sealings could occur. And so to assume that they were all time and eternity is just not a good assumption. Assumption. I believe that 11 of the 14 women who had legal husbands that their seedlings to Joseph were only for eternity. And in the other three cases, in two of them, the woman had physically separated from the husband, and so they were only having sexual relations with Joseph. And in the third case, it's Mary Harrin. We just don't have enough data. We're going to talk a little bit more about that as we get to the other two myths.

John Dehlin [01:07:32] Why is this myth important? Important?

Brian C. Hales [01:07:34] What's that?

John Dehlin [01:07:35] Why is this myth important? That some. It sounds like what you're saying is some of Joseph Smith's marriages weren't sexual.

Brian C. Hales [01:07:43] Right. Well, and that's something that's going to be very dubious to people who are sure libido's driving, driving it. But if we want to understand Joseph's relationships with legally married women, this is a concept that we have to understand. And at least two authors have really got way out of the way to try to make it appear that these never occurred. And so that's kind of why I'm addressing it.

John Dehlin [01:08:04] Okay, so this is important for the polyandry discussion.

Brian C. Hales [01:08:08] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:08:08] Okay. All right. Myth number eight.

Brian C. Hales [01:08:11] Myth number eight is that Joseph Smith's teachings allow sexual polyandry. And this is kind of a myth that I made up because I don't think anybody's even thought about it. But it's important to understanding what's going on here. The reason is that there's virtually everybody who's written about Joseph Smith and polygamy has portrayed Joseph as practicing sexual polyandry. Now, what that means is that he would go to have sexual relations with the woman, and then she go back to her legal husband and have sexual relations. Everybody who portrays Joseph doing this basically are ignoring Joseph Smith's teachings regarding polyandry. And so what Joseph taught is that he says, behold, I say unto you that all old covenants have I caused to be done away in this thing. And this is a new and everlasting covenant. Now, at the time they were talking about baptism. This is 18:30 D&C, 22, verse 1. But when Joseph asks about polygamy, and then he gets what is now section 132, the Lord says, or the revelation says, for behold, I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant. So if the new and everlasting covenant causes all old covenants to be done away in Joseph's Smith's teachings, there is no way that a woman would have two marriage covenants at the same time, even if one were legal and one was a sealing, the sealing would cause the legal marriage covenant to be done away. But what's also important, so anyway, a woman could never have two husbands with whom she could lawfully experience sexual relations. Joseph Smith also taught that a woman, after she is espoused in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, if she shall be with another man, she has committed adultery and shall be destroyed. So section 132 describes three polyandrous situations and labels them all adultery and in two cases says the woman would be destroyed. So the point I'm trying to make here is that his teachings would not allow the Fawn Brodie version of Joseph Smith's relationship with women with legal husbands.

John Dehlin [01:10:20] Okay, really quick. Didn't you say there was not a revelation on baptism in the last interview?

Brian C. Hales [01:10:27] Yeah, I said there was no revelation before they did the baptize. In other words, the argument you got to have the revelation before you can do it isn't supported.

John Dehlin [01:10:35] Okay, and then, and then you're saying here that his statements in the DNC wouldn't have allowed for sexual polyandry based on your interpretation of these scriptures.

Brian C. Hales [01:10:48] Right. I mean, to me it's very plain that it supersedes all old covenants. So how could a woman have a legal marriage covenant and a. A covenant in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage according to these teachings, one would supersede the other.

John Dehlin [01:11:02] Okay, I'm just going to go back to something you mentioned earlier. So we have, we have plenty of wives, polygamous wives, saying that Joseph Smith had sexual relations with them, but none of them were polyandrous wives, by your understanding.

Brian C. Hales [01:11:23] This is really important. Okay. That I make this clear because I've had people who are very much apologetic and agreeing with me who have misunderstood what I'm saying. So here's the deal. I am saying that at no time is a woman having sexual relations with more than one husband. Husband. So even if she has on paper a legal husband and Joseph Smith as a husband, she's only experiencing relations with one of those two men. If it's the legal husband, then I'm saying that the marriage is for the next life only. And Joseph really isn't her husband now because it's an eternity only sealing. But in three of the cases, Sarah Ann Whitney, Mary Heron and Sylvia Sessions, all three of those women were having sexual relations with Joseph, which means they were not having sexual relations with their legal husbands. Okay, so to say that Joseph isn't experiencing sexual relations with his polyandrous wives would be incorrect in three of the cases. But as I mentioned with Sylvia Sessions Lyon, she had stopped conjugal relations with Windsor after he was excommunicated in the case of Sarah.

John Dehlin [01:12:34] How do we know that? How do we know. Know that?

Brian C. Hales [01:12:36] Well, and Todd Compton still disagrees with me on that. But if you just look at all of the evidence, I think the evidence supporting that is very strong.

John Dehlin [01:12:42] Okay.

Brian C. Hales [01:12:43] But I can, I can tell you there's two accounts in the Andrew Jensen paper saying that the two were separated. One of them dates it after the excommunication. But also Sylvia told Josephine in 1882 that she was sealed to Joseph when Windsor was out of the church. And Todd Compton just ignores that saying, oh, that's just cover up? Well, I don't think so. I think we should put it with this other evidence and show that that's really consecutive marriages, not sexual polyandry. And in the third case, it's Mary Haron, and we just don't have enough evidence. And I'm hoping somebody out there is going to be able to do more research and help us figure out what was going on in that relationship.

John Dehlin [01:13:23] Okay, so for you, either Joseph wasn't having sexual relations with, with the polyandrous wives and they were married to Joseph for eternity only, and so the wives were having sexual relations with their husbands, or the wives had sort of left their husbands or stopped having sexual relations with them if they were having sex with Joseph.

Brian C. Hales [01:13:48] Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:48] And in your view, would it have been inappropriate for wives to be having sex with two men?

Brian C. Hales [01:13:55] Well, it's Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 describes three situations where a woman would be having sexual relations with two husbands or two men. One is a husband and one is another man is the wording that it uses. It describes all three of those situations as adultery. And so in my understanding of Joseph Smith's teachings, there's just no way a woman could be lawfully involved with two husbands having sexual relations.

John Dehlin [01:14:20] Okay, well, that's an interesting position. So we'll leave it to. To the historians to see if they can disprove you. How's that?

Brian C. Hales [01:14:27] That sounds great.

John Dehlin [01:14:28] Okay.

Brian C. Hales [01:14:29] It needs peer review and I'm anxious to see what happens.

John Dehlin [01:14:32] Okay. Myth number nine.

Brian C. Hales [01:14:34] Myth number nine. We're still on the polyandry question. In fact, we've kind of covered a lot of it. But if you look at the slide here and the authors, virtually everybody says that he may have or he did. I think I'm the only published author to say he didn't. Certainly I was two or three years ago ago. I'm feeling pretty alone. But just a few observations on this, and we've already covered some of it. But if we look at the individuals involved, we find that none of them, none of the husbands, none of the wives, left any report or complaint about it. Joseph Smith did not explicate or defend it. The polyandrous wives didn't report it, defended or complained. The polyandrous husbands, importantly, did not report it, defend it, or complain. None of the officiators or witnesses, none of the family members reported it, defended it, or complained. Even the anti Mormons did not complain about it till 1859 years after it reportedly began. When William Law accused Joseph Smith, and William Law was a polygamy insider, he didn't choose a polyandrous marriage. He accused Joseph with Maria Lawrence. That was just a regular polygamous marriage. And you can say, well, these are very devout men and women. They're not going to say anything. But the biggest surprise is nobody's defending. You can imagine that if this is really going on, you would kind of expect somebody to at least say, well, you know, you're really sleeping with two husbands. How does that work? And they would respond, well, Joseph said this and.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] But they might just not want to talk about it because it's so volatile and explosive, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:16:04] Well, but they're not going to get away with that. I mean, it's weird today. Let's face it. Sexual polyandry is really bizarre. It's very rare in the world. You and I are talking about it right now. Do we think that they weren't talking about it?

John Dehlin [01:16:15] Well, if there was no even record of the marriage. Marriages taking place, any of the marriages, it seems reasonable that they wouldn't want to try and be defending polyandry. That's like, I could see how that would be just be the last thing that people would want to be writing about. You know, that's just my quick reaction. But I don't know. You can see that, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:16:39] Well, yeah, I can. Well, to some point. But I mean, if. Can you imagine Zina Huntington's brother, brother. And somebody hears, well, Zion is sealed to Joseph, but she's also married to Henry Jacobs. How does that work? And you can say, well, they don't want to talk about it, but people will ask the same questions in Nauvoo that we're asking today. I do think it's a little naive to think that they could just brush it off without any kind of explanation.

John Dehlin [01:17:01] I could see People not defending it purely because they're not wanting to talk or write about it at all. But what I think is interesting, and this is just me, is that none of the husbands later or the wives are, you know, complaining or objecting. That is interesting.

Brian C. Hales [01:17:24] Yeah. And again, we don't have as much data as we would like. But one other observation that's worth looking at. Joseph married his first polyandrous wife. It was Zina Huntington, on October 27, 1841. During the next 20 months, we think he married the rest of the 13 for a total of 14 women. Now, we don't have dates for three or four of him, but isn't it interesting when he finally dictates a revelation on polygamy? If he had been practicing sexual polyandry, wouldn't we have expected him to throw a verse in there authorizing that behavior? And isn't it ironic if he was doing it, that he, he describes three polyandrous situations and labels them all adultery? To me that's a puzzler. If he's actually practicing it.

John Dehlin [01:18:05] Yeah, right. Unless he's just kind of lost it at that point. But I mean, it's. It totally your position there is going to reflect your biases, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:18:16] Sure, sure. If we go to the next slide, if you're interested, because Michael Quinn and Todd Compton both responded to my polyandry papers. Quinn at Calgary at Mormon History association and Compton at Sunstone, and they were very kind, both of them, to do it. Michael quinn wrote a 70 page, 10,000 word explanation kind of defending the position. He's absolutely convinced Joseph practice sexual polyandry. And I asked him for permission to post that on my website. He declined to let me do that. So I've just posted my own response there. But if you're interested in it, you can go to Joseph Smith's polygamy.com and one of the buttons there on the left hand side has Hales Quinn polyandry. And you can download that if you have additional interest in the evidence involved with it.

John Dehlin [01:19:08] Okay. All right. So myth number 10, and this is

Mission Calls and Polyandrous Sealings

Brian C. Hales [01:19:15] something we hear a lot, that Joseph sent men on missions so he could be sealed to their wives. And there's a lot of anti Mormons out there that have repeated this over and over. Unfortunately, none of them seem to have actually looked at the evidence. Of the 12 polyandrous wives identified by Todd Compton, 10 were not on missions at the time Joseph was sealed to their legal wives. Of the two possible exceptions only.

John Dehlin [01:19:36] Okay, wait. So 10 out of the 12 polyandrous husbands never served missions?

Brian C. Hales [01:19:46] No, I didn't say that. We have dates for some of these sealings, and the husbands were not on missions at that time.

John Dehlin [01:19:53] Okay, so they may have served missions previously, sure. But at the time that Joseph entered into the marriage, it wasn't like he propositioned, got rid of the husband, husband, and then proposition them in at least 10 of the 12. That's what you're saying.

Brian C. Hales [01:20:07] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:20:07] Okay, well, that's important.

Brian C. Hales [01:20:09] Well, and then of the two possible exceptions, only Orson Hyde is documented as being on a mission at the time his legal wife, Miranda Johnson Hyde was sealed to Joseph Smith. But we also remember that Orson left with the other members of the 12 over a year before that. So if Joseph is calculating to get at Mirinda, he sends Orson off and then over a year later he proposes to her. So, you know, the sequence isn't exactly what you might expense if you expect. If he's just sending men out to get him out of Nauvoo. The other exception is.

