Welcome back to Part 34 of our series with Dr. John G. Turner! Today we are covering most of Chapter 27 in John Turner’s new book Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. The chapter is called “Deep Water” and covers the year 1843.
The main topic for today is polygamy.
Join us as we discuss several of Joseph Smith’s wives such as Flora Woodworth, Eliza R. Snow, Sarah Ann Whitney, Lucy Walker, etc. John Dehlin challenges Dr. John Turner on specific aspects such as whether Emma Smith really did push Eliza R. Snow down the stairs and whether or not Porter Rockwell did actually attempt to assassinate Lilburn Boggs. We also discuss the validity of the William Clayton journals and postulate on why the church has yet to publish them.
Throughout 1843, Joseph Smith promised men and women salvation based on their willingness to enter into polygamy. He spent church funds on gifts for his wives, as well as buying some of them plots of land, and even travel expenses for some of the women (from England to Nauvoo). Joseph Smith used language that could be seen as coercive, for example, telling Lucy Walker that polygamy was a command of God and that he would give her “until tomorrow to decide this matter [of polygamy] and that “If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you.”
In this episode we tackle hard questions such as: Can people who do bad things also be good? Does good behavior negate seemingly abusive actions? Are people all bad and all good? Can Joseph Smith’s actions be seen as human trafficking?
This chapter in Mormonism is deeply problematic and disturbing, but Dr. John Turner handles it amazingly.
If you’d like to help keep this project going, please consider donating to support this series. Your support makes long-form, in-depth historical discussion like this possible!
https://donorbox.org/josephsmith.
Purchase John Turner’s book here: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300255164/joseph-smith/
Let us know your thoughts on a Brigham Young series (comprising ten episodes) covering John Turner’s book Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet.
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guest: John Turner
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Episode Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to Part 34 of the Joseph Smith Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is March 11, 2026. We've been away for a week or two. Lots going on, including threats of the Mormon Church suing me and the Open Stories Foundation. So that's kind of been a little bit pressing. We are here today to discuss this amazing book, Joseph Smith, the Rise and Fall of an American Prophet by Dr. John G. Turner. I am sporting my Aggies cap today. I still have my George Mason hat here on my desk. Go Patriots. But today it's Go Aggies, because the Utah State Aggies won outright the Mountain West Basketball Conference championship. So I got to say, go Aggies. How are the Patriots doing in terms of the NCAA tournament? John Turner.
John Turner [00:00:58] I think we're looking a little shaky. We had a great start to the year. Then we tailed off for a while. We've got our conference tournament coming up. We made the finals of the conference tournament last year. So, you know, who knows? Maybe. Maybe we can get on a run if.
John Dehlin [00:01:14] Does the winner of your conference championship have an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament?
John Turner [00:01:20] Correct.
John Dehlin [00:01:20] Okay, well, maybe. Maybe the Aggies and the Patriots will meet in the NCAA tournament. Stranger things have happened.
John Turner [00:01:28] Okay, well, I'm not holding my breath, but that's okay because we've got other exciting things going on.
John Dehlin [00:01:34] And you're sporting the T shirt. John Turner.
John Turner [00:01:36] I am in a Nauvoo state of mind.
John Dehlin [00:01:41] This is a Billy Joel reference there. I love it. All right, well, today we are going to be covering Chapter 27 of John Turner's book. Even though it's the 34th part of this series, we're covering the 1843 part of the 1843 period. The chapter's called Deep Water. Boy, is it. It's not just Deep water for Joseph, but for many other people in his life. The main topic today is going to be polygamy and eternal marriage and celestial marriage and eternal sealings, that sort of thing. Lots of polygamy and sex today. Lots of have a brief Kinderhook plates detour. But other than that, it's pretty much all polygamy. I do wanna just remind people that the Joseph Smith podcast series can be consumed as a part of the Mormon Stories podcast feed on YouTube and on Spotify and on Apple and wherever you get your podcasts. It's also a standalone playlist on The Mormon Stories YouTube channel, so you can consume it in sequence there. And it's a standalone podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just called the Joseph Smith Podcast. If you just want these episodes and nothing else, I'll also remind you all that this series exists due to the generosity of you, our donors. If you've donated to either Mormon Stories Podcast that's helped or many of you have donated specifically to the Joseph Smith Podcast, you can donate to the Joseph Smith Podcast by going to donorbox.org Joseph Smith and that's how you can become a donor to keep this series alive. We do pay John Turner for his efforts here. And John Turner, a generous donor, reached out and offered to put money towards the continuation of this series focusing on Brigham Young. Because you, before you, you wrote a biography of Joseph Smith. John Turner, you also authored a biography on Brigham Young. And I think I saw an email where you may have consented to what, a 10 part series on Brigham Young? Is that right?
John Turner [00:03:54] I did suggest that we could do, do something like that. I, you know, after 34 episodes of this, I'm surprised people aren't offering you money to just wrap it up and, you know, push, push me aside. But I, I really appreciate that people value history and one of the things I've always loved about Mormon history is that so many people care about it from all sorts of different perspectives. This history matters, matters to people. It has reverberations for lots of people down to the present day. So I love talking about it and I'm happy to continue to do so.
John Dehlin [00:04:39] Well, if I'm, if I'm counting right, we're going to reach at least episode part 39. So this series is going to end up a 39 or 40 part series. Does the epilogue deserve its own chapter? I haven't read it yet. I haven't read ahead.
John Turner [00:04:57] Man. I feel like we could make, if we made it an even 40, it would be like a biblical style flood of information about Joseph Smith. If you did one episode a day, you could have a 40 day Joseph Smith flood.
John Dehlin [00:05:12] 40 days and 40 nights of Joseph Smith with John Turner and John Dehlin. I love it. Okay, so this series is gonna wrap up around episode 40. There's an end in sight. But stay tuned. There might be a Brigham Young 10 episode Nightcap, something like that. All right, John Turner. Well, so today is 1843, deep water, chapter 27. And I will warn viewers and listeners that we have discussed some of the content from this chapter in previous episodes. And I'm just going to warn people, we're probably going to rediscuss some of these stories because I think they do. I like these episodes to be comprehensive of a chapter. But also, we're going to revisit some of these stories because honestly, many of them are worthy of a second discussion. But, John Turner, why don't you start by painting the picture of what's going on in Joseph Smith's 1843 Nauvoo. And you start by talking about all. Now that John C. Bennett is on the outs, Joseph basically just assumes all of John C. Bennett's titles, which were not few in number. So take it away, John Turner.
Setting the Stage in Nauvoo, 1843
John Turner [00:06:35] Yeah. So to set the stage, Joseph Smith is really feeling back on top. In January of 1843, he had been on the run from the law for months on end. In 1842, he'd been embroiled in public feuding with people like Orson Pratt and Sidney Rigdon. But as of the new year, he triumphed in court. He came back to Nauvoo. He re baptized the Pratts. He feels safer legally from his enemies in Missouri, people who he had been antagonistic toward, namely Orson Pratt, Sidney Rigdon. They're still on the inside. John C. Bennett, he is still trying to find ways to damage Joseph Smith. But, you know, his, his threat is fading a little bit. Nauvoo is growing. Immigrants from England are continuing to arrive. So things had sort of been on hold for Joseph for. For half a year because of the. The legal trouble and being sort of hiding out from the law. And now Joseph can move forward with everything from building the temple to the buying and sale of property in Nauvoo, building up the church. And also, Joseph is now in a position to renew his pursuit of plural wives. So that had been on hold while he had been on the run. So what we have is an emboldened Joseph Smith ready to move forward on all fronts.
Joseph Smith's Many Roles in Nauvoo
John Dehlin [00:08:35] Okay. And you mentioned at the beginning of chapter 27, Deep Water, that Nauvoo, Illinois, is rivaling Chicago, Illinois in size. Did I, did I get that right?
John Turner [00:08:48] Yeah. So now when you hear that, you might think of the Miracle Mile in Chicago and you think, wow, how could that be? I mean, Chicago is also not enormous, enormous as of the early 1840s, but Nauvoo peaks in the mid-1840s at perhaps 5 or 10,000 residents. So for the time, it's a sizable city and it's a period of rapid growth. One of the things that Joseph Smith is really good at, and he demonstrates again and again, is he can build a city up out of nothing and get people to flock to it, get to work, and start building houses, temples, communities. He's really good at that.
John Dehlin [00:09:43] And remind us of all the titles Joseph is now holding in 1843 with John C. Bennett on the outs.
John Turner [00:09:51] So most significantly, he is, of course, church president. He is now also the mayor of Nauvoo. He was elevated to that position after Bennett's resignation. He's also Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, technically the first person in the country to hold that rank since George Washington. So there's a lot of exaltation there. So those are the main ones. Joseph is always wearing a lot of hats. Being mayor of Nauvoo also means that he presides over the city's municipal court, which is. Which is also a big deal.
John Dehlin [00:10:43] So he's executive branch head of the executive branch and the judicial branch, Right, Correct. And the legislative. I mean, the city council, I believe
John Turner [00:10:52] he presides over city council meetings.
John Dehlin [00:10:55] He's all three executive. He's all three branches of government in one executive and the church and the military.
John Turner [00:11:03] Right. And as we've talked about before, so much of these activities all take place on the upper floor of his red brick store in Nauvoo. It's the center of everything. And so you're often in situations in which the city council might meet and then they leave and the Relief Society comes in and they meet and, you know, Joseph's next door, and then you can have church meetings, church councils. So everything. Everything really seems to transpire there.
John Dehlin [00:11:39] So instead of having a white house, he has a red house, red brick store.
John Turner [00:11:44] Yeah, his white house, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:11:47] Okay. And then you also mentioned at the beginning of chapter 27 that. That the church is kind of. My interpretation is that the Mormon Church, the LDS Church, at this point is operating like a business, really, because you talk about massive property holdings. The church isn't just a church. You mentioned that the LDS Church has massive property holdings and a significant number of real estate transactions. Is it fair to say that the LDS Church is operating kind of like a corporation at this point or not? Is that fair?
John Turner [00:12:24] Well, it's not a new thing. Back in the early 1830s, I think as early as 1831, Joseph and his associates had formed something called the United Firm to bring various commercial operations of the church under one umbrella. And Joseph himself, on his own capacity, has often been involved in merchandising. The relationship between the church's business and Joseph's business is always a bit of a tangled mess. It causes a lot of trouble legally. After Joseph's murder, as Emma, on the one hand, and church leaders try to untangle Some of those connections, but yes. So Joseph and. Or in his own capacity or as trustee and trust of the church, owns and controls a lot of real estate. As people stream into the city, Joseph is involved in a large number of property transactions. Newcomers need lots, sometimes they need loans. It's a sort of a juggling act trying to hold all of these activities together.
John Dehlin [00:13:51] It would be interesting for someone to do, maybe one of our viewers or listeners can do a calculation. It'd be interesting to know at the peak of the church's power and influence in Nauvoo, what its adjusted net worth would be in 20, $26. You know, is it a million dollar corporate church? Is it a ten million dollar corporate church? Again, in adjusted dollars? I'd be curious to get a sense for that.
John Turner [00:14:22] Well, one thing that always happens is, or not always happens, but, but happened repeatedly is Joseph and church leaders bought relatively undeveloped land on the cheap, as they do on both sides of the Mississippi river after the expulsion from Missouri. That land they bought on very favorable terms. And then of course, as thousands of church members move to Nauvoo and surrounding communities, that land rises in value considerably. This had happened in Missouri. Kirtland was less undeveloped, but it also happened, happened there. So the hope, or one part of the hope was, you know, as the church provided land for newcomers, everybody's land holdings would rise in value. I wouldn't say that the church was enormously wealthy at the time, nor was Joseph personally, despite the assets that he possessed. For instance, and I don't talk about this in detail in this chapter or in the book, but in 1843, Joseph files for bankruptcy. You know, his, his debts often exceed his. His assets.
John Dehlin [00:16:03] Yeah, but. Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's this saying that if you want to get rich, start a business, if you want to get really rich, start a religion. The, the real estate holdings and the financial transactions, whatever, Joseph's personal debts or bankruptcies aside, I mean, this is how eventual really wealthy churches kind of get started. And nowadays I remember watching a biopic on McDonald's on Ray Kroc, and he got really, really rich when he stopped thinking about McDonald's as a burger franchise and he started thinking of McDonald's as a real estate company. Because what he would do is he would buy the real estate and then lease the real estate back to the franchisees. And you know, McDonald's made a lot of money off of burgers, but it made a whole lot of money off of owning the real estate under the franchises. And it just seems now we know that the LDS Church is like the second or third largest private land owner in the United States, as I understand it. And how could it not be said that it begins with Joseph's land purchases in Kirtland and then eventually in Nauvoo. It just seems like that's the birth. This is the birth of the LDS Church becoming a massive real estate, you know, multi hundred billion dollar corporation.
