Thomas S Monson: The prophet Joseph Smith
said that, "Happiness is the object and the
design of our existence and will be the result
thereof if we but walk the pathway which leads
to it.
And that pathway said he is virtue, uprightness,
faithfulness, holiness, and keeping of all
the commandments of God."
Happiness is the object and the design of
our existence.
Dallin H Oaks: The happiness is the object
and design of our existence.
Speaker 1: Happiness is the object and design
of our existence.
Speaker 2: Happiness is the object and design
of our existence.
Speaker 3: Happiness as the object and design
of our existence.
Speaker 4: Happiness-
Thomas S Monson: Happiness-
Speaker 5: Happiness-
Speaker 6: Happiness-
Speaker 7: Happiness-
Dallin H Oaks: Happiness-
Speaker 8: Happiness-
Dallin H Oaks: Happy-
Speaker 9: Happy-
Speaker 10: Happy-
Speaker 11: Happy-
Speaker 12: Happy-
Speaker 13: Happiness-
Thomas S Monson: Is the object and the design
of our existence and will be the end thereof
if we will, but pursue the path which leads
to it and that path is virtue.
Speaker 14: Virtue-
Speaker 15: Virtue-
Dallin H Oaks: Virtue-
Speaker 17: Virtue-
Speaker 18: Virtue-
Speaker 19: Virtue-
Thomas S Monson: Uprightness-
Speaker 20: Uprightness-
Speaker 21: Uprightness-
Speaker 22: Uprightness-
Dallin H Oaks: Uprightness-
Speaker 23: Uprightness-
Dallin H Oaks: Uprightness-
Speaker 24: Uprightness-
Speaker 25: Uprightness-
Thomas S Monson: Faithfulness.
Speaker 26: Faithfulness-
Speaker 27: Faithfulness-
Speaker 28: Faithfulness-
Speaker 29: Faithfulness-
Thomas S Monson: Holiness-
Speaker 16: Holiness-
Speaker 17: Holiness-
Speaker 18: Holiness-
Thomas S Monson: And keeping all of the commandments
of God.
Group: And keeping all of the commandments
of God.
Group: And keeping all of the commandments
of God.
Group: And keeping all of the commandments
of God.
Thomas S Monson: The prophet Joseph declared
happiness is the object and design of our
existence and will be the end thereof if we
pursue the path that leads to it.
Bill Reel: What you just heard was several
references from official conversations.
You likely recognized the voice of Dallin
H. Oaks and even more specifically Thomas
S Monson in those audio bytes.
There were several apostles and presidents
of the church whose voices you heard there
as well as other auxiliary leaders and members
of the 70.
The Happiness Letter has been quoted in Mormonism
a multitude of times.
The quote is often used to point us to what
it takes to be happy and that sacrifices must
be made, but what is not said is the manipulative
context of this letter authored by the prophet
Joseph Smith.
In today's episode, you're going to hear a
conversation that consist mainly of Jonathan
Streeter and Chris Smith.
With just a few comments here and there by
me.
We go into depth about the Happiness Letter
and the attempted manipulation of Nancy Rigdon
into an elicit relationship.
Bill Reel: My challenge to you as listeners
as you listen to today's episode is that simply
reading the Happiness Letter is insufficient
to give you the context needed to understand
this issue.
If you follow this episode back to where it
was posted at Mormondiscussionpodcast.org
or MDpodcast.org.
If you find this episode, look at the show
notes, follow all of the hyperlinks and sources.
What you'll come to understand is that LDS
leaders in the early 1840s late 1830s and
early 1840s were deeply teaching in the background
manipulative theology designed to convince
women to become plural wives of various members
of the church, specifically the prophet Joseph
Smith, often for the purpose of sexuality.
I hope you enjoy today's episode, but I don't
think it's one that's going to be very comfortable
and with that now onto what you've been waiting
to hear.
Bill Reel: Welcome to another episode of Mormon
discussion podcast.
I'm your host Bill Reel and I'm sitting here
today with Jonathan Streeter and Chris Smith.
How are you guys this morning?
Chris Smith: Doing great.
Jon Streeter: Doing great.
Bill Reel: Good, good.
Glad to have you both on.
So I was at Sunstone you guys were at Sunstone,
somebody canceled at the last minute and you
guys presented on the.
Happiness Letter from Nancy Rigdon and I've
always wanted to understand this story better.
So I went into your session, sat through what
I thought was a really great presentation,
especially last minute.
It sounded like something had been prepared
over a long period of time.
I want to give you guys just a brief moment
to introduce yourselves to the audience, but
then let's jump into the early life of Nancy
Rigdon and go from there.
Jon Streeter: Sounds good.
Chris, you want to start?
Chris Smith: Sure.
I'm Christopher Smith.
I've got a PhD in religion from Claremont
Graduate University, have taught at Utah State
and then a fellow at BYU and basically I'm
an American historian of religion but specializing
in Mormonism.
Jon Streeter: And I'm Jon Streeter.
I run the blog Thoughts on Things and Stuff
and the YouTube channel Thinker of Thoughts.
I grew up in the church, ended up going a
different direction a few years ago, but fell
in love with church history and just the study
of the phenomenon of what it is that makes
people love the church so much.
And so it's been the subject of a lot of my
blog and podcast activities and the Happiness
Letter in particular is something that's been
on my mind for several years.
And you're right, Bill, you didn't see us
just come up with this last minute when it
canceled.
This is something that I've been talking to
Chris about for a while.
We had some things in the works and it just
was serendipity that there was an opportunity
for us to showcase it at Sunstone.
Bill Reel: Hey, I found that amazing that
you guys again last minute, it wasn't on the
schedule that everybody had in their hands
and yet that was a room that had a lot of
people in it.
And I thought it was just an interesting conversation.
So with that, let's start off Nancy Rigdon
maybe start us wherever you want to and let's
run through here.
And I'll poke in and ask a question in here
and there.
Jon Streeter: Okay, well I just want to give
an outline of this.
This is all going to center around something
that we'll refer to as the Nancy Rigdon affair
and that happens in 1842 but if you really
want to understand it, you have to go back
and you have to start a lot earlier than 1842.
So we're going to take some time and just
take a look at Nancy Rigdon's biography, where
she came from.
We're going to look at some of the rumors
that were swirling around Joseph Smith's prior
accusations of sexual impropriety.
We're going to look at the things that are
going on in 1842 when we get there that help
you understand both the events around the
letter and the contents of the letter itself.
Jon Streeter: And then what happens with the
letter and then some of the aftermath of it.
I just want to start with where did Nancy
Rigdon first meet Joseph Smith?
And if you study church history, you know
a little bit of the history where the church
was founded in 1830 I believe that year, Parley
P. Pratt used to be a congregant member of
Sidney Rigdon and ended up joining the church
and then going on a mission and sharing the
book of Mormon with Sidney Rigdon.
The story goes that he initially rejected
it, but then ended up reading it and becoming
converted to it.
Does that sound about right, Chris?
Chris Smith: That was Parley Pratt and in
fact, if anybody would like to know more about
that story, they can read about it in my article
Playing Lamanite that appeared in the Journal
of Mormon History.
Jon Streeter: Oh, excellent.
All right.
He was baptized pretty closely, his whole
family, is that correct?
Chris Smith: Yeah, the Rigdon family.
Yeah
Jon Streeter: So and Nancy would have been
eight years old around that time and we can
kind of start the relationship between the
Rigdon family, Nancy as the oldest daughter
in particular in 1830 where she would have
been an eight year old child, baptized.
Now, if I understand correctly, Joseph Smith
was not the one who baptized the Rigdon family.
Do you know who it was that did the baptism,
Chris?
Chris Smith: I'm not sure.
But it was one of those missionaries, Parley
Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Ziba Peterson and I
don't remember who the last one was.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, exactly.
So then if you kind of do a search for what
are the other connections between Joseph and
Nancy directly?
You can find a letter in the Joseph Smith
Papers Project where Joseph is writing about
some of his experiences visiting the saints
in Kirtland and he mentions visiting the Rigdon
family and specifically blessing Nancy.
And so Joseph Smith would have visited, and
this is a year later, a nine year old Nancy
Rigdon who was fallen ill and laid his hands
on her and given her a blessing.
And that's the first time that I can find
that there's a real physical connection between
the two.
Going forward, Chris, as part of his presentation,
gave an account that there were some rumors
going around that Joseph had had some interaction
with Rigdon's family.
And I'll let Chris kind of talk about that.
Chris Smith: Sure.
So this is in 1838 and there's a guy named
William C. Smith who later becomes a member
of the RLDS church.
This is not the prophet's brother different
William Smith, but he testified in 1884 that
he thought that Joseph Smith had been interested
in Nancy at Kirtland.
And he says, "My impression is that the report
was here in Kirtland.
I went to school with Athalia Rigdon."
That's Nancy's one year younger sister.
"And there was talk among the boys about sealing.
I think there was difficulty between Joseph
Smith and Rigdon with reference to having
Rigdon's daughter sealed to Smith.
I would not positively say it was so; that
is my impression."
So ordinarily a source like this I would just
dismiss because it's a really late reminiscence.
He says he's not even sure about it.
And it sounds like something where he could
be confusing later advanced from Nauvoo with
the Kirtland era.
Chris Smith: But there in this case is contemporary
corroboration.
So we have a letter by Oliver Cowdery's, brother
Warren Cowdery that he published in the Latter-day
Saints Messenger and Advocate in September
1837 and he alludes to these rumors about
Joseph Smith and a daughter of Sidney Rigdon.
It says he's heard "That rumors were afloat
and had gained some credence in your towns."
These are neighboring towns around Kirtland,
"That were derogatory to the characters of
Joseph Smith Jr and the family of Sidney Rigdon.
He called these rumors a sheer fabrication.
I said that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon
are still on friendly terms."
So these rumors apparently were implying some
kind of falling out between Joseph and Sidney
and he doesn't spell out exactly what the
rumors were, but in his closing sentence,
he makes it pretty clear that it related to
Joseph Smith's involvement with a Rigdon daughter
because he says "Relative to the family of
Sidney Rigdon, we have to say that it is large
consisting mostly of females, young, innocent,
unsuspecting without reproach and for ought
we know above suspicion."
Chris Smith: So these rumors apparently involved
some kind of sexual misconduct between Joseph
Smith and a Rigdon daughter.
And we don't know which Rigdon daughter.
So in the Nauvoo sources we don't have any
indication that there had been prior involvement
between Joseph and Nancy and it kind of seems
like this came out of left field for Nancy.
So there's a real possibility that the person
involved in these Kirtland rumors was actually
Nancy's sister Athalia, who when Joseph Smith
comes to talk to the Rigdon family about the
letter that he sent to Nancy in Nauvoo.
Athalia sort of leaps to his defense when
Nancy accuses him.
So possibly there was some kind of prior involvement
between Joseph and Athalia, but this is pretty
thin.
We don't know exactly what the nature of the
rumors were.
Maybe this was just Joseph Smith had noticed
Nancy or Athalia and sort of said something
improper or looked at them the wrong way and
rumors circulated.
So we don't really know.
Jon Streeter: Okay.
And for me, the big takeaway from that is
that there was some sort of rumor in the air
that there had been some connection between
Joseph and one of the daughters of Sidney
Rigdon and that fits in with a pattern of
accusations that kind of plagued Joseph as
he moved along in the development of the early
church.
And there's a document out there authored
by former CES instructor Grant Palmer, where
he looked at all of the early accusations
of sexual impropriety of Joseph Smith and
he's documented all of them.
And check that document out and when you read
it, you can see the types of allegations which
seemed to follow Joseph no matter where he
went.
And one of those occurred in 1832 and it has
some significance for what ultimately happens
with the Nancy Rigdon affair in 1842 and that
is when Joseph and Emma were living with the
Johnson family in Kirtland.
Jon Streeter: And we all know if we grew up
in the church that there's this story of Joseph
Smith being dragged from the house and tarred
and feathered.
And it's one of those stories that's frequently
brought out just to show how persecuted Joseph
was for preaching the gospel, for bringing
the restoration of the truth, and how he was
hated by everyone for that.
But when you actually dig into the history
and look at the accounts of the people involved
in that event, you can find out that it's
a little bit more complex than that as many
of these things are.
And that is that not only did they tar and
feather him, but they also had a doctor on
hand who was ready to castrate Joseph.
And the story goes that once they had Joseph
laid out on a board and called on the doctor
to do his procedure, he decided that he was
not going to do it.
Jon Streeter: But the people who gave an account
of this event indicate that one of the Johnson
boys, the reason the doctor was there to castrate
him was because there was a sexual impropriety
that is linked with Joseph and one of Johnson's
daughters, a girl by the name of Marinda who
was 16 years old at the time.
Joseph was in his mid to late twenties I think
he was around 27 at that time with them living
with the Johnsons and there was this rumor
that he had been inappropriate or had pursued
Marinda Johnson who was the 16 year old daughter
of the family.
He was living with.
Any other details on that, Chris, that I may
have left down?
Chris Smith: I think an important piece of
context for this is that 1832 is when Orson
Pratt says, Joseph Smith first told people
about polygamy.
A Pratt says that Joseph told people the principle
of taking more wives than one is a true principle,
but at the time had not yet come for it to
be practiced.
So this is potentially when that principal
is emerging and the same year Joseph Smith
revises Romans 7 for the Joseph Smith translation,
the inspired version of the Bible, and in
Romans 7 in which Paul is talking about how
Christians aren't under the law anymore, Joseph
writes "For the good that I would have done
when under the law I find not to be good,
therefore I do it not, but the evil which
I would not do under the law I find to be
good that I do."
So it's kind of calling good evil and evil
good.
It's kind of reversing the standard moral
paradigm.
Which is very much the kind of rhetorical
move that he makes in the Happiness Letter
which we'll discuss later.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
Okay.
Very good.
Now we're leading up to the events of 1842
we've talked about the connections between
Joseph and the Rigdon family.
We've talked about all of these different
events that seem to link Joseph to unorthodox
sexual practices that are just plaguing him
as he goes through there.
You've got, of course, the Fanny Alger affair.
There's other stories that I'll refer you
to that Grant Palmer document.
Then we get to Nauvoo in 1842 now before we
get here, just reflect back on the history
of the Rigdon family and the Smith family.
By the time they're in Nauvoo, we've been
through the Ohio Kirtland era and all of the
conflicts about that.
What would you say would be the major landmarks
between the Rigdon family and Joseph along
this time, Chris?
Were they always on good terms?
Chris Smith: I think for the most part they
were on pretty good terms.
I mean Rigdon is basically the number two
man in the church.
He's helping Joseph Smith around the church.
Especially during Missouri, Joseph Smith and
Sidney Rigdon are hand-in-glove.
Jon Streeter: Okay.
So, so Nancy is really seeing her father not
only as a co leader of the church, but also
share in some of the tribulations of Joseph
and certainly received the benefit of being
in Joseph's inner circle.
What I want to do is have the listener get
a sense of if you're the teenage daughter
of somebody who's the right hand man of the
prophet, what kind of social pressures or
familial pressures would you have of rejecting
somebody who you had seen as your benefactor?
Because all of these things are in the air
and must press upon her mind.