John Dehlin [01:20:42] Well, it could be that it takes a while to get these guys off on missions. But you're saying he was gone and then he waited a year.

Brian C. Hales [01:20:50] Right, Right. Which he's just curious if all he's trying to do is get Orson out of there so he can get married to.

John Dehlin [01:20:56] Why did he wait a year?

Brian C. Hales [01:20:57] Yeah, why wait a year? And I see that's a double slide there. You may to want. Want to remove it, but. But still, it is.

John Dehlin [01:21:03] It is weird that he's propositioning other people's wives. Right.

Brian C. Hales [01:21:09] Well, the one thing that we haven't talked about here is Joseph Smith told Lucy Walker, one of his poor wives, that women would have their choices. That. And we're going to talk about this in a minute. About what? About the women who turned him down. But. But Lucy remembered that. That women would get their choices. In every one of these cases and all the evidence that we have, these women are choosing Joseph as their eternal husband. And it's weird. There's no question. This is strange. But none of the husbands left any record against Joseph Smith for allowing these sealings. And if Joseph was consistent in what he said, then these women just chose Joseph for their husband.

John Dehlin [01:21:52] Do we know if Orson Hyde complained or was mad or upon.

Brian C. Hales [01:21:56] There is one account. It's not from the best source that he came back and was ticked off, but within two months, he's being sealed to his own wife. The same wife, a plural wife. And Joseph is the one performing the sealing. So if he was upset with Joseph, it apparently didn't last Very long.

John Dehlin [01:22:12] But I guess the skeptics could say, well, he was just rewarded with another woman, and that helped ease the pain of losing his first wife.

Brian C. Hales [01:22:20] Well, undoubtedly the plural wife was. Would have given him hope to have an eternal wife if his wife is sealed to Joseph for eternity. So, sure.

John Dehlin [01:22:29] No. But also the skeptic would say he would have another woman that he could be with, you know?

Brian C. Hales [01:22:35] Well. And we don't know if Marinda was sealed to Joseph for time and eternity or eternity only. I put her in the eternity only category. But we have two sealing dates for Marinda, and it's possible the first one was eternity only. The second one was time and eternity. We just don't know.

John Dehlin [01:22:49] But it would have been stand up for Joseph. Joseph to run this by Orson before he proposed to Orson's wife. Right.

Brian C. Hales [01:22:57] It's hard to defend that he would be sealed to her unless she was really pressing it, which there's just no evidence either way. With Miranda, we know very little about Mirinda. She's for somebody who was pretty prominent in Nauvoo. We know so very little about her. So. But, yeah, I think it's weird.

John Dehlin [01:23:14] Okay.

Brian C. Hales [01:23:14] And I don't understand it.

John Dehlin [01:23:15] Okay. All right. But you raise important points. Okay. The second. The second case. Do we already talk about that?

Brian C. Hales [01:23:24] No, it's. It's not that helpful. The second possible case involves George Harris, and he was on a mission in July of 1840. But we don't have any sealing date between Lucinda, his legal wife, and Joseph. And I'm. If I had to take one woman off my list of 35, it would be Lucinda. The evidence supporting her ceiling to Joseph, to me, is just not that strong. And as I said earlier, we're dealing with Todd Compton's 12. But I've added two more women to the list. Both of them had legal husbands. And it's possible that Mary Heron. Mary Heron's husband was on a mission at the time, but we just don't have a sealing date for either one of those marriages. And so we just don't know. They're kind of like George Harris. We just don't know when the woman was sealed with Joseph. So it's impossible to say whether the husband was out of town or not.

John Dehlin [01:24:14] Okay. All right. So out of all the polyamorous. Polyandrous relationships, you're saying two out of the 12 were even candidates of the scenario where Joseph sent the men off in order to marry the spouse. And one of those, he waited a year after the guy had left. And so that makes it not totally fitting in that scenario. And then the other, you're saying there just isn't enough data to make anything conclusive. Is that right?

Brian C. Hales [01:24:47] Well, there were actually four possibilities, but because we don't have ceiling dates for three of those women, we just don't know. And then, of course, the fourth one is Mirinda that we've talked about.

John Dehlin [01:24:59] Okay, do we know if George Harris complained?

Brian C. Hales [01:25:04] None of these men left any record of complaints against Joseph Smith. Now, a couple of them were sad to learn that their legal wives were sealed to jail. Joseph understandable. Henry. Henry Jacobs and George Albert, or an Albert Smith, both left record that they were, you know, saddened by that, which is understandable. But neither one of them left a record criticizing Joseph. You have to have to question why Joseph would allow for these things to happen. But again, it's not immorality. It's just puzzling.

John Dehlin [01:25:33] Okay. All right. Myth number 11.

Coercion Claims and Emma Smith's Role

Brian C. Hales [01:25:37] Myth number 11 is that Joseph Smith threatened to destroy the reputation of any woman that turned him down. And this is actually a quote from John. John Bennett's book. But as I was alluding to earlier, Lucy Walker quoted Joseph saying a woman would have her choice. This was a privilege that could not be denied her. So if we believe that that actually was in effect, then it would help us understand why these women would choose Joseph maybe over their. Their legal husbands. At least in some of the cases. We do know that five women turned Joseph Smith down. Esther Johnson, Lydia Moon, Sarah Granger, Kimball, Cordelia C. Morley, Rachel and Ivan's. But the interesting thing is, the only reason we know about their rejections is because either they or others who were close to them left late recollections about it. In other words, these women told Joseph no, and there was no retaliation. There was no trying to destroy their reputation. Joseph respected their decisions. In one of the cases, he said, well, I will pray for you. And he just moved on. So the idea that Joseph Smith was going to destroy the reputation of any woman who turned him down just is not supported in these five cases. Cases. However, Joseph Smith's interactions with two women, Sarah Bates Pratt and Nancy Rigdon, shows that when they made accusations against them publicly, he would defend himself against that.

John Dehlin [01:26:56] But he did. Do you think that the. Did he threaten the women that their souls would be damned if they didn't agree?

Brian C. Hales [01:27:05] No, not that we have any record.

John Dehlin [01:27:07] Weren't there some letters written sort of the. The. I seem to remember something about. He's in the attic with the young woman. He hands them a piece of paper, and it Basically says, you know, your soul will be destroyed if you don't agree to this. And you've got 24 hours. So I'm totally paraphrasing, but maybe that's just slander or, you know, misinformation. You're not aware of that kind of thing.

Brian C. Hales [01:27:34] Yes, in fact, it's very important. And I should have added this to a myth because it's gone rampant with GoT authors even recently misrepresenting it. Lucy Walker was introduced to plural marriage by Joseph Smith in 1842. We don't know which month it is. Lucy Walker gets majorly depressed. She doesn't give him an answer. She doesn't know what to do. She says life was no longer worth living. Then she tells us that one day in April, late April of 1843. So we're at least three or four months out from the time when Lucy Walker is first introduced to it. But in April, Joseph Smith sees how distraught she is and he says, okay, I'm going to give you 24 hours to make a decision, and if you don't, the doors will be shut against you forever. And that night she has a spiritual extra worldly experience. And then the next day, she is sealed to Joseph. Unfortunately for everybody, there's been a number of authors who have only told us that Joseph met her and gave her a 24 hour ultimatum. Like, man, she's a hot woman. I want to get in bed with her. So here's the ultimatum, baby, you better accept this and let's get married. That's not at all what happened. Joseph, according to the account, saw her distress and says, okay, let's resolve this. You got 24 hours. And she prays that night and has this marvelous experience that convinces her that this is right. And so she goes ahead and she is sealed to Joseph and becomes his plural wife. So I think that's the account that you're referring to. Does that sound right?

John Dehlin [01:29:11] Yeah, maybe. But are you aware of him ever sort of threatening the woman with damnation or some type of lower status in the future worlds if they don't marry him?

Brian C. Hales [01:29:26] Not in a credible document. And maybe I'm missing on something. There were some allegations by Bennett regarding Sarah Pratt that may have gone there. There's some things with Brigham Young and Martha Brotherton, but again, if you look at the women, if Joseph were threatening them, you would think that some of them would have later been unhappy with that and left some kind of a record. But Lucy Walker says, no, A woman gets her choice, and that's the best record that we have regarding these interactions.

John Dehlin [01:30:02] Now, Emma did get the threat in D&C 132, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:30:07] Yeah. Yeah. I can see why Emma wasn't real pleased with the revelation.

John Dehlin [01:30:11] Because in there, what does it say?

Brian C. Hales [01:30:14] Well, it says a couple of things that are important. It says don't partake of whatever you've been offered. And some people have said, oh, that was a polyandrous relationship with William Law. The problem with that interpretation is William Law later said when he was interpreted, interviewed that that's just false. There was no truth to it at all. Somebody was making it up. So this idea of William Law and Jane making some kind of a switch is just not credible based on his testimony.

John Dehlin [01:30:38] Although he could have been just trying to cover up, you know, past indiscretion. I mean, that's possible, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:30:46] Yeah, yeah, of course, you know, anything is. But when you read the way he stated it, it's pretty convincing to my mind. But I just think that she was not supposed to partake of that is just a divorce that she threatened. Divorce. We have people telling us that that actually had occurred and they're saying, look, let's keep this together.

John Dehlin [01:31:06] Okay? But what did Joseph threaten Emma with if she didn't comply or allow. Wasn't it pretty severe? Indeed. I mean, the Lord, if you believe it's the Lord's revelation, right?

Brian C. Hales [01:31:19] If you believe it's. It's the Lord's revelation that the threat is that. That he. It's the law of Sarah. And I could pull it up, but basically that, that once they are taught the law. And Joseph waited a long time to teach Emma, that was why he waited, I believe is because once she was taught about plural marriage, if she rejected it, then she becomes the transgressor and she will be destroyed. And that's the threat to Emma.

John Dehlin [01:31:46] I have a hard time wanting my God to be threatening destruction of people. But you know, but you know, the scriptures have all sorts of difficult things in them. So I guess this wouldn't be the only case of God doing some disturbing things by some people's report. Right?

Brian C. Hales [01:32:04] Well, and see, I would read this and of course maybe I'm being too nice to the Lord in my read, but I just think they will be destroyed is describing anybody who is not able to have a continuation of the or who is not exalted. They'll be destroyed in the flesh and then they are resurrected in the telestial and terrestrial kingdoms. To me, that's all that that's alluding to. And so it's actually a merciful claim. Hey, let's live up to the highest law here and get the highest reward.

John Dehlin [01:32:35] You are indeed kind to the lord.