John Turner [00:17:47] Yeah, well, during Joseph's lifetime, Joseph never. His communities never lasted. So the land never became truly valuable. These investments did not ever really pay off. Joseph himself did live in accordance with greater affluence in the last couple years of his life. You know, he. He and the household and Emma move into a much finer residence in the fall of 1843. Joseph dresses like someone with greater means toward the end. End of his life. And so he, he sort of gives off the appearance of a more wealthy man. Now, under Brigham Young, the church, they stay in Utah, and Brigham Young accumulates a much, much greater fortune than Joseph Smith was able to do. The church. And we don't need to digress too much now, but the church has had its financial ups and downs over the years. I think at the turn of the 20th century, the things went really south financially under Lorenzo Snow. And I think since then, you could say the church has almost overcorrected toward making sure, you know, they have sort of a rainy century fund, rainy millennial fund.
John Dehlin [00:19:21] What are you talking about?
John Turner [00:19:23] Well, that would be appropriate, right?
John Dehlin [00:19:25] No, and y' all have to forgive me, I'm just kind of trying to process all this, looking with a modern lens of the church. But then also, and all I'm saying is that the seeds of the Mormon church becoming a $500 billion multinational corporation with extensive real estate holdings, the seeds of that eventuality to me, are born in Kirtland and Nauvoo. Real estate dealings that may all go south, but that tees up, you know, because we think of a church as like a church owns one plot of land, the plot of land the church sits on. And then what the church does is it just has a weekly church service with its members. Clearly, that's not the model that Joseph Smith is experimenting with in the 1830s and 40s. He's setting this church up to eventually become what it is today. In my view, as I'm reading it. Maybe I'm wrong.
John Turner [00:20:29] No, and you're right. You're right to finger a fundamental distinction between Joseph Smith's church and, say, the Methodist Church or the Presbyterian Church. Now, those denominations also end up owning a fair amount of real estate. But you're quite right, they would want a church for each plot of land for each congregation. Joseph is buying up land for communities and then he then necessarily spends a lot of his time on property transactions.
John Dehlin [00:21:12] Yeah. Okay, well, the next part of your chapter is, is kind of where the title comes from. You talk about Joseph faking monogamy and having up to 15 wives, you know, during the beginning of this chapter in 1843. And, and you, you give it a really amazing psychological profile of Joseph Smith. Can you talk to us about where that Deep Water title, the quote that it comes from and what it tells us about the psychology of Joseph Smith in your mind?
The Deep Water Quotation and Joseph's Mindset
John Turner [00:21:48] Sure. So Joseph said, deep water is what I am want to swim in. And excitement has almost become the essence of my life. When that dies away, I feel almost lost. I think he just, he had some self awareness that he plunged himself into dangerous currents again and again. I just, you know, I talked a little bit about how in theory, he could sort of have done a bit of a reset at the beginning of 1843. He was clear of legal danger. The furor surrounding John C. Bennett had largely passed. Joseph was not one to say, hey, I just, I just barely survived this. I'd better be a little bit more prudent going forward. He just plunges right back into complicated dangers now. I do, actually, one thing I would say, and I don't say this in the book, but in terms of plural marriage, it's conceivable that Joseph realized that it could be risky to marry already married women or to propose to already married women. Because what I think was a proposal to Sarah Pratt really blows up in the summer of 1842. Going forward, there is a shift in 1843 and that the women that Joseph is sealed to, they are young unmarried women, single women, and often teenage girls, often teenagers or in their early 20s. And so that's different from the, the, the prior year. Now, there had been some previous ceilings to single women like Eliza Snow, Louisa Beaman, but there'd been a lot of, there'd been a lot of plural marriages to already married women. And so there's a bit of a shift as Joseph resumes his marriages.
John Dehlin [00:24:16] So he shifts from already married women in general to younger girls. Yeah, in this chapter, there's a girl as young as 15 that he's trying to marry. We'll talk about that. I just want to summarize this Deep Water quote, this idea that Joseph feels lost when he isn't in danger. That's kind of how I summarized, reminds me of like adrenaline junkies of skydivers and rock climbers and I mean it's an interesting psychological profile that if he wasn't constantly endangering himself and I would say the people around him, he felt depressed and lost. That is a shocking but sense making quote. Where does that quote come from, that deep water quote? Because that's, I think that along with the rough stone rolling quote might be one of the most important psychological characterizations of Joseph's mind.
John Turner [00:25:22] So I don't remember the exact circumstances of the quote. It's from mid May of 1843. It's recorded in Wilford Woodruff's journal. I think it is Joseph in private conversation with a group of people, but I don't entirely remember. But yes, I totally agree with you. Joseph's he has a very pronounced recklessness and there's hardly a chance, there's hardly a catching of breath between one reckless endeavor and the next. And there's just not, there's not a lot of prudence and caution. And Joseph seemed to find those scenarios exhilarating, almost life sustaining. And so he plunged right into them.
John Dehlin [00:26:18] And by the way, that Wilford Woodruff journal is dated, entry is 5-14-1843. So we're not talking about a 40 year late recollection. This is what Wilford Woodruff, eventual prophet of the church is writing in his journal at the time of what Joseph is saying. So that's, that's pretty telling and pretty shocking. But also it makes sense, it explains his super reckless behavior which you've been talking about now for so many chapters, right?
John Turner [00:26:52] I think so, yeah. And as you said, as you sort of said, it's almost with each chapter some of Joseph's actions and decisions become more outrageous and this continues right through the end of his life. And it's a little bit hard to know how to assess this. I think at times Joseph's predilection for danger and risk, that could be self destructive. On the other hand you could say that a lot of Joseph's hair, you know, kind of hair brained ideas and schemes from the Book of Mormon to founding a city among the Lamanites, to building temples, I mean again and again these harebrained schemes were also visionary things that drew people to him. So this is both key to his success and key to his self destruction.
John Dehlin [00:28:06] But the members of the church today who are enjoying being Latter Day Saints have this psychological profile to thank because his audaciousness is part of why the church is so successful today. He didn't quit, he kept doubling and tripling down. And each time he's forging the foundations of what has made the church so successful today.
John Turner [00:28:31] Also true.
Joseph Smith's Marriages to Teenage Girls
John Dehlin [00:28:32] All right, so speaking of endangering himself, let's now talk about Joseph, his shift to marrying teenage brides. There's several successive new wives that you talk about in this chapter and I think it begins with Flora Woodworth. I think you called her raven haired. So
John Turner [00:28:59] I don't know, that's, that's, that's, that's almost a touch of sensationalism for me. But yes. So she was 16 years of age at the time of her ceiling to Joseph, which was in March of 1843. She's the daughter of a close associate of Joseph, Lucien Woodworth, who's not, he's not particularly well known, I think outside of Mormon history buffs, but he was an architect and sort of in charge of the Nauvoo House project. Joseph envisioned sort of a resident slash inn in Nauvoo. Lucien Woodworth, his nickname was the Pagan Prophet. And the reasons for that aren't entirely clear. But perhaps because he had not yet been baptized into the church, I think his wife had been. You can tell that there is a lot of connection between Joseph and the Woodworths. In Joseph's Journal for 1843. There are a lot of visits to the Woodworth household. There are some instances in which Joseph takes Flora Woodworth on carriage rides. Joseph gave her a gold watch. So it seems that oftentimes Joseph didn't have much in the way of ongoing connection with his plural wives. He did seem more smitten with Flora Woodworth than was typical.
John Dehlin [00:31:03] I mean this, this idea of Joseph being smitten with a raven haired teenage girl, taking her on carriage rides, which would be the equivalent of, I don't know, car rides and fancy cars or limos. Certainly not everyone had a carriage, I'm guessing. Certainly the money to pay for the carriage came from tithing to the church. What is Joseph doing buying a teenager, raven haired, good looking teenage girl a gold watch? Where would he have gotten the money for the gold watch? And why is he buying a gold watch for a raven haired teenage girl?
John Turner [00:31:43] So
John Dehlin [00:31:46] it sounds, I mean like, like a really crazy thing for a religious prophet to be doing.
John Turner [00:31:52] And again, I think it is pretty crazy. Now I'm willing to concede that I don't have a letter from Joseph Smith to Flora Woodworth saying I'm really smitten with you, your raven hair. I just think it's magnificent. And I'm giving you this watch because I'm really in love with you. So to a certain external extent, I would concede I am speculating about Joseph's feelings from the scattered records that exist, which include, you know, records of those visits in Joseph's journal and then accounts from. From a young man named Orange Wright, who was also a suitor of Flora Woodworth. And then there are some.
John Dehlin [00:32:59] It's Orange White.
John Turner [00:33:00] Right, Sorry, Orange White.
John Dehlin [00:33:03] Which you think it would be spelled W H I T E, but it's W I, G, H, T. But still, it sounds like a funny name. Orange White. Right.
John Turner [00:33:11] Son of Apostle Lyman White.
John Dehlin [00:33:14] Yeah.
John Turner [00:33:17] And so then there are some sources about the watch and Emma's, and I believe this is from William Clayton's journal. So later, in 1843, there's a confrontation between Emma Smith and Joseph over Flora Woodworth. And there's a story, which I don't. I don't know whether or not I believe it, about Emma smashing the watch may or may not be true. So, you know, I am looking at all of this evidence and I do think it seems that this is one instance in which Joseph was enamored of a young woman.
John Dehlin [00:34:13] I mean, it paints in my mind the picture of Joseph being like a baller, driving around in the equivalent of a Mercedes with his own gold watch, you know, gold necklace, you know, given the women that he pursues, you know, treasure, you know, jewelry. So anyway, did you write that Flora's mom, Phoebe ends up getting sealed to Joseph and as well.
John Turner [00:34:40] So I wrote that that's a possibility, yeah. And I think I did what I usually try not to do and buried it in a footnote in his magnificent book. In Sacred Loneliness, Todd Compton notes that Phoebe Woodworth was sealed to Joseph for eternity in the Nauvoo Temple after Joseph Smith's death. And that's sometimes an indication that a woman had been sealed to Joseph during his lifetime. So we don't know.
John Dehlin [00:35:18] Julia is sharing this quote. August 23, 1843, Wednesday, quote, President Joseph told me that he had difficulty with Emma yesterday. She rode up to Woodworth's with him and called while he came out to the temple. When he returned, she was demanding the gold watch of Flora. He reproved her for her evil treatment. On the return home, she abused him much. And also when he got home, he had to use harsh measures to put a stop to her abuse, but finally succeeded. Close quote. And that reminds me of Martin Harris beating his wife. I guess Julie is writing that it's possible that Joseph could have needed to hit Emma to. To get her to relax over her anger at Joseph's, you know, favoring of Flora. I mean, this sounds like gossip. This sounds like scandal. You know what I mean?
John Turner [00:36:15] Yeah. So I think that. I mean, I do think that information is more than gossip because it's William Clayton, Joseph scribe, who presumably heard it straight from Joseph and he's not remembering it later.
John Dehlin [00:36:31] This is a journal diary entry, right?
John Turner [00:36:35] Correct.
John Dehlin [00:36:36] Yeah.
John Turner [00:36:37] And I write about that in the next chapter. You know, what were those harsh measures? Did Joseph strike Emma or threaten to do so? Did he simply browbeat her until he had stilled her voice? No other sources shed light on the fight. So, you know, we don't know. But it was clearly. Joseph's relationship with Flora clearly becomes a point of contention with Emma and a source of Emma's displeasure. And Emma manages to put an end to it. We'll talk about that next time.
The Problem of Suitors and Secret Sealings
John Dehlin [00:37:17] So this, once Joseph starts marrying teenage girls, it presents the problem of other teenage boys or young men not knowing that Joseph has married these teenage girls. Them wanting to court, date or marry these presumably single teenage girls. And Joseph's got to come up with a way to deal with that. So tell us how Joseph deals with that in the case of Flora and then we'll go to others.
John Turner [00:37:48] It almost seems unfair. You get sealed to already married women or proposed to them and their husbands don't always like it. So you reasonably shift your attention to young single women and then that creates
John Dehlin [00:38:07] other trouble because the young men of town don't like it.