So when you see what type of young woman Nancy
is in this situation, it kind of makes you
feel even more impressed with what her character
is when we actually get into it.
So 1842, particularly early 1842 is one of
the most momentous periods of time in the
church.
Jon Streeter: In January, you've got Joseph
Smith opening up his red brick store, the
upstairs room of which sees a bunch of really
historic events.
You've got the creation of the Relief Society
in March, you've got the elevation of Joseph
Smith and others to the position of master
mason, I believe, in the newly formed Nauvoo
Freemasonry lodge there.
You've got shortly after that, the creation
and introduction of the temple endowment.
And underneath all of this is Joseph's activities
in creating his network of people who are
all involved in the practice of polygamy.
It's around early 1842 where Heber C. Kimball
has been put to the Abrahamic test already.
First Joseph asserts that he wants Vilate
Kimball and Heber struggles with that, finally
consents.
And then Joseph says it was just a test.
And then shortly after that Heber is brought
into polygamy.
He originally says, "Well, why don't I just
marry these old spinsters?"
And Joseph says, "No, you need to marry Sarah
Noon."
I believe who was a younger woman.
Jon Streeter: And so all of these things are
happening, which if they're happening behind
the scenes, you can understand why Joseph
and other leaders are having to deal with
this constant flood of rumors that something
unorthodox is happening.
This is why in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants,
you'll find section 101 that is trying to
put to rest rumors and accusations that polygamy
is happening.
If there was nothing to cause these rumors,
there'd be no reason for them to be so outright
in denying those rumors.
So clearly some of this stuff is leaking out
into the air and people are realizing that
something is up.
One of the things to also realize is that
Joseph and Emma have house guests.
It's hard to piece all these things together,
but when you go back and look at the dates
in early 1842 the Partridge sisters are living
with Joseph and Emma and years later in the
Temple Lot Case, Emily Partridge would say
that Joseph told her that he had something
to tell her that would place him at risk and
that he would be willing to write a letter
if she would read it and then burn it.
Jon Streeter: And so we're starting to see
that there's a pattern that we are going to
recognize when we get to the Nancy Rigdon
affair proper.
Now 1842 particularly in March and early April
of 1842 saw several interesting things that
are interesting primarily in retrospect.
Let's talk about a few of them.
Okay, so March 24th, 1842 the Relief Society
has already been formed.
It was, formed the 17th.
On the second meeting, Joseph Smith files
a complaint against Clarissa Marvel and basically
says that she is spreading lies about him.
And you can go to the Joseph Smith papers
website, look at the Relief Society minute
books and you can see the discussions that
are had about Clarissa Marvel.
Essentially Clarissa Marvel had been living
with Agnes Smith for a year and Agnes Smith
was the widow of Joseph's brother Don Carlos.
And she was spreading rumors that there were
some sort of inappropriate relationship between
Joseph Smith and Agnes.
Jon Streeter: And so if you go and look at
the minutes, you can see that Joseph is basically
calling her a liar for spreading lies about
him.
And there's a great deal of consternation
in the Relief Society because they're trying
to root out anyone who is trying to disparage
the leaders of the church.
They eventually send some people to talk to
her and the people they send happened to also
be in Joseph's polygamy circle and then a
few meetings later she has affixed her name
to a statement that says, "I've never seen
or said anything bad about Joseph at all."
But looking back we can see that Joseph actually
had in January of that year secretly taken
Agnes as a plural wife.
So what we're starting to see here is that
there's a difference between what the leaders
are saying publicly and what they're doing
privately and that contrast between what is
publicly said and what is being done privately
is very important when you look at everything
around the Happiness Letter in the Nancy Rigdon
affair.
Jon Streeter: Because when you examine other
groups where the leaders are using their position
to take advantage of people in the congregation,
you'll find the same pattern of something
different said publicly, particularly to outsiders
of the group, but even to insiders of the
group and then what is happening privately.
There's an other instance in March 31st.
This is one of probably the most fascinating
things that I think gives us some insight
into Emma Smith.
In the midst of all of this, Joseph and several
other leaders of the church write a letter
to the Relief Society telling them that they
need to learn how to keep secrets and they
use the pattern of secrecy of the Freemasons
to do that.
And when you read the minutes of the Relief
Society, you can see that one of the things
that they're concerned with doing is taking
any bad news about the leadership of the church
and keeping quiet about that, but talking
about good stuff.
Jon Streeter: So there's already an aura of
secrecy happening.
But then Joseph Smith in this letter specifically
says that no prophets, seer, revelator, apostle
or anyone can use his name or use their position
to teach or preach anything that varies from
morality, from virtue, from any of the conventional
standards of marriage.
Sexual relations are only within the bonds
of marriage.
And this, this letter that Emma Smith reads
in the Relief Society is interesting for one
particular reason and that is that we have
two copies of the content of the letter.
One of the copies is what is written in the
minutes of the Relief Society, which is what
Emma actually verbally said to the Relief
Society.
And the other copy of the letter is what the
letter actually contained, which they kept
the letter and Joseph Smith Papers Project
has scanned that letter and a few years back
I was checking out that letter and I decided
to do a textual comparison on it and I noticed
that there was a particular line that is in
the letter that Emma Smith specifically left
out of the letter.
Jon Streeter: And that line is very, very
telling because that part of the letter it
says, "We warn you and forewarn you in the
name of the Lord to check and destroy any
faith that any person may have in any character.
For we do not want anyone to believe anything
as coming from us."
Meaning the leaders of the church, Joseph,
in particularly, "Contrary to old established
morals and virtues and scriptural laws, regulating
the habits, customs, and conduct of society."
That's what Emma read to the Relief Society.
But when you look at the original letter,
what it actually says is "Don't believe anything
as coming from us, contrary to the old established
morals, virtue, scriptural laws, regulating
the habits, customs, and conduct of faith,
unless it be by message delivered to you by
our own mouth, by actual revelation and commandment."
Jon Streeter: That last part about, unless
it's delivered to you by our own mouth, by
actual revelation and commandment, Emma left
that out when she was reading the letter to
the Relief Society.
And you can see why, because that is a loophole
which basically instructs everyone there to
reject any variation from established morals
and virtues, unless it comes directly from
Joseph by revelation and commandment.
And that is very key because when we read
the Happiness Letter, that concept of unorthodox,
new or contrary things coming by, actual revelation
and commandment is exactly what it's focused
on.
Bill Reel: Let me stop you for just a second
to John.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
Bill Reel: So I want to talk about that for
a moment.
Which is this idea maybe speculate or give
us your thoughts on Emma's motives.
When you say like, okay, the leaders of the
church, Joseph Smith are inserting like, "Hey,
we always follow kind of the standard cultural
morality unless there is some kind of secret
instruction given," and then Emma when she
goes to give this instruction completely leaves
that out knowing essentially that it's a loophole.
Is it because...
I guess I could see a couple of motives which
is that one she senses that's a loophole or
two she's actually helping Joseph to keep
this initiative, which is if I...
I guess I don't know.
I guess I'm trying to push you back and see
if what you would say about Emma's mindset
at this moment and why she would receive instruction
going one way and then give it in another.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
I think it's a really complicated picture.
When you read those early minutes of the Relief
Society and you see what is written as coming
from President Smith and the Relief Society
knows that's referring to Emma Smith and the
other women.
There's this real strong mentality that they're
trying to root out inequity.
They're trying to find and root out these
people who are spreading lies or are actually
involved in this spiritual wifery thing.
It depends on how much inside knowledge Emma
has about what's actually going on.
Jon Streeter: My sense from my exposure so
far is that she is not aware of the full extent
of it and but has some reservations and sees
that there may be some...
I think there's one point that say there may
be more truth than poetry in what's being
described about Joseph Smith and so anything
that she can do in her domain to try to seal
and put a lid on that both spreading the news
of it as well as the possibility of it, I
would see her doing.
I don't know if you have a different take
on it, Chris.
Chris Smith: I think, Emma was aware of what
Joseph Smith was doing with polygamy and extramarital
affairs and they had had conversations about
it already and that she essentially used her
position in the relief society to sort of
way to guerrilla war against the private teachings
that he was promulgating to people.
She's using her authority to try to oppose
his authority.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
Bill Reel: Yeah it seems like there's enough
smoke everywhere.
I mean she's been dealing with this at this
point by four or five years of hearing allegations
on a regular basis.
And so there has to be so much smoke in her
mind that she realizes to some extent something's
going on.
Chris Smith: Yeah.
I don't have the source in front of me, so
I don't remember who it was, I think it might've
been William E. McLellan who said that Emma
told him explicitly that she knew for a fact
that Joseph Smith had had extramarital affairs
for years prior to the revelation, the polygamy
revelation Nancy 132.
So she was aware of this for quite some time.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
All right.
So that letter was read on March 31st so they're
already kind of setting up these things in
that focus on whether or not special revelation
or commandment comes directly from Joseph
becomes important later.
So just kind of put that on your shelf for
a minute.
Okay, so we move along then.
Then we've got something happening on April
7th now this is two days before this story
of the Nancy Rigdon affairs, but on April
7th there's a special conference.
We have the conference notes for it.
Hyrum Smith and Joseph stand up and speak
before the congregation.
One of the things that they are doing is trying
to put to rest rumors about a young woman
who had been locked away in a room with leaders
of the church, Brigham Young, Heber Kimball,
trying to persuade her to accept the principle
of plural wives.
Hyrum stands up and says, "We've got to put
these rumors to rest."
Jon Streeter: Joseph stands up and says, "Nobody
who is familiar with us would believe any
of these stories.
It's a waste of time to even talk about it."
And what all of these things are alluding
to is the story of Martha Brotherton and that's
something that is a whole separate podcast
in and of itself, but it establishes this
pattern where leaders of the church, there
are rumors of it anyway, isolating young women
and using the force of their rhetoric, the
force of their religious position, and the
isolation of the women to compel them to accept
these unorthodox ideas that are against the
conventional morals of the day with the idea
that leaders of the church are giving special
permission, special revelation.
This idea of the blessings of Jacob is reiterated
in these stories and we're going to see that
what is happening in the Nancy Rigdon affair
exactly mirrors what these rumors are.
Bill Reel: By the way, I'm just looking at
Mormon polygamy documents, which I believe
is Brian Hales, right?
Chris Smith: Right.
Bill Reel: There's an affidavit from Martha
Brotherton.
I'm not going to read through it right here,
but is there any mention of her being locked
up?
I mean, besides the rumors that they're addressing,
we don't know what the rumors specifically
are, we just know they're addressing and putting
them down.
We've got John C. Bennet's expose.
Is there any other concrete statements out
there that point to this incident actually
happening with Martha Brotherton?
Jon Streeter: I would say the other concrete
thing is that later when Martha Brotherton
dies, Brigham Young has her seal to him.
That is kind of the punctuation of the idea
that there was some connection between Brigham
Young and Martha Brotherton.
Bill Reel: Gotcha.
Yeah.
Jon Streeter: This just shows you that the
leaders even up to Joseph himself up to two
days before what happens with the Nancy Rigdon
affair, are outright denying that anything
at all other than conventional monogamy, conventional
marriage, conventional morals is taught or
practiced by the church.
And this will become even more important later
when all of the women who had been seduced
by John C. Bennett and others start giving
testimony before the high council.
But right now we're at the time period where
all of that is actually going on before anything
has really blown up majorly about it.
Bill Reel: Oh, let me ask a question here.
Jon Streeter: Yes.
Bill Reel: So the April 7th incident, essentially
you have John C. Bennett who starts this rumor,
right?
He's the one who initiates this kind of conversation
that this is occurring-
Jon Streeter: No, I want to correct that because
when everybody finds out about it and when
it's in the full public mind, that is when
John C. Bennett has started to write his expose
in his letters to the Sangamo Journal, that
actually happens in July later.
So us in the future, we see all that and we
see it and kind of blown apart because of
Bennett's public exposes, but this is early,
early, early before Bennett he still has not
been ousted.
He hasn't written those letters yet and so
this is just the rumors that are going on
because Bennett was not the first person to
let these stories go out in the public.
They were in the air at the time.
Bill Reel: Gotcha.
That's important because I know that FairMormon
makes it like, okay, it's John C. Bennett's
word against Joseph and Hyrum, and you already
see in what Joseph and Hyrum do in addressing
these at this conference or at this meeting
is they're saying, "Look, we're not even practicing
anything outside monogamy.
Don't trust these rumors."
The fact that they are doing things outside
monogamy already lends some distrust to their
credibility on what they're saying and FairMormon
makes it sound like it's essentially an argument
against John C. Bennett, but as you're pointing
out, this rumor is already in the cultural
milieu.
Bill Reel: This rumor is already in the cultural
milieu.
John C. Bennett then picks up and runs with
it, but it's really Joseph and Hyrum being
dishonest about the sole practice of monogamy
and locking girls up in rooms, trying to convince
them of polygamy, juxtaposed against a multitude
of people who are now hearing these whispers
of these events happening.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, and the thing is the word
game that they're going to play with is that
these were carefully worded denials.
And the thing is when you look at what Joseph
and others are saying they're not trying to
play word games.
They're saying basically we don't do anything
other than straight up monogamy and that we
don't practice anything that even people would
mistake for that.
When you see the contents of the Happiness
Letter, when you reflect back, now that the
church has admitted that there's polygamy
going on, what they're doing is very much
close to what is brought up in connection
with John C. Bennett and the others that are
doing the spiritual wifery thing.
Bill Reel: Yeah.
I just want the listeners to understand that
there is a plethora of things going on behind
the scenes that people are catching wind of,
of inappropriate propositions to various women,
including young girls, and that as these events
are happening, rumors are getting out and
as these rumors spread, Joseph, Hyrum, other
leaders of the church are trying to say, "Look,
look, don't believe that.
Trust the prophet.
Trust is credibility."
But when you say like, "Hey, we're just practicing
monogamy," you've already taken a serious
dent to your credibility and maybe and likely
those rumors are true.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
As we're learning later.
Jon Streeter: Okay, so we've talked about
connections between Joseph and the Rigdon
family.
We've talked about early sexual improprieties
accused at Joseph Smith leading up to 1842.
We've talked about all of the events of 1842
including major doctrinal revelations of the
endowment and so forth.
And we've talked about the secret actions
of the leaders being different from their
public denials.
There's one more piece of this puzzle that
we have to fit in before we get to this remarkable
funeral that happens on April 9th and that
is what I call the manipulation and exploitation
of Marinda Johnson Hyde.
Jon Streeter: You remember in 1832 when Joseph
was almost castrated, it was because of accusations
about improprieties with Marinda.
Well, later on she marries Orson Hyde who
is an apostle and in 1841 Orison Hyde is sent
off on a mission to the Holy Land.
At that time, Marinda has I believe three
young daughters.
She's kind of left destitute and on her own.
In the winter of 1841 she goes to Joseph and
talks about her position.
Joseph considers it and has the first of several
convenient revelations.
Jon Streeter: Now at that time, he receives
a revelation that God commands Marinda to
be taken into the household of a family in
Nauvoo called the Robinson family, Ebenezer
Robinson at the head of that family.