Brian C. Hales [01:32:37] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:32:38] All right, myth number 12,

Brian C. Hales [01:32:41] rounding it out. We're back at Emma now, and some people don't think that she ever supported plural marriage. And I disag. And the evidence is strong she did. It doesn't appear that she knew of any of the time in eternity plural marriage seedlings prior to the spring of 1843. And how she became introduced, we don't know. She may have learned about the eternity only seedlings first and actually had thought that they all were eternity only seedlings, only to learn that they were not. They were also for time and eternity and that Joseph had been involved with some of these plural wives sexually and not just anticipating the future future. But we do have good evidence that in May and June of 1843, she participated in plural sealing ceremonies for the Partridge and Lawrence sisters. And then the night after Emma Smith gave Emily Partridge to Joseph as a plural wife, Emily stayed with the prophet. When asked where Emma slept that evening, Emily replied, she was in her room, I suppose. I don't know where she was. Well, Emily observed that after that night, Emma never again allowed Joseph to sleep with them. Her. No, sir, Never. After that first night, she turned against us. After that, Emma knew that we were married to him, but she never allowed us to live with him. And so you can see that sharing a husband sexually in polygamy has got to be one of the hardest things, if not the hardest thing. And Emma tried. She gave four wives to Joseph. But this is something that it just appears that she couldn't do, even though she was trying very hard. And then, you know the story. On July 20, Hyrum says, Joseph dictate a revelation. I'll take a tour. We'll convince her that this is legitimate. Well, he dictates the revelation. Emma rejects that and threatens Joseph with divorce. And then part of the story that not everybody knows is the very next day, they send for William Clayton, and there's a big meeting between Joseph and Emma. And William records that Emma demands that some property be deeded over to her, either because if Joseph dies, she'd have this value, or if they get a divorce, that Emma would have something for which she could continue her life from a monetary standpoint. And then the other thing that we observe is that from that point on, Joseph is only sealed to two more women. One of those sealings occurs at the end of September, and it's to Melissa Lott and Melissa left a record that. That Emma knew all about it. And then the second one is to Brigham Young's sister, Fanny Young. And it's in the context of just an eternity only seedling, if you read the account. So those are the only marriages after this July 13th meeting that Joseph has with Emma. Then what we find is that for the rest of Joseph's life, and this is from, like, July until his death, the following year, June, they really live outwardly a monogamous lifestyle. And Emma is in the Nauvoo Mansion. Some of the plural wives live there with them. But whether or not they're having their times with Joseph, we do not know. But what's interesting, and I kind of wanted to end this with a positive thing regarding Emma, is that as Joseph was leaving for Carthage and martyrdom, Emma requested a blessing at his hand. Now, time was limited. So what he said is, write one and I'll sign it. And so what she wrote was, I desire with all my heart to honor and respect my husband as my head ever to live in his confidence and by acting in unison with him, retain the place which God has given me by his side. According to their son Alexander, Emma's final words, spoken at her last breath, were, joseph, Joseph, yes, yes, I am coming. So I really read that Emma tried very hard, and I think that while she stumbled and she made Brigham really ticked off, I think that there's lots of mercy for her and that no one should judge her.

Part Two Summary and Book Overview

John Dehlin [01:36:42] All right, well, we did it. We covered the. I don't know, in your view, 12 myths of about Joseph Smith's polygamy. So I want to thank you so much, Brian, for being willing to do this on Mormon stories. I think you give us, if anything, in my view, the lesson that I've learned from the past two podcasts is sort of the lesson about confirmation bias, but that it really does cut both ways. There are people who sort of believe Joseph was, you know, they'll say a fraud, or they're angry at the church or they're disillusioned, and they're going to be really willing to sort of embrace any information or data or interpretation or rumor or innuendo, whatever they can hear that will justify their position that Joseph was an evil, adult, philandering scalawag. And I myself, I think, have been guilty of sort of believing or passing on or perpetuating almost many things that I've heard as if it were factual without really taking the time to study the historical evidence. And I think it's Fair to say, on the other hand, that. That for those who really want to believe, you know, I think it's fair to say that many of our listeners are going to say that you're very kind to Joseph, you're very kind to the Lord and to your interpretations. And what you're also doing is working hard to support a point of view. But I guess the difference between you and me, and maybe a lot of the, let's just say, Joseph naysayers that I know, maybe not all, is that, is that you've definitely dug into the evidence and you're basing your positions on primary sources. And I think that deserves a lot of respect. And I think what you do for sure is you show us that many of us have jumped too early to conclusions that really aren't necessarily strongly supported by evidence. Is that fair?

Brian C. Hales [01:38:59] No, I appreciate that. And. And I think you characterize my position very well. I personally think that if we just get all the evidence out there, I think Joseph does just fine. There are questions, why would he allow 14 women to be sealed to him? There are questions, why was he sealed to 35 wives? And things of this nature? But for men and women who paint him as being this philanderer, the evidence just is not there. It doesn't bear out that interpretation, even though there still are some question marks. And so, so like I say, the process through which I, I did this research has increased my belief in him and in his teachings immensely.

John Dehlin [01:39:38] All right, so the book is Joseph. The books are Joseph Smith's Polygamy, volumes 1, 2 and 3, due in bookstores February 26 through either benchmark Books, Covert or Amazon. For those of you who want to pre order, you can get a discount through those channels, at least through two of the three channels. We also want to encourage you, if you want to meet Brian in person or Don Bradley, his main research supporter, you can go to one of two book signings. One is February 27th from 5:30 to 7:30 at Benchmark Books in Salt Lake City. And the other is March 9th at 7pm Pineapple Pioneer Book in Orem. So, Brian Hales, thank you so much again for coming on Mormon Stories podcast. And please check us out for our final episode where I'm going to be taking a lot of the questions that were posted to the MormonStories.org website and sort of, you know, having Brian not defend polygamy per se, but just to sort of explain in light of the very tough question, how he and how the original Saints were able to maintain faith in spite of what for many is very troubling. And I hope that that's just very, very much an affirming episode for those who want to remain in the church. You know, Brian might give some tips and tricks on how someone could know all about the Joseph Smith's polygamy and still believe. You still up for that one, Bryan?

Brian C. Hales [01:41:13] Yeah, that sounds great John. Thanks so much.

John Dehlin [01:41:15] All right, so please check us out@mormonstories.org to to comment to provide us with any support that you're able to provide. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have questions. And we just thank you all for listening and hope you tune in again soon. You guys take care.

Brian C. Hales [01:41:33] Thanks John.

John Dehlin [01:41:34] Thanks Brian. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@savor rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Guest [01:41:52] Come come ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're away Though heart to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jose your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is high Tis not so I live is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your lo fresh courage take our God will let never us for sake soon we'll have tale to tell oh, all is well, all is well oh, all is well, all is well. And should we die before our journey's through half a day all is well we then are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared again to see the saints the rest obtain I will make this Corey swell. Oh, all is well,

Brian C. Hales [01:45:38] all is well,

Guest [01:45:41] all is well

John Dehlin [01:45:45] all is well

Guest [01:45:48] all

Brian C. Hales [01:45:48] is well

Guest [01:45:52] oh, is well, well all is well, all is.

Confirmation Bias and Historical Interpretation

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 404

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, and I am very excited to have with me part three of a series with Dr. Brian Hales. He's an anesthesiologist in Salt Lake City, but he's just released a new set of books called Joseph Smith's Polygamy with Greg Coford Books, and the first two episodes of our podcast received really good attention and feedback. We're recording this as a video as well that's available on YouTube.com mormonstories because there's accompanying set of slides that we're going to be using to help in Brian's presentation, Parts 1 and 2. Part 1 was a refutation of Grant Palmer's treatment of sexual allegations against Joseph Smith. We'll refer you to that. That's episode 402. And then Paul part two was sort of Brian laying out 12 myths regarding Joseph Smith's polygamy. This part three is something that Brian and I thought would be really valuable. I basically asked Brian, you know, there's a segment of our audience that wants to retain some type of belief in the LDS Church and participation, but historically there are many that sort of see polygamy and polyandry and things about how polygamy was handled. They sort of see that as a deal killer. And yet, you know, here you are, Bryan, sort of defying that position because you're someone who we could argue might be among the top five people in the world in terms of a detailed knowledge of Joseph Smith's polygamy. And yet you stand here as a committed believer. And so the purpose of this episode is just to lay out this is not to convince people who are skeptical or disbelieving that that they should start believing again. I think it's pretty clear that if someone wants to believe, you know that they're going to be open to considering different ideas. But if they've got their mind made up and they don't want to believe, then there's no amount of literal or logical argumentation that's going to persuade somebody. So that's not the purpose. The purpose is simply this, that if someone wants to believe, what's a framework that we could establish for belief. And basically, what's Brian's framework of belief? Knowing everything that he knows about all these difficult issues. So, Brian, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Brian C. Hales [00:03:12] Thanks, John. It's great to be back.

John Dehlin [00:03:13] And I'm going to be navigating these slides from my end. So if you'll just let us know when to advance, we'll go and advance them for those who are following on YouTube. And with that, how would you like to begin?

Brian C. Hales [00:03:27] Well, I just appreciate being able to use the slides. If anybody's heard me in any presentation, I use slides kind of to keep my mind on track. So I'll be happy to just tell you to advance them. But there are a few concepts that I was hoping to share today that I hope would be useful to the listeners and those that are looking at the YouTube slides. But I want to thank you, John. You're a very good interviewer. And during our second interview, particularly there at the end, you asked some questions to me that I thought my answers were inadequate. And I really had been feeling pretty comfortable with where I was with my beliefs and with the evidence on Joseph Smith, the plural marriage. But you demonstrated to me that, that if you go to slide number three, there, frankly, faith is still required. And I hadn't necessarily thought about it that way. I thought the evidence that we had was really supportive of Joseph, and I still believe that it is. But nothing is to the level that you could draw strict conclusions one way or the other. So the issue of faith is something I wanted to talk a little bit about and how people need faith, regardless of which side of this issue you are on and whether Joseph was a prophet or whether he was driven by libido. But then something else happened. Next slide. In our signing at the Pioneer Bookstore last Saturday night with Don Bradley, Don pointed out in his comments that I had the faith that Joseph Smith was a true prophet going into the study of Joseph Smith and plural marriage, and that this was something that separated me from other authors who had published on this topic. Next slide. I realized that Don was right, because in the 1990s, when I was investigating Mormon fundamentalism and I had a member of my family that joined with them, and I found myself really being immersed in Joseph Smith's teachings. And since that time, and I don't mean to promote myself, but I probably read the book of Mormon 50 times and the Doctrine and Covenants at least that many, so I came to believe, independent of anything historical, that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. Next slide. And then the go to Slide number seven. So when I approached Joseph Smith's plural marriages and teachings historically, I actually just believed that the history itself would correlate to the theology which I had already embraced.

John Dehlin [00:06:02] And to be honest, in psychology, I think we have a term called confirmation bias and that cuts both ways. If you're a believer, you're going to understand the evidence you see as confirming your view or you're going to maybe ignore it and it's true. With someone who doesn't believe, they're going to find whatever evidence they can find to confirm their narrative and they'll likely dismiss anything you offer that would run counter to their theory. This is just a human fact phenomenon that we all do well.

Brian C. Hales [00:06:35] And I love the way you explained it because it's better than the way I'm going to kind of go over that, but. Next slide. Not surprisingly, I discovered a history that was consistent with my previous beliefs. And in some ways my books represent a self fulfilling prophecy. And that actually could be a criticism of the books. As you pointed out, the biases are there going in, and so I find what my biases would dictate is going to be there. However, go to the next slide. I believe that my view is more useful because in some ways it emulates that of the Nauvoo polygamist who first believed Joseph was a prophet before they addressed his teachings of polygamy. In other words, in Nauvoo, people had a testimony of Joseph either from reading the Book of Mormon or his scriptures or having heard him speak, and they believed he was a true prophet. And then he introduces plural marriage. Well, that's kind of the way I approached plural marriage was that I came in thinking Joseph was a prophet and that then somehow this, this teaching of plural marriage must defensible or consistent with what he had already been teaching. Next slide. Now, the good news for everyone is that I'd like to think that I don't tell my bias story, just sprinkling it with a few supportive documents while ignoring contradictory interpretations and evidences. Next slide. I would like to think that virtually every known document that anybody's ever mentioned on this topic is included from all sources. In other words, I'm giving you both sides of the issue from an evidentiary standpoint. I'm giving you what the antagonists and unbelievers said. I'm giving you what the believers and apologists have said, and then the readers can make their own decisions. Of course my interpretations reflect my beliefs, but the evidence is there. If you want to disagree and then go Ahead. John, did you have a comment?