John Turner [00:38:10] Who would have thunk it?
John Dehlin [00:38:11] Yeah, so if they knew it, they wouldn't like it, but they didn't know it.
John Turner [00:38:15] But, yeah, I mean, and this, this might not seem an immediate. This problem might not immediately springs spring to our mind, but this, this was a recurrent problem because when Joseph was sealed to women, this, these were secret marriages. And the women, you know, the, the lives of the wives went on as they had before. They were still living in most cases with their families and publicly were single. And so young men would pay attention to them and see them as prospective wives. And especially Flora Woodworth is, is on the young side. But especially for those who were, well, really 16 or older, you could say young men would be thinking about them as prospective wives. And so Joseph sometimes needed to find ways of fending off those other suitors. And in this case, Orange White was also interested in Flora Woodworth. And apparently this is from his recollection. One day Joseph drove up in his carriage and he invited Both Flora and Orange White to ride with him. He basically saw her out with another man. And then they, you know, they went to the temple, spent some time together, and then they went to the Woodworth home. And then Phoebe Woodworth, Flora's mother, took White into another room and apparently told him that Flora was Joseph's plural wife. So, in other words, cease your attentions. And so White's courtship to Flora came to an unexpectedly abrupt end.
John Dehlin [00:40:18] And it's so wild that Phoebe, Flora's mom, not only was acting as Joseph and Phoebe's marital protector for her own teenage daughter, but that later it would occur to her she needed to get sealed to Joseph herself. Like, you can't make this up.
John Turner [00:40:39] It would be hard to make all of this up. I totally agree.
John Dehlin [00:40:41] This would not be believable if a fiction writer wrote this. People would say, this is unbelievable. This is not.
John Turner [00:40:49] Yeah, well, suspend your disbelief, everybody.
John Dehlin [00:40:53] And it doesn't end here. Okay, so Orange White is on the outs. Flora stays married to Joseph. All right, so let's move to Sarah Ann Whitney.
John Turner [00:41:07] We've talked about Sarah Ann Whitney before as the daughter of Newell K. And Ann Whitney, sealed to Joseph in the summer of 1842. And we've talked about their visit, or at least requested visit to Joseph when he's on the run in August of 1842. One thing that emerged later is that the ceiling was not easy on Sarah Ann Whitney. So we know that Joseph wrote a blessing for her in his own hand in March of 1843. The circumstances of this, I think, are interesting. Joseph makes a clandestine visit to the Whitney home that month. He actually left Nauvoo and, you know, so that people would think that he was out of town. And then he. Then he circles back and visits the Whitney home and he writes her a blessing in which he reminds her that if she remains in the Everlasting Covenant to the end, she would come forth in the first resurrection as also all her father's house. By remaining in the everlasting Covenant. I interpret that as remaining in this covenant, sealed relationship with Joseph Smith, and that there are going to be eternal benefits for her and her family, her father's household. I interpret this as well, if Joseph needs to give her this blessing, she was probably struggling with accepting this new reality of being one of the prophet's plural wives. And it seems that she actually wanted more than assurances about eternity. She wanted some arrangement for her earthly life. And that was not going to be moving in with Joseph Smith. So what could that arrangement be? And Joseph And I don't, I don't. I don't know if the idea originates with Joseph or the Whitneys precisely, but the arrangement is that Joseph Kingsbury, who is Sarah's uncle by marriage, becomes a sham wife for, excuse me, a sham husband for Sarah and Whitney. And so then going forward, outwardly, she is Joseph Kingsbury's wife, which gives her an identity and also makes it clear that she should not receive other suitors. And so it's a very unusual arrangement, but it seems to have certainly have been acceptable to Kingsbury,
John Dehlin [00:44:57] something that some, before we talk about Kingsbury, something that really kind of shocked me or took me back when I got my patriarchal Blessing. I was 16ish in Katy, Texas. And a patriarchal blessing is something that usually a Mormon teenager, young adult gets sort of like, almost like religious fortune telling, where you're told, if you're righteous, what your future is going to be. I remember wanting to know what it was going to say about my status in the resurrection because I had heard about people being promised that in their patriarchal blessing that they would rise in the morning of the first resurrection, which means that come Judgment Day, you would be exalted to be in the highest degree of celestial kingdom. So that's what I wanted. And indeed, when I got my patriarchal Blessing at age 16, I was promised that if I was righteous, I would rise in the morning of the first resurrection. And I remember just feeling full of pride that I, my, if I just stayed faithful, I would become exalted as a God in Mormon heaven. So it was a little bit sickening and shocking for me this morning to read that when Joseph's trying to keep Sarah and Whitney on board, lo and behold, you write that he promises her, he gives her a blessing. Joseph Smith gives Sarah Whitney a blessing in which he reminded her that, quote, if she remained in the everlasting covenant to the end, she would come forth in the first resurrection. Which made me kind of sick that the promise that I had gotten was the type of promise Joseph would give to his teenage brides and their families as a way to sort of spiritually manipulate or coerce them into being his, I don't know, bride slash sexual partners. But then it also, it's even worse because he's not just promising her exaltation if she stays married to him and has sex with him, I presume, but also that somehow her decision to stay married to him and to be sealed to him and to rise with him as a celestial wife would mean that her father's House would also slip in to exaltation along with her. So it's so much power, this idea that Joseph Smith was doling out exaltation, promises of exaltation as a way to get sex and teenage brides in the present. This doesn't come off really explicitly in your book until you really connect the dots. But am I getting it wrong about the implications of this? You know, DNC132 eventual new and everlasting covenant sealing, eternal families practice and exaltation promise has its roots in Joseph trying to coerce teenage girls to be his bride and to have sex with them. Are those dots unfairly connected?
John Turner [00:48:22] JOHN TURNER so I think what you're describing is not at the time was not a bug within the system, but, but almost a feature. And you can find a number of individuals who look back on the introduction of polygamy in Nauvoo and describe it explicitly as forming links between families that will persist for eternity, in a way creating nuclei of extended families on earth that will be exalted for eternity. Now then you're going to get into, I think you could then step back and think, is the purpose to create those eternal, almost dynastic links or is the purpose for Joseph Smith to have an expanded number of sexual partners? I actually think that's not an easy question.
John Dehlin [00:49:39] It's both. It could be both.
John Turner [00:49:41] Because I think it could be both. I think it is both.
John Dehlin [00:49:43] Yeah, it's both.
John Turner [00:49:44] And I think in. And I think the theology and the desire, they are always connected and sometimes one or the other is the dominant impulse. And I think the reason for that is it's uncertain whether it's probable that Joseph did not consummate all of his plural marriages. There are a lot of different sorts of women in very different life and family circumstances. And at times some of these healings may have been strictly ceremonial and spiritual. At other times, yes, they might also have served these theological purposes. But we know that some of these marriages were consummated. And in the case of someone like Flora Woodworth, Joseph's desire seems to play a significant role.
John Dehlin [00:50:56] Yeah. And to me this does taint what becomes the new and everlasting covenant because it is used as a way of persuasion for Joseph marrying teenage brides and also Joseph motivating his followers and his followers wives and his followers daughters to all be recruited into this practice. And so it does what I think is Mormonism's crowning doctrinal teaching or feature, which is the eternal family. Eternal marriage in the eternal family. Because it's so interwoven in Joseph Smith's predilection to other men's wives and teenage girls and sex. It really, really, for me, ends up really tainting the doctrine and the practice. And then what taints it further is again, in this example of Sarah Ann Whitney, she needs a cover so that more teenage boys or young men don't come after her. That Joseph lines up this Kingsbury guy to do a sham fake marriage to Sarah Ann Whitney so that she can be perceived as Mrs. Kingsbury, when really, as you note in the book, she's Mrs. Smith. It also shows that at some level, Joseph knew what he was doing was wrong and. Or it showed that Joseph is willing to deceive people privately and publicly, you know, which comes up later in this chapter when he performs a sham, another sham marriage to the Partridge Sisters in front of his own wife. But it's a level of deception on top of the predation that is really disturbing when you see it all in slow motion, which I think is one of the great treasures of your book. John Turner. These dots didn't get connected for me in Fawn Brody's no Man Knows like, nobody knows my history like it is. As I'm reading thoughtfully your chapters. That's one of the reasons why your book is such a treasure. And Bushman doesn't even cover this stuff.
John Turner [00:53:13] He just leaves it alone mostly. I mean, I've heard Richard say that he would have spent more time on plural marriage or thinks he might have. Yeah, well, I should have titled my book One Man Knows His History. No, and just to circle back to the theology, really, since the early 1830s, Joseph has been talking about the fact that men can grow into a fullness of glory, divine glory, the way that Jesus progressed to a fullness of divine glory. And Joseph has not clearly been articulating how obviously baptism, you know, faithfulness. But Joseph now, and this comes up later in the chapter, he says very clearly that in order to obtain the highest celestial glory, and this is in the context of marriage, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood.
John Dehlin [00:54:22] And.
John Turner [00:54:23] And if he don't, he can't obtain it. It's not crystal clear. Joseph doesn't flat out say, if you want celestial glory, you need to marry polygamously. But he is also talking about how there are degrees of glory within the celestial kingdom. And it's pretty clear the extent of your family determines the extent of that eventual glory. So, and this is a very strong theological rationale for families to sanction their daughters being sealed to Joseph Smith, as we'll talk about in the next chapter, you know, Apostle Heber C. Kimball. He is eager for 14 year old Helen Mark Kimball to become one of the prophet's wives. And so you can see that for people who accept Joseph's theological leadership, these promises are very motivating.
John Dehlin [00:55:37] Yeah, and this history explains so much because first of all, why would Kingsbury be willing to perform a sham marriage? To give the perception to the public that he was the husband of Sarah and Whitney, when really it was Joseph Smith? Well, Joseph used the promise that he would seal Kingsbury to his dead wife, who he actually loved, as a motivation for Kingsbury to perform the sham marriage. And then also, why would so many subsequent prophets after Joseph's death claim that polygamy was not just a feature to the Mormon doctrine and theology, that polygamy was a requirement for exaltation in the highest degree of the celestial kingdom. Now that all makes sense because it has its roots in what Joseph was telling people at the time. So that's why so many. That's why the Church didn't want to give up polygamy. That's why it was willing to have its leaders eventually imprisoned. That's why it was willing to take the Church to the brink of losing all its property. That's why it was willing to hide and lie. And Even after the 1890 manifesto, the church kept practicing it even though it promised the world that it wouldn't. All of that has to be tied to this idea that the promise of exaltation, of eternal marriage with eternal children and eternal families was all wound up in polygamy. It's all wound up in polygamy. Which makes it more disturbing now that the Mormon Church likes to say that polygamy won't be required in the celestial kingdom, that if a woman doesn't want to practice it, she won't have to. That the church, quote, no longer practices, practices polygamy. You know, it's, it's, you can't really disentangle eternal polygamy. Oh, and also apologists are now claiming the DNC132, that somehow the new and everlasting covenant is separate from eternal marriage. There's no way to disentangle the new and everlasting covenant. Eternal marriage, eternal sealings and the celestial kingdom, and exaltation in the highest degree of exaltation. There's no way to disentangle polygamy from all of those teachings. Eternal families and celestial kingdom. Am I wrong? And exaltation and God making. Am I wrong?
The Eliza Snow Plural Marriage Story
John Turner [00:58:17] Well, That's a great. That's a great comment slash question. John Deyn. I will say it was fairly remarkable in the early 1800s that the church was able to disavow additional polygamous marriages while at the same time retaining that doctrine of eternal marriage and eternal families. I think for. I think for many church members, that has sort of, in a way, been successfully disentangled, as you allude to. The. The problem, in my view, is that Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 remains scripture for Latter Day Saints. So it's sort of always lurking there, that entanglement.
John Dehlin [00:59:27] Yeah, well, yeah, this chapter has me flipping tables. Okay, so, John Turner, we're going to do something that I normally don't do, which is I am going to challenge you a little bit. Is that all right?
John Turner [00:59:48] Challenge away.
John Dehlin [00:59:49] Okay, so it's now time to turn to the Eliza Snow plural marriage. Eliza Snow is known today in Mormonism as this really important early Mormon woman poet who wrote probably the lyrics to many hymns, but specifically one of the most beloved Mormon hymns, oh, My Father, was penned by Eliza R. Snow. And in past episodes, I've already asked you, I think you know the story of Eliza R. Snow. You know, Emma catching Eliza R. Snow as a plural wife, getting mad at her and either beating her with a broom or knocking her down the stairs where allegedly she lost a baby that Joseph had impregnated her with. Like, that's what I had learned growing up as a Mormon. And. And you've already addressed in previous episodes on this series that you're not buying that story. Why don't we just quickly revisit Eliza Snow's plural marriage to Joseph Smith, and then I'm going to do something I rarely do, which is challenge you a little bit. John Turner.