Now Ebenezer Robinson is the printer, the
publisher of the Times And Seasons, which
is the newspaper for Nauvoo there.
His family lives in an apartment above the
print shop in the same building as the print
shop.
And Ebenezer Robinson has been approached
already by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
because they want him to sell the Times And
Seasons to them so that they can have more
control over what gets printed in the pages
of the newspaper.
Jon Streeter: Willard Richards is the apostle
who's really heading that up.
At one point, Willard Richards tells Ebenezer
that if he doesn't sell, then he's going to
start his own competing paper and put him
out of business.
But this is his life's calling.
He apprenticed at it and that's what he wants
to do.
He's not interested in selling.
Jon Streeter: But when Joseph has this revelation
that he is to take Marinda and her daughters
into his household and provide for them, he
immediately does that.
That revelation did not simply include that;
it also included some instructions to Marinda
that I think Chris does a good job of kind
of laying out the power of those instructions.
Chris Smith: Yeah.
So the revelation orders Ebenezer Robinson,
who at the time is living in the church's
printing office to open their doors and take
Nancy Marinda Hyde and her children into their
house and take care of them until Orson Hyde
returns from his mission to Israel where he
was at the time.
Then the revelation goes on to say, "And let
my handmaid Nancy Marinda Hyde, hearken to
the counsel of my servant Joseph in all things
whatsoever he shall teach unto her, and it
shall be a blessing upon her and upon her
children after her, unto her justification,
saith the Lord."
Chris Smith: So she's being instructed to
hearken to Joseph's counsel in all things
that he teaches her, essentially to suspend
thought.
And he really does seem to have had Nancy
Marinda Hyde completely under his control.
And she does hearken to all things that he
teaches her, including the plural wife teaching
and she begins to help him recruit new plural
wives.
And it's in that capacity that she approaches
Nancy.
That is going to be her role in this affair
is introducing Nancy to Joseph Smith, so that
Joseph Smith can raise this proposal with
her, sexual and marital.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, exactly.
And remember this is happening in December
of 1841.
Then the next month in January, Ebenezer just
took this young family into his house with
his family and then Joseph Smith has another
convenient revelation.
His revelation is to the Twelve and God commands
them to purchase through any means necessary
or through the way that God will reveal to
them the print shop from Ebenezer Robinson.
So now it's not just that the Twelve want
it it's that God is commanding the Twelve
to obtain it.
And so Ebenezer looks at the revelation, he's
like, "I'm not going to fight this."
So he doesn't fight it.
He goes ahead and consents to sell, but he
gets to name his terms.
Jon Streeter: It is the Apostle Willard Richards,
who is very close with Joseph at this time
and acting as his scribe, the Apostle Willard
Richards is the one who executes that contract.
This is happening on a very quick time frame,
in the middle of the winter.
Ebenezer tries to find a place for his family
to move to.
He's not able to really arrange it because
housing is really short at this time, but
Willard Richards tells him basically by the
end of tonight, the day they sign the contract,
by the end of the tonight, "If you're not
out, I'm going to kick you out."
Jon Streeter: So Robinson finds a tiny corner
in a neighbor's house that he can move his
family into, but Marinda stays in the print
shop.
That night, who else, but Willard Richards,
Apostle Willard Richards who is living by
himself in Nauvoo because his wife who he
married when he was in England, stayed in
Massachusetts and so his wife is in Massachusetts,
he's in Nauvoo, he moves in with Marinda Hyde
whose husband is in Jerusalem on the mission
and they are now cohabiting in the apartment
above the print shop.
Jon Streeter: The story goes that Willard
Richards boarded up the windows, went out
into the streets and shot off his guns that
night and started ... You got to love John
C. Bennett's power with language at some point
... Bennett describes this as Willard Richardson
notoriously hiding in these days.
And so they're cohabiting.
If you know about kind of just the way that
society and culture is in that era, that is
a scandalous thing and is undoubtedly to be
the subject of rumor.
Jon Streeter: But in February of 1842 now
we've set the stage.
We've got Marinda living with Willard Richards
above the print shop.
And this is all important because when we
get to Nancy Rigdon, you're going to see that
these two figures are totally enmeshed in
what goes on.
Marinda has been told to obey Joseph in everything
and we are going to learn that she has been
brought into the circle of polygamy.
There's some speculation that there was an
inappropriate sexual relation between Marinda
and Willard at this time; both of them having
their spouses outside of Nauvoo.
We learn in Joseph Smith's journal, there's
a little handwritten note that says that Joseph
Smith was sealed to Marinda and it just says
April 1842.
Jon Streeter: And so by the time we get to
the events of the Nancy Rigdon affair, we
have good evidence to support the idea that
Marinda was an insider of polygamy, even one
of Joseph's secret polyandrous wives and this
is where we approach Nancy Rigdon.
Jon Streeter: Now I think we've set up all
the story that you need to have.
Is there anything that I missed, Chris that
you can think of that would be important to
know?
Chris Smith: Yeah, let me just chip in and
say that Ebenezer Robinson, John C. Bennett
and Sidney Rigdon all three say that Willard
was sexually involved with Nancy Marinda Hyde,
which is interesting because she then marries
Joseph Smith.
So there's the question of, was she ever sealed
to Willard or were they merely sexually involved
outside of marriage?
Chris Smith: Joseph Smith at this time is
teaching a doctrine of concubinage as well
as a doctrine of plural marriage, which we'll
get into in a few minutes here.
So it's possible that she was merely acting
as a concubine to Willard Richards, but it's
also possible Brigham Young later laid out
this doctrine where a women could sort of
trade up for a better priesthood holder.
So it may be that she was sealed to Willard
Richards and then trades up for Joseph Smith
and get sealed instead to Joseph Smith, which
would have canceled the sealing to Richards.
So we're not entirely sure what the nature
of the relationship between Willard and Nancy
was, but it seems to have been sexual.
Chris Smith: Also, just to put a finer point
on Bennett's comment about Willard hiding
in the printing office, it may not have been
clear to all the listeners that that's a play
on Nancy Marinda Hyde's last name.
Jon Streeter: Yes.
Bill Reel: And I just want to just to throw
out, as you guys were going through all of
that, I was just looking at Martha Brotherton's
affidavit, and she acknowledges in the document
that Brigham Young locked the door when they
had the conversation in the upstairs, pulled
the curtain, closed the window, pulled the
curtain as that conversation was happening.
So we have the door being locked in Martha's
own words.
It's not just John C. Bennett or just rumors
that we don't know about.
Chris Smith: Yeah, speaking also of closing
up windows; when Ebenezer Robinson says that
Willard fired off his gun in the street, Robinson
doesn't explain why Willard would have done
that, but I think probably he did that in
order to provide himself a pretense to move
into the printing office, that he was there
to defend the printing office and boarding
up the windows would also be consistent with
an alibi of trying to defend the printing
office from thieves.
But really, I mean this is providing him privacy
with Mrs. Hyde.
Jon Streeter: Well it does get messy when
you dig into this, that's for sure.
Jon Streeter: All right, so we've built up
all of these things so hopefully you can understand
what's going on.
And then we get to the fateful day of the
9th of April, 1842.
There are other accounts of these events from
Nancy's younger brother John that are much
later and so the details on that one are probably
not as fresh.
Before we get into this, Chris, what do you
say about people that question the provenance
of this narrative?
How reliable is this part of John C. Bennett's
story about what's going on?
Chris Smith: Well, Bennett is writing an expos-ay
and so he always sensationalizes a little
bit and different versions of the stories
that he tells sometimes will have slightly
different details, but overall Bennett's stories
are corroborated by lots of other sources.
And so the people who simply wave their hand
and dismiss Bennett out of hand just haven't
done the background work to find out exactly
how much of Bennett's stories are corroborated
by other sources.
Frankly, I think he's a pretty good source
actually overall.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, and we have to kind of
put a fine point on that is that one of the
things that we only have from Bennett and
that is the text of the Happiness Letter,
was so considered to be reliable and authentic
that the church internalized it in its documentary
history and it's been quoted in lesson manuals
and conference talks.
It was quoted as early as J. Golden Kimball
quoted it in the 20th century.
We even have some quotes of concepts that
are less recognizable in the 1800s.
Jon Streeter: So very early on, the contemporaries
of Joseph Smith recognize the letter as from
him.
And if you accept the letter, then you have
to accept the context of what produced the
letter.
Now there may be some points about exactly
what was said when that there may be some
differences of opinion on or doubt on, but
the fact that there was a proposal and a rejection
necessitating the letter and then the contents
of the letter is really not in dispute.
The people both faithful and critical of the
church have to accept those things.
Bill Reel: I don't want to get sidetracked
here because John C. Bennett himself could
be another podcast.
But when I joined the church as an older teenager
and I go through my early time in Mormonism,
I am taught explicitly to distrust critical
sources.
And as I'm investigating the history of the
church and reading, I'm coming across John
C. Bennett's own practice, so his spiritual
wifery and some of the things he was doing
and being dishonest about.
I don't want to spend a lot of time on it,
but maybe just a little bit of commentary
on parsing out John C. Bennett's practice
and why the church lost trust in him or why
Joseph Smith lost trust in him versus what
seems to be the leadership of the church doing
the same type of behaviors.
Bill Reel: We were always taught as believing
Mormons that the spiritual wifery thing over
here is bad and polygamy over here is good.
And I'm trying to figure out how much John
C. Bennett was in with the leadership of the
church doing the things they were doing and
how much he was going rogue.
Jon Streeter: Well, do you want to address
that, Chris?
What would you have to say about that?
Chris Smith: Yeah, I mean a lot of it really
focuses on the concubine edge doctrine and
the sort of sex ring that gets busted open
in May 1842.
So that's happening basically contemporaneously
with this Nancy Rigdon thing, that a number
of sort of insiders, Joseph Smith's inner
circle are being tried for approaching women
with extramarital sexual proposals and telling
them that it is okay to have sex outside of
marriage, that God allows this.
Bennett is a ringleader in this, of course
Joseph Smith is also a ringleader in this,
but Bennett ends up being a convenient scapegoat
that all of this sort of gets pinned on.
So I think that's part of it is just that
Bennett makes a convenient scapegoat.
Chris Smith: But also I think maybe Bennett
is taking this a little bit farther.
He is being indiscreet.
He's getting caught and that really is the
cardinal sin here.
And then also in the Nancy Rigdon affair,
Bennett pushes back against Joseph Smith's
proposal to Nancy Rigdon.
Bennett actually warns her beforehand what
Joseph Smith is planning to propose and Bennett
is corresponding with her boyfriend, Francis
Higbee, about all of this.
Chris Smith: So I think that Joseph Smith
sees Bennett as a trader and we'll hear a
little bit of that language as we tell this
story.
Jon Streeter: And I would add to that that
we have the benefit now I think Joseph Smith
Papers project has recently published the
high council record of the testimony of the
women who came forward that blew open the
John C. Bennett affair.
And to me the most telling thing is that when
you look at what the women say that was being
told to them, one of the things that happens
is they don't believe it at first.
And then John C. Bennett and Chauncey Higbee
and the other men who are involved in this
say, "Well, we're going to bring our church
leader who will tell you that Joseph Smith
approves this."
And they bring Joseph Smith's brother Apostle
William Smith.
Jon Streeter: Now when these accounts are
published in the newspaper later they leave
William Smith's name out so that the general
membership doesn't know that an apostle was
actually brought in to give Joseph's stamp
of approval on this.
And then later in the trial that ended up
excommunicating all the men that happened
on this, we learned that William Smith was
originally going to be tried and Joseph Smith
was sitting in the audience stands up and
basically says, "If I hear my family's name
being dragged through the mud, either I'm
going to die or you are."
And Brigham Young immediately drops all the
charges for William Smith.
So all the other men get ex-communicated,
but William Smith does not.
Jon Streeter: So there's an element of nepotism
of the close family circle of Joseph Smith
being protected from the repercussions of
this.
And honestly, it shouldn't really just be
the John C. Bennett affair of spiritual wifery;
it should be the Apostle William Smith thing
because he was the one that came in and gave
the stamp of approval to these women so that
they accepted the doctrine.
And what we're going to learn is that doctrine
is that the leader of the church can give
special permission by revelation and commandment,
and that what we thought was sin before is
not actually sin in that scenario.
And that is exactly what happens in the Nancy
Rigdon affair.
Jon Streeter: That's really what ties all
this in to show.
And the whole concept of eternal sealings
and families and the celestial marriage thing
isn't really articulated in this.
And you're going to see that it's not in the
Happiness Letter, but okay.
Jon Streeter: So with that discussion in,
because we want to get to the events.
I'm sure your listeners are like, "Well, get
to the affair."
So Chris does a great job of kind of laying
this out starting from the funeral on the
9th and I'm going to let him go and take it
away with that.
Chris Smith: Okay.
According to John C. Bennett, Mrs. Hyde approached
Nancy about this at a funeral and that's important
not only because of just the incongruity of
making a romantic overture at a funeral, but
also because Nancy's father Sidney Rigdon
preached the funeral sermon that day and he
focuses his sermon on happiness.
And so when Joseph later writes the letter
on happiness to convince Nancy to marry him,
he echoes the language of Rigdon's funeral
sermon, which is kind of interesting.
I think he was making a kind of power move
here, echoing her father's language in order
to convince her.
Chris Smith: Anyway, Nancy went to the printing
office as instructed.
She has been told that Joseph wants to meet
her at the printing office so she goes to
the printing office, but Willard Richards
answers the door and tells her that Joseph
has been detained and so she should come back
next Thursday.
So she goes away.
Jon Streeter: Just to clarify, it's Marinda
who approaches Nancy at the funeral, right?
Chris Smith: Nancy Marinda Hyde, yes.
Jon Streeter: There's so many Nancys here
... I just ... I'm going to call her Marinda.
Chris Smith: Or Mrs. Hyde, yeah.
Jon Streeter: Yes, exactly.
Okay.
So she's essentially saying, come to my home
and Joseph's going to meet you there because
the printing office is her home where she's
living with Willard Richards.
Chris Smith: This is an illustration of how
Marinda is serving as the recruiter and as
a sort of an accomplice in convincing women
to marry Joseph.
These proposals are happening in her home.
That's how closely tied she is to these plural
marriage proposals.
Jon Streeter: Right.
And this is the pattern that we saw in the
Martha Brotherton thing where we're having
Joseph or other leaders meet with young women
at places that are not their homes.
So like Joseph is not saying come and meet
me in my home where Emma's there and all these
other people are there.
He's meeting in secret, separate from his
home for that.
That's just a key part I want to make sure
that we remember with this setup.
Bill Reel: Just to note, Orson Hyde is still
out on his mission.
Chris Smith: That's right.
Orson Hyde is away on his mission at this
time, yes.
Chris Smith: Okay.
Nancy Reagan mentions this situation to her
boyfriend, Francis Higbee, and Higbee asked
John C. Bennett about it.
Bennett is a close insider at this time, so
he has all the sort of dirt on what Joseph
Smith is thinking.
So that's who he goes to.
Bennett warned Higbee that Joseph Smith was
intending some kind of sexual or plural marriage
proposal and he recommended that Nancy go
to this meeting and find out for herself what
Joseph wants.