John Dehlin [00:08:23] No, no, keep going.

Brian C. Hales [00:08:24] Next slide. My books also tell a story that has never been published about Nauvoo polygamy, and that is it gives the view that through the eyes of those who lived it. I would argue that if you handed Fawn Brodie's book or some of these that have been written on Nauvoo polygamy more recently to a Nauvoo polygamist, if we had a time machine and could bring him to our day, I honestly think they'd read this book and go, that's not what I experienced. That is not what they felt. Now, that's my own belief. That's my own speculation, but I really don't think that the view has been given of those Nauvoo polygamists, and it's told by them through their numerous recollections.

John Dehlin [00:09:02] Now, real quick, Wasn't Todd Compton's book sort of first person people relating their own accounts and experiences, or do I have that wrong?

Brian C. Hales [00:09:12] No. Todd did a great job, but that wasn't the focus of his books. He was giving us biographies of the wives, and it naturally intersected with polygamy in many points. But his focus wasn't to tell their story and especially the other men. Also because we have quite a few accounts from other men who were polygamists in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:09:31] Got it. So you tried to do a more comprehensive narrative and story.

Brian C. Hales [00:09:37] Right. And include everything that they had said. And people who buy my books are going to get tired of block quotes in some of the chapters, but that way they'll get a feel for what these people were thinking and how they remembered it. And of course, late recollections are not always as good as contemporaneous accounts. There just aren't contemporaneous accounts. So we're kind of stuck with this. But there's a lot of them, and they tell a very constant story.

John Dehlin [00:09:59] Got it.

Brian C. Hales [00:10:00] The next slide is reflecting what you just said, that finding what an author expects to find when reconstructing history is common. And you had a name for it. What was it?

John Dehlin [00:10:10] Confirmation bias.

Brian C. Hales [00:10:11] Yeah, right, right, exactly. But I think that it could be argued. Next slide. That all of the authors who have written on this topic have done the exact same thing. My example. Next slide is Fawn Brodie. She believed Joseph was a libertine. And what did she find and what did she portray? Next slide. And the question comes up, why is it common? And you mentioned there's some psychology, but I would illustrate that with a little more Detail. Next slide. One of the reasons is that there are significant limitations and ambiguities in the historical documents. We just don't have nearly as many historical documents as we would like to help us understand what was happening in Nauvoo. Next slide. So observers must fill in the gaps, and they usually will do that based upon their own beliefs. Next. In addition, and this is important, Joseph Smith was not perfect. And I don't want anybody to think that I think he was or that he thought he was or that I'm presenting him as if he was. So the writers must decide what to do with those documented imperfections. And I like this next quote. Next slide. Brigham Young said Joseph Smith had all the weaknesses a man could have when the vision was not upon him. When he was left to himself, he was constituted like other men and would have required years and years longer in the flesh to become a Moses in all things. But for the length of time he lived, he was as good a man as ever lived in the flesh. Jesus accepted. So the question comes up. Next slide. Should authors highlight the mistakes and weaknesses, or should they ignore them, completely minimize them? How do you deal with these? And that's where a person's own beliefs, their own faith, and their own convictions and biases will come in. Next slide. As we discuss a few specific episodes in Joseph Smith's polygamy, what we will discover is there's a huge spectrum on how observers and researchers can interpret them. There is, at one extreme, the naturalist and the naturalist is someone who believes God was not part of it. Now, we could use other terms like anti Mormon or antagonist, because they embrace this same view most of the time. But I don't want this to be pejorative. I want it to be neutral, that they just really think God was not part of the process. Now, the other end of the spectrum is that of the believer. That would be me believing there is a God and that Joseph was his prophet. And so there's. But there's a whole spectrum here, and I just want to talk about the two extremes on some of these issues to illustrate that faith is still required no matter where we are on the spectrum, because there's not enough evidence. And what we do have is sometimes ambiguous. Plus there's the issues of what about Joseph's own weaknesses. So jumping right into an example. Next slide. Oh, skip. Skip over one more to the charge of adultery. Okay, you got that?

Difficult Issues: Polyandry and Public Denials

John Dehlin [00:13:00] So we're going to start. So if I. If I take it right, I saw an old version of the slide deck. You're going to go through a bunch of different problems that people have with polygamy, with Nauvoo polygamy, with Joseph Smith's polygamy, and you're going to analyze it from a naturalistic perspective and from a believer.

Brian C. Hales [00:13:19] Right, right. And I readily acknowledge that I'm probably not representing the naturalist the way the naturalist would. And in fact, it might be an easy, interesting discussion in the future if somebody wanted to use some evidence to that end. But I think the audience is going to get the general picture of the extremes and how basically the message is that we need faith as we're going to try to interpret these. Even though I really like the evidence supporting my position, it certainly isn't conclusive.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] Well, what I would like to do is take the pressure off of the conversation. You know, let's just stipulate that we're not going to advocate, you know, we'll put up straw men, you know, positions for the naturalist, but not pretending that we're representing them accurately and not pretending that we're even trying to convince naturalists to be believers. And I would hope that our goal isn't even to criticize the naturalist position. It's more to just say, hey, if you want to be a believer, here's the way I, as a believer, am able to make sense of these and not feel awful about it. That's, you know, I think that's just we need more role models for belief and faith, and that's what I like to highlight most.

Brian C. Hales [00:14:32] Well, and thank you, because I totally agree. The naturalist view is a very valid view, especially from a historical standpoint and a researcher standpoint. And doubtless I'm creating some straw men as I represent them. But I think the listener and the viewer will gather that I'm not too far off because this is how Vaughn Brodie, who would be a naturalist, has portrayed Joseph Smith and other authors and other critics.

John Dehlin [00:14:57] Okay, let's dive in.

Brian C. Hales [00:14:58] Alrighty. The first one is a charge of adultery. William Law was a second counselor to Joseph Smith from January 19th of 1841 up until 1844, and he accused Joseph Smith of adultery in 1844. So if we look at the naturalist view, the naturalist might say, well, Joseph Smith's counselor was a polygamy insider, and he just told the truth. He just wanted to bring this to a head and get Joseph to fess up and turn the church back to where it was when he believed. Well, at the other end of the spectrum is the believer, and the believer would probably say the relationship in Question. And that happened to be Maria Laurence, which was one of the four plural marriages that Emma Smith participated in, but that it was a genuine plural marriage performed by proper authority. And then next slide is that historical documents demonstrate that Joseph Smith was imperfect, but he was not guilty of any egregious transgression, including sexual impropriety. Now, this is a little apologetic, but I would send this message that there is no solid evidence that Joseph was guilty of egregious transgression or sexual impropriety that I have found. There is ambiguous evidence and there's. There's some limited comments and things from questionable sources, but this, to me, is something the believer would, I think, advocate.

John Dehlin [00:16:15] So are you talking about Oliver Cowdery's accusations about Fanny Alger?

Brian C. Hales [00:16:20] Well, I'm talking just generally about any of them. I mean, clearly Oliver did not believe that it was an authorized marriage or a valid marriage, but I think the evidence is strong on marriage was performed. So, see, there's the contradictory evidence that kind of countermands the Oliver Cowdery view.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] When you say evidence, you're referring to the Eliza R. Snow records that were written later on, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:16:47] Yeah. And the Mosiah Hancock and that chart that we went over in one of the previous interviews.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] Okay, got it.

Brian C. Hales [00:16:56] And go to the next slide here. Polyandry. And I talk about that quite a bit because I think this is one topic that Fon Brody really misrepresented Joseph on. But the observation is simply that Joseph was sealed to 14 women who were legally married. So the naturalist might say something like, Joseph simply wanted to expand his sexual opportunities. In contrast, the believer might quote Lucy Walker. Lucy Walker was one of Joseph's plural wives. And she said that Joseph taught that a woman would have her choice. Next slide. If you're not there on the believer one.

John Dehlin [00:17:30] Yep, I'm there.

Brian C. Hales [00:17:31] This was a privilege that could not be denied her. And so the conclusion would be these 14 women chose Joseph Smith as their eternal husband.

John Dehlin [00:17:42] Okay.

Brian C. Hales [00:17:43] And then just flip down one more believer might also say that most of the Polyandra seelings were for eternity only regarding the time and eternity marriages. And I say there were three. The women were physically separated from their legal husbands because sealings supersede civil covenants. Now, let me just pause here, John, just to reiterate that neither the naturalist or the believer can stand up and beat their chest saying, I'm right. Okay? Because the evidence is not conclusive on either end of the spectrum. And so this is where our faith or our belief have to enter in. And I Don't want people to say that I'm declaring this as irrefutable. It isn't. But I think the evidence is definitely strong supporting the believer's side, because that's where I am. But the naturalist might find some things that are strong in their eyes as well. So we just kind of have to choose what we want to embrace here. Okay, the next episode is Mirinda. Nancy Johnson. And you and I kind of talked about this, and this is something that piqued my. My questions in the second interview. But there we recognize that Joseph Smith was apparently sealed to Mirinda in April of 1842 while Orson was on his mission. And the. The naturalist would say something like, joseph Smith sought to have sexual relations with Miranda, so he didn't marry her, or he married her for time and eternity to accomplish that goal with no regard for Orson's feelings. Now, you could see why somebody would look at this, because we know absolutely nothing more about what happened in April of 1842. And you can see why somebody, even an objective observer, might just say, gosh, that doesn't seem very nice to Orson and what's going on. And, you know, Joseph may have wanted just to have sex. Well, in fact, if you go to the next slide, the believer would acknowledge that there are two dates. For one is May 1843, and this is a much more reliable date because it's signed by Marinda herself. So the April 1842 date could be an error. A second possibility is that in 1842, Marinda may have learned of eternal marriage and chose Joseph over Orson as her eternal husband. That then the prophet acquiesced and allowed an eternity, only sealing. Okay, next is Sarah Pratt. We talked also about her. There is evidence Joseph made some kind of an offer to Sarah in early 1841 while Orson was on a mission. What's going on here? Well, the naturalist might say that Joseph wanted to have sex with Sarah, but she turned him down. The believer next slide is that Joseph Smith learned that Sarah was sexually involved with John C. Bennett and that he intervened, offering her to be sealed to him if she didn't want to be sealed to Orson.

John Dehlin [00:20:23] Is that true? Do we know that she was involved with John C. Bennett?