John Turner [01:01:01] Okay. You can challenge me a lot. So Eliza Snow is sealed to Joseph Smith in the summer of 1842. It's just in the wake of the John C. Bennett.
John Dehlin [01:01:15] Three or two. Three or two. 43 or 42.
John Turner [01:01:18] 42.
John Dehlin [01:01:19] Okay. All right. So we're going back. We're going back a year.
John Turner [01:01:22] Yeah. Their ceiling is in 42. And at the time, Eliza is living in the Smith household. And we know that she leaves the Smith household in February of 1843.
John Dehlin [01:01:40] Okay, so she leaves in 43, but she sealed in 42. Got it.
John Turner [01:01:44] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:01:44] Okay.
John Turner [01:01:46] And so how do you want to challenge me, John DE La. You're getting me excited.
John Dehlin [01:01:50] Okay. Oh, good, good, good, good. Okay. So if I'm recalling right what you've said is that you're not buying that Emma beat Eliza Arsenal with the broom and. Or knocked her down the stairs to cause her to lose the baby? Because there's a better explanation, and that's that Joseph Smith's mom moved into the mansion and just displaced Eliza R. Snow, and that that's why Eliza R. Snow left, not because Emma beat her and knocked her down the stairs and kicked her out. Did I get that right?
John Turner [01:02:31] Correct.
John Dehlin [01:02:33] And also you say that the. Am I right that you say that those stories of either Emma beating Elizar Snow with the broom and. Or knocking her down the stairs to cause her to lose the baby, that part of the reason we're not buying into them is because they come really late. Is that also what I remember you saying?
John Turner [01:02:52] That's true. So I'm trying to remember in my brain where exactly when those stories originate. I believe one of them came via a nephew of Eliza Snow named, I think, Leroy Snow, and I think he reported hearing from someone else that Emma had pushed a pregnant, obviously pregnant Eliza Snow down the stairs, causing her to miscarry. There are some other, other sources, I think, in the late 1800s in which Emma beats her with a broom or pulls her by the hair. And I think maybe in some of those, Emma is pregnant. In some of them, she's not.
John Dehlin [01:03:54] Okay, well, I'm not, you know, I'm not marinating in the sources like you. So this will be a logic. These will be two logical challenges without real, any real knowledge or expertise on the source documents. So challenge number one, if I'm, if I'm reading this chapter right, that, that footnote about Orange White that you, that you list as footnote number three on page 422, that, that recollection from Orange White comes, if I've got the date right, in the 1890s. So. And this, this actually pulls in our previous conversation about Michelle Stone and the. The polygamy deniers, one of their biggest constant challenges to Joseph Smith's polygamy is the reliance on late recollections. And I can, you know, that's a common practice of historians to, I guess, credit less and less an account the later that it appears. But just like you're relying on Orange White's recollection around Joseph Smith and Phoebe Woodworth and, you know, Orange White being told to lay off Flora Woodworth because Joseph, you know, and. Or this is kind of complicated, but Joseph and. Or Flora, you know, sit Orange White down to tell him, sorry, Flora's already married to Joseph. Back off. That recollection is coming from the 1890s and yet we're still willing to consider it. So I guess logically I would just say we're not, we're not above relying on later recollections to believe something. So with the same standard, that shouldn't necessarily discredit the Emma beating Eliza with a broom story and, or the Emma knocking down, knocking Eliza down the stairs to lose her baby story. Because I think we often are forced to rely on later recollections because people are sworn to secrecy and don't tend to write these stories down until later. So that's challenge number one to your, I'll just lovingly call it your pooh poohing of the Eliza R. Snow lore that I was taught. I don't think we can purely say a late, late recollections discredit that part of the story in and of itself. Logically, is that fair or not fair?
Evaluating Sources on Polygyny
John Turner [01:06:48] Well, first of all, I totally agree that we, I like the way you framed it and I like the way you're pushing us to think about which sources we trust, which is really, that is such an issue with Joseph's polygamy because a lot of the sources are late. And so you're right to highlight a potential danger that historians or anyone could say, well, look, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go with those sources that line up with the way I want to portray this. Right. And you can't always corroborate everything. And so you, you have to be, you have to be, you have to be careful and you don't, don't have as much information as you would like. So let me, let me start by explaining why I don't trust those late sources about Emma and Eliza. So I think they are very much tinged with sort of anti Emma Smith prejudice that is pretty endemic in a lot of sources really after 1850, but particularly after the reorganization of the church under Joseph Smith iii, which Emma supports. There's a lot of animosity against Emma on the part of Utah based Mormons
John Dehlin [01:08:26] because Emma doesn't follow Brigham. Right. And because Emma denies that polygamy. Joseph ever practiced polygamy and she hated Brigham Young. That would make Brigham want to smear and defame Emma, correct?
John Turner [01:08:38] Absolutely. So there's a lot of defamation of Emma and these stories about Emma and Eliza R. Snow, they are meant to defame Emma. So. But the reason why I don't trust them is not just because they're late, but it's because in my opinion, very credible, contemporaneous Sources cast doubt on them, namely that not only is there an alternative, simpler explanation for Eliza Snow leaving the Smith household. A lack of space. It's clear that Joseph, Emma, and Eliza Snow are on good terms as of March, 1843, a month after she's left the household, because Joseph and Emma together attend the last day of a school that Eliza Snow taught that winter. So everybody's on good terms. It totally, I think, would be a stretch to think that in February, Emma discovered that Eliza was pregnant with Joseph's child, pushed her down the stairs in rage, and then put on a good public face a month later. I just don't think that's possible.
John Dehlin [01:10:01] All right, put on your armor, John Turner, because now I've got a third challenge to your logic. Okay, later in this chapter, you've got this trial of the first presidency involving Sidney Rigdon, where Sidney, you know, basically, Sidney Rigdon is saying, hey, Joseph and I are on good terms. This is after Joseph had propositioned Sidney's daughter and smeared her publicly for, you know, just for telling the truth about Joseph's sexual advances. And you also have, in this chapter, Hyrum Smith almost ready to burn down the church once he learns that Joseph lied to him about practicing polygamy. And then all of a sudden, Hyrum's taking on wives himself. So if Joseph's good at anything, it's in getting people who are furious with him to get back in his good graces somehow. So, I mean, I'm just saying, logically, Joseph is not above making a fool former arch enemy his bosom buddy. No pun intended. So, I mean, that's just a logical challenge. But you could be right. I will say that Julia notes that Emma does not attend Relief Society anymore once Eliza moves out of their home, until pretty much the last meeting. Now, I tend to trust Julia, but again, this is all circumstantial evidence. And I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying I'm not ready to let go of this Eliza R. Snow lore. The final thing I just want to mention is regarding your logic that a better explanation is that Lucy Mack Smith moved in and so Eliza R. Smith moved out. Multiple things can happen simultaneously. So it could be that it was just as simple as, oh, sorry, Eliza, bad news. Lucy Mack's moving in. You got to move out. But it could also be, oh, my gosh, we've got this problem with Eliza, but also, Lucy Mack needs a place to live. Well, you know, let's tell Eliza she needs to move out, because Lucy's moving in. Like multiple things can happen at the same time simultaneously. It doesn't have to be either Lucy Mack Smith's moving in is the reason or Emma and Eliza coming to blows is the reason. It can be both, right?
John Turner [01:12:37] Well, yes, could be.
John Dehlin [01:12:39] Okay, so we're all speculating. We're all speculating. I'm just not ready to let go of that lore because I say this lovingly. I'm not sure you've proved the case that the Eliza R. Smith lore couldn't have also happened and likely didn't. So there's my challenge. I challenged you, John Turner. I did it.
John Turner [01:13:01] Look, I am fully accepting this challenge. I love it.
John Dehlin [01:13:06] Julia says she likes it, too.
John Turner [01:13:09] I'm going to have one more response. And if you just can't accept this, John Dillon, that's on you.
John Dehlin [01:13:17] You're a Joseph Smith apologist. John Turner. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
John Turner [01:13:20] So what I. What I would say is you're actually right to. I guess the. The one shank I think you've been able to put into my armor is, yeah, there are times where Emma is privately steamed at Joseph and does put on a good face publicly. So you're right that maybe. Maybe I'm reading too much into public amity. But the other thing I would say is that I think it's pretty clear from all of the sources that Joseph does not broach the subject of plural marriage to Emma until May of 1843. Now, perhaps you could say, well, okay, Emma's in the dark about polygamy until then, but maybe she discovered a pregnant Eliza Snow, and this wasn't about polygamy and she's just discovering an affair that
John Dehlin [01:14:17] Joseph has a wayward eye, like, with fanny and with other. I called the bimbo eruptions, sort of referring to Bill Clinton, but, like, there had been bimbo eruptions. What's a better word? In the 1842 time period and the Relief Society that we covered previously. So, I mean, clearly by now, Emma has to be thinking, does my husband have a wandering eye?
John Turner [01:14:41] At a minimum, there's no sense that Emma and Eliza are at odds the first half of 1843. But there's an entry in Eliza Snow's journal from the summer of 1843 after polygamy blows up between Emma and Joseph, in which Emma comes and pays Eliza Snow a very frosty visit. And so I think the two women discuss this, and Emma is probably withering in her criticism of her former friend. And so I just think this discovery and pushing a pregnant Eliza down The stairs. It just doesn't make sense with the rest of the timeline of events in 1843. I love a good story. I'm certainly not looking to shield either Emma or Joseph from criticism. I think the historians who've examined all the sources and a few people have done so. I think they're right to cast doubt on it.
John Dehlin [01:15:58] Yeah, maybe it's kind of just. I'm just trying to process it myself. So thanks for doing. Doing that with me in good nature. Now, if Emma. Is it true what Julie said, that Emma stops attending Relief Society until the very end? And if so, wasn't Emma president? Did Eliza become president at some point?
Emma Smith's Awareness of Plural Marriage
John Turner [01:16:20] So, no, Emma is president. I think the Relief Society meetings, there's a big gap in their meetings. I forget when that gap really begins. I'll have to look it up. Maybe from the summer of 1842. I think there's a substantial hiatus. Emma doesn't reappear at the Relief Society, I think, until February of 1844. So she is absent from some of their meetings. I don't know that we exactly know why, if there are meetings after May of 1843. I do think Emma is very upset that Joseph. And she probably doesn't know about all of them, but she knows that Joseph is sealed to at least some of the women in the Relief Society. I think she's, you know, for a while. She doesn't want to have anything to do with it.
John Dehlin [01:17:29] Well, I mean, based on our previous coverage, the fact that it appears as if Joseph Smith set up the Relief Society in part to keep quiet the rumors, the credible rumors of affairs he was having with other women, I could see why Emma and others wouldn't want to keep up with the Relief Society meetings because that's an unsavory, unpleasant situation to begin with. Plus, Joseph's listening in the room next door.
John Turner [01:18:02] Man, Emma needed some relief from all of this, for sure.
John Dehlin [01:18:07] All right, well, we'll let our. This will be fun. We'll let our viewers and listeners weigh in in the comments, how they come down on the question of Eliza Snow, the stairs, the pregnancy, the broomstick, and all of that. And it'd be fun to see if people have other theories. But thanks for being so good natured about those challenges. Okay, so, yeah, so I don't think Emma is oblivious to rumors of affairs with Joseph Smith. But. But let's move to the next part of the chapter where you talk about Emma still being oblivious to the real. The. The indoctrination or the religious. I don't Know the. The doctrination. What is it called? The indoctrination of polygamy as. As being celestial, like. Anyway, talk about Emma being oblivious to polygamy until a bit later.
John Turner [01:19:11] So I think Emma still trusts that she's Joseph's only wife until May of 1843. The exact sequence of events is tricky to reconstruct. So we know that Joseph is sealed to Emma on May 28th of 1843.
John Dehlin [01:19:35] After how many women he's already sealed to? Is it two dozen?
John Turner [01:19:40] About two dozen. Okay, so.