But he says, "Don't place too much reliance
on revelation."
Chris Smith: Bennett also went to Joseph Smith
after he heard about this and he told him,
"Joseph, you're a master mason and Sidney
Rigdon, Nancy's father is a master mason so
you really should stay away from a fellow
master mason's daughter.
You have an obligation to your fellow master
mason not to mess with his daughter or you'll
get in trouble."
And Joseph replies, "You are my enemy and
you wish to oppose me."
And Bennett says, "No, I'm not your enemy.
I just think this is a bad idea."
So you see here some of the tensions beginning
to emerge between Joseph and John C Bennett.
Chris Smith: Nancy takes Bennett's advice
and she goes to the printing office the next
Thursday and she meets with Joseph Smith according
to plan.
And according to Bennett, Joseph locked the
door, he swore Nancy to secrecy and then he
told her that he loved her, that she had been
the idol of his affections for several years,
and then he lays out his doctrine of concubines
and plural marriage.
He says he has had the blessings of Jacob
given to him.
Chris Smith: And Jacob, the patriarch in the
Bible, you may remember that he had two wives,
Rachel and Leah, but you probably have forgotten
that he also had two concubines, Bilhah and
Zilpah.
And Joseph Smith seems to have been proposing
to make Nancy a concubine, but he says, "If
you have any scruples about that, then I can
privately marry you."
So concubine first, but if you have scruples,
then we can make it a marriage.
Jon Streeter: The difference between a concubine
and a wife, as they would have understood
it at that time ... Did he outright use the
word concubine or are we just putting that
name on what it is by definition?
Chris Smith: That is mostly a name that we're
putting on something that ... you generally
didn't use that term.
Jon Streeter: Okay.
So it's basically somebody that you can have
sexual access to who's not technically your
wife, and because there's a biblical precedent
in both Jacob as well as Solomon and so we
have the idea that God has approved this at
some point, then he could have used biblical
precedent to get them to accept that as long
as they invoked these patriarchs from the
Bible.
Chris Smith: That's exactly right.
And in the letter on happiness, he does invoke
Solomon as well, who also had quite a few
concubines.
So he's laying the biblical precedent both
for plural marriage and for concubine simultaneously.
Chris Smith: He also says that if he marries
her, that wouldn't prevent her from marrying
anyone else, which is kind of interesting.
So he seems to be laying out an idea of polyandry
here too, that she can be married to multiple
people.
Chris Smith: And then he tries to kiss her
and Nancy is insulted and angry at this point
and she pushes him away and she says, "If
she ever gets married it will be to a single
man or to no one at all."
And she threatened to scream and alert the
neighbors unless Joseph immediately opened
the door and let her out, which he did.
And after letting her out of the room, he
asked Mrs. Hyde to explain matters to her
and he also promised to write her a letter
and then he left the house.
Chris Smith: And so Mrs. Hyde takes Nancy
aside and says, "Look, I know it seems strange.
It seemed strange to me at first too when
I first heard about this, but you'll feel
better about it once you think about it and
pray about it a little."
And Nancy's reply was, "I never shall," and
she left the house.
Chris Smith: Nancy Rigdon was kind of a bad
ass.
Chris Smith: And then a slightly different
version of this story, I just want to make
sure that we nod to this because it does read
a little bit differently.
Nancy's brother, John Rigdon, many years later
in the year 1900 tells this story.
And he says that Nancy was at a church meeting,
that Mrs. Hyde sat down with Nancy at this
church meeting and explained the doctrine
of polygamy to her and the exaltation that
could be obtained by it and then a couple
of hours later, Joseph Smith came along and
proposed marriage to her.
Chris Smith: So John Rigdon's version doesn't
mention concubinage or extramarital sex.
He's framing the entire thing as a plural
marriage proposal.
He also doesn't mention the printing office
or really any of the little details described
by Bennett.
But I think it's important to note that this
version of the story is written out almost
60 years later, that John was not a party
to these events really, and that he's looking
at this incident through the lens of later
plural marriage doctrine.
Chris Smith: So I think that the main value
of his account is just a corroborate that
a proposal did take place.
I don't think he's that useful for the details
of the proposal.
Jon Streeter: All right, so we've got the
proposal happening.
I got to think that Joseph is a little bit
worried just because here he may have set
fire to a powder keg that he didn't realize
was going to blow up the way that it did.
He doesn't waste any time getting that letter
to her.
How does the letter get delivered to Nancy?
Chris Smith: Well, you know what, let me first
talk a little bit about this concubinage thing
because I just want to establish a little
bit more context on that.
So this disciplinary hearing that happened
in May was all about men approaching women
and saying that they're allowed to have sex
outside of marriage, and three different women
testify in these minutes.
And these minutes are produced by the church,
so this is a church document.
Three women testify that four different men
told them that they had heard this teaching
directly from Joseph Smith.
So there's quite a bit of evidence within
that document that Joseph Smith was the source
of this doctrine.
And John C. Bennett told Catherine Fuller
that Joseph Smith himself was conducting in
that manner, meaning that he was having extramarital
sexual relations.
Chris Smith: There's a couple of different
doctrinal justifications that they give for
this.
One is that the prohibition against adultery
doesn't mean single women; it means married
women.
That's what Chauncey Higbee told Sarah Miller.
So single women are allowed to have sex with
as many people as they want.
The Bible only prohibits adultery.
It doesn't prohibit fornication.
So that's one justification.
And in fact, William Smith goes so far as
to approach Catherine Fuller on her wedding
day and say, "Don't get married because if
you get married, I won't be able to have sex
with you anymore," which is pretty audacious.
Chris Smith: The other justification that
Chauncey Higbee gave was that there is no
sin where there is no accuser.
And we actually have a record of a sermon
that Joseph Smith gave in which he says much
the same thing.
This was a public sermon that Joseph Smith
gave.
He says, "If we did not accuse one another,
God would not accuse us, and if we had no
accuser, we should enter heaven.
If we would not accuse him," meaning Joseph,
"he would not accuse us.
And if we would throw a cloak of charity over
his sins, he would throw one over ours for
charity, covered a multitude of sins and what
many people called sin was not sin and he
did many things to break down superstition
and he would break it down."
Chris Smith: Joseph Smith gave this sermon
on November 7th, 1841 and it's using that
same language.
If we don't accuse each other, God will not
accuse us.
So there's no sin where there's no accuser,
there's no damnation where there's no accuser.
In effect, this is saying there's no condemnation
if you don't get caught.
Chris Smith: The other thing that's pretty
significant about this trial record is that
Lyman O. Littlefield testifies at the trial
that he's come to the conclusion now that
Joseph Smith actually dis-approbates this
practice, meaning Joseph Smith is actually
opposed to this practice, but that Joseph
Smith sometimes practices a sort of spiritual
entrapment where he tries to persuade men
to act wickedly and then exposes them.
Chris Smith: This is something that Joseph
Smith also tries to tell Nancy's family, which
we'll get to in a moment, that this was just
a test of her virtue, this proposal.
This is a rationale that he uses often.
Chris Smith: I think that the fact that Lyman
O. Littlefield originally believed that Joseph
Smith was teaching this doctrine and then
comes to believe that Joseph Smith was just
practicing the spiritual entrapment and testing
him, I think that adds a lot of credibility
to the testimony that this doctrine is coming
from Joseph Smith, because we're seeing that
same pattern emerge where Joseph Smith is
telling people this doctrine and then when
he gets caught, he's telling them that it
was a test.
The reoccurrence of that pattern I think adds
a lot of credibility to this.
Bill Reel: Oh yeah, that's a real good point.
Jon Streeter: Okay, so essentially Joseph
has left Nancy who kind of tried to calm down
and convinced a little bit with Marinda.
They all go back to their homes.
Nancy goes back to her home.
She doesn't live too far from Joseph in Nauvoo.
It's just the next block over.
And so then what happens next?
Chris Smith: So Joseph writes this letter
to Nancy, the letter on happiness, which is
laying out the whole theology that we're going
to be talking about.
It's an interesting mix of permissive language
and divine commandment language.
Joseph Smith doesn't seem to have a clear
sense of whether he's allowed to do this stuff
or whether he's commanded to do this stuff.
And we see that same vacillation between permissive
language and commandment language in D and
C 132.
Chris Smith: But anyway, he writes this letter
and then the letter is delivered to Nancy
by Willard Richards and Willard Richards tells
her to burn the letter after she's done reading
it.
And by the way, important point, Willard Richards
served as a scribe for the letter so the letter
was not in Joseph Smith's handwriting, which
will become significant later when Joseph
Smith is kind of denying authorship of the
letter and Sidney Rigdon is reinforcing those
denials by pointing out that the letter is
not in Joseph Smith's handwriting.
That's kind of a strategy that Joseph Smith
uses to provide himself some plausible deniability
as he uses scribes so that none of this stuff
is actually in his handwriting.
Jon Streeter: And that's not unusual.
Willard Richards is acting as Joseph's scribe
for other church business at this time, is
that correct?
Chris Smith: Yes.
Yes.
Joseph Smith is pretty much always using scribes.
Jon Streeter: Okay.
Chris Smith: So Joseph Smith in this letter
... Maybe you want to talk about the language
of the letter, Jonathan.
Why don't you summarize the language?
Jon Streeter: Well, the letter itself lays
out using some of Joseph Smith's most beautiful,
most scriptural, most powerful rhetoric using
the language of piety, alluding to some of
God's glorious promises as well as some of
his sternest boundaries.
I think that's why it gets quoted so frequently
is it is a really powerful letter.
The problem is when you dig down into what
is actually being said, and when you look
at the type of religious rhetoric that other
non-Mormon not tied to Joseph at all, other
religionists have used in order to break down
moral boundaries and engage in unorthodox
sexual practices, to include child abuse,
to include free love, all sorts of things,
every one of those religious charlatans had
to come up with a religiously oriented doctrinal,
theological justification in order to subvert
the morality of the people that were their
targets.
I think what we have in this letter is the
purest, most clear and un-obscured form of
the type of teaching Joseph Smith was doing
to do exactly that.
Jon Streeter: Now, you mentioned a talk that
he gave in 1841.
There are other examples including the doctrine
and covenant section 132, where he's conveying
these principles in much vaguer terms in multilayered
illusions that aren't specific and that are
complicated and obscured frankly by a bunch
of other issues giving a little bit of plausible
deniability.
The Happiness Letter doesn't have that.
It's just pure crystalline religious manipulation
frankly.
Jon Streeter: And so my part of the presentation
at Sunstone, which I'm hoping Bill can play
here, just takes the letter and breaks it
down, stanza by stanza and just shows you
how this messaging is used to try to break
down the conventional moral ideas of this
young 19 year old who before this has been
totally beholden to the prophet.
He's hitting her with this stuff out of the
blue and reformulate her moral conscience
in a way that would be permissive and even
celebratory of anything that Joseph would
propose to her.
It plays on her naivety, her credulity, her
trust in the prophet.
It plays on her trust in her father and some
of the language that Joseph used that's borrowed
from her father.
It plays on her own desire to feel special.
Jon Streeter: You could say that we're injecting
all of these motives into the letter, but
when you look at how other religious charlatans
use these psychological levers to
Jon Streeter: prey upon their targets.
You start to see patterns and those same patterns
are used here.
Bill Reel: All right, stop.
We're going to play here a reading of the
happiness letter.
We'll play that and then following that, we're
also going to have a section from Sunstone
where Jonathan Streeter disassembles the letter
and talks about the manipulative concepts
in it.
But first the straight reading of it.
Joseph Smith: Happiness is the object and
design of our existence, and will be the end
thereof, if we pursue the path that leads
to it.
And this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness,
holiness, and keeping all the commandments
of God.
But we cannot keep all the commandments without
first knowing them, and we cannot expect to
know all or more than we now know unless we
comply with or keep those we have already
received.
That which is wrong under one circumstance
may be and often is right under another.
God said, "Thou shalt not kill."
At another time he said, "Thou shalt utterly
destroy."
This is the principle on which the government
of heaven is conducted, by revelation adapted
to the circumstances in which the children
of the kingdom are placed.
Joseph Smith: Whatever God requires is right.
No matter what it is, although we may not
see the reason thereof till long after the
events transpire.
If we seek first the kingdom of God, all good
things will be added.
So with Solomon, first he asked wisdom and
God gave it him and with it every desire of
his heart, even things which might be considered
abominable to all who understand the order
of heaven only in part, but which in reality
were right because God gave and sanctioned
by special revelation.
Joseph Smith: A parent may whip a child, and
justly too, because he stole an apple.
Whereas if the child had asked for the apple
and the parent had given it, the child would
have eaten it with a better appetite and there
would have been no stripes.
All the pleasures of the apple would have
been secured and the misery of stealing lost.
This principle will justly apply to all of
God's dealings with his children.
Everything that God gives us is lawful and
right, and it is proper that we should enjoy
his gifts and blessings whenever and wherever
he is disposed to bestow.
But if we should seize upon those same blessings
and enjoyments without law, without revelation,
without commandment, those blessings and enjoyments
would prove cursings and vexations in the
end.
And we should have to lie down in sorrow and
wailings and everlasting regret.
Joseph Smith: But in obedience there is joy
and peace unspotted, unalloyed.
And as God has designed our happiness, the
happiness of all his creatures, he never has,
he never will institute an ordinance or give
a commandment to his people that is not calculated
in its nature to promote to that happiness
which he has designed and which will not end
in the greatest amount of good and glory to
those who become the recipients of his law
and ordinances.
Blessings offered but rejected are no longer
blessings but become like the talent hid in
the earth by the wicked and slothful servant.
The proffered good returns to the giver.
The blessing is bestowed on those who will
receive and occupy.
For unto him that hath shall be given, and
he shall have abundantly.
But unto him that hath not or will not receive,
shall be taken away that which he hath or
might have had.
Joseph Smith: Be wise today.
'Tis madness to defer.
Next day the fatal precedent may plead, thus
on till wisdom is pushed out of time into
eternity.
Joseph Smith: Our heavenly father is more
liberal in his views and boundless in his
mercies and blessings than we are ready to
believe or receive and at the same time is
more terrible to the workers of iniquity,
more awful in the executions of his punishments,
and more ready to detect every false wave
than we are apt to suppose him to be.
He will be inquired of by his children.
He says, "Ask and you shall receive.
Seek and you shall find.
But if you will take that which is not your
own or which I have not given you, you shall
be rewarded according to your deeds.
But no good thing will I withhold from them
who walk uprightly before me and do my will
in all things, who will listen to my voice
and to the voice of my servant whom I have
sent.
For I delight in those who seek diligently
to know my precepts and abide by the laws
of my kingdom.
For all things shall be made known unto them
in my own due time.
And in the end they shall have joy.
Bill Reel: That was a reading of the Happiness
Letter.
Now we're going to listen to Jonathan Streeter
as he disassembles this letter going through
the various mechanisms of manipulation that
are used.
Jon Streeter: All right.
If any of you are familiar with the blog Thoughts
on Things and Stuff, or the YouTube channel
Thinker of Thoughts, then you'll know that
I start with history and then try to dive
a little bit deeper and look into the context
of some other religious movements and see
what we can learn from there, and then apply
to our analysis of Joseph Smith.