Brian C. Hales [00:20:25] The evidence is very strong. Notwithstanding what Richard Van Wagner and others have said, the evidence is very strong that they were sexually involved with each other. And we do have one rather dubious account, that Joseph did intervene and even was swearing at Sarah or that profanity was used according to the account, and that he left Sarah very upset with her so, yeah, there's definitely some evidence. Is it perfect evidence? No. Is it conclusive evidence? Absolutely not. But it does support this view, which is, again, why I'm embracing it myself. Not trying to, again convince the naturalist or others who disagree, but you will understand why I'm where I am on this issue. Okay, now we're back to polyandry. If you can look at this chart, and I wanted this chart here. It's in my book. It's on my website in a modified form. But what we're showing is the 14 women with their husbands that were all sealed to Joseph. But if you look at the right hand columns, there's. I've tried to figure out what was happening, and you'll see I've got some yeses there and no's. But again, this is based more on my own opinion than on evidence. But then I even acknowledge probable and unlikely. Impossible. So I wanted to emphasize that despite the fact that I've even done my very best, I've had to use words like probable and unlikely because the evidence is so scant. But again, acknowledging this, that the naturalist. If you go to the next slide, is that Joseph Smith sought sexual relations with married women. So he incorporated sexual polyandry. And that's essentially Von Brody tells us. But the believer would say that Joseph Smith taught the sexual polyandry was adultery and that he never practiced it. That would be their position. And then moving on to another topic, the public denials. And people are often understandably, very bothered that Joseph Smith publicly would deny polygamy when privately he was practicing it. And let me just qualify that he didn't outright lie. And I'm not sure that it makes a big difference. But the words that Fawn Brodie used to describe what happened, and it's a wonderful word, circumlocution. I had to look it up. And verbal gymnastics. I mean, what the. And not just Joseph Smith, but other Nauvoo polygamists are trying to not admit to the practice of plural marriage without actually denying it. But they're clearly deceiving their listeners into believing that it isn't being practiced. So that's what we're talking about. And the naturalist going in the next slide would simply say, hey, Joseph willingly lied to conceal his debaucheries. The believer, on the other hand, might say something like, Abraham interacting with the king of Egypt. Joseph Smith was forced to conceal important facts that if disclosed, would have prevented him from obeying other important commandments. So again, you can see the spectrum there. The two polar differences Then going on to Emma a couple of things about Emma. Joseph married plural wives without telling Emma he was doing so that doesn't seem very right. So the naturalist would probably say that he was just being insensitive to Emma as he explored his lobigenous desires. Now, the believer, in contrast, would say something like, Joseph Smith withheld plural marriage teachings from Emma until she was ready to believe, because once instructed, to reject them would bring condemnation. And this historically seems to be represented because she did try to believe, at least for a few weeks there in May of 1843. Again, another observation with Emma is that Joseph Smith experienced sexual relations with some of his plural wives without telling Emma that he was doing so. This just doesn't seem right. And the naturalist would point out, well, Joseph Smith was simply seeking extramarital trysts, disguising them as polygamy. And you can understand why they might say that. The believer, in contrast, would say that Joseph was commanded by an angel to practice plural marriage independent of informing Emma. And then the last example to talk about is sexual relations with 14 year olds. We observe that two of Joseph Smith's sealed wives were 14. Helena Kimball, who clearly was, so she was three months shy of her 15th birthday. And then there was Maria Winchester, who we don't know for sure she was 14. She probably was. We don't have a date for their ceiling, but most likely she was. Now, the naturalist is just thinking that Joseph is attracted to these young teenagers, so he seeks sexual relations with them under the guise of polygamy. The believer would say that there's no credible evidence of sexual relations in these ceilings and that later documents support that they were not consummated, which is consistent with later Utah policies. But can either side prove their position? No, you can't do it. Going to the next slide then. Faith is required because the historical documentation does not allow for an irrefutable conclusion. So any comments there, John, before we forge on to a couple more ideas?

John Dehlin [00:25:24] Well, we've covered a lot of territory. I think each one of those topics could merit its own few minutes of conversation. But why don't we forge on and then we can maybe circle back?

Brian C. Hales [00:25:42] Sure, that'll be fine. And we can talk more about the details. I've got stuff here that I'm more than happy to go into more detail. Of course, my books go into a lot of detail. But the next slide is the believer's interpretation is based upon faith. That theology is what drove the process, not desire for sex. And next slide, Joseph taught a very complicated theology to explain the need for plural marriage. And I would argue that plural marriage is not his zenith doctrine. It's not the culmination of everything. He was teaching nothing of the sort, but that in his theology, plural marriage was necessary. But also I would argue that Joseph didn't even need to give us all of this theology. And in fact, plural marriage may have been easier for him to introduce if all he had said was, they did it. I am restoring it. As we've talked about in one of the other interviews, there is no theology of marriage in the Bible, really, but certainly nothing in the Old Testament. We do not know from the Old Testament whether polygamy is better than monogamy or if even monogamy is better than celibacy. There is nothing there to tell us any of those answers. And so all Joseph had to say, they did it. I'm restoring it. There was no obligation to provide us with this theology, which is very detailed in section 132, because Joseph got a lot of pushback, not only on polygamy, but also on some of the other concepts. William Law was not happy with this idea of deification. Then shall they be gods, A continuation of the seeds. These ideas were very unique, very new, and they were not readily accepted by many people. So even though Joseph provided us with this theology, I do not believe that that was necessary. Okay, if we go to the Naturalists, they are going to generally believe, as is reflected by Fawn Brody in her book, that libido was the primary motivator. And we understand this. This is, you know, we understand why this is because. But as we look at the evidence, again, getting back to the evidence, it indicates that Joseph Smith consummated 12 of the plural marriages. And let me just give a sidebar here. Last week I was reading a blog and some woman had written that I was claiming Joseph did not have sex with any of his plural wives. I just don't know where these ideas come from. I have never said that. But the evidence is good. It's on my website. It's a whole appendix in the back of volume two of all of the evidence of sexual relations in 12 of the marriages, with some kind of ambiguous evidence for three more. But I would also argue that sexual relations were not a common occurrence for Joseph Smith. And here's a few. If you go to the next slide, there's a few observations. We only know of two children who are born to all of the plural wives. One was to Olive Frost, and she and the child died before they left Nauvoo the second one is Josephine Fisher, Josephine Lyon Fisher, who we've talked about already, the daughter of Sylvia Sessions Lyon, but that's really all that we know about. And the reason that this is kind of interesting is that Sarah Ann Whitney, who was sealed to Joseph for 23 months before his death, after Joseph was killed, married Heber C. Kimball, and based upon the birth date of their first child, she became pregnant just within about three months. And she bore seven children to Heber C. Kimball. Lucy Walker, another plural wife, became pregnant within three months of marrying after the martyrdom and gave birth to nine children. Melissa Lott was sealed to Joseph in September of 1843, but she afterwards married Ira Jones Willis, and her first child was born just two and a half months after she was married, or, I'm sorry, was conceived two and a half months after she was married, and she bore Willa's seven children. So these are just some examples of these young women were very fertile. Joseph had eight children with Emma, and yet we can only find two children with a reference maybe to a third in all of Joseph Smith's plural marriages. So this is one evidence that sexual relations were not common. But also, it's important that hiding from Emma and Hyrum and William Law would have been a little bit difficult. You see, these three individuals did not learn about plural marriage until the middle of 1843. So if Joseph Smith is having sexual relations daily, as one researcher has recently affirmed, he would have been doing it without Emma knowing, without Hyrum knowing, and without William Bluff finding out about that, which would have been a little bit of a challenge. But then once Emma found out about it, she had spies that were out. And we have one account about how she had commissioned women to keep an eye on Joseph Smith. And if he was ever caught with any of his plural wives, Emma would just be in a tizzy and be very upset. So even after 1843, Hyrum would have helped Joseph, William Law would not have. But Emma also would not have been very helpful in this. So Joseph would have had a challenge there. But it's also interesting because church members generally did not know about plural marriage. By the end of 1842, there may have been a few dozen, but not too many. By end of 1843, there were hundreds. But one interesting example is that Joseph was sealed to Agnes Coolbreth Smith, the widow of Don Carlos Smith, and Agnes was living with a woman, Clara Marvel. Well, Clara apparently saw something going on between Joseph and Agnes, and not knowing that plural marriage was restored, Clara reported this to the president of the Relief Society, who was Emma Smith, Joseph's wife. So, see, you have a member who is skeptical and wondering what's going on. She's not cowing down to Joseph or to Emma. She sees something that's problematic and she reports it, and it becomes a big deal. There's a number of notes from the Relief Society about how they are handling it, and we aren't even sure how it's resolved. Whether Clara is taught about plural marriage, which I bet is what happened, or whether she was just convinced that it would be better to not pursue this. But she eventually drops the charges. But the reason I mention this, John, is that if Joseph were jumping from bed to bed in Nauvoo, the people that were watching him, and he was being watched, he lived in a fishbowl, they would have either all had to have been totally aware of what's going on, or he would have had to have done it in such a secret way that nobody's even noticing that he's going over to visit one of his plural wives. So I think this is another strong evidence that sexual relations, while they did occur, and may have occurred somewhat often with a few of the wives, this would not have been a huge motivator because he was so limited in how he could rendezvous with him. So, anyway, go to the next slide there. If sexual relations were maybe not that common with Joseph, the question comes up, why are so many people sure that this was libido driven? And then the next slide. It seems that the only people who can believe that it wasn't libido, in other words, that God commanded Joseph to practice plural marriage. The only ones that can believe that are those who believe God was talking to him in the first place. Next slide. Everyone else will readily dismiss God and theology as possible motivators, leaving only one obvious choice, libido. Believing that consciously or unconsciously, Joseph Smith wanted to expand his sexual license. And we don't fault people for this. If I talk to somebody who knows little about our religion and I say, yeah, Joseph restored polygamy, why do you think he did it? They're going to say, well, he wanted sex. They're certainly not going to say, well, he was probably a true prophet and God commanded him, you know, that's just not going to be anywhere on their radar. So we don't fault people for this view, but we want to get back to the evidence, and I argue that the evidence really doesn't support that. And then the next slide has this wonderful quote from Richard L. Bushman. Who is so wise and has seen so much of Mormon history. But he said polygamy is an interesting thing because it serves as a Rorschach test. People project onto Joseph and the polygamists their own sins about human nature. So I think as we look at these kinds of observations, we can understand why people are so sure that it's libido. But the point I'm trying to make is that the evidence doesn't necessarily support that. Next slide. If we also go back to the Nauvoo polygamists, and by my count, there were 115 men and women who had entered into plural marriage by the time of the martyrdom. But their beliefs are that of the believer, not the natural. And of course, that doesn't surprise us because if they were naturalists, they wouldn't have entered into it. But they do reflect the same faith of the believers, I think in most accounts. Next slide. It appears that if the Nauvoo polygamists had thought Joseph Smith was driven by libido, the naturalist interpretation, well, they would have immediately dumped him in his religion. And the reason this is important, John, is that when I was a kid, this is the best way I can illustrate it. I grew up in Logan, and before they built the basketball arena, the Spectrum there used to play in the George Nelson field house. I don't know if you've ever been over there. I know you're on the campus, but.

Motivations Behind Plural Marriage

John Dehlin [00:35:09] Yeah, I exercise there every day.

Brian C. Hales [00:35:11] Yeah, well, it used to have, you know, a basketball court there with risers going up both sides, and they were pretty rickety. But I'd go watch Aggie basketball there with my parents. And I used to hate it towards the end of the game, especially if it was close, because at the end of the game, everybody would stand up. And I was five or six years old, I couldn't see anything, and it would really bug me. And my dad would pick me up and hold me on his shoulder, but then the people behind him would get ticked off. So I'm just sitting there and I can't see what's going on on the basketball floor, but I can watch my parents and I can watch the people around me, and I can tell if the Aggies are winning or losing by watching those who are watching the Aggies. I can't see the basketball players, but I can see those that can see the basketball players. I think as we look at the Joseph Smith's polygamy, we can't see what happened. There's just not enough detail to know but we can perhaps gain some value by watching those who were watching Joseph Smith. And these would be the 115 individuals who were involved with polygamy during the time of Joseph Smith himself. And it's an interesting observation that none of these 115 ever wrote an expose or ever criticized Joseph saying that this was just a cover up for debauchery and for immorality. And specifically, the 35 women who were sealed to him did not do this. Five of them joined other churches and a couple other we kind of lost contact with, but most of them stayed true to Joseph, went to Utah, and so far as we can tell, and I'm relying on Todd Compton's book, but if you read these accounts, they didn't write exposes, they didn't criticize him. Even after they'd remarried and after they gained extra experiences with sexuality and things like this, they didn't go back and say, Joseph abused me. I was just chattel. You know, this was all an immoral bunch of nonsense that just did not happen. These individuals stayed true to Joseph and. And you can argue that they had some personal reasons to stay true. Of course they did. They'd invested themselves in this principle, kind of like the FLDS down there, right now that Warren Jeffs is doing so many crazy things, and yet people stay true to him because they've invested in it. I understand that too. But it is interesting that there's not a single one of these individuals who knew what was going on that later said Joseph was just covering up his debaucheries with the idea of polygamy. So, next slide.