John Dehlin [01:19:44] And believing Mormons need to be able to answer that question, why did Joseph Smith get sealed to almost two dozen women before he ever got sealed to his first wife? Especially when DNC132 has the law of Sarah, which says the first wife needs to consent to all subsequent wives. That's a serious major problem, I believe,
John Turner [01:20:05] and we've talked about it before, it seems that Emma. That Joseph probably introduced the subject of polygamy to Emma early to mid May of 1843. Emily Dow Partridge states that Emma was present when she, I think, and her sister were sealed to Joseph on May 11th of 1843. I don't know if, you know, I don't know if that is an exact reliable date or not, but certainly by May 1843, Emma, I'm not going to say, was no longer in the dark, because I think Joseph didn't tell her very much at all about the extent of his polygamy, but he at least broaches the topic to her and everything explodes in the months after that.
John Dehlin [01:21:14] Well, we're going to cover that in detail in just a second, but really quickly. You talk about Joseph having nightmares. You know, the Porter Rockwell stuff has got him up late, because I'm sure he's not just worried that his friend could be imprisoned or, you know, end up a victim of the death penalty. I'm guessing he could also worry that his friend would give him up and, you know, testify against Joseph. I don't know if Joseph ever worried that Porter Rockwell could turn on him. But regardless, you've got Joseph having nightmares, being paranoid, studying the law at one point to see if he can help get his friend Porter Rockwell free. And then you also mentioned that Joseph ends up using part of his money to pay for lawyers to help free Porter Rockwell. Do I have all that right?
John Turner [01:22:09] You've got all that right. So for people who need a refresher, someone in the spring of 1842, nearly assassinated former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs. There is speculation that Porter Rockwell could have been the assailant, the would be assassin, and could have been acting on Joseph's orders. That is the reason for the attempted extradition of Joseph Smith to Missouri in 1842. That's why he's. He was on the run, in hiding for months. The second half of 1842. Rockwell makes the very unwise move of traveling to St. Louis in 1843, and he gets arrested. Ultimately, a grand jury declines to indict him for the crime. But that's something else for Joseph to again worry about. And one thing that actually, you know, and so you alluded to this dream that Joseph has where. And this is sort of in the context of Rockwell's arrest. He dreams of swimming in a clear river above in a school of enormous fish. I was astonished and felt they might drown me. And so I don't know to what. To what extent Joseph is really consumed with worry about the Rockwell case. But it's, you know, he's still. He's still a bit worried about that. He's still worried about Signe Rigdon's potential disloyalty. On the other hand, Joseph is pretty good at giving off an appearance of being at ease. He. He still, you know, when he's. He still takes opportunities to engage in wrestling matches. He sometimes plays ball games in the streets of Nauvoo. He feigns just not being worried about Rockwell at all. You know, he stretches himself out, rests his head on some law books, says, this is the way I study law, and then falls asleep and begins snoring. So he seems. I mean, I really think Joseph was just buoyed by, you know, getting, you know, winning in court in early January of 1843. And he's not immediately worried about extradition. So, you know, he's. He's actually pretty at ease with things.
John Dehlin [01:25:15] I will also say, John Turner, we'll have this episode be the episode of John Dolan Descent. To me, you haven't convinced me yet that Porter Rockwell didn't attempt to assassinate Lilburn Boggs. We did cover this in a previous episode, but the fact that we know that Porter Rockwell was a violent man, had a violent history, bragged about being violent, that he was in Missouri at the time and that Boggs was. There was an assassination attempt. Why? And then the fact that Boggs and everyone around him thought it was Porter Rockwell, like, it's totally possible it wasn't. But to me, there's just too much smoke there to have there not be a fire. Plus, I think Mormons kind of embrace that idea. Later. Why would they embrace that if there weren't possible validity to it? And I don't think Porter Rockwell ever really credibly denied it. So, again, we don't have to re adjudicate that. I'm just letting you know that you're gonna tear Elizar Snow and Porter Rockwell from me only by trying to pry away my cold, dead fingers.
John Turner [01:26:36] Well, I wouldn't want to do that. I don't want your fingers to be cold and dead.
John Dehlin [01:26:42] You don't want to pry my cold, dead fingers away from Porter Rockwell and Elizar Snow.
John Turner [01:26:47] You don't want to re adjudicate that one. We can leave it. He definitely had means, motive, and opportunity. We can agree on that.
John Dehlin [01:26:55] Yeah, you said that. Okay. And I think your only point is there isn't enough evidence to convict him, right?
John Turner [01:27:02] Well, I think the main reason that he was arrested in the first place and why there was a warrant issued for his arrest and Joseph's is it's basically information that John C. Bennett provided to Lil Burn Boggs and others. And when a grand jury had the opportunity to indict Rockwell for the crime, and it wasn't exactly a friendly grand jury that just loved Mormons, they declined to do so. So there. There's just an element of mystery about the case. And I think one reason why it's hard to shake Rockwell as the would be assassin is because there's not a good. There's not a good second suspect. So we, you know, we can't pin it on anybody else. And so he sort of remained the prime suspect historically.
Sidney Rigdon and the Staged Presidency Trial
John Dehlin [01:27:56] Let's talk a little bit about Sidney Rigdon and this staged. I think you referred to it as a staged trial of the First Presidency. And I want to talk about. Like, I already alluded to this previously in this episode, but we. We've already talked in a previous episode about. About Joseph not telling Sidney Rigdon he was first counselor in the First Presidency. Right. Joseph doesn't tell him about polygamy. He propositions Sidney Rigdon's teenage daughter, Nancy. While Sidney's away, Nancy Rigdon declines Joseph's advances, speaks about it publicly, and then Joseph smears her as a harlot. Miraculously, that's not enough to shake Sidney Rigdon's allegiance to Joseph Smith. You write in this chapter that Joseph's paranoid that Sidney Rigdon is in cahoots with John C. Bennett. And so Joseph stages a trial of the First Presidency. What's that about?
John Turner [01:29:04] So this was sort of a technique that Joseph had used on a number of occasions. So when he became estranged from other high ranking church leaders and their loyalty was in doubt, he sometimes asked church meetings to, to sustain church leaders. And that could be an opportunity for individuals to be sort of cast aside. This happened in Missouri. Well, this is sort of when things were unraveling in Kirtland and Oliver Cowdery, the Whitmers and others were, were becoming estranged from Joseph. Joseph held a series of meetings in the fall of 1837 and asked church members to sustain some of these people of questionable loyalty. And sometimes that was an opportunity for things to be resolved favorably. Other times it was an opportunity to sort of move on and cast somebody aside. It's not totally clear to me whether Joseph hopes that Rigdon will be cast aside at this trial of the First Presidency. Sort of gives Rigdon an opportunity to explain himself. Rigdon, you know, Rigdon says he'd always regarded Bennett with suspicion. And Dimmick Huntington, who's someone who is close to Joseph because he sort of brokered Joseph's two of Joseph's plural marriages. Dimmock Huntington says that Rigdon once complimented Bennett as a gentleman. That wasn't really a whole lot to go on. So Joseph didn't really make a vigorous case against Rigdon and so church members almost unanimously sustain him. But there's just this smoldering rift between the two men. It eventually subsides a bit toward the end of Joseph's life. But for, for a couple of years or at least 18 months, Joseph and Rigdon are very much uneasy with each other.
John Dehlin [01:31:40] Yeah. The line that the current LDS church always gives its members is that the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon always stayed faithful, at least to the Book of Mormon and their witness of it, if not to the church. But what they never tell the members ever is this stuff about Nancy Rigdon and Joseph smearing Nancy and this rift between Joseph and Sidney. No, I don't think any, no Mormon has ever learned that story in a Mormon LDS Church official context. They've had to go to unapproved or condemned sources to even hear that story to begin with. But I'm fascinated by the fact that Rigdon didn't. I mean he had every reason to join John C. Bennett. He kind of did collaborate with John C. Bennett. Right.
John Turner [01:32:34] Well that is not clear. So Rigdon has a son in law, George Robinson, who does actively conspire with Bennett. I think Rigdon is steamed. In the wake of Joseph's proposal to Nancy Rigdon, there are a couple either meetings or communications between Joseph and Sidney. I think in May and June of 1842. Those don't really produce a reconciliation. And Rigdon strenuously denies repeatedly conspiring with Bennett. I don't know if he may have given. He could have given Bennett some initial encouragement, but for the most part, I think once Bennett's out, I don't think. I don't think Rigdon, him. Sidney Rigdon himself conspires with Bennett.
John Dehlin [01:33:37] But it also would have been probably very dangerous if. If not physically, then definitely socially, if Rigdon had admitted to conspiring with John C. Bennett and. Or had admitted to being an adversary of Joseph Smith. Like, clearly, Rigdon's going to deny that, even if he's doing it because of the potential danger involved. He certainly had every reason to turn on Joseph Smith because of the treatment of Nancy Rigdon alone. But also you read later that Rigdon says the Melchizedek priesthood thing, the Peter, James and John thing, never really happened. And it sort of just brought to my mind, again, this question of why didn't Sidney Rigdon turn against Joseph and. Or the Book of Mormon? And the only explanation I could come up with, which again is speculation, is this idea of mutually assured destruction. You know, how, like, Russia doesn't nuke the United States because the United States could nuke Russia and vice versa. Like, Joseph could destroy Rigdon if Rigdon turned on Joseph, but Rigdon could destroy Joseph if Joseph turned on Rigdon. And so in a way, they could destroy each other. And that's my only best explanation for why neither ultimately turns on the other. Is that a viable theory or totally out of left field?
John Turner [01:35:03] Well, I think. I don't know. I mean, I think it's a little bit simpler in that Rigdon, like a large number of other people, when they are baptized into the church and become close to Joseph Smith, they are super invested, and it takes so much to sunder that bond. So just thinking ahead a little bit, there are men who have bitter breaks with Joseph in the last six months of his life, like William and Wilson Law, the foster brothers. Even these people who have bitter splits with Joseph, they. They want to reconcile with him. Joseph, Joseph really does have a strong charismatic bond with some of his associates. And that.
John Dehlin [01:36:06] That.
John Turner [01:36:07] I think that that's a. That's a hard thing to really be able to assess as a historian. How do you really explain that psychologically or. Or otherwise? That's definitely true in the case of Orson Pratt, look what he endures. And he will not break with Joseph Smith. And it'd be easy to say, well, These people. I heard some of this in your question, and I think it's quite fair. Like, well, Rigdon has a stake in this. He sort of would discredit himself to discredit Joseph Smith. You could say the same thing to some extent with Orson Pratt. But, I mean, somebody like Pratt for sure could have said, look, this man has deceived me, and I'm bringing him down, and I'm going to remake my life somewhere else. And these are talented. You know, these are talented individuals. They could have done that, but they have this. They have this bond with Joseph Smith that hardly anything can break.
John Dehlin [01:37:08] Yeah. It does make you wonder why John C. Bennett was able to make that break while others weren't. You're absolutely right in it. With William Law and the Foster brothers, Even in the novel Expositor, they don't claim Joseph was never a prophet. They only claim he was a fallen prophet. And I think Sidney Rigdon sort of probably believes that at some point, Joseph went astray. That suggested in the pamphlet that he authored to what? To all believers in Christ or whatever. But let's talk about William Law really quickly. When Joseph did this weird public trial of the First Presidency, which was really about Sidney Rigdon, was William Law part of the First Presidency at this point?
William Law and the First Presidency
John Turner [01:37:55] Oh, boy.
John Dehlin [01:37:59] I think he was.
John Turner [01:38:00] I. I think so, but. So there's definitely signing Rigdon, Hiram Smith. I. I have to. You'll have to forgive me for blanking.
John Dehlin [01:38:11] Oh, no, that's okay. We'll have Julia look it up. It just. It'd be really interesting to think that at this point, Sidney and. And eventually William both are. Are become at odds with Joseph. So I just had to ask that. When does. When does William Law enter the picture as a First Presidency member? Yeah. Julia's writing that from 1841-44, William Law was in the First Presidency. So, yeah, looks like he was.
John Turner [01:38:43] Well, I. I think we'd be remiss in this chapter if we didn't talk about another William.
John Dehlin [01:38:48] Yeah. So I was. That's where I was going next. So tell us. It sounds like William Clayton joined the church pretty late in Joseph's life. Talk about, first of all, the Clayton journals and their status with the church right now. Give a little background on William Clayton, and then let's talk about what he writes about.