We're going to take a dive into looking at
the language of the Happiness Letter and reflect
on whether or not it matches the pattern that
we may find in other religious sexual predators.
Now, if we want to know what a religious sexual
predator looks like, then we kind of have
to look at the history of other religious
sexual predators.
So that we can kind of figure out how a duck
quacks so that if we hear a duck quack, we
can know that it's a duck.
Jon Streeter: So we've got an example here
of six different religious professors and
you may actually recognize some of the stories.
This is Wayne Bent here in the upper left
hand corner.
He claimed that God was going to destroy him
if he did not have sex with his daughter-in-law.
We've got David Koresh down in the lower left
hand corner who claimed that there was a significant
scripturally based religious justification
for him to dissolve the marriage bonds of
everybody in his flock so he could have sexual
access to the women in his flock for a very
biblical reason.
You've got other representatives who were
able to come up with religious and biblical
and theological justifications for their unorthodox
sexual activities and they were different
from each other.
So a member of one group might look out at
one of the other groups and say that prophet
has it all wrong.
My prophet is the real prophet.
But at the end of the day, you really have
to engage in a form of special pleading in
order to do that.
But we're going to try to avoid that pitfall
of special pleading when we do this analysis.
Jon Streeter: So when you look at all of these
different stories and you try to paint the
picture of a religious sexual predator, you're
going to find some things pop up again and
again.
You're going to find that the individual claims
divine sanction for their unorthodox sexual
practices.
You're going to see them appeal to the devotion
and piety of the targets of their predations.
You're going to find that they have created
religious justification.
In some cases, it may be as simple as, well
God said that love is love and we're going
to interpret that as sexual love and it's
free.
That would be the case of the leader of the
children of God.
Or it may be a more complex, multilayered
theological justification.
And we're left to decide whether or not the
degree of ornate justification sublimates
something that we would otherwise consider
abominable or whether it really doesn't make
a difference.
Jon Streeter: So when you look down at the
root mechanisms of these types of manipulations,
if you want to learn about it, you can do
searches for documentaries about these different
group leaders and listen to the stories of
the survivors, so you can see how they were
able to take people who started out with conventional
moral... a moral compass of what was right
and the boundaries of propriety and their
mortality was subverted by the messaging and...
The self-proclaimed prophet used enticement.
They used fear, they used guilt, threat obligation.
All of these things were part of the toolkit
of the religious manipulator and it was all
bound up by secrecy.
Jon Streeter: All right.
So, the Happiness Letter.
Now when you guys...
How many people here know what the Happiness
Letter is or have heard of it before today?
If you take some time and you're in your ward
or anything, you might ask people, do you
know what the Happiness Letter is, and chances
are you'll have my experience where people
are like, what is that, I don't know what
that is.
But they will probably have heard it if you
start with the stanza, because it's a very
familiar stanza.
Happiness is the object and design of our
existence and will be the end thereof if we
pursue the path that leads to it.
So we're going to take a moment and we're
going to go through the Happiness Letter stanza
by stanza, and we're going to examine the
language of manipulation that is woven throughout
the letter.
Jon Streeter: All right, so let's talk about
the language and mechanics of manipulation.
Now, in any manipulative endeavor, the perpetrator
begins with some knowledge of his target,
his mark.
He wants to understand the motivations, desires,
insecurities and proclivities of his target.
And this allows him to tailor his approach
so that it will hit just the right notes to
persuade, but also to give the target the
sense that their submission is voluntary and
the product of their own free will and priorities.
Jon Streeter: In many cases, which we see
at the start of this letter, the manipulation
starts with an appeal to something that the
target desires.
This is the honey and the trap.
The bait on the hook, and the target's desire
for this bait becomes the fuel for the rest
of the manipulation.
Now, such enticements could be strictly secular.
This type of focus is common in financial
forms of fraud.
For example, Bernie Madoff appealed to his
clients' desires for financial success and
that was enhanced by the sense of an elite
status that you qualified for his unique investment
scheme.
The people behind pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes,
cash gifting circles, and other forms of financial
fraud will often use these secular types of
enhancements.
Jon Streeter: There are religious manipulations
as well, and these draw upon more existential
desires, divine acceptance, healing, salvation,
spiritual rebirth, absolution, enlightenment.
All of these touchstones have been used by
various religious charlatans throughout history.
Now these metaphysical objects of desire are
enhanced when they're tied together with other
coveted ideas, prosperity, wellbeing in this
life and the next, and these may be connected
with the spiritual obligations that are communicated
by the predator.
The elite feeling of being among the chosen
people with special callings, trials, blessings
is a really strong appeal, particularly to
vulnerable people who may have little else
in their life to feel elite about.
Now, if you examine all of those six men that
we have there, you'll find elements of this
in the story of every one of their survivors.
Jon Streeter: Now in the opening line, Joseph
invokes a very universal enticement, happiness.
Now, notice that Joseph is not adorning his
enticement with the complex theological framework
that emphasizes the need to seal or bind families
together.
Now that's a common apologetic rationale that
is used to justify Joseph's unconventional
polygamous proposals, but it's nowhere in
this letter.
He begins instead with something simple and
pure, the state of happiness in this life
and the next.
Now this is something which even a child could
respond positively to, and it doesn't require
any deep doctrinal elaboration.
Now alluding to this promised state of bliss
is not the whole of Joseph's manipulation.
The manipulation takes a clearer shape when
the if-then statements begin to appear.
Now Joseph quickly establishes the requirements
for this promised blessing using the metaphor
of a path which must be followed.
Happiness will be the ultimate state of our
eternal existence if we follow the path to
it, and this concept serves as the foundation
for the rest of the letter.
Jon Streeter: Joseph spends the next several
paragraphs defining the path and establishing
the consequences for those who either accept
or reject his prescriptions.
Now notice that Joseph throughout this letter
uses inclusive language.
He says we, our.
He includes himself, and he does this to make
it seem as though he and his target are under
the same requirements when in fact they are
in very different positions.
Joseph is the one setting up the hoops to
jump through while Nancy is the one who must
do the jumping to get the prize.
Now, it should be noted here as well that
the theme of happiness is one which would
be familiar to Nancy and that's because both
Joseph and Sydney spoke at that funeral and
Sydney's sermon was on the theme of happiness.
Joseph may have used this language in order
to give a sense of familiarity and propriety
to his petition, sort of twisting the trust
that she had for her father against her.
Jon Streeter: All right, so let's go to the
next stanza.
And this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness,
holiness, and keeping all the commandments
of God.
Now, I want you to take a look at this list.
It's made up entirely of seemingly positive
ideals.
An individual who considers themselves religious
or spiritual even without knowing the source
could look at this list as a series of guiding
moral ideals and principles, each ideal appealing
to their own aspirations of goodness.
But this is all part of the deception.
On the surface there is nothing which really
raises a red flag, but it's important to remember
that these ideas of virtue, holiness, and
divine command are subject to the definition
of whoever claims the authority to define
them.
Jon Streeter: Now, throughout history a wide
array of religious con artists have distorted
and redefined these notions to alarming degrees.
Here are some examples.
For a member of the children of God, virtue
may be found in following the teachings of
its leader, David Berg, which includes using
sexual enticement to gain converts and involving
children in abusive sexual activities.
For a member of the Church of Christ, Scientist,
uprightness may be achieved by adhering to
the admonition of the church's founders, Mary
Baker Eddy, and rejecting medical science
in favor of faith healing, and the idea that
all sickness is the result of spiritual weakness.
Jon Streeter: For a member of the Jehovah's
Witnesses, faithfulness may be proven by denying
a sick one, a lifesaving blood transfusion
resulting in a preventable death, or by completely
cutting a loved one out of your life if they
choose to leave the faith.
And this is all encouraged by the men in the
governing body of the institution.
For a member of the Unification Church, holiness
may be attained by surrendering one's will
to sinful humanity and consenting to be married
to a stranger in a mass ceremony in order
to be grafted into God's sinless lineage under
the blessing of church founder Sun Myung Moon.
Jon Streeter: Now, while some of these examples
are more benign than others, the alarming
principle at work here is the notion that
individuals claiming special divine sanction
are able to use supposed divine authority
and the name of God to compel people to do
things that they would otherwise completely
reject.
All of these examples involve people following
a path towards happiness as defined by their
respective charismatic leader.
Joseph also follows this pattern and makes
sure to include the catch-all concept by summarizing
the path to virtue being found in the statement
that you have must follow all the commandments
of God with a strong emphasis on the all.
Jon Streeter: All right, let's go to the next
section.
We cannot keep all the commandments without
first knowing them, and we cannot expect to
know all or more than we know unless we comply
with or keep those we have already received.
Now, here Joseph is using a sense of urgency
and lists more requirements.
This sets up another assault on the conscience
of his target.
Joseph has already planted the idea that his
target cannot achieve true happiness unless
they follow all of God's commandments, and
now he's establishing that an individual can't
even learn what all of the commandments are
unless they're obeying those which they've
already been given.
The fact that Joseph chooses to convey this
message only after claiming that he has been
given commandment to take Nancy as a secret
illegal plural wife should not be overlooked.
The unspoken imperative here is that neither
Joseph nor his target will be able to achieve
happiness unless they comply.
Jon Streeter: Another danger here is that
this compels people in Joseph's orbit to obey
anything that he puts forth under the name
of God both now and in the future.
Now, you can review the bad outcomes of groups
under the influence of religious manipulation,
Jonestown, the Branch Davidians, Heaven's
Gate.
Each of these reveal that the horrific outcomes
was facilitated by a charismatic leader who
wove a web of undue influence over the minds
of their followers.
This is characterized by the notion that the
leader's instructions could only be righteously
answered by obedience.
Now, the leaders did not start out by giving
the extreme commands which led to the deadly
headlines.
Rather, they started by instilling the notion
that obedience to the leader was equivalent
to obedience to God and should be done without
question or doubt.
Jon Streeter: Now, it's not the extreme outcome
of these examples, which is the problem.
It is the culture of irreproachable authority
which lies behind them.
Even if a group doesn't end up involved in
mass suicide, if the teachings and expectations
of the leader or leaders imposes this high
demand for obedience upon the members, that
is the moral and ethical root of the problem.
This demand for obedience is the underlying
message woven throughout Joseph's happiness
letter, obedience at the threat of one's eternal
soul.
It echoes through the issues of polygamy into
the Mountain Meadows Massacre, racism, sexual
abuse, and even bigotry of today.
Joseph has set up the stakes and next he delivers
the linchpin of his entire religious ethic,
a concept which places his commands above
the conscience and judgment of his target.
Jon Streeter: This is a key section.
That which is wrong under one circumstance
may be and often is right under another.
God said, "Thou shall not kill."
At another time he said, "Thou shalt utterly
destroy."
This is the principle on which the government
of heaven is conducted by revelation, adapted
to the circumstances in which the children
of the kingdom are placed.
Now remember that Joseph is drafting this
letter to a 19 year old young woman who has
refused his proposal for secret illegal bigamy,
a practice that she saw as adultery.
He's creating a religious justification for
how and why this woman could receive his proposition
as an act of righteousness and see him as
a man of God even though his request violates
her sense of virtue, morality and godliness.
Jon Streeter: At the core of his message.
Joseph endeavors to use religious rhetoric
to make that which is wrong, appear right?
He introduces this concept and in so doing
points out that these circumstantial exceptions
are not extremely rare, but are in fact frequent
enough to be described as occurring often.
In order to make this point, Joseph uses the
effective approach of taking something even
more offensive than sexual sin and showing
how it could be seen as righteousness.
Thou shalt not kill, the scriptural injunction
against murder found in Exodus in the 10 commandments.
If Joseph could turn this instruction on its
head and show how God could justify killing
in certain circumstances, then a call for
polygamy would be almost trivial by comparison.
And accordingly, Joseph does just this.
Thou shalt utterly destroy, four words that
are only found together once in scripture
in Deuteronomy 20 as part of instructions
for the complete and utter killing of the
inhabitants of six different cities to include
men, women, and children.
Jon Streeter: Now, this particular scripture
is the subject of a great deal of debate in
modern times because it's often interpreted
as an example of God commanding genocide.
Those who defend the Bible spend a great deal
of effort trying to demonstrate how this is
not exactly the case.
They appeal to many different moral rationales
to do so.
Joseph does not do this.
However, he cites this scripture as an example
of God by command through a prophet, overturning
the prohibition on murder due to circumstance.
Joseph accepts this passage as a command for
genocide and uses that contradiction to rationalize
his violation of monogamy and sexual fidelity
on the basis of divine revelation and command.
Jon Streeter: Joseph states that these moral
contradictions occur as a principle upon which
the kingdom of God is based, citing revelation
and circumstances to imply that they are simple,
commonplace, administrative procedures and
should even be expected.
Keep in mind that at no point in the entire
Happiness Letter does Joseph ever directly
mentioned marriage or sexual morality.
He cites murder and theft but steers away
from directly addressing his subject.
Joseph's reminder that this principle applies
to children of the kingdom serves two manipulative
purposes.
Jon Streeter: First, it allows his target
to feel the pride of being part of an exclusive
chosen followers of the restored kingdom of
God, something made possible by Joseph himself.
Second, it reinforces the idea that people
receiving these contradictory instructions
are like children, immature, naive, and thus
unable to understand or question the wisdom
behind the apparent contradictions that they're
compelled to accept.
Still, Joseph understands that he's not addressing
a subdued sycophant.
Nancy has already demonstrated her moral grounding
and resilience in the face of his prophetic
claims.
Therefore, Joseph knows he has to apply every
bit of his powers of persuasion to overcome
her conscientious objection, which means finding
a way for her to doubt her own judgment.
Jon Streeter: And the next section of the
letter adopts this tactic directly.
Whatever God commands is right, no matter
what it is, although we may not see the reason
thereof until long after events transpire.
If we seek first the kingdom of God, all good
things will be added.
So with Solomon.
First he asked wisdom, and God gave it him
and with it every desire of his heart, even
things which might be considered abominable
to all who understand the order of heaven,
only in part, but which in reality were right
because God gave and sanctioned by special
revelation.
Jon Streeter: Now, Joseph starts this section
by reinforcing the most important concept
of this letter, that no matter what God, through
Joseph, may command, it should be considered
right and just.
This is a form of divine command morality,
which is the weapon of choice for religious
charlatans and manipulator.
Joseph then plants the seed of doubt about
one's own personal judgment by warning that
they may not see the reason that such offensive
commands are actually right until long after
events transpire.
Joseph is instructing his target to quell
their own doubts and stifle their conscience.
Those concerns are just the product of childish
and limited minds, Joseph suggests, and should
be ignored in favor of anything that Joseph
says God commands.
Jon Streeter: After giving a reason for Nancy
to doubt her own wisdom in objecting to such
prophetic instructions, Joseph offers her
a new kind of wisdom, a wisdom embodied by
the scriptural paragon of wisdom, Solomon
himself.
This leads to an important subtext in this
part of the letter.
In describing the blessings of Solomon, Joseph
is indirectly referring to the taking of multiple
wives and concubines, as Solomon is famous
for 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Doctrine and Covenants section 132 invokes
the name of Solomon for the same reason.