John Dehlin [00:37:27] Except for maybe like William Law.

Brian C. Hales [00:37:30] Well, now, William Law is an interesting account. He's a good one. And the other one that I like is Catherine Lewis. But what these are are two individuals who knew what was going on. They knew polygamy from the inside. They were taught by Joseph, or they were taught by his lieutenants who were right close to him. Both of these individuals and Catherine Lewis, just so you remember, she's the first female to write an expose of the Nauvoo Temple. And she was, I think, the second one overall. But there are other experts who would know better. But both of these individuals knew polygamy from the inside. And what's interesting is neither one of them rejected it outright. In other words, they didn't hear about it and then say, this is nonsense. This is just immorality. I am out of here. I'm going to fight against you. Neither one of them did this. Both of these individuals, for Weeks or months thought about it, they learned about it, they contemplated it. If you read William Law's journal, his first entry, January 1, 1844, indicates that he almost entered into it. And he doesn't elaborate, but he thanks God that he did it. And we don't know all the details of what's going on, but what they didn't see was something that was just openly non immorality as portrayed by Fonbrodi and others, which I think is significant. Catherine Lewis was proposed to before she even got to Nauvoo and got there and contemplated joining it, and then later decided, no, this isn't for me, but what was going on there is something that at least on the surface appeared to be genuine or these individuals would have jumped ship really early is something that I would argue. Okay, yeah, next slide. And we're almost done here with the slides. But. But for those who get my books and read the accounts of those who are participating, I think they will be able to conclude even if they don't believe in Joseph, if they don't believe in Joseph's God and all of that, but they will be able to see that they were not gullible men and women, even the comic book characters that are portrayed by the Fombrodis of the world. Next slide. The accounts from the Nauvoo polygamists themselves indicate that they were sincere and devout and just as discerning and skeptical, if not cynical, as we are today. And I also believe. Next slide. That their accounts support that they would not have tolerated the duplicity and hypocrisy in their prophet leader that some of the reconstructions portray him to be. And then the next slide is one I just throw in, and I think it's from something we've already discussed, but the fact that on this issue of sexual polyandry, that we don't have any of these people who knew what were going on complaining about it. We can explain that away by saying, well, they were devout. They aren't going to complain about sexual polyandry because they were devout or they didn't report it because, you know, they just wanted to keep it hushed up. But the fact that they didn't defend it either, to me is significant, that maybe this didn't exist because if somebody would have gone up to Zina Huntington or to one of her brothers, Dimmick or Oliver, and said, you know, you've got two husbands here, Joseph Smith, and you're married to Henry Jacobs. How does that work? How do you have two husbands? Are you like, you know, you know, with both of these husbands, what's going on here? I don't think that Zina is going to say, or the brothers are going to say, I can't talk about it. I'm going to just be quiet. This is too safe. Because that's a tacit admission. I mean, the listener is going to say, oh, gotcha. That you are doing with both of them. And I think in any sense, if they were doing sexual polyandry, they would have in that instance. And you can bet that the question came up just then as now, that they would have defended it. They said, well, Joseph said it was okay because. Or Joseph said it was just at least to acknowledge it existed and he had sanctioned it. But there's nothing like that. And so to get this from people who knew what was going on, the fact that there's nothing to support it existing at all, I think is significant. And then lastly, next slide. The position of the naturalist like Von Brody is somewhat paradoxical. She and the men and women who are like her, individuals who did not know Joseph Smith, but they expressed their confidence that libido was the primary motivator. Next slide. And that the Nauvoo polygamists, the men and women who knew Joseph Smith personally, just couldn't figure it out. Fawn Brody could figure it out 100 years later, but they couldn't have, because if they had thought it was libido, they would have jumped. Shit. So, in other words. Next slide. Those who knew him best could not see what those who know him least claim to know. And then I want to just end with one last quote. And this is a favorite of mine. It comes to us late, and it's secondhand, and it proposes to be verbatim. So there's always some concerns and weaknesses in this kind of a quote, but it really summarizes the Joseph Smith that I believe in and one that I think the believers can relate to.

John Dehlin [00:42:27] Tell us the source of this quote really quick.

Brian C. Hales [00:42:30] Sure. There were two young men. It comes from an account by a man named Horace Cummings, and I include it in an appendix in my book. But what he did is he heard from a man, Harrison, I'm blocking on his last name, who was in Nauvoo. And he and another young man were invited to some meetings with William Law, where they plotted to kill Joseph Smith. And Joseph kept asking them to go to these meetings to find out what was going on, and they would go, but they almost were killed in the very last meeting because they would not take an Oath that they would see the prophet Joseph get killed. And so when they reported to Joseph the last time, this is what Joseph reportedly said to them. And again, it's not an ideal quote, but the gist of it is certainly something that seems to be what he might have been saying, even if Harrison did not report it accurately to Horace. And he told Horace this from his own mouth. And Horace wrote down these in his journal and then later put them together in his account that I've got in the appendix of my book. But Joseph Smith is reported as saying, they accuse me of polygamy and of being a false prophet and many other things which I do not remember. But I am no false prophet. I am no imposter. I have had no dark revelations. I have had no revelations from the devil. I have made no revelations. I have got nothing up of myself. The same God that has thus far dictated me and directed me and strengthened me in this work, gave me this revelation and commandment on celestial and plural marriage, and. And the same God commanded me to obey it. He said to me that unless I accepted it and introduced it and practiced it, I, together with my people would be damned and cut off from this time henceforth. And they said, if I do so, they will kill me. Oh, what shall I do if I do not practice it? I shall be damned with my people. If I do teach it and practice it and urge it, they say they will kill me, and I know they will. But, said he, we have got to observe it. It is an eternal principle and was given by way of commandment and not by way of instruction.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] And that, for you, is kind of what Joseph Smith's mindset was.

Brian C. Hales [00:45:01] Yeah, it reflects, I think, the belief of the believer, as I've been giving you that extreme view throughout these analyses. And I think this. This kind of sums up their belief in Joseph and what was motivating him.

John Dehlin [00:45:16] Got it. Okay. All right, so what I'm going to do, you know, you kind of prepare this in a bit of a linear fashion. And I think it's an important contribution to just hear, you know, your defense based on the evidence and your logic for belief. And so I'm going to. What I'd like to do is wrap up. Up this section. We'll make this section three of the interview. And what I want to do is now sort of. I want to conclude with just sort of an informal conversation between you and I. And what I'd like to do is I don't want to. I'm not saying put all the evidence aside. But what we're going to do is we're going to. We're going to finish this portion and then come back with the final portion, where I just want to summarize your point of view that is informed by the evidence, but is just based on your faith and your logic and your understanding to paint a picture of how you piece polygamy together from a faithful perspective. Is that okay if we conclude in that kind of way?

Brian C. Hales [00:46:23] Oh, sure. That's fine. And let me also repeat that for those who would maybe consider themselves more on the naturalistic end, Please don't think that I'm trying to convince you of this, because I hope I've acknowledged over and over that the evidence is not concluded and that certainly people on the naturalistic side could quote other evidences to support that position. But sure. But I'm comfortable where I am with my faith and with the evidence that I have found.

John Dehlin [00:46:49] Okay, good. So we're gonna finish part three, and we're gonna do a quick part four where we try and summarize this, but talk more from a faithful perspective than from an evidentiary perspective. And I think listeners will understand what I'm getting at in a bit.

Brian C. Hales [00:47:05] Bit.

John Dehlin [00:47:05] But we'll close up this and then we'll talk more in just a bit. All right?

Brian C. Hales [00:47:09] Yeah. That's great.

John Dehlin [00:47:10] Okay. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@sabre-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com. thanks for listening.

John Dehlin [00:47:29] Come, come, you say no toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo Hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well

John Dehlin [00:48:22] well,

John Dehlin [00:48:26] Why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard t not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward Lord, if we now shun the fight Gird up your lo fresh courage take Our God will never us forsake soon we'll have a tale oh, all is well all is well oh, all is well all is well. Sam. And should we die before our journey is through half a day all is well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives lives are spared again to see the saints the rest obtain I will make this chorus well. Oh, all is well all is well all is well all is well all

Brian C. Hales [00:51:25] is well

John Dehlin [00:51:29] all is well, All is ra.

Brian Hales on Personal Faith and Testimony

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 405

Brian C. Hales [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org all right, Brian, so we're gonna start. This is Brian Hales, author of Joseph Smith's Polygamy by Greg Covert Books, kind of part four. In a discussion about polygamy. This is going to be a quick one. It needs to be done in about 25 minutes or less. And what we're going to try and do is just summarize. And Brian, what I want to do is put away the history as a tool, sort of to defend a case. And what I want to add, you know, so it's not like we're not going to be able to bring any history in. But it's not the point of this last discussion. I want you to bring in your emotion. I want to bring in your spirit, spiritual side. And I'm not saying that those were absent before, but what I now want to do is just have sort of a heart to heart summary of how you view polygamy from a faithful perspective. And I'll guide it by just asking some questions, but let's just try and do a back and forth. Does that make sense?

Brian C. Hales [00:01:33] Sure, that sounds fine.

John Dehlin [00:01:34] Okay, so what, just real briefly, your testimony of the gospel and of Joseph Smith that you said has sort of come from the very beginning. And just talk really briefly about the origins of your faith. Was it a witness you received? Was it some type of miracle? Like, how would you describe really briefly what you base your faith on?

Brian C. Hales [00:02:06] Boy, I appreciate that opportunity or this opportunity, John. I think my first conviction that I recall was when I was a missionary in Venezuela back 100 years ago. Actually, I'm not quite that old, but I remember reading on my mission teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith. And I remember reading in there some things that were quite different from what we were hearing from the Catholics that we were teaching and some evangelicals, the evangelicals that we would talk to about the Bible. And that was kind of a moment for me to say, okay, was he really a prophet? Because this is different from what we're encountering with these investigators. And it was there that I think I made my first conscious decision that, yeah, I believe this or I'm going to believe this. This feels right to me. And from there on out, it hasn't been difficult for me to believe that Joseph was a prophet and to basically follow the mainstream, which I know for some is a challenge, or for some that sentiment is to be condemned because I'm not being objective or I'm not thinking for myself or things of this nature. But that's kind of the beginning for me.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] So for you, you've experienced, you acknowledge the validity of a spiritual realm, of a spiritual way of understanding, and you feel like you've had spiritual confirmation that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.