The William Clayton Journals as Historical Sources
John Turner [01:39:08] Sure. So William Clayton, he is an English convert to the church. I think he converted during the early mission to England in 1837. He and his wife then emigrated. I think in the early 1840s, he becomes one of Joseph's scribes and clerks in late 1842. And Joseph, he very much cultivates an intimate relationship with William Clayton. The two men spend a lot of time together. Joseph talks to him at great length about plural marriage. Clayton later recalled that during the last year of his life, we were scarcely ever together alone, but he was talking on the subject. And Clayton kept a pretty exhaustive journal. He wrote at length about. About this subject in his journal. The journal also contains a lot of information about Nauvoo land transactions. Historians have been interested in the Clayton Journal for. For a long time. And when we say a journal, basically it's really a series of journals. The journal that Clayton kept when he was in Manchester in the early 1840s that was published quite a few, I think, a couple of decades ago. In terms of Clayton's Nauvoo Journal, it's in three different volumes. And over the years, a number of people have taken notes of the Clayton Journal and have either published or made public portions of it. Notably, George Smith published significant excerpts from it a few decades ago, I think maybe four decades ago. There's has been a lot of. A lot of interest in the Clayton Journal. It has not generally been accessible to researchers. It is cited extensively in the. In the Joseph Smith Papers Project. The Church also allowed Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to use it and for her book A House Full of Females. The Church also allowed me to use it for my biography of Joseph Smith. My understanding is that the Church has an arrangement with Yale University Press to publish the Clayton Journal. I don't know if that's this year or next year, so sort of its publication has been imminently anticipated for quite a few years. I do believe people will be able to make use of all of it pretty soon.
John Dehlin [01:42:50] Wow. I had either forgotten or didn't know that you had actually been allowed to access the journals really quickly. Remind me that the sources are always so complicated in all of this. Remind me, are the journals that the Church has been keeping and has yet released to the public, number one, are they copies of an original or are they. Do we know if they're the original or are some of the volumes original and some of the volumes copies of it original? Do you know?
John Turner [01:43:25] So it's a great question. So I did spend some time with the original books and then made use of images, digital images of them. The latter is actually easier because the books themselves are pretty small, so it's easier to read. He's got good handwriting. But it was still easier to read in larger digital format. So my understanding of The Clayton Journal is that you could describe it as a near contemporaneous writing of what probably originally existed as daily notes. Oftentimes, or at least sometimes people who kept journals would have a daybook in which they would make a rough notation of daily events, and then they would. They would sort of write out those notes into longer form. So it seems that that's what Clayton did. I consider it a contemporary source for events in Nauvoo between 1842 and 1846.
John Dehlin [01:44:51] So did I hear you say they're not copies? The Clayton Journals are not copies of a journal, but actual.
John Turner [01:44:57] Well, they're in Clayton's hand. They are probably Clayton's at least near contemporaneous sort of expansion and copy of his daily notes. That's my understanding. I think some of that is not totally easy to pin down because we don't have. We don't have those daily notes. And I think the reason for that speculation is they read as someone sort of writing at several days worth at a time.
John Dehlin [01:45:41] Okay, so remind me, what are some of the key Nauvoo sources that we don't have the originals, but we have copies of? I think we've talked about this in previous episodes. Aren't there one or two really, really important sources that are copies, not originals? And I guess I'm just confusing them with the Clayton journals. I'm putting you on the spot there.
John Turner [01:46:05] Yeah, well, I don't know what you have in mind. So the interesting thing, I'm just going to kind of digress from your question a little bit, John. One thing that's, you know, that I. That I find fascinating is there is so much, I don't know, controversy about a number of kind of key sources. The earliest manuscripts of section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Clayton Journal. And, you know, that comes out of, you know, controversies pertaining to Joseph Smith's polygamy and whether or not you can trust these as. As credible sources. Now, in my mind, I didn't feel like the Clayton Journal had to clear a hurdle of credibility. So when I examine the. The Clayton Journal, the, you know, the contents, you know, they line up with. They have a lot more detail, but they. They line up with other sources like Joseph's journal that. That other scribes kept for him. They also, it. I see no reason to think that Clayton fabricated or made up the contents in his journal later on as a way of sort of fabricating Joseph's polygamy, because what Clayton details about his own activities, in my opinion, it casts both him and Joseph in not a very positive light. So the idea that by today's standards anyway. Well, I think by the standards of the early 1840s for sure.
John Dehlin [01:48:17] Well, not by his standards of his religious beliefs and his devotion to Joseph. He thought he was engaged in righteousness,
John Turner [01:48:25] sure, but also managed to make almost everybody around him miserable. And so, yeah, for me, there's a presupposition of credibility with the Clayton Journal.
John Dehlin [01:48:46] Okay, I think I'm remembering it now. Tell me if I'm wrong. I think I remember Sandra Tanner talking about this and then you mentioned George Smith. Isn't some. So I'm finding here that George Smith released an intimate chronicle, the journals of William Clayton, I believe, around 1995. And I'm pretty sure that that publication was based, at least in part on transcripts of the original sources. So the Church has the originals, but I think what Sandra Tanner got her hands on, Sandra and Gerald Tanner and also George Smith, might have been transcripts taken written down from someone who had access to the originals. And that's why people like Michelle Stone and others want to cast doubt on anything William Clayton wrote, because they say, well, they're copies of the original, they aren't the original. But that leads. Is all that sound right. And then I have a follow up.
John Turner [01:49:54] No, so you're right. So a number of people made typescripts of the Clayton journals. Michael Quinn, Andrew Ehot. I don't know if I'm saying his last name correctly. I think James Allen. So there had been sort of Clayton typescripts in circulation. I don't think images of the Clayton Journal were ever in circulation. You know, at one point the Church had allowed some people to access it and then. And then restricted it in part because, you know, those people didn't keep it to themselves, I think. So that's been. Yeah, so that's been. One complicating factor is that the portions of the Clayton Journal, Nauvoo Journal, that have been published, they have been based on those typescripts rather than on original examination of the journal. But then I think people have also raised questions about whether this is a contemporary Nauvoo source typescript or original, or whether or not this is Clayton's sort of post martyrdom fabrication of Joseph's polygamy.
John Dehlin [01:51:26] And you don't buy that latter theory?
John Turner [01:51:29] I do not buy that.
John Dehlin [01:51:31] Yeah. And that's something that I think the Joseph Smith polygamy deniers really need. They need William Clayton's diaries to be post martyrdom fabrications because otherwise to me, Joseph starts to look more and more like Jeffrey Epstein once you start reading William Clayton's diaries. And we could talk about that now, but really quickly, if you had to theorize or speculate as to why the Church, for all that the Church has released by 2026, why in the world would the Church have been hesitant to release the William Clayton diaries to the point where they won't be released until 2027 or 2028? What's your speculative theory as to why the Church again has been unwilling to allow us to pry the William Clayton journals from the Church's cold, dead fingers?
John Turner [01:52:31] Well, first of all, I will just start with an expression of gratitude. I'm glad the Church let me examine them so and so. As to why I, I don't know. I haven't, I haven't asked people at the Church history department why, why these haven't been generally accessible. I think the easiest thing is to surmise that, look, there's a lot of tough material in here and you know, it. It's. This really is sort of a nitty gritty window into elements of Joseph's polygamy. And it's different than, you know, a lot of the sources that we have. They are affidavits from a couple decades later or they are people testifying five decades later. They are later memoirs and autobiographies of Joseph's wives. And some of those have significant detail and they can be very helpful in reconstructing events. But this is by far the most extensive, sometimes day by day account of some of Joseph's plural marriages, his teaching of polygamy, his conflicts with Emma. There's just a lot, there is a lot of rough stuff in here for us to process.
John Dehlin [01:54:09] Yeah. And would it be fair to characterize your reading of at least parts of the William Clayton journals as being deeply disturbing? Is that fair to say?
John Turner [01:54:21] Oh, that's fair to say for sure.
John Dehlin [01:54:23] Deeply disturbing. Maybe some of the most disturbing source documents we have about Joseph Smith and the practice of polygamy.
John Turner [01:54:31] Well, what I would say is that it shows that both Clayton and, and Joseph could be very callous about the trauma that polygamy caused for many individuals. And there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of prudence, caution, self reflection. There's a lot of charging ahead and a disregard for the pain and anguish that this causes for many people.
John Dehlin [01:55:17] And would you say that your overall assessment. Do you have an adjective to describe your assessment of William Clayton's character after reading his journals, or is that Putting you too much on the spot. Despicable comes to mind.
John Turner [01:55:35] But yeah, so that's a great question. So it's so funny, because my first thought of William Clayton has always been he wrote Come, Come, Ye Saints, a beloved.
John Dehlin [01:55:48] One of the most top three beloved Mormon hymns.
John Turner [01:55:51] Yeah. And I love it.
John Dehlin [01:55:54] What? I love that you love it.
John Turner [01:55:56] I like it. I like it. So if I'm at BYU and the carillon, the bells start chiming out, come, come, you saints, it makes. Puts me in a good mood. And so he wrote that hymn after hearing that one of his plural wives, after he had left Nauvoo, had safely delivered a child. And it's actually a woman named Diantha Farr who is connected to some of the stories that I talk about in this chapter. And so that was my first impression of Clayton, but, yes, I think disturbing would be. That's a fair adjective for sure. I think we better just get into the nitty gritty John.
William Clayton's Role in Sealing Ceremonies
John Dehlin [01:56:55] All right, let's do it. Let's dive in. I think it's important to understand the context, but let's do it. William Clayton. So you write that there were reluctant polygamists like Brigham Young, but that William Clayton wasn't one of them.
John Turner [01:57:11] He was not reluctant. No. So Clayton, I think when Joseph starts giving him some instructions on the priesthood, which is basically a euphemism for polygamy. Clayton. Which he did through Brigham Young, actually, he used Brigham Young to introduce the subject to Clayton. Then Clayton immediately starts thinking about a woman whom he had met while he had been a missionary in Manchester, England. And if you look at Clayton's Manchester diary, he writes about struggling with impure affections for a woman named Sarah Crooks. And when Joseph gets wind of this, he takes Clayton on a walk and tells him that it would be lawful for him to send for Sarah. And he even offered to foot the bill. And so that takes a while to develop because she's still on the other side of the Atlantic. Clayton instead turns his attention to the younger sister of his wife. So Clayton's first wife, her name is Ruth Moon. And Clayton turns his polygamous attention to her younger sister, Margaret. Now, Margaret was already living in his household along with his mother in law. One complicating factor is she was engaged to, or at least promised to, a man named Aaron Farr, who was away from Nauvoo on a mission. So Clayton talked with Margaret Moon about plural marriage. That got back to Aaron Farr's siblings, who were. Who were not pleased. But this was persuasive to Margaret. And so Joseph sealed Margaret Moon to Clayton and apparently, well, Clayton doesn't keep this a secret from his first wife. And apparently, at least on some occasions, he shared a bed with both sisters. So this is pretty crazy.
John Dehlin [01:59:49] Yeah, absolutely. And that's again, I think I wrote the word Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, I've shown you John Turner how, how much I'm marking up these pages like it's insane. And I keep writing either Ghislaine Maxwell or Jeffrey Epstein at least once on every page. But like the idea that, I mean, I don't know any other word to describe it, but like sexual escapades. Like the fact that. Oh, I'm kind of speechless. Yeah, it's like Joseph is doling out women. It's like if men are willing to go along with Joseph's polygamy, then he's doling out women to them. And you've got men sleeping with multiple sister pairs. You've got, you know, BJ sharing his bed and Joseph having sex with multiple women in. Is it Benjamin Johnson's bed? Like, it starts to feel like Nauvoo becomes Epstein's island in its own way because of the sexual escapades that start happening.
John Turner [02:01:06] Well, you know, stylistically I tend to avoid those sorts of present day comparisons because, I don't know, it's just, it's just this is enough on its own terms, in my opinion. I'm not criticizing you for doing so, but I narrate how this plays out in the next chapter or two. But this makes the Clayton household miserable. I mean, Margaret Moon totally regrets being sealed to Clayton and,
John Dehlin [02:01:44] and again, she's the sister of his wife.
John Turner [02:01:46] Right, right, right. And it drives, it drives Clayton's mother in law to insanity. She at some point tells, tells them, look, you can't all sleep together. And there's, there's just, there's a lot of, a lot of turmoil and angst in the household. Understandably.
John Dehlin [02:02:16] I'm trying to imagine a frontier woman who's a Christian, letting her husband marry her sister and then sharing a bed with her husband and her sister. Like that. That you got to see why I'm, why I'm invoking Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. You also go ahead.