Joseph reminds Nancy that Solomon's faithfulness
resulted in both wisdom as well as treasure
and the desires of his heart, things which
were otherwise considered gratuitous.
The implication here is that taking numerous
wives is something that was the part of every
desire of Solomon's heart.
Joseph is demonstrating that desire can be
seen as driving a prophet's action in secretly
pursuing women other than his first wife and
maybe counted as righteousness even though
it would otherwise be considered lust.
Jon Streeter: To make this point even more
clear, Joseph acknowledges that such thing
might be considered abominable to those ignorant
of God's purposes, immediately placing potential
objectors into the category of the ignorant,
ignorant of the ways and purposes of God.
Joseph explains, however, that it's easy to
avoid this fate if one understands that God
gave special permission to Solomon to accept
these abominations by revelation.
Thus Joseph's abominations may be accepted
for the same reason, and the abominations
are sublimated into righteousness.
Joseph is very careful to make sure that he
alone is able to sanction and receive such
revelations and proclaim God's command and
blessings.
This letter is a glimpse into how that singular
power is wielded in the private lives of those
in Joseph's world.
Jon Streeter: Not content to stop at the examples
he's already provided, Joseph uses another
analogy to make the point that his illicit
proposal was divinely approved.
A parent may whip a child, and justly too,
because he stole an apple.
Whereas, if the child had asked for the apple,
the child would have eaten it with a better
appetite, and there would have been no stripes.
All the pleasures of the apple would have
been secured and the misery of stealing lost.
This principle will justly apply to all God's
dealing with his children.
Jon Streeter: Since Joseph has now dealt with
the issue of divine punishment.
For the proposal of his secret adulterous
bigamy, he turns his attention to the fears
of punishment, which he understands are undoubtedly
clouding the mind of his young prey.
He needs to assure her that the fears of damnation
and hellfire, which usually accompany sexual
sin are not in store if she accepts, rather
pleasures await his target for consenting
to his proposition.
Under normal circumstances, such an act would
carry a painful penalty, but this situation
is one which has been granted special allowance
by God according to Joseph, who claims to
speak for God because he said so.
To convey this reassurance, Joseph employs
the metaphor of a child stealing an apple.
Just as a child who asked permission to eat
an apple will enjoy its pleasures more fully,
so too will the young woman who accepts Joseph's
secret arrangement to be able to freely enjoy
the results.
Jon Streeter: Joseph closes by filing this
little bit of sophistry under the category
of God's dealing with his children.
He slathers the language of piety over this
brazen manipulation in order to exploit the
godly mindset of his target.
This is how religious manipulators take advantage
of religiously minded people.
Next, Joseph draws a clear distinction between
those secret illegal marriages which were
sanctioned by God and those which were not.
Now, examining the historical context of Nauvoo
in the spring of 1842 will demonstrate why
this distinction is critical as we heard.
Jon Streeter: All right.
Next section.
Everything that God gives us is lawful and
right and it is proper that we should enjoy
his gifts and blessings whenever and wherever
he is disposed to bestow.
But if we should seize upon those blessings
and enjoyments without law, without revelation,
without commandment, those blessings and enjoyments
would prove cursings and vexations in the
end and we should have to lie down in sorrow
and wailings of everlasting regret.
Jon Streeter: Now, while in the prior section,
Joseph assured his young target that she need
fear no punishment for consenting to his illicit
advances.
Here he provides a counterpoint that anyone
who would try to indulge themselves in such
extracurricular activities, but without the
express commandment and revelation from God,
is committing sin and is therefore subject
to everlasting punishment.
This section serves two purposes for Joseph.
First, it indirectly gives his target a sense
of being special in the eyes of God.
It is she who was chosen for this special
blessing and privilege, while others who have
not received this blessing would be harshly
punished for violating God's commands.
This sense of being special in the eyes of
God can be very alluring, particularly to
insecure young people who yearn for acknowledgement.
No doubt this tactic had worked for Joseph
in the past.
By the time of his approach of Nancy Rigdon,
Joseph had already secretly entered extra
legal relations with 10 women other than his
wife within the range of age 16 to 47.
Jon Streeter: Second, Joseph's direct condemnation
of those who had indulged their desires without
the blessings of God serves to quell concerns
Nancy might have based on current events and
rumors going around Nauvoo at this time.
At the time of the letter's creation, there
were rumors circulating in Nauvoo that high
level leaders in the church were engaged in
secret sexual relations with women with the
use of religious justification.
Joseph and other leaders have publicly condemned
those ideas and denied any similar practice.
This section serves to rectify that apparent
disparity in the mind of his target.
Now just six months prior to this statement,
Joseph delivered a sermon declaring if we
do not accuse one another, God would not accuse
us and if we had no accuser, we should enter
into heaven, going on to say what many people
call sin is not sin.
This gave doctrinal cover to the notion that
if illicit relations were kept secret, then
there would be no sin found in them, especially
if done with the blessing of Joseph.
Jon Streeter: In the spring of 1842, the very
time that Joseph is approaching Nancy, the
high council in Nauvoo is receiving testimony
from women acknowledging that leaders such
as John C. Bennett, then mayor and one of
the counselors in the presidency, is using
this justification in order to take on spiritual
wives and have sexual intercourse with them.
The testimonies recorded regarding this incident
invoke the idea that Joseph gave sanction
to having secret relation by special permission
just as Joseph is teaching in this letter.
Other men and leaders of the church are implicated
in his accusations, including the prophet's
own brother, Apostle William Smith.
In the aftermath of these disclosures, Joseph
denies ever teaching any such principle and
demands that the men involved publicly deny
he ever sanctioned their actions.
Jon Streeter: This letter demonstrates that
Joseph was in fact asserting that special
permission can be granted by the prophet for
things which are otherwise considered moral
abominations.
The difference here is that when those accusations
against Bennett and others became public,
Joseph was able to deny that he had ever given
such permission and so could paint the offenders
publicly as sinners while privately fulfilling
his own desires for relations with multiple
women.
This distinction between illicit activities
which are rendered divine by special permission
and those which are damnable for their lack
of it carries through today in the narrative
of the church.
It's one of the primary talking points of
apologists addressing the issue of Joseph
Smith's polygamy.
Jon Streeter: Keep in mind that special divine
permission is nothing new, when you look at
religious charlatans.
Self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh of the
Branch Davidians claimed special divine permission
to take child brides for the purpose of producing
the 24 elders foretold in the book of Revelations.
Special proclaimed prophet Wayne Bent of the
Lord Our Righteousness Church claimed special
divine permission for having sexual relations
with children, even his own daughter-in-law,
in order to avoid God's punishment.
Self-proclaimed prophet Julius Schacknow of
the sect known as The Work claimed special
privilege to promise salvation in exchange
for sexual intercourse with women and children,
including his own stepdaughter.
Self-proclaimed prophet Tony Alamo of Alamo
Christian Ministries claimed special biblical
permission to illegally marry multiple women
and children.
Jon Streeter: Special prophet David Berg of
the children of God claimed special divine
permission to normalize sexual relation with
children's.
Prophets, justifying their own predations
as special divine permission through the use
of pious language and religious sentiment
is nothing new.
They should be seen for the predators that
they are.
But how is a naive 19 year old in the 1800s,
confronted by the very prophet she has revered
from the age of eight supposed to know that?
Joseph uses this section of the letter to
impose his authority, to draw the line between
elicit relations that receive God's blessings
and those which do not.
Having underlined this point, Joseph then
moves on to reinforce the theme of happiness
as linked to his proposition.
Jon Streeter: All right, so moving on to the
next section.
"But in obedience there is joy and peace unspotted,
unalloyed, and as God has designed our happiness,
the happiness of all his creatures, he never
has, he never will institute an ordinance
or give a commandment to his people that is
not calculated in its nature to promote that
happiness which he has designed and which
will not end in the greatest amount of good
and glory to those who become the recipients
of his laws and ordinances."
Now, one of the most powerful ways to induce
someone to act against their previously held
principles is to subvert their higher values.
Joseph knows that his target is extremely
devout and God fearing, and he's already inculcated
her mind with the idea that he alone can declare
the will of God.
He's declared his deviant proposal to be a
righteous and blessed command of God and attempted
to alleviate his target's fear of punishment
because his proposition contradicts her own
moral sensibilities.
He is leveraging her reverence of God against
her own moral conscience.
Jon Streeter: He takes the concept a step
further by conflating obedience to God with
obedience to a man who claims to speak for
God.
In Joseph, I, there is no distinction between
the two, so as long as it's Joseph's version
of God's commands that are obeyed.
Joseph continues to wax poetic about the glorious
blessings that will accompany obedience to
his will, a joy and happiness that are actually
God's design from the beginning.
In fact, Joseph assures his young target that
God would never command anything that would
lead to anything other than happiness, and
not just any happiness, but the greatest amount
of good and glory.
This is exactly how religious predators play
the, "Trust me, I only want what's best for
you," card.
This idea certainly carries more weight when
you transpose it so that it appears to come
from God, but the intentions are the same.
The goal of the charlatan is to break down
any resistance or concern that may exist in
the mind of their target so that the trusting
target can be induced to surrender to their
will.
Jon Streeter: For those who want proof of
the fictitious nature of this promise that
obedience to polygamy can only lead to happiness
just look at the lives of the women who were
subsequently afflicted with it.
Even the most vocal modern apologist for the
church on polygamy, Brian Hales, concedes
that it was a terrible experience in practice,
far from the promised bliss of this letter.
In the end, the modern church can only rely
on law, command, and obedience as justification
for the practice of polygamy because conscience,
ethics, equality, morality and stability all
scream out against it.
Jon Streeter: The next section, "Blessings
offered but rejected are no longer blessings
but become like the talent hid in the earth
by the wicked and slothful servant.
The proffered good returns to the giver.
The blessing is bestowed on those who will
receive and occupy for unto him that hath
shall be given and he shall have abundantly,
but unto him who have not or will not receive
shall be taken away that which he hath or
might have had."
Here it becomes apparent that there's a pattern
to Joseph's letter.
He repeatedly alternates between offering
positive assurances and blessings for accepting
his proposition or offering threats and punishment
for refusing it.
Jon Streeter: This section carries the theme
of negative consequences for refusal.
Pleasant language and biblical imagery are
employed to soften the message that anyone
who refuses to be Joseph secret bride or sexual
play thing is wicked and slothful.
Not only would they miss out on the glorious
blessings, they'll also lose blessings that
they already have now.
This is perhaps the nicest way to make a bold
faced threat against someone who may rebel.
It would not be surprising to hear such a
threat be uttered by an organized crime syndicate
against a business owner.
After all, you know, "Gee, it would be a shame
if something was to happen to that nice store
you got."
Jon Streeter: That routine is very common
in the shakedown.
And manipulative religionist follow this routine
in a different way as Joseph showcases here.
It would be like, "Gee, it would be a shamed
if all those blessings that you were enjoying
was to be taken away."
These are not the words of a man of God instilling
virtue.
These are the words of a predator who uses
tacit threats and manipulation to induce a
vulnerable target to fall victim to his carnal
designs.
Now by including a poetic stanza here.
Joseph takes a cue from John C. Bennet.
"Be wise today.
'Tis madness to defer.
The next day the fatal precedent may plead
thus on till wisdom is pushed out of time
into eternity."
Now, if you read Bennett's expose or any of
his writing, he interjects poetry very, very
frequently and we can see here Joseph is kind
of adopting this approach.
He cites a verse which uses emotionally charged
language such as madness, fatal precedent,
wisdom, eternity, in an attempt to override
the moral conscience of a youth with urgency
and fear.
Jon Streeter: This subtle manipulation speaks
to Joseph's, amoral intuition and facility
with language, specifically the power of language
to influence others.
Joseph was a powerful orator in public and
in private.
Nancy's resistance to this manipulation is
a Testament to her character in strife.
Having laid down some tacit threats, Joseph
now shifts to making glorious promises once
again.
"Our heavenly father is more liberal in his
views and boundless in his mercies and blessings
than we are ready to receive."
Once again, Joseph attempts to redefine morality
in the mind of his prey.
If he can introduce a vague uncertainty about
the boundaries of propriety, he can then more
easily redefine morality on the strength of
his claimed status as the mouthpiece of God.
If God's views are more liberal than we're
equipped to receive, it means that our old
fashioned notions of sin and moral behavior
are potentially more strict than God actually
intends.
Jon Streeter: This branch of thought neatly
complements Joseph's November, 1841 sermon
where he declared that what many people call
sin is not sin and these ideas carry the combined
implication that the prudish objections to
Joseph's extralegal marital adventures are
actually based on outdated and overly restrictive
morals and keep the objectors from actually
receiving God's blessings.
This is the effect intended upon the mind
of young Nancy.
Moving on, "And at the same time is more terrible
to the workers of iniquity.
More awful in the executions of his punishments
and more ready to detect every false way than
we are apt to suppose him to be.
He will be inquired of by his children.
He says, ask and you shall receive, seek and
ye shall find, but if he will take that which
is not your own or which I have not given
you, you shall be rewarded according to your
deeds."
Jon Streeter: Again, Joseph switches to offering
threats and the brilliance of these contrasting
themes in his letters is that he's shaping
a new moral framework in the mind of his target.
If Nancy's conscience was previously defined
by principles such as devotion, fidelity,
chastity, Joseph is breaking those ideas down
and redefining morality by reframing it to
match his own goals.
The new moral boundaries can be located by
observing where the blessings and punishments
are staked.
According to Joseph, devotion is found in
compliance with God's commands through his
prophet.
Fidelity is defined to staying true to God
and his prophet.
Chastity is expanded to be a concept that
allows any relations given special permission
by God's prophet.
Underlying all of this is the unavoidable
truth that in Joseph's new religious framework,
there is only one virtue, obedience.
All other virtues are subordinate to obedience
and obedience may trump any other virtue at
any other time allowing even extremes of murder
and genocide should God through Joseph command
it, making polygamy trivial.
Jon Streeter: "But no good thing will I withhold
from them who walk uprightly before me and
do my will in all things and will listen to
my voice and the voice of my servant who I
have sent."
Now, when David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite,
Jim Jones or any other self-proclaimed mouthpiece
of God, instructs others to submit to some
heinous act which betrays their conscience,
the prudent response is to recoil, to reject
their claims and see these men for the pretenders
that they are.
The idea that God would use such men to order
abominable things refutes their claim to speak
for God in the first place.
The deception of these charlatans is laid
bare no matter how flowing, beautiful, or
pious their rhetoric.
They will insist that their words are not
their own, but God's and thus cannot be rejected.
To object to those instructions is to object
to God's will.
Jon Streeter: Charlatans continue to employ
this tactic because it is so effective against
devoted people who have a deep, sincere desire
to please God and who are not familiar with
the methods of such manipulation.
Joseph mimics this tactic here in this stanza.
He promises blessings for complete obedience
while subtly giving equivalence to the voice
of God and his own.
He uses the voice of God to declare that he
is God's mouthpiece in a bit of circular logic
that can only be seen by those who are already
under his spell.
Joseph God here is speaking with words found
nowhere else in scripture.
