Unable to Decide...

I've been working on an essay addressing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the long-since abolished practice of polygamy, although I'm really deciding whether or not I should go ahead and finish it =/

I'm not going to be so bold as to say that I know all the ins and outs of why polygamy came about, but I have my theories, and the essay is outlining those theories.

Essentially what I say in my essay is that the reason why polygamy was integrated into the church temporarily may have been due to the persecution of the members of the religion. Historically, the Latter-day Saints were often threatened if not actively run out of town and even attacked in some cases. In the state of Missouri, there was an extermination issued against the Latter-day Saints.

Aside from that, the long trek to Utah was extremely difficult on the Latter-day Saints and, consequently, there was a high death toll. It could be considered that because of the great number of men who died at the hands of violent protesters on top of the high death count as a result of the trek to the Salt Lake Valley, there were many widows who were unable to support themselves and their families, so the practice of polygamy may have been a commandment given in order to help the surviving companies keep the population from dying out entirely.

It's known that a very small number of Latter-day Saints actually had more than one wife, less than about 10%, and these were the men who were very well-to-do and had the means to support the suffering families who were no longer able to make a living for themselves.

I'm torn though. I'm not sure if I want to publish the essay for a few reasons:

1. I'm no expert and I obviously don't know the real reason, so I don't want to say anything in ignorance, even if I do explicitly state that my essay contains strictly my own thoughts and ideas

2. I don't want to make it look as though I'm antagonizing anybody. I don't want to try to gain sympathy and make the Latter-day Saints look like victims, I simply want to express that there was in fact persecution in an impartial, unbiased manner, but I don't know how people will interpret my meaning.

3. I don't want to make it look like a justification. Whether people believe it's right or wrong, polygamy happened, and I don't want to come off as though I'm trying to convince people one way or the other because frankly, everyone's entitled to their own opinions, and whether they believe that polygamy was a good or a bad thing is something over which I have no say

So please excuse the extremely long post, but as I said, I'm torn about it. I already have an essay written out which I find to be interesting and (to me) it makes sense as to why a religion which is typically good and fair-minded would take part in a practice which seems inherently unequal in regards to human rights.

Well officially, the answer is that it was revelation received by the prophet Joseph Smith that the duty to take an extra wife was an assignment from God. Aside from that, there's no other reasons given, which is why I like to think that, (assuming you believe it truly was divine inspiration) it was guidance from God with a reason that we can readily understand.

That's ultimately what I aim to do, is to show that even though we receive answers from God about things, we don't have to sit and wonder what His reasons are for calling us to do something, rather, sometimes there is a completely plausible reason right in front of us.

And this essay is for people like me, I suppose, someone who's really interested in religious faiths and the history of religion =)

Deb, I'm really glad you brought that to my attention. Joseph Smith himself actually had multiple wives, I'm fairly certain of that. However, that adds some complications to the idea that the commandment for certain individuals to take other wives was based on the decline of men in the society.

I'm surprised I let that detail slip by me. Usually I'm pretty on top of things like that.