John Turner [02:02:39] The crazy thing, John, and. Well, this I narrate in a later chapter. This makes everybody in the family miserable. And Clayton and Joseph both want to marry a third Moon sister, which is just. That's why I say that these two men proceed with a callous disregard for the misery that their Actions are inflicting on others. And I'm not saying that that was always the case with plural marriage. You can find wives of Joseph Smith who reflect back positively on the blessings they received and defend the principle. But in the Clayton household, at least it makes Ruth and Margaret Moon miserable, along with their mother and William Clayton and Joseph Smith, they both proposed the idea of marrying an additional Moon sister, which is just, just mind blowing to me.
John Dehlin [02:03:52] Who was what age?
John Turner [02:03:55] I don't remember.
John Dehlin [02:03:58] Well, you know, I just, I'm. There's so much here you write that Clayton writes in his journal during. You've mentioned this before, maybe you mentioned it today. During the last year of Jose. Of his Joseph's life, Clayton recalled, we were scarcely ever together alone, but he was talking on the subject. So Clayton says Joseph couldn't stop talking about polygamy. And by polygamy, we mean sex with teenage girls and other men's wives. That's gotta be what it means you talk about. When Brigham Young is summoned to teach Clayton about polygamy, Clayton almost immediately says, hey, there was this woman that I was attracted to when I was a missionary. And Brigham says that Joseph tells Clayton through Brigham sent for her, as if Joseph could just broker women like cattle. And that's, you know, what DNC132 ends up saying is that women are basically exist to be sexual conquests of men given and taken like cattle. Well, that's exactly what Joseph does. Clayton says, I want to bring on a second wife. And Joseph says, you can have her send for her, Brigham. Like, what the heck is that? Yeah, like again, you can see why I'm invoking other examples modern. Because that's just. Doesn't that count as trafficking? Go get her and bring her and she could be your wife. Because you're letting me have other women and you're marrying me to other women.
John Turner [02:05:41] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:05:41] So I'll let you have this other woman send for her. How is that not trafficking?
John Turner [02:05:46] Well, I mean, it's certainly facilitating. So this is what I would also say, and I think this is illuminating for understanding Joseph's actions. So I don't know if it's in this chapter or a subsequent chapter Joseph teaches Clayton. And I might not get the quote exact get all you can, which I interpret that as recklessly pursue as many plural marriages as possible.
John Dehlin [02:06:21] Why?
John Turner [02:06:23] Well, presumably get all you can because the more wives you have on earth, the greater your eternal glory. And for me, that in a nutshell explains why Joseph acted as he did during the last couple years of his life. He tries to get all he can. And why he marries so many different women in so many different circumstances, why he plunges ahead when he really should have pulled back. That's what he teaches Clayton. Get all you can. So, Clayton. Yes. I want this. I want this woman I was attracted to on my mission. In the meantime.
John Dehlin [02:07:10] Well, I want my wife's sister.
John Turner [02:07:12] Right. Which it's absolutely. Yes, I think that is absolutely despicable. Bonkers.
John Dehlin [02:07:24] So I did use the word despicable earlier.
John Turner [02:07:26] You did. And I, I would say with Joseph, Joseph managed, and I'm not saying this in any way to defend Joseph, but Joseph always seemed to proceed with a lot of these plural courtships. There's elements of decorum and, you know, he talks about it in, you know, I don't know, very semi discreet terms. And I think, you know, Clayton, he's just. He's more unhinged in terms of his pursuits.
John Dehlin [02:08:14] Yeah. And I wrote at the bottom something you've already said. But, but it's, it's. It's not lost on me that to Joseph, priesthood and polygamy, those words were interchangeable at this point, which again explains why the church fought for another 50 years to lie about or hide or even to stop its practice because priesthood became interchangeable with polygamy in the church.
John Turner [02:08:43] Absolutely. So it can be a little tricky when reading 1840 sources. So sometimes instructions on the priesthood, it can sometimes be a euphemism for what became the endowment ceremony. In this instance, it's clearly instructions on the priesthood mean I'm teaching you the doctrine of plural marriage.
John Dehlin [02:09:10] Yeah. Julia asks if it's true that Margaret had a child, Daniel Albert Clayton, from her sexual tryst with William.
John Turner [02:09:27] So I'm pretty sure Margaret. Margaret Moon does become pregnant after her marriage to Clayton. My best recollection is she may have lost. May have lost the pregnancy. There aren't very many children born to polygamous wives in Nauvoo during Joseph's lifetime. I think there's a Sarah Noon, married to Heber C. Kimball, who had an early child. But let me investigate a little bit more. I believe when Clayton's plural wife, Margaret becomes pregnant, I think there's some discussion with Emma Smith about the pregnancy, so I will refresh my memory. There's no beautiful hymn to accompany what transpires during these months.
John Dehlin [02:10:25] Well, Julia shared with me also, I think, an article from Gary Bergera where he tries to identify all the children born to polygamous marriages during the Nauvoo time period, kind of pre. Martyrdom. So that's a reference we'll also include in the show notes. So the people who want to investigate. But it seems like we may even have a child as proof of, I don't know, William Clayton's despicableness. But we'll leave it at that for now. I'm also curious why Margaret, like we talk about, why was William Clayton's first wife willing to have her sister have sex with her husband? But also, why would. Why would Margaret want to have sex with her sister's husband? Like, it's just. It's just deeply problematic. And if that weren't enough, let's go ahead and maybe close out. We may have to break this episode up into two John Turner, because we're already past two hours. But maybe, maybe we'll save the Kinderhook plates to kick off the next episode. But let's just go ahead and close out today's episode by talking about Lucy Walker.
Lucy Walker and Joseph's Younger Plural Wives
John Turner [02:11:46] Sure. So Lucy Walker is another of Joseph's young single plural wives. So she's 17 at the time of her sealing to Joseph. Clayton seals her to Joseph, I think in early May of 1843. She's one of a number of women, young women who move into the Smith household and then become plural wives of Joseph. Oftentimes this was because women had lost. Young women had lost a parent or parents. The Partridge Sisters are also in this category. Lucy Walker moved into the Smith household after her mother's death, and then her father had left Nauvoo, so she needed somewhere to stay. And these women, they. I would say, they weren't necessarily servant girls. They more were people who were welcomed into the household, would sometimes help with child care. And so Lucy was in that category. And according to her later recollection,
John Dehlin [02:13:18] she
John Turner [02:13:19] one day was taken aside by Joseph, who told her that God had commanded him to marry her. And of course, when she's taken aside with that, she's taken aback. And Joseph sort of, you know, the way he approached it was he asked her if she believed that he was a prophet of God. And when she said yes, he then taught her that the principle of plural or celestial marriage would prove an everlasting benefit to her family. She's in agony about it for a while. Joseph told her to pray about it. She didn't immediately get a divine witness confirming the teaching. Instead, she was really in agony about it. Joseph then, according to this, again, is according to her recollection, Joseph then essentially gave her an ultimatum. She had one more day to submit to God's command. And Joseph said, if you reject this message, the gate will be closed forever against you. And after a sleepless night, she felt that God, you know, gave her a sense of calm and assurance and happiness, which she took as a confirmation of Joseph's teaching.
John Dehlin [02:15:01] And I've mentioned this before, but apologists like to focus on the fact that Lucy Walker eventually received confirmation or inspiration as some sort of suggestion that then she consented. But the fact that she first thought it was repugnant, the fact that Joseph is pressuring her, the fact that he has so much power, but the fact that he's tying not only her eternal salvation, but that of her family as well. The fact that she's given a time limit with that pressure. You know, is this consent? Is this thoughtful, willing, spiritually informed consent, or is this abusive coercion in your mind? John Turner, if you have to call balls and strikes for those who want to say Lucy Walker entered in consensually.
John Turner [02:16:06] So it's a great question. Sometimes I want to say, look, I am just a humble historian. I'm not an ethicist. So I think there's a couple of things we could say. I mean, number one, I do think we have to acknowledge, you know, Lucy repeatedly in later years, you know, went on record about these experiences. She shared her reminiscences in a book that was published in the 1880s. She then testified in the Temple Lot case in the early 1890s. She does not betray any, you know, any. Any animosity or resentment against Joseph for his behavior. She later, I think, became a plural wife of Heber C. Kimball after Joseph's death. So I don't think we, you know, I don't think when discussing these cases, we want to totally disregard the agency and the experiences of Joseph's wives themselves. Now, that being said, you asked me to. You asked me to tell you what I think, and I think it's deeply problematic and disturbing for a religious leader to propose a polygamous marriage to a young woman on the basis of theological benefits and. And pressure. You know, both of which were. Were clearly present in this case. You know, it's when she agrees, she gets a blessing from Joseph. I'm sure she, you know, according to her own recollection, she really treasured that. Nevertheless. Yeah, I think there's sort of a coercion through ecclesiastical authority and theological promises that I think very much put people in an unfair position.
John Dehlin [02:18:28] Yeah. And again, so many things are becoming tainted that I once cherished. This really does start to taint the idea of celestial Marriage and eternal families. When you realize that Joseph used it as a coercion tool to get teenage girls and other women married to other men and even foster children entrusted to his care. It was all used as coercion. Spiritual, religious, prophetic coercion, in effect, to get them to marry him and to go to bed with him. It becomes really disturbing really quickly. One thing that I forgot to mention, going back to Sarah Crooks and William Clayton, when I talked about trafficking, I wrote down in my notes that Joseph Smith offers to pay to transport Sarah Crooks to deliver her via Brigham Young to William Clayton. So again, not only is Joseph buying gold watches for women that he's secretly betting, not only is he offering property to women that he's secretly betting, but he's offering money to transport across country boundaries women that he wants to deliver to men who are accomplices in his polygamy. Right? That's tithing money used to buy gold watches for mistresses, to buy property for mistresses and to transport women to, to, to. To be delivered as property to his accomplices. Am I wrong?
John Turner [02:20:31] Well, I don't, I don't know whether it was tithing money, but I don't really even think.
John Dehlin [02:20:35] Where did Joseph get money?
John Turner [02:20:37] I mean, I, he had, did he
John Dehlin [02:20:40] have a side job?
John Turner [02:20:41] Well, he, he did have his own, you know, had his own commercial operations. He had his own real estate transactions. But I don't think that's the key point. I'm so, I'm not, I'm not saying that to, to quibble. There's a lot of quid pro quos here. You know, I seal you to Margaret Moon, you seal me to Lucy Walker. Now, he would have been happy to seal Joseph to Lucy Walker anyway. But one of the strange things is Joseph, I think, actually cares about, you know, developing these bonds of friendship with people like Clayton through these escapades. You know, he, he refers to himself as a David like figure to Clayton. Like they are like the biblical David and Jonathan. Yeah. And let me just, I'm just going to step back, if you don't mind, and say a couple of things about Joseph and plural marriage. So, you know, there, there are all these debates about Joseph and plural marriage. You know, there's the back and forth over the decades of did Joseph actually engage in polygamy or not? So for me, that's not a debate. I think there's an abundance of evidence. And then the second is the whole cluster of questions. Well, what do we make of this? Was Joseph a moral monster? The way that Jeffrey Epstein or Warren Jeffs seem to be moral monsters. And what does this say about Joseph's character? And often then there are a lot of debates between people who want to defend Joseph's character and say, well, he proceeded with propriety and decorum and concern for people and people who, you know, just, well, like, you know, these are despicable actions. So my own opinion is that, yeah, these are despicable actions. I think If1.If1, had no connection to the church and Joseph Smith, be really hard to find a way to defend this behavior. Now, I, at the same time in my biography, I resist reducing Joseph to anything that's simple. So, you know, I say at the outset that I see Joseph not as just a prophet or a scoundrel, but a bit of both. And I really do mean that, like, I think these are just despicable behavior. This is my least favorite part of the story when it comes to, you know, Joseph Smith. I think if Joseph Smith were only someone who behaved despicably with regard to polygamy, there wouldn't be any need for us to have all these biographies and other books written about him. It'd be a simple story. And unfortunately, or fortunately, it's not simple. You know, there are. Even in these chapters, one can get a sense of why Joseph's teachings appealed so much to people. Joseph Kingsbury wanted to know that he would be with his beloved deceased wife and children forever. And so Joseph's solution for him was something that he treasured. We'll see a little bit later on when Joseph introduces polygamy to his brother Hyrum. Hyrum finds the idea repugnant, but Hyrum also wants to be with both his first wife and his second wife forever. He wants some assurance that this can be the case. So he has some theological and practical personal reasons to accept this as well. I know I'm digressing and probably rambling a little bit on Delin, but I do, you know, I do wrestle. I did wrestle with some of these feelings while writing these chapters. I mean, this is tough stuff. And, you know, I don't, you know, you have to, you know, full examination of Joseph Smith. You have to reckon with some really tough stuff during these chapters, even if you find other things to admire about him.