He is delivering a revelation that is no less
universal or significant than those found
in the doctrine and covenants.
In society today a middle aged man using the
name of God against a teenage girl, inducing
her to secretly commit and make herself sexually
available to him is correctly identified as
a manipulative predator.
Jon Streeter: Such predators have existed
for as long as people have held special reverence
for God.
In the case of the happiness letter, Joseph
exposes his true character to match those
manipulative predators joining their ranks.
Joseph concludes his letters still speaking
in the voice of God.
"For I delight in those who diligently seek
to know my precepts and abide by the laws
of my kingdom, for all things shall be made
known to them in my own due time and in the
end they shall have joy."
Joseph God here establishes that God's favor
is found only in complying with his wishes.
Blind obedience is the order of the day.
Delight, joy, happiness, this letter is peppered
with carrots to be dangled in front of the
devoted naive and credulous.
Nancy had lived in the shadow of the prophet
since she was a young child.
Her own father's position in the world was
held at Joseph's good favor, producing underlying
pressure to please the prophet.
He threatens her with lost blessings, God's
disfavor and eternal detriment to her soul.
Jon Streeter: This letter contains every manipulative
and coercive tool that a religious predator
has at their disposal.
Draped in flowery language and plied against
a youth with such a desperate position of
power in their community that it would make
Harvey Weinstein blush.
To accept Joseph as a true prophet and accept
his assertions in this letter as God's will
is to accept both prophet and God as abusive,
coercive, and manipulative with the prophet
enjoying divine sanction to satisfy his own
carnal lust at the expense of the innocent
and vulnerable.
Examining the happiness letter for what it
is causes a moral person to see Joseph in
a new light.
The letter shows a side of Joseph that is
usually clouded with religious cunning, a
secret side which can be perceived when the
letter is viewed in the context of its writing
and the subject of its prose and the psychological
manipulation in its wording.
Jon Streeter: These same manipulatives, subversive
and amoral sentiments are found peppered throughout
his sermons and revelations, although they're
usually better hidden behind vague illusions,
scriptural adornment and plausible deniability.
Every deplorable point in this letter has
its equivalent in section 132.
Now imagine the same words here secretly delivered
from some other religious leader to a youth
in his congregation over whom he has been
licking his lip for years.
Would you think such a man spoke for God just
because he claimed it?
If you rejected his godly claims sanctioned
in this act, would you accept any other claimed
communication or authority from God by this
man?
Would you accept it from any other modern
church leader of the same?
Would you believe any of these six people
on the right if they, knowing about their
sexual predations also gave you pleasant sermons?
Would that be something that you would want
to internalize?
Jon Streeter: These are the questions that
should echo in the heart of a person of conscience
when considering the words of the prophet
Joseph directed to young Nancy Rigdon in the
happiness letter.
Every time a church leader invokes the phrase,
happiness is the object in design of our existence
these questions scream all the louder.
The happiness letter and the circumstances
which brought it into existence do not depict
a man of God.
They are the marks of a wolf who adorned himself
with the affectation of godliness in order
to exploit the trusting and devoted nature
of the people around him.
It's a credit to the strength and will and
courage of Nancy Rigdon that she resisted
his predations and raised the alarm to warn
others of his nature.
She was a whistleblower of the early church.
While her efforts were overwhelmed by the
forces of other men around her, she stands
tall in Mormon history and we are in her debt
for exposing Joseph's hidden character.
Thank you.
Bill Reel: Well, that concludes Jonathan Streeter's
Sunstone portion where he disassembles the
letter.
Now we're going to go back to the conversation
between Jonathan Streeter, Chris Smith, and
myself.
Jon Streeter: There's actually a connection
with this letter that will be the subject
of a future presentation that I do that goes
back hundreds of years with some really surprising
connections to the Smith family dealing with
folk magic.
But I'm going to just keep that as a tease
and that'll be a later thing.
But this letter to me is very important in
understanding the secret character of Joseph
Smith at this time because it's an insight
that you get that really we don't have from
any other source.
And when you view it in contrast and comparison
with the testimonies being given about the
John C. Bennet affair and what those women
in spiritual wifery are doing, it's really
hard to draw a distinction other than if Joseph
himself gives you the command verbally as
in that letter to the relief society, then
it's righteous and good.
But if anyone else simply says, "Oh, Joseph
told me we could do this," then that's not
righteous and good.
And that's really the only distinction you
can make to try to carve Joseph out of that.
And that's exactly what eventually happens.
But that's my take on the letter.
Chris Smith: You do a great job in your presentation
on really zeroing in on the coercive language
that Joseph Smith used the commandment language
in order to try to create a religious obligation
for Nancy to do as he wants her to do.
I'm really interested in the permissive language.
So let me just give a quick summary of that.
Joseph says in this letter that God is more
liberal in his views than we're ready to believe,
which seems to be implying that God is not
opposed to sex outside of marriage.
He says, happiness is the object of existence
and that God won't withhold anything from
us that gives us joy and that whatever God
gives us is lawful and right.
And he invoked Solomon with his 700 wives
and 300 concubines as an example of someone
who practiced these principles.
And I think this fits right in with Joseph
Smith's teachings about there being no sin
where there's no accuser.
Chris Smith: And also with the passage I mentioned
earlier from Romans 7, the Joseph Smith translation
of Romans 7 where he essentially says the
things that are good under the law are now
no longer good and he doesn't do them, and
things that were evil under the law are now
no longer evil and he does those things.
So there's this kind of inversion of morality
that he's practicing.
He's almost doing away with the whole concept
of morality.
And this is not something that Joseph Smith
was alone in.
In the Christian tradition there occasionally
has been what Orthodox Christians would consider
a heresy called antinomianism.
Antinomianism means essentially against the
law.
And the apostle Paul makes a lot of strong
statements in Romans and in 1 Corinthians
about how Christians are sort of no longer
under the law.
He says that everything is permissible or
lawful for a Christian, but that not everything
is beneficial.
Chris Smith: And so Paul essentially is saying
anything goes, but you need to practice a
little bit of wisdom.
You need to be careful of the consciences
of your fellow Christians because some of
your fellow Christians have delicate consciences
and you shouldn't do things to offend their
consciences.
But the way the antinomians have read those
passages in the New Testament is essentially
that Christians are no longer under the moral
laws that applied to other people, that grace
essentially has freed them to to what they
want.
And Joseph Smith very much seems to embrace
that ideology and I think that that is his
secret ideology and that when he is using
the language of divine commandment, he's really
using that to manipulate other people.
I don't think he really buys into the language
of divine commandment.
I think what he really buys into is the language
of divine permission.
Jon Streeter: And at any point he can say
that what his desire is is actually a command
from God.
And that just amps up the pressure on whoever
he's imposing it upon.
Chris Smith: Right.
And it's interesting the way that he framed
some of the obligation language in the letter
on happiness.
He says, basically, if you reject a blessing
that is offered to you, then the blessings
that you already have will be taken away from
you.
And he uses the parable of the talents from
the new Testament where a servant is given
a talent and rather than investing it, he
buries it in order to keep it safe and his
master gets angry with him for burying the
talent rather than investing it and increasing
it.
And Joseph Smith is using that language from
the New Testament to try to create an obligation
that because he's offering Nancy something
that he perceives as a blessing, Nancy is
now obligated religiously to accept that blessing.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, yeah.
He's using both promises of of glorious blessings
as well as implicit threats of taking away
things if she doesn't comply and he just,
it's a brilliant masterwork of manipulation
that uses all of those things.
To me, that's why it has such an impact.
Chris Smith: Right.
And as mentioned earlier, this is echoing
the language of Sydney Rigdon's funeral sermon
from the day when Mrs. Hyde approached Nancy
about this proposal and Rigdon had taught
in that sermon, "When we see a principal that
makes us the most happy, if we will cultivate
that principle and practice it ourselves,
it will render others happy."
And Joseph Smith's letter starts by saying,
"Happiness is the object and design of our
existence and will be the end thereof if we
pursue the path that leads to it."
So essentially both men's messages that happiness
makes right.
You know something as right if it makes you
happy.
So it may be that Smith has sort of weaponizing
Nancy's father's words against her in order
to seduce her.
Although Joseph Smith had said things like
this before and Sydney had gotten his ideas
on happiness from Joseph Smith.
So it may or may not be the case that Joseph
Smith is deliberately echoing Rigdon there,
but I tend to think that it's a manipulation.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, I think that's a good
point.
What we're seeing in the happiness letter
was not created out of thin air just for Nancy.
What we're seeing is the teachings, the rationalizations,
the instructions that have been delivered
to any of the people that Joseph would bring
into the circle and understanding of polygamy
is just here on the page.
And so if we hear other people like a Willard
Richards drafted some letters to his wife
in Massachusetts earlier in 1842 and it uses
some of these themes and that just reflects
that this is what Joseph is teaching his inner
circle who come to accept polygamy.
So it's not surprising that we're going to
see different points that are crystallized
in this letter pop up in Joseph Smith's circle.
Chris Smith: Yeah, there's a, there's a scholar
associated with the Joseph Smith papers who
has been trying to basically say that Joseph
Smith didn't write this letter, that maybe
John C. Bennet forged this letter and published
it under Joseph Smith's name.
But I mean, everything in this letter is the
culmination of things that Joseph Smith has
been thinking about and teaching for years.
This is not something that Bennet created,
and it's certainly not something that is not
reflective of Joseph Smith's point of view.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
You're referring to Garrett Dirkmont's suggestion
and to me, I don't know.
I sent a note to him because I want to see
his take on it.
My impression is that he understands the problematic
nature of the content of this letter, and
so he wants to dissociate it from Joseph,
and I applaud him for that and frankly to
any apologists who are listening, you will
save yourself a great deal of heartache if
you take his seeds of doubt about the provenance
of this letter and run with it and do not
fight back and try to tie this to Joseph.
Because if you tie this to Joseph, it is going
to make it even harder for people once they
start to learn about how religious manipulation
works.
Jon Streeter: When you see those footprints
all over this, it just really, it's kind of
like it's hard to go back and see Bill Cosby
as the same way that we used to see him before
we learned that he manipulated, drugged, and
raped women.
Once you learn how predators work and you
start to see that pattern in somebody that
you felt one way about, it's hard to go back
to that way and feel that way about them again.
Chris Smith: All right.
So this letter didn't succeed in convincing
Nancy and probably in no small part because
the thought of having sex with Joseph Smith
was not something that would've made her happy.
And that's actually kind of mind blowing that
Joseph Smith's, his conceit in this letter,
and beginning with an appeal to happiness
as if he just assumes that of course the thought
of having sex with him would make Nancy happy.
And I don't think Nancy saw it that way.
So this argument about happiness falls rather
flat for Nancy, and he probably should have
stuck with just the religious obligation language
that he used so successfully on so many other
people.
But anyway, Nancy tells her boyfriend, Francis
Higbee and her parents about Smith's proposal
and rumors start to spread around the city.
And Joseph complained to Samuel James that
he had approached Nancy Rigdon and asked her
to become his spiritual wife and she had to
go and blab about it.
Chris Smith: So Joseph Smith is not happy
that Nancy is telling people about this.
And in attempt to stop the rumors, he comes
to the family's home and he baldly denies
the allegation to Nancy's parents.
And Nancy is not in the room when Joseph Smith
is denying the allegation, but she's in the
next room and she overhears this and she storms
into the room and she says, "Joseph Smith,
you were telling that which is not true.
You did make such a proposition to me and
you know it."
And it's at this point that Nancy's sister
Athelia chimes in and says, "Nancy, are you
not afraid to call the Lord's anointed a cursed
liar?"
And Nancy says, "No, I am not for he does
lie and he knows it."
Joseph Smith had tangled with the wrong woman
here.
And at this point Joseph Smith admitted that
the incident had happened.
Chris Smith: He could no longer deny, Nancy's
accusation was too forceful for him to credibly
deny that this had happened.
So he changes his story.
He says that he did this in order to test
Nancy's virtue, that he didn't really mean
this proposal.
He was just trying to test her.
And Sidney Rigdon is not convinced by this
explanation.
And so they have some more discussion.
George Miller, who has accompanied Joseph
Smith on this visit, tells the family that
they need to keep quiet about the whole thing
because Joseph is the Lord's anointed and
God will not suffer him to fall.
So don't tell anybody.
And then Joseph and George Miller leave the
house.
And for quite a while after this, Joseph and
Sydney's relationship is pretty chilly.
Joseph at some point reportedly came to the
house in tears and asked for forgiveness and
the family shook his hand and forgave him.
Chris Smith: But the relationship broke down
again in part because Francis Higbee gave
John C. Bennett the letter that Smith had
written to Nancy and Bennet eventually publishes
that letter in his expose to the church.
And so Joseph Smith and his inner circle are
retaliating now against the Rigdon family
by spreading vicious rumors about Nancy, calling
her a whore.
Sidney Rigdon goes to Joseph privately and
exchanges letters with him, begging him to
stop spreading slander about his family.
Joseph Smith promises to stop, but then he
keeps on doing it and in an attempt to reconcile
with Joseph Rigdon writes a carefully phrased
half denial of Bennet's story.
In this statement, he claims to be speaking
for Nancy with her full authorization.
He acknowledged that the letter that Bennett
had published was a real letter that had been
in Nancy's possession, but he says Nancy didn't
give Bennet the letter, didn't authorize him
to use her name or to publish the letter,
and he also says the letter isn't in Smith's
handwriting, which remember is true.
Chris Smith: The letter has been scribed by
Willard Richards, so it's true that the letter
is not in Smith's handwriting.
Rigdon also mentions that Joseph had denied
authorship of the letter, which is also true.
He doesn't mention the part where after denying
authorship of the letter, Joseph Smith had
then admitted authorship of the letter.
He excludes that.
So everything Rigdon says here is technically
true, but he's lying by omission in order
to protect Joseph's reputation.
Rigdon also published an acknowledgement that
his daughter had near denied the faith, but
that her experience showed the folly of any
persons attempting to overthrow or destroy
Joseph Smith.
And he publishes in two church newspapers
a denial of the rumor that Joseph Smith is
a fallen prophet.
So he's pretty aggressively denying these
allegations and even going so far as to sort
of, I think, participate in some of the slander
of his daughter in a backhanded way.
Jon Streeter: There is one event that stands
out in my mind and that is after John C. Bennett
starts writing his letters.
Joseph Smith has a special conference where
he asks basically for everybody to stand up
and to swear that Joseph is of unimpeachable
character and everybody does this except for
three different people, one of which is Sidney
Rigdon.
Chris Smith: Interesting.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
And then there's another one, which is Orson
Pratt.
You know, these are all people who basically
have these issues with polygamy, with Joseph
Smith.
Chris Smith: And then amidst all of these
denials from Sidney Rigdon, possibly just
because of publishing timelines, Joseph Smith
is still publishing slander, but then he ends
up taking some of that back after Rigdon's
denials.
So now the policeman, Steven Markham, publishes
this affidavit claiming that Nancy had had
sex with John C. Bennett, that he had witnessed
Nancy and John C. Bennett in compromising
positions, that their words and gestures were
very sexy and that he thought that they had
had an affair.
