Customer Reviews

Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations After the Manifesto

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I originally purchased this book for my wife who has been interested in what makes modern polygamists tick. I browsed through it and decided that it would be worth my time to read. It turned out to be a very educational experience and helped me understand the history of Mormon fundamentalists much better.

This book was published by Greg Kofford Books, a small publishing house in Utah specializing in Mormon and regional studies. I have read several of their books and have been impressed with the quality of their material.

This book is a study of the beginnings and history of Mormon fundamentalism. It is not an apologetic work on polygamy, but focuses on the claims of authority by the leaders of the major polygamous sects. The author states that he did the research and wrote this book after a sister became involved in one of the polygamous sects.

The first part of the book talks of the claims of authority that the LDS church used to implement and then stop the practice of polygamy. The discussion then went into detail of how difficult it was to stop polygamy within the church. After the first manifesto, the practice was still continued outside of the US and even somewhat within the US. There was opposition from several key leaders including some apostles. Eventually a second manifesto with issued during the time of the Smoot hearings, where penalties of excommunication were threatened for anyone performing plural marriages. Two apostles were ultimately excommunicated along with several other local leaders over the next several years in an attempt to stop the practice.

The fundamentalist movement grew out of those issues, and the claims of authority were ultimately tracked back to John Taylor and a revelation he received and ordinations he allegedly secretly performed back in 1886, but not brought to light until the 1930's. Hales spends most of the book tracing these lines of authority up to modern times. He also points out what he sees as the weaknesses of these claims of authority.

The last chapter is an attempt to try to understand why people become fundamentalists. I thought his discussion of how to determine true doctrine from false doctrine to be very well thought out. He clearly writes as a believing LDS sincerely trying to understand these groups that his sister became involved in.

Having grown up in Utah, the history was a good review of the many groups that I have heard of throughout my life. He covers the FLDS group (Warren Jeffs), the Lafferties (Famous for assassinating other polygamists), and many other sects that have been in the news.

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn more about Mormon fundamentalists.

This book is rich in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and how certain Church members split away from the main Church to form their own group in the early 20th century. It is a facinating review of American history.
I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in American history or religious history.

This book purports to be a reasonably accurate history of Mormon Fundamentalism. It is instead a work of unabashed Mormon Apology. Throughout the book Brian Hales demonstrates a general lack of respect for historical facts and constantly interjects his bias against his subjects. This book is clearly an attempt to discredit Mormon "Fundamentalists" and support mainstream mormon veiwpoints. If you are looking for a biased narrative whose only purpose is to convince you that all other veiwpoints are wrong and those of the curent mainstream in the church are the only credible ones, then by all means buy this book. If you actually want to understand the big picture, and get historically acurate information, buy "Silencing Mormon Polygamy" from Drew Briney.

I will wait for a book whose title & rationale do not again mistakenly project polygamy as fundamental to Mormonism or as preceding our doctrine of monogamous marriage. In every age of the Gospel, including Joseph Smith's (D&C 49:16), the doctrine of monogamy always preceded, and subsequently interrupted, polygamy's divergent practice. All 4 cataloging topics of this book's copyright page again perpetuate the error of calling this practice a "doctrine" (Hinckley, Nelson, Ballard, Widtsoe, Talmage).

It is surprising that in today's information age, yet another book omits & contradicts historical demonstration that Mormon polygamy came at the end rather than the beginning of polygamy's epidemic in globally-Western society (Hardy); that ancient polygamy evolved either out of, or as a precursor to, slavery (Lerner); that polygamy is legally & socially incompatible with freedom & democracy (Kurtz). Since monogamous Isaac & Rebekah tried to terminate polygamy from his father's culture, the author wisely removes Isaac's name from the list of supposed Old Testament polygamists named in our unschooled & recollected Section 132, which Joseph Smith never canonized. But Hales missed that BYU Studies & student manuals also remove Moses (in deference to factual historian Josephus).

As for Hales needing additional information to know whether Adam & Noah were polygamists, it is already amply clear in the Old Testament record that they were not. But Christ himself repeats the answer about Adam in singular & exclusive terms as he twice adds the word "twain" to our Genesis account when quoting that scriptural record to the Pharisees: "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh." Besides using singularity in his codification of marriage, and discounting Abraham's plural "marriage," Paul confirms the Genesis account of Noah & his sons being monogamous. The Flood terminated the introduction of polygamy as a counterfeit from Cain's line after their ancestors had originally been dividing "two and two in the land."

Perhaps not surprising is that Hales continues the LDS tradition of taking 2 verses out of the scathing context of 35, to rationalize the opposite of what Lehi's Jacob unequivocally denounced in the name of the Lord. That includes, among a whole list of unabridged pronouncements, the Lord's invalidation of any attempt to defend polygamy with the Old Testament, ... and the Lord's eye-opening view of this "abominable" "crime" as intolerable "captivity" for Nephite women & girls, for those in the land of Jerusalem, and "in all the lands of my people" as He prohibited polygamy from spreading to this Promised Land (Jacob 2). Besides King Noah's group, the earlier Jaredites too met similar termination of the practice.

If we acknowledge, as Hales does, Joseph Smith's inspiration to correct mistakes in the Bible, why do we ignore his edits (such as in 1 Kings) that further censure ancient Israel's polygamy?

But I'll give Hales a second star for several refreshing acknowledgments including this: "It appears that the scriptural record fails to document a time when God commanded his followers to practice plural marriage." Further, current latter-day scripture alone has at least 3 separate canon that explicitly command monogamy.

Perhaps one of the most prophetic statements Brigham Young made was: "If it is wrong for a man to have more than one wife at a time, the Lord will reveal [that] by and by, and he will put it away that it will not be known in the Church."

The original doctrine of marriage (from the beginning with Adam & Eve, and in this Last Dispensation restored in 1831 under Sections 42 & 49 and re-restored in 1890 under the Manifesto) was monogamy, not polygamy. So which is really more fundamental? "For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?"