Brian C. Hales [00:03:45] Yeah, yeah. The scriptures talk about having a burning in your bosom. I'll be honest with you, John. I have no idea what that's talking about. But that same scripture says, but you will know that it is right. And I've written a whole book on light. We haven't mentioned this. It's from Cedar Fort. And I don't mean to plug it here, but in that book I kind of analyze some of these feelings. Another book I wrote called the Veil, where I talk about parting the veil as part of our efforts in life. And how can we do that? One of the veils, of course, is that which separates us from God. But these are processes that are very real to me, and they require some faith and some ability to believe. I have a colleague who's a gynecologist, and he is a staunch atheist, and he's great. I love him and. But he's always talking to me about, how can you believe this stuff? There's just nothing there. He's very much rooted in the sciences, thinking that science has the answers, which they don't, but they don't let on that they don't. We can expand on that if you want, John, but the point I see with him is he cannot possibly entertain the possibility that there's something out there that he cannot measure scientifically. And so he will never be able to know. Because Bruce R. McConkie said this, and it's a favorite quote, that all true religion is a feeling. And I can tell you I have had feelings. I've had things that were more conscious than that. I won't share. But, you know, charismatic experiences are not the only evidence of truth because they're, you know, the devil can do miracles, and there are false spirits Joseph Smith warned us about. So I don't mean to imply that the experiences I've had are absolute proof, but they are for me.

John Dehlin [00:05:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I only care about your perspective here, you know? So this isn't a defense. This is an explanation on your part. Okay, yeah. So, so you start from a place of having felt real, legitimate spiritual confirmation as to the, the prophetic, you know, stance of Joseph Smith. So that's, for me, I think a spiritual, a spiritual position is one that deserves respect and is a credible one. I also believe science and history are credible in their own rights. But, so starting from that, I just want to briefly, really brief answers, go through the narrative and just have you share summaries of how you view things without any lengthy explanations. Just really brief explanations.

Wrestling With Polygamy as a Believer

Brian C. Hales [00:06:20] Okay, so.

John Dehlin [00:06:23] So, I mean, we know that in the Old Testament, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, you know, they practice polygamy, right?

Brian C. Hales [00:06:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:06:31] And so it's hard to argue that polygamy is ungodly if God chose as the father of his chosen nations a bunch of polygamists and didn't outright condemn it or demand that they stop doing it. And then Jesus, of course, deferred to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a foundation he was building upon. So it's pretty hard, it's pretty hard to condemn polygamy if you're sort of of a Judeo Christian mindset. Is that kind of true from your perspective?

Brian C. Hales [00:07:05] Yes. I have another colleague who I love dearly, and she's a born again Christian, and I talked to her about this and, you know, she. Her response is, well, they shouldn't have done it. It causes a lot of problems, but it is a bit of a quandary for them. You know, how do you explain Abraham, who was a friend of God?

John Dehlin [00:07:24] Right, right, absolutely. Okay, so we've got that foundation, and then we fast forward to Joseph Smith, who loves the Bible and feels like he wants to not just restore things, all things, but also add things. I mean, I mean, it's clear that he's doing both. He's trying to restore stuff, and he eventually adds a bunch of new stuff that you can find sources of in the Bible. But the truth is there's a lot of stuff that he added that he provided at least clarification for that the Bible didn't have. So tell us real quick, when you think, just very briefly, when did he first receive the polygamy revelation in your understanding?

Brian C. Hales [00:08:05] Well, the evidence is pretty good that in 1831, Joseph learned that it was a true principle. And then I believe that 1834 is when the angel first came and told him, we want you to do this, Joseph.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] So he gets the Revelation 18:31, but he sits on it. Then in 18:34, you've read from the evidence that an angel comes to him and says, you need to do it. And then Fanny Alger, you say, comes after that. Is that right?

Guest [00:08:33] Right.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Okay. And then the reason why he didn't tell Emma about it and he didn't tell Oliver about it was why? Briefly?

Brian C. Hales [00:08:44] I don't know. And in retrospect, he. Well, he probably knew Emma wouldn't go along with it, but Emma or Joseph was in a tough spot, because if he knew Emma wasn't gonna go with it and there's an angel on the other side, what do you do? And maybe he stumbled. I mean, Joseph wasn't perfect. He may have been able to have done things better. We just don't know. We don't have enough evidence.

John Dehlin [00:09:04] Stumbled by not telling Emma.

Guest [00:09:06] Yeah.

Brian C. Hales [00:09:06] And not telling Oliver or trying to get the angel to come to them or something.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] Okay, so for you, his relationship with Fanny Alger was a plural marriage that he felt too scared to tell Oliver and Emma. Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:09:21] Yeah, that would be. Yeah. A good.

John Dehlin [00:09:23] And then the fact that Oliver ended up kind of getting punished for his accusations, and the fact that Joseph. There's no evidence that he ever really tried to explain, is that sort of just an unfortunate instance of Joseph Smith trying to keep secrets that he thinks are going to be damaging? And he's imperfect. And so Oliver Cowdery becomes unfortunate collateral damage with Joseph just trying to not ruin things by talking about things prematurely. Is that how you would frame the Oliver Cowdery situation?

Brian C. Hales [00:09:59] Yeah, you know, the Oliver one. One aside, there is that Oliver accused Joseph of adultery. And if Joseph had had a marriage performed, he could easily deny with a clear conscience in his realm, deny all

John Dehlin [00:10:14] that I didn't do adultery, and nobody

Brian C. Hales [00:10:17] was asking him about polygamy. This is something I bring up in my books is like, what if somebody had said, well, Joseph, are you doing polygamy?

John Dehlin [00:10:22] Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:10:23] Would he have said, but they weren't asking that they were doing adultery. And he's saying, no, I'm not doing adultery.

John Dehlin [00:10:27] Right. And that. And we all would acknowledge that that's not perfectly. But you're saying there was so much at stake, that he was probably intentionally not being fully honest and that there's Book of Mormon and biblical precedents for not always being completely candid, depending on what's at stake. Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:10:46] Well, again, he's hair splitting, but he could honestly say, I'm not committing adultery and they're hearing.

John Dehlin [00:10:53] But it is misleading. But again, there's biblical precedents and Book of Mormon precedents for saying things that intentionally not giving the full truth as a motivation to guard something sacred. Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:11:08] He clearly didn't disclose very much so

John Dehlin [00:11:12] in that way, probably misled. But in your view, if he did mislead, it was with intent of guarding something sacred. True. And not ruining God's work. Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:11:24] Well, John, I think the word mislead applies better to Nauvoo. We don't have a lot in Kirtland, but I think he was accused of adultery. He denied it honestly, not misleading them because he didn't think he had practiced it. And I just wonder what he would have said if it had been asked about polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:11:40] Right. But you agree that the fully honest thing to do would have been to say, hey, I got this revelation and she was my first plural wife. But he didn't do that. And my guess is that you would say he didn't do that because he didn't feel like it was the right time.

Brian C. Hales [00:11:56] Well, I think he did it to Emma and to Oliver, and they rejected it. And how much further he shared it, we don't know.

John Dehlin [00:12:04] Oh, so surrounding the phanalgia affair, he did. There is evidence that he did start talking about polygamy to them?

Brian C. Hales [00:12:10] Oh, I'm sure he did. Well, again, this is speculation, but I'm quite sure that he would have told them why he was doing it. And the reason we know that is that Benjamin F. Johnson. Anyway, we don't want to get into evidence, but there is evidence that people were told that polygamy was being restored

John Dehlin [00:12:26] during the Fanny Alger time period.

Brian C. Hales [00:12:28] Right. Right. Now, these are late recollections, but I think he told them, and they just says, I don't believe it. I think you're after Fanny because she's good looking.

John Dehlin [00:12:36] But that's. That's kind of a. You're kind of. You're filling in some blanks there, you know, that we don't have hard evidence that he told them at that point.

Brian C. Hales [00:12:44] At that point, Lyman Sherman was told polygamy was being restored, and then he died. And Benjamin Johnson said he was quoting Lyman. So, you know, if that story's true, then Joseph was teaching plural marriage was to be restored at that time.

John Dehlin [00:12:57] Right. Okay. Okay. So then he. He sits on it for a while. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't start polygamy again until, what, 1840.

Brian C. Hales [00:13:08] 1841. April 5th.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] Okay, 1841. And again, just really briefly, what do you think it was that made him start it up again? Was there another angel? Is there any writings of that type of thing?

Brian C. Hales [00:13:24] We are told by Mary Elizabeth ROLLINS There were three visits. We have a date for the first one. 1834. A date for the last one, 1842. And I'm surmising the second visit is what prompted that.

John Dehlin [00:13:34] 1834, that might have been.

Brian C. Hales [00:13:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:13:36] And so from your perspective, he started that up in Nauvoo again and again, didn't let Emma know and didn't let the other Saints know why.

Brian C. Hales [00:13:49] Correct? Right. The quorum of the 12 were out of town. He didn't have counselors that he could trust. So he went to Joseph B. Noble as one of the first who were to learn of it.

John Dehlin [00:14:02] And then, you know, for those who would claim that it was all just Joseph's desire to have sex, your summary would be what bullet points? You know, what I've heard you say is that there are a lot easier ways to have sex, that he could have done it in lots of other ways that. Go ahead and fill in the blank. I don't want to speak for you.

Brian C. Hales [00:14:28] Well, you've hit the biggest one. And even many non LDS writers and researchers have acknowledged if Joseph were just looking for sexual opportunities, he could have done it much more easily. And the evidence, as I've argued for a lot of sex in Nauvoo is not great. And quite honestly, nobody wanted to do this. There's not any accounts of people running up to do this, but somehow people are saying that Joseph wanted to do it. There's this huge disconnect between all of the reactions of the people who tell us what they felt in Nauvoo when they were told about polygamy and the reaction that they assumed Joseph Smith had. I like the accounts that talk about Joseph arguing with the angels, saying, look, the Book of Mormon condemns polygamy and that he pled on his knees with the angel. I can see that happening because that's the normal reaction virtually everybody in Nauvoo had when it came to plural marriage and being introduced.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] So from your point of view, he was kind of dragged into it. He didn't really want to do it, and he did it. He hid it to protect the work. And that if sex, you know, some sex did happen. But you're saying it wasn't a whole lot.

Brian C. Hales [00:15:40] What I'm saying is the evidence doesn't support that it was a lot, and you can't prove a negative. And so, you know, maybe. Maybe there was a lot more than we have evidence for. But Joseph gave three reasons, and we've talked about these. To restore polygamy, multiply, replenish. And the third one was to allow all worthy women to be sealed to an eternal companion. And that to me is by far the most important, important. But sexuality was part of it. These were bona fide marriages. The men and the women saw themselves as actually being married. And so for them to be having conjugal relations is expected.

John Dehlin [00:16:12] Right. But having said that, you don't see a lot of evidence for a lot of conjugal relations. And when it comes to the polyandry portion, just a high level, why do you think polyandry was allowed or was an important part of this?

Brian C. Hales [00:16:29] You know, polyandry is still difficult. And it goes back to the quote I had with Lucy Walker where she says, Joseph said a woman would have her choice. And apparently there were married women, women with legal husbands who didn't want to be with those husbands for eternity, and they chose Joseph. Now, it begs the question, well, why would Joseph allow these? I mean, even if the woman is pushing him, wouldn't he be saying, you know, go be sealed to your legal husband? I mean, these are some question marks that I don't know that I have a real satisfactory answer for that one.

John Dehlin [00:16:59] Okay. And it's fair to say that if these women didn't know about the law of eternal marriage when they entered into their marriages, they might have made very different decisions. And since they believed Joseph was going to the celestial kingdom and they loved him, you know, I mean, I guess it's logical to say that they should be allowed to make that decision of their own free will and choice. Right?

Brian C. Hales [00:17:23] Well, it is interesting that the only generation where these were allowed is that very first generation where the women had entered into legal marriages without the thought of eternity. And at least one of the wives, though, he told her, look, when we get out to the Rocky Mountains, I'll be able to acknowledge you as a wife. So she may have been intrigued for other reasons too. This was a non polyandrous wife that said that.