And other people published denials of this
saying that they had been present on the same
occasion as Markham and that he had made all
this up.
And Joseph Smith also published a retraction
of Markham's affidavit saying that he was
satisfied with Sidney Rigdon's statement about
the John C. Bennett affair and that he had
not authorized Steven Markham to publish this
affidavit, which is interesting because it
sort of tacitly acknowledges that the Markham
affidavit was a punishment of Sidney Rigdon.
And Joseph Smith, when he takes it back, he's
taking it back because Sidney Rigdon has satisfied
him, not necessarily because he's saying Stephen
Markham's affidavit wasn't true.
That is an interesting admission that Joseph
Smith is making there when he's framing this
in terms of punishment of Sydney Rigdon.
Chris Smith: But it's interesting that the
slander of Nancy kind of continues.
As late as 1845 Orson Hyde declares Nancy
little, if any, better than a public prostitute.
This is during the succession crisis when
Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon are contending
for control of the church.
Orson Hyde is returning to these slanders
of Nancy Rigdon in a way to kind of hurt Sidney
Rigdon during the succession dispute.
And Hyde claims that what had happened in
this Nancy Rigdon incident was that Smith
had admonished Nancy for seeing too many suitors,
saying that basically this was going to hurt
her reputation because she was consorting
with too many suitors and Nancy was so insulted
by this reproof that she took revenge on Joseph
Smith by making up the story of this marriage
proposal.
Chris Smith: And Hyde says that his own wife's
role, Marinda Johnson's role in the episode,
was to extend a hand to help a poor, miserable
girl out of the very slough prostitution.
And in response to allegations that Joseph
had tried to get Nancy for a spiritual wife,
Hyde retorted that Joseph should've tried
to get her for a carnal wife instead and then
he would have been successful, then she would've
gone along with it.
So just vicious slanders about Nancy continue
to persist.
And I think a nice way to wrap up what I have
to say about this is there were a couple of
poems that were published about the Nancy
Rigdon affair.
The same month that rumors about Nancy spread,
Eliza Snow wrote and published this poem titled
The Tattler and she describes the tattler
as the worst and most soulless kind of creature.
And I'm pretty sure that she had Nancy in
mind when she wrote this.
Chris Smith: She says, "It has been said by
some that woman's soul should never hate,
but yet one character I almost dare to hate.
And even in this age of effeminacy is there
who would say, would think, that women should
not hate the tattler whose unhallowed business
seems to wake up nonsense and stir up strife.
Poor brainless skull, wretched propensity,
and wretched the possessor of this exorable
vice whose soul if soul there is at all must
be unto non-entity so near allied as to require
a microscopic power to swell it into visibility."
So Joseph Smith once said that the secret
of masonry is to keep a secret, and Eliza
Snow seems to have really internalized that
idea that if you can-
Jon Streeter: That just breaks my heart.
When I heard that.
Chris Smith: I know, it does.
Jon Streeter: Because I have such an endearing
view of Eliza Snow as this poet.
It hurts me that she would use her talent
like that against somebody who I'm now realizing
is a flipping badass.
Chris Smith: Right.
Yeah.
It sucks to see women who have internalized
oppression and internalize the ideology of
patriarchy.
And Eliza I think here certainly fits that
bill.
But there's another poem that I want to quote,
which is kind of cool.
Oliver Olney who was a Mormon dissenter and
a self proclaimed prophet in his own right
seems to have seen through all of these slanders
about Nancy.
And he wrote a poem that I think makes a nice
counterpoint to Eliza's.
He says, "The sound has gone out her to oppress.
Yes, Miss Rigdon now has to bear the slang
because she did not conform to Joseph Smith's
word of God, but barely a youth she for herself
spoke and showed that she was not to be duped."
Jon Streeter: Very nice.
All right, so we've talked about the preamble
to the letter, the events of the proposal,
got the aftermath.
Let's talk a little bit about some of the
criticisms about everything that we've presented
here.
Starting with, we've alluded to it a little
bit, which is the provenance.
Bill Reel: Yeah.
I just, I would like to know, we have a copy
of the letter, which I believe is is penned
by John C. Bennett, correct?
Jon Streeter: Well I guess when you say penned,
I'm assuming you're talking about when we
look at the scanned document whose handwriting
is it in.
The earliest copy that I can find in church
records of the text of this document is in
the handwritten history of the church that
served as the document that they eventually
published it from.
Is that correct in your understanding as well,
Chris?
Chris Smith: Yeah, I mean there's Bennet's
publication of the letter in his printed book
and then there's the history of the church
copy.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
So you can find probably, if we want to go
back to the very earliest where the public
has access to the words of the letter, you'd
have to go to the original Sangamo journal
that John C. Bennet published his letters
in, which he eventually compiled into his
book, The History Of The Saints.
And so that's where the public was first made
aware of it.
And that issue is actually digitized.
You can see that.
That's where it first entered into the public
mind.
But the actual letter in the handwriting of
Willard Richards, we do not have, all we have
is John C. Bennet's that then the church adapted
to itself.
To my understanding that's the earliest we
have it.
Jon Streeter: Now, I would have liked to find
something even earlier regarding this in the
history of the church, in the records of the
church, but I haven't been able to find it.
Bill Reel: John C. Bennett originally uses
the letter in his expos, History of the Saints.
The church then after, uses the letter in
its history of the church?
Jon Streeter: Yes, it's published there and
then it's even included in the compilations
later about the words of the prophet Joseph
Smith where they go and they take everything
that we attribute to Joseph Smith and compile
it into a large volume.
You will find the Happiness Letter in there.
They don't refer to it as the Happiness Letter,
they just include it, almost as though it
was a sermon.
Just the words of Joseph Smith.
Bill Reel: And in the wording in the history
of the church, they use the exact same wording
from John C. Bennet's expose.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
I have not seen any differences.
I haven't run an exact textual analysis by
computer, but I've read them side by side
and I could not find any substantive differences.
Bill Reel: The last point being is that we
know Willard Richards is the one who is connected
to this going into the history of the church
and Willard Richards would have been serving
as one of the scribes, a heavily used scribe
and a heavily connected associate of Joseph
Smith, during this timeframe, so if anybody
would have known if the letter was legitimate
or not, that was living, Willard Richards
would be at the top of that list.
Jon Streeter: Yeah.
And he never denies it.
We refer to these people, Willard Richards,
William Smith, these are apostles.
This is Apostle Richards.
So it's like having Dallin H. Oaks deliver
the letter, or something like that.
These are the leaders of the church.
They're not just scribes.
Bill Reel: Right.
So if John C. Bennett's putting his expose...
If Willard Richards believes this is not a
legitimate letter, he has all the reason in
the world to say, "Let's not include this
thing."
It's included by one of our critics first.
It is critical work.
We can safely assume Willard Richards is certain,
one way or another, that this letter is originally
created by the prophet Joseph Smith, and likely
was directly connected to it in its creation
in that it's included the history of the church.
It seems like it's the most reasonable rational
conclusion by far, as I've looked into, to
safely assume this letter is legitimate and
it's Joseph Smith's ideology.
Chris Smith: Well, and it's so important too,
Bill, to look at the exact language of Sidney
Rigdon's denial of Joseph Smith's authorship
of the letter.
Because Sidney doesn't say Joseph didn't author
the letter, he doesn't say, "I don't believe
Joseph authored the letter."
He says, "The letter's not in Joseph Smith's
handwriting, and Joseph denied to me that
he had authored the letter."
So, I think that what he is not saying is
as revealing as what he is saying.
You see a lot of that in the history of the
church, where if you pay attention to what
they don't say, it's often much more informative
than what they do.
Bill Reel: Bennet must have had a copy of
the letter, obviously, if he gets all the
wording right.
And if we have the original letter, it may
very well be in Willard Richard's own handwriting.
Jon Streeter: I don't think we're ever going
to get a copy of the actual letter, because
that came out of the possession of the church
and never made it back.
It's my understanding.
Unless it's in some hidden vault safe somewhere.
But it is worthwhile to take the objections
raised by Gerrit Dirkmaat and acknowledge
them.
His case is that, listen, as historians, if
we evaluate any other document with the same
problems of provenance as this letter, just
on face value in terms of where is the source
of the language coming from, if it was any
other document, we would have serious reservations
about considering it to be authentic just
on following the provenance.
And I think that's a legitimate concern to
raise.
Jon Streeter: It's just when you look at everything
else around it, beyond the line of where we
get the text from in terms of what are the
other things that Joseph Smith was teaching,
I think there's some people who've raised
objections to Dirkmaat's presentation who
say that there's nothing actually new in this
letter.
Joseph Smith at various times had taught everything
that's in this letter.
Not only that, but other people who later
testified about the way that Joseph Smith
introduced them into polygamy, used some of
the exact same arguments, including the talents
and things like that.
So there's peripheral stuff which corroborates
this beyond the line of where the text came
from.
Jon Streeter: Those are good objections to
raise.
There was a response given by D. Michael Quinn
to the presentation raising the question about
provenance, and one of the things that he
sites are early contemporaries of Joseph Smith
that use excerpts from this letter in their
talks as early as the 1850s, very early in
the church.
Jon Streeter: Usually, before his response,
I think most people traced the use of the
letter in general conference to Golden Kimball
in the 1930s or 1940s, or something like that.
But Quinn was able to point out that even
Joseph's contemporaries very early in the
church were using themes from the letter.
Jon Streeter: The critics, they raise a valuable
point, but there's so much overwhelming evidence
that points to this being from Joseph Smith.
Not only that, but the language of the letter
is very different from what you would expect
John C. Bennett to include in his expose if
he was trying to really get Joseph Smith in
trouble.
If he was really trying to expose Joseph Smith,
he would not have hidden the idea of polygamy
or concubinage behind these vague scriptural
illusions in the letter.
He would have outright put words in the mouth
of Joseph Smith, direct more seductive language,
rather than this theological framework that
is in the letter.
Jon Streeter: I spoke with Brian Hales about
his take on this whole thing and that's one
of his main arguments to tie the letter to
Joseph Smith.
And I agree with him.
I think that's an important point to make.
Chris Smith: Let me just add Jonathan, that
as somebody who practices history professionally
on a regular basis, I think that Mormon historians
are actually a little bit spoiled with the
availability of primary documents, because
you're giving credit to Garrett saying that
if any other document had these provenance
problems, we would not take that document
seriously, but I actually don't think that's
true.
I think that in most circles outside of Mormon
history, you don't expect to have the original
copy of something that gets published.
Often you just accept those things at face
value because there aren't the kinds of archival
systems in place in other realms of history
that the Mormons have in place.
I actually think that just the richness of
the Mormon documentary record has spoiled
people like Garrett a little bit to where
they're expecting more from the documentary
record than I think most historians would
expect.
Bill Reel: Perfect.
I want to ask now, let's spend about five
minutes.
We've got about maybe 18 minutes left.
Let's talk for a moment about the Devery Anderson
point that there is a earlier referenced,
contemporary, but we're talking when...
Devery is still alive.
He's relatively a young man.
I've met him before.
And Devery's done a lot of great historical
work.
There's this point where he makes a reference
to a document in a source called The Law of
The Lord, if I'm not mistaken, maybe run us
through that really quick.
Jon Streeter: Well there's two different missing
documents that I've come across from.
The first one is actually from the biography
of Sidney Rigdon.
I think that's Van Wagoner I can't remember
the author of it, but when you go to his pages
about this, if you look at the footnote where
he's describing the correspondence between
Joseph and Sidney in trying to resolve the
conflict, he states that there is a reference
that the church has in their archives, which
they will not give me access to, in the book
of The Law of The Lord, of the letters exchange
between them.
Jon Streeter: That book was written some time
ago.
Now that we have the Joseph Smith Papers Project
and that book of The Law of the Lord is digitized
and we can see it, those letters are not there.
When you look at the footnote to where those
letters would be, it mentions in one of the
footnotes that the people at the Joseph Smith
Papers Project recall is that those letters
are not extant.
We don't have those letters.
That's one missing piece of the puzzle of
this story.
Jon Streeter: The other thing with Devery
Anderson's article, he wrote a really insightful
article about Willard Richard's relationship
with his first wife, as well as with other
wives, and because Willard Richards is central
to the story, he talks a little bit about
the Nancy Rigdon affair and one of the things
he points out is that several months before
the authorship of the Happiness Letter, Willard
Richards writes back to his wife in Massachusetts
including some of the principles about happiness
and these ideas that God is more boundless
in his mercies and more liberal.
Those things are in those letters.
But this is not to say that Willard Richards
himself is the author of the Happiness Letter,
but rather that those teachings are part of
what Joseph Smith is using to introduce men
and women in the inner circle of polygamy,
to the idea that polygamy can be seen as a
justified and righteous thing within the confines
of morality.
Bill Reel: Right.
This theology would have been ruminating in
all of their heads as Joseph, behind the scenes,
is teaching this, whether you want to call
it polygamy, concubine, spiritual wifery,
concepts.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, and in that article, when
he mentions the Happiness Letter, he refers
to a source in the church history with a particular
date affixed to it of January 1843, or something
like that, and if you just follow his citation
and go to the Joseph Smith Papers Project
and see if you can find that, there's nothing
that matches that exactly.
Jon Streeter: I've asked a number of historians
and I've not been able to locate his reference.
I sent a note to him, but I haven't heard
back from him yet.
It's possible that there was a difference
in what they were calling particular letter
books or something like that when he wrote
his article, from what we see them now, so
I'm still holding judgment on that.
We may be able to find that.
Jon Streeter: If we do locate that, that may
be an earlier version of the Happiness Letter
in the records of the church, but it would
still just be a transcription of whatever
John C. Bennett published in his expose.
Bill Reel: Gotcha.
I guess thoughts from you guys, what other
tangents or other areas do we need to spend
a few minutes in?
Jon Streeter: Well, for me, I've spent some
time trying to discuss this with defenders
of the church as much as possible so I can
see what would your objections be to the points
that we're raising in a presentation like
this?
One of the unusual ones that I got back was
that we are starting with the assumption that
Joseph Smith's proposal to Nancy, and what
is described in the Happiness Letter, involves
sex.
If we step back and say, let's reimagine what
Joseph is proposing and he's just proposing
a ceiling that does not involve sex, then
we don't have to be upset or alarmed that
it matches the pattern of other sexual predators.
Jon Streeter: I don't know what to say about
that, because many of the key figures would
go on to testify that these proposals involve
sex, the history of the church, certainly
in how later prophets practice polygamy and
plural marriage involved sex.
So I think that's an objection that is helpful
to people who really want to preserve a pristine
view of Joseph Smith, but I don't think it
matches up with the historical record.
Chris Smith: That doesn't seem rational.
We don't lock doors, close windows, and closed
curtains, if we're just talking about a relationship
on paper.
It just seems as though Mormonism is deeply
entrenched in trying to keep the prophet Joseph
Smith's reputation squeaky clean, when the
reality is, the evidence seems to indicate
that the most rational perspective by far,
I think, to an average person who has no stake
in the game, is that there's sex and propositions
of sex all over the place.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, I agree.
The other objection that I've heard is that
I was too harsh on Joseph and I used words
like predator, and I shouldn't have done that
because Joseph has created some