Moral Assessment of Joseph Smith's Actions
John Dehlin [02:25:28] Yeah, and I really appreciate your willingness to call balls and strikes John Turner. You know, I joked with you a little bit about the logic around Porter Rockwell's possible guilt or innocence or the Eliza R. Snow story. There's this really faulty logic that many employ With Joseph Smith, which basically is he's not all bad. He did a lot of good things, he was beloved. And I think you're not doing this, but a lot of apologists would say Joseph couldn't have been a monster because he was so beloved and because he did so many good things. And I'm just reminded of the knowledge, and I probably mentioned this before, and I know it's gonna come across as shocking, but anyone who studied child, I'll just say child abusers as an example, not to call Joseph a child abuser. Anyone who studied child abusers will admit that the most likely child abuser is going to be a beloved member of your family who's super generous with you and with your children. And the problem is, number one, that might be authentic. They might be lovely, kind, generous people, but also that's part of how they gain their power. By being kind and generous with adults and beloved, they're able to gain access to the children. And by being kind and generous with the children, they're able to gain access to the children. So the fact that someone who's potentially a monster is also beloved and kind, that's not just a possibility. That's part of how they do it. Jeffrey Epstein was loved by a lot of people. And he put it. We just found out through the Epstein papers that Jeffrey Epstein paid the tuition of a BYU Idaho student. I'm sure she found that to be kind and generous. And I think it's probably likely she was brokered to one of his clients or customers as a sexual favor. Both are true. So just because somebody is kind and generous and well loved doesn't discount the possibility that they were a predator. It comes part and parcel with being a predator is also being loved and charismatic. And that's how you gain your power and people's allegiance and trust to begin with. And we just have to look to Warren Jeffs and all the women that still believe he was a prophet after he's been imprisoned for child abuse. There are still women who are still and men who are believing that Warren Jeffs was a prophet in spite of having audio recordings of him having sex with a 12 year old girl in his temple. There are still people that are believers and I'm sure he was generous and kind to some people. And, and again, the fact that, the fact that Lucy Walker finally received a spiritual witness that Joseph, that she was supposed to marry Joseph by an angel, that. That doesn't really tell us anything other than sometimes can get, sometimes people can get spiritual manifestations confirming something that they think is repugnant. Oftentimes under pressure and coercion and duress, the mind can generate a spiritual experience as a way to help someone feel better about an otherwise coercive and abusive predicament that they find themselves in. And so, you know, Keith Rodri still has people that believe that he was a beloved, generous prophet. Warren Jeff still has people who believe he was a loving and kind and generous, inspired prophet. Heck, Heaven's Gate still has people who believe that Heaven's Gate was of God, even though its beloved leader and all the followers ended up committing dying by mass suicide. So, and again, I just want to also just end with the. With the realization from this important chapter that Joseph not only used spiritual and doctrinal religious coercion to convince his followers to get into polygamy, he used church money to buy gifts for his. His victims, to buy land for his victims, gold watches for his victims, and even to transport his victims. He used tithing money because where else did he get the money if not from tithing or from investments on the tithing? It almost reminds me of City Creek Mall and the church saying it wasn't tithing used to build City Creek Mall. Well, okay, it was investments on the tithing. But either way, the money that Joseph got from tithing and from the church was used in. In these. What we would have to say is despicable misdeeds. Now, having said that, yeah, Joseph was also beloved and did acts of kindness and probably believed a lot of his spiritual and doctrinal and religious teachings and had good intentions, too. But I'm grateful, John Turner, that you were willing and able to. To depict ultimately some of Joseph's behaviors as despicable. Like William Clayton. Like unto William Clayton. Because if any chapter shows despicable behavior, it's this one.
John Turner [02:31:29] Yeah, I mean, this is. Well, I just. I never think it's a good idea to try to defend the indefensible. Yeah, I think it's better to say, oh, okay, this is. This is, you know, serious. Some serious errors and sins. Even I'm comfortable with that kind of language here. Let me just try out something that. I don't know if this would resonate with you or not, but I just finished reading a book called Cave Mountain, which is mostly about some sort of bizarre intersections of religion and violence in Arkansas in the late 20th century. And it talks about just some. Just a terrible, terrible instance in which a small cult, which I think is the fair word in that case, including a young mother, is complicit in the murder of a three year old child. The three year old child of this young mother and the author of the book. Rather remarkably, this took place. I think it's either late 70s, early 80s. The authority, 40 years or so after the fact, tracked down everybody, pretty much everybody that was involved. And you know, after being complicit in this horrible act, a lot of them had served prison terms. They, they then some of them kind of rebuilt their lives. You know, they, they were guilty for what they had done. They worked dead end jobs, they formed new family connections, some were successful than others. They kind of tried to atone for what they had done wrong. Joseph Smith, I think very much goes off the rails morally in Nauvoo
John Dehlin [02:33:47] and
John Turner [02:33:49] is then murdered at the age of 38. We don't know what Joseph would have done with the rest of his life, whether he would have regretted some of these actions, whether we would have, he would have quadrupled down on them in the end. We just don't know. Get a sense of the way his, you know, many of his followers chose to, to live this out. You know, that's sort of what we're, we're left with. We're left with, you know, two, three years of reckless, chaotic, you know, morally disturbing pursuit of, of polygamy. And you know, that essentially that's what we're left with. And it's, it's, it's not easy to, to come to terms with.
John Dehlin [02:34:49] It's not. Well, thank you for sharing that.
John Turner [02:34:52] I think what you, you know what, I'm just, I push back a little bit on applying the label of moral monster to almost anyone now. I make exceptions. I make exceptions for obviously the Adolf Hitlers, the Jeffrey Epstein's of the world. For me, I don't put, I don't put Joseph Smith in that category. I guess maybe this is sort of just splitting hairs. You know, I use, I use the label of a scoundrel. Maybe that doesn't quite do it justice for me. It is hard to reckon with the full measure of this man's life. I totally agree with you about. It's sloppy moral reasoning to say somebody who does some despicable things. Well, if he also did some good things and he was a good wrestler and played ball with the kids in Nauvoo, then it's kind of just a mixed bag. But you know, even so, I feel, you know, I won't go as far as to call Joseph Smith a moral monster partly because I do think the record is more complex than that. And I See, I see Joseph. I do see him living differently to some extent, the last six or eight months of his life. So I guess I didn't lose all hope in him. But, yes, I don't have any trouble saying that the way he pursued polygamy was despicable.
John Dehlin [02:37:03] Yeah. And I don't think I called Joseph Smith a moral monster. I don't. I don't think those words have ever come out of my mouth. Am I wrong? But I do think that the despicable is a fair characterization of some of this behavior that is coming out in the Nauvoo time period.
John Turner [02:37:23] Yeah. And I would say that, you know, for those who. I mean, I'm not. I'm not going to tell other people how they should. Should think about this. I do think, you know, sometimes it's better off for institutions and their members to simply be willing to say, look, this was a terrible mistake, and we don't fully understand why some terrible mistakes were made, but this was a terrible mistake. There's nothing to defend sometimes.
John Dehlin [02:38:07] Yeah. All right, well, we're only halfway done with this chapter, but it was so important that I think we need to split it out. Honestly, I don't want to rush some of the stuff that comes later. So maybe next episode will be a little bit shorter than today's. But we still have to cover, you know, the Kinderhook plates. We have to talk about Emma and Hyram not being in the know, but eventually Joseph Smith bringing Hyrum and Emma into knowledge about the polygamy. And there's still some other disturbing accounts left in the chapter. So anyway, John Turner, what a wonderful chapter. My blood was boiling, but I learned so much today. Deep water doesn't begin to describe how powerful this is. By the way, I think one of Joseph's victims also described herself as being in deep water in this chapter, which I thought was kind of ironic. It isn't just Joseph who liked to be in deep water, but sometimes he got other people in deep water as well. Did you notice that?
John Turner [02:39:30] I think you're. I think you're right. Yeah. You're reading my chapters so carefully, John de Lynn, that I. Now, I think sometimes you know my writing better than I know it myself, which is a little crazy. A little crazy.
John Dehlin [02:39:42] I'm reading it like scripture. I mean, the church taught me how to. How to study Scripture, so that's what I'm doing, and I stand by it. Anyway, what an important chapter. We have more to come. The book is Joseph the Rise and Fall of an American Prophet by Professor John G. Turner. Please buy it. Please buy it. For friends and family, there's an audiobook that's outstanding as well. Thanks to everyone who's donated to make this series possible. And if you, you know, we keep extending episodes because there's so much here. We've done this because of the generosity of the donors. But also if you want to see the series continue, if you like John Turner earning extra income for this amazing knowledge that he's sharing with us, you can donate to this project as well. You can go to donorbox.org Joseph Smith and donate to the series. And you can also know that now those donations will likely help tip the scale in convincing John Turner to do at least 10 episodes more on Brigham Young. Which if we end with 40 on Joseph Smith and 10 with Brigham Young, that'll be a 50 episode series with John Turner. That's a semi centennial. What do you call half a century? Half a hundred.
John Turner [02:41:11] I'd call it a Pentecost. That's 50 Pentecostal power.
John Dehlin [02:41:18] Well, please, thank you for your support. Please support us if you can. Donorbox.org John Turner please buy this book. But also there are other ways to support us. You could like and subscribe. We're like 150 people away from 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. Please subscribe to us on YouTube and on Spotify. We love your comments on YouTube and on Spotify. We LOVE your emails@mormonstoriesmail.com Please correct us, please criticize us, please agree with us and praise us in the comments and in email. We love all that. True, John Turner.
John Turner [02:41:53] That is very true. I really appreciate people listening and engaging from all sorts of different perspectives and probably almost everybody would find something to disagree with in today's episode because there's so much, so much to deal with and think about. But I, I appreciate the support and I appreciate the engagement and I just love the fact that, that so many people take an interest in early Mormon history. Some people for deeply personal reasons, religious reasons, some people just because they find this stuff as fascinating as I do, even though they don't have any connection to it. So wherever you're at, definitely comment, drop us a line. We love you being our audience.
Preview of Coming Topics
John Dehlin [02:42:46] And just as teasers, agreed with all that, just as teasers coming up, we've got the kinder plates. We, we've got this idea of a calling and election being made sure which to me is kind of again a precursor to the second anointing. We've got BJ's bed, Benjamin Johnson's bed. We're gonna be talking about how Joseph beds multiple women in BJ's bed. We're gonna be talking about Joseph trying to marry Esther Johnson. A 15 year old would be the third sister that he would marry. We're gonna be talking about, again, Emma and Hyrum being brought in. We're going to be talking about the sham marriage of the Partridge sisters, which, again, we've talked about before, but it's worth going slowly. It's deeply disturbing. Again, Hyrum Smith as well. Eventually, Emma getting sealed to Joseph. And the closing of this chapter where Joseph admits. He says the quiet part out loud. Joseph is going to admit that not only does he love men who swear, but that he's not a righteous dude. He tells everybody that he's not righteous dude. That's all coming up in, I guess we're going to say part 35, part two of our series with John Turner on chapter 27 of his book. Thanks, John Turner.
John Turner [02:44:07] All right, hold on to your Aggie hat. Aggies hat, John Dehlani.
John Dehlin [02:44:11] And good luck, George Mason. We hope that the Patriots make the NCAA Tournament.
John Turner [02:44:18] All right, Bye.
John Dehlin [02:44:19] Bye. All right. Thanks, John Turner. Thanks, Julia. Thanks, Brooklyn. Thanks, everyone who makes this possible. Thanks to our listeners and viewers. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of the Joseph Smith Podcast and Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care, everybody.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Thumbnail Credits: Main image of Joseph Smith by Unknown painter, from Community of Christ Archives (public domain); Background image of Heber C. Kimball home taken by Julia Sanders
One Response
Apology!
John, although you don’t know me and therefore this will obviously mean very little to you however I need to offer you an apology.
I previously had misjudged your intentions and motivation with regards to this podcast and I now see that you are very sincere and genuine in your desire to free the minds of individuals like me by offering not only truth but more importantly hope after a lifetime of one sided indoctrination.
As such, I sincerely Apologise.
Alan Robinson