John Dehlin [00:17:43] Right. And were the. Were there ever polyandrous relationships where the husbands weren't knowledgeable? Like, was it hidden from the polyandrous husbands or were they pretty much always informed? Or do you know?

Brian C. Hales [00:17:56] Do you know, the different authors say different things about how much the husbands knew about these seedlings? Todd Compton, I think, hits it on the head in chronicling that. We don't know. We do not have any idea. But as I said earlier, I think 11 of them were eternity only, which would not have been a bother to the non members at least. And we don't what the member husbands thought about it. But none of them left a record criticizing Joseph for allowing It. So that's a puzzler.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Do we know of polyandrous husbands who knew that their wives were married to Joseph at some point?

Brian C. Hales [00:18:36] Yeah, some of them obviously found out about it, usually later. But like one husband stood proxy for Joseph in the Nauvoo temple as they re performed that sealing. So they would have found out at point that the woman was sealed to Joseph. But exactly when there's just almost no documentation.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] But there's no evidence of a polyandrus husband complaining about Joseph marrying one of his wives.

Brian C. Hales [00:19:03] There are a couple of them that express disappointment that the woman didn't choose him for the eternal husband. But nobody left a record saying Joseph is a scoundrel or a rascal or. I'm kind of bugged at him for doing this. There's nothing that I found. We've looked hard.

John Dehlin [00:19:18] Okay, okay. So, you know, one of the biggest questions people have, as we kind of summarize, is that people have is that it's like, what kind of God would allow this confusion? You know, this just seems like a mess. And it seems like, why is he sending an angel with a sword? And why is he asking men to give up their wives to Joseph? Like a lot of. And this goes back to some of the theodicy questions about the Bible. And sometimes God can appear cruel or confusing. So how do you feel about just the messiness of it all as it relates to God being at the head of such confusion? How do you work through that yourself?

Brian C. Hales [00:20:12] Well, you know, John, it's a great question because I think of all of the questions that we would have had going into this research and again, emphasizing that faith is needed to answer a lot of these. But the one that I still can't fully answer to my own satisfaction is why did God command it now? Why did he permit it? I can understand that because it allows every worthy women to be sealed to an eternal husband. And when Joseph introduced eternal marriage is the only way to exaltation, then there apparently are going to be women who need a husband and polygamy allows for them to be sealed. So that's why it's permitted. But why it was commanded at that time and place? I mean, life was hard enough and missionary work was tough enough, but when you throw in polygamy, missionary work just almost stopped and the persecution was ramped up. But the thing that balances that is that you've got the participants are telling us about their own incredible spiritual experiences that are supporting them in this practice. That I don't understand why it's commanded but the. The angel visits are there. The visions are there from these people. And of course, as I said before, the charismatic experiences are not proof, but it's exactly what you would expect them to be reporting if God was behind it. But I don't have a full answer as why did God command it there? Because he had never commanded it before to a people. We have him commanding Abraham to take hagar in section 132. That's the only other person who was ever commanded in the scriptures to practice plural marriage.

John Dehlin [00:21:47] That's not in the Old Testament. That's the Doctrine and Covenants.

Brian C. Hales [00:21:50] Right, Right. In the Old Testament, it's Sarah who encourages him to take Hagar.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] Okay. Okay, got it. So for you, you just don't know. And you know, and that's. I guess that goes back to faith, right? It's just to say God's ways are not. It's kind of Isaiah 55. Right. God's ways are not my ways. And we have to have faith that sometimes things are messy.

Brian C. Hales [00:22:16] Well, yeah, that's. That's the way I do it. I also add to that I'm so grateful I didn't live then because it's hard. I've said this before, but polygamy expands a man's emotional and sexual opportunities as a husband as it simultaneously fragments a woman's emotional and sexual opportunities as a. As a plural wife. And that's tough. There's just no way to defend that.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] So the inequality does disturb.

Brian C. Hales [00:22:41] Right? Yeah. It does disturb me, though I add usually that in eternity, I don't think any woman feels like she's fragmented because of the way time is different there, but on earth, it's a toughie to defend this practice.

John Dehlin [00:22:53] Right. So you're not. But at the same time. And you won't have time to go into this. But at the same time, did you see a lot of beauty and strength and power come from polygamy in terms of what you read, both for the individual lives of those who practiced it and for what it did for the church in the long run? Did you see flowers come from this pile of poo that some might call it do?

Brian C. Hales [00:23:20] You know, since my focus was just on those 115 Nauvoo polygamists, and they were doing it completely in secret, we didn't get to see a lot of that. But I can tell you one experience I had just two or three years ago, I was asked to speak at the Hales family reunion, and we all went back to a monogamous couple who was sealed in the Nauvoo temple. They had four sons and two daughters, so there were six offspring. But because those sons took an additional six wives among them, among the four brothers, we ended up with 12 lines coming down of genealogy. And I just said to this group of about 600 people that were all Hales, half of you would not be invited to this meeting probably if we hadn't had polygamy. And so to me, that's a positive thing. And I don't think the numbers are too far off. I think that somewhere around that number would not have been invited there. So as a need to jumpstart the church's size and things in the West, I think polygamy fulfilled that role. But it's about the only one that I can really identify. There are better people to ask that question to, actually, because I'm not a Utah polygamist expert by any stretch.

John Dehlin [00:24:31] That's fine. That's fine. Do you. When. Do you wonder why it's not something the church is working towards practicing today. Do you ever wonder, you know, when President Hinckley said what he said about it not being doctrinal? And we don't need to split hairs about whether that was honest or not honest, but do you ever wonder sometimes about, you know, why not, or if the church might ever try and bring it back?

Brian C. Hales [00:25:00] I don't think it'll be back before the millennium. It'll have to be practiced through the millennium just to get every woman who's worthy to have a husband. But let me tell you, Proposition 8 in California excludes polygamy as strongly as it does same sex marriage. And to me, that was a sign of what the Church is thinking about polygamy. I don't think I'm over reading it. Perhaps I am, but.

John Dehlin [00:25:25] And yet you would guess that the brethren would still believe it's an eternal principle.

Brian C. Hales [00:25:29] Well, as I've said, polygamy has never been hard for me to understand because it is needed to allow all worthy women to be exalted. I'm repeating that too many times here. But so from a theological standpoint, I'm sure they. I would expect they all accept that as theology, but certainly the practice right now would not be a positive in any way that I can think of.

John Dehlin [00:25:53] But you still believe it's an eternal principle and you imagine the brethren still do?

Brian C. Hales [00:25:57] Yeah. In fact, I love Joseph Smith's description of exaltation as families. To me, that is just beautiful. And it requires plural marriage for a small number of the women who wouldn't be able to be saved if there was only monogamy.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] So you tend to see it as maybe something that the early church needed for God's wisdom and to solve the imbalance of there being a few more women than men. But in your mind, this is more of an isolated doctrine that has local application, but it's not going to be kind of the main law of the land in the celestial kingdom. It's going to be more the exception than the rule. Is that how you see it?

Brian C. Hales [00:26:36] Well, I don't believe that every man in the celestial kingdom is a polygamist. And you can't find any church leaders saying that without qualifications. There's two or three quotes that the fundamentalists use quite often, but when you look at them in context, that's not what they're saying. And personally, I don't think there's going to be enough extra wisdom women to go around so that every man can have two. So, you know, if you look at it from a kind of a practical standpoint and reread section 132 and about the need to have a spouse or to you will live separately and singly without exaltation through all eternity, you know that it becomes pretty plain that these women are going to need a husband. But it isn't two to one the ratio of worthy women to men. So I see it as absolutely necessary for a small number of the total. But if we only had eternal monogamy, there were still be billions and billions who could be saved, but there would be some women that wouldn't be able to.

John Dehlin [00:27:31] So it'll be the exception, probably not the rule as you see it.

Brian C. Hales [00:27:36] Yeah, we don't know the numbers, but I would doubt that even 50% of the men will be polygamous there. And then you've got some polygamists like Joseph who've got dozens of women sealed to him. So that leaves a lot of room for monogamy, which makes me happy.

John Dehlin [00:27:51] Right.

Brian C. Hales [00:27:51] I'm still trying to do that, but okay.

John Dehlin [00:27:54] Okay, good. You're single right now, is that right?

Brian C. Hales [00:27:56] Yes, I am.

John Dehlin [00:27:57] Okay, so Brian's a very eligible bachelor for any. For any woman out there who's interested. We'll give you Brian's email address. All right, Brian. Well, I'm taking my daughter to soccer practice now, so I need to wrap things up. I just wanted to give you a final note. Chance to kind of bear your testimony and say whatever you want. It can be about what you study. With Joseph's polygamy, it can just be about the Gospel. But just feel free to sort of conclude from an emotional and a spiritual and from an intellectual standpoint, you know, whatever testimony you want to leave with our audience.

Final Reflections and Closing Thoughts

Brian C. Hales [00:28:37] Well, I appreciate that, John, and I certainly don't want to turn off those that disagree and find this objectionable, but I do. This whole thing was brought home to me after studying this for about four years. I was in Deseret Book and I saw a picture of Joseph Smith up on the wall, and I just had this feeling towards him of appreciation, even love for him that just kind of flowed spontaneously from me. And I realized that that was the result of my research in polygamy. And I just thought that's kind of weird, because who would have thought polygamy would have brought me closer to Joseph and stronger in my convictions of him? And that was probably the first time that I ever realized that that was what the upshot of all of this was for me personally, that, you know, I do believe that he was a prophet of the living God and that God is reaching out to all of us through him. That he was an Incredible Prophet. Top 10 of all the spirits to come to this earth, Joseph Smith was right there among them. And that we're very grateful, we should be very grate, and we're very fortunate to live in his dispensation. And that would be my witness or my convictions that I'd share. And I just have grown to really love this man as a virtuous prophet of the living God.

John Dehlin [00:29:53] And for those who are finding their study of polygamy to lead them out of the church or out of faith, what final advice, you know, might you give them with respect for whatever ultimate decision they might want to make? Is there some advice or a plea that you would offer them, you know, to not give up too quickly?

Brian C. Hales [00:30:16] Well, I would just say that I think when all the evidence gets out there, Joseph does just fine. And if you're leaving the church because of polygamy, well, find a better reason, because this is not it. When the evidence is out there, when we can cut through the garbage we've been given by the fombronis and just let the evidence speak for itself, we can find plenty of room for virtuous Joseph Smith who didn't want to do it and was compelled by his God through an angel to carry this forth. And like I say, if you're going to leave the church, don't let it be over polygamy. Find another reason. Kinderhook plates or something like that, but not polygamy, okay?

John Dehlin [00:30:51] Brian Hales. The books are Joseph Smith's Polygamy by Greg Crowford Books. You can get them at Greg Crowford, Amazon, other places. We'll put links to it up on the website. Brian's got a couple websites. We'll link to those as well. And Brian, we just want to thank you so much for coming on Mormon Stories. We really appreciate it, John.

Brian C. Hales [00:31:11] You're very kind. And thanks for everybody for listening. Thank you so much.

John Dehlin [00:31:15] All right, take care, Brian. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Guest [00:31:35] Come, come ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way Though hard to you this journey meant appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo your hearts will sweat. Oh, all is well, all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is high Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your lo fresh courage take our God will ever for us for sake soon we'll have tale to tell oh, all is well, all is well oh, all is well all is well. And should we die before our journey's through Happy day All is well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared Again to see the saints the rest obtain. I will make this chorus swell. Oh, I'll is well all is well all is well

John Dehlin [00:35:28] all is well

Guest [00:35:31] all

Brian C. Hales [00:35:31] is well

Guest [00:35:35] oh, is well. All in the way all in the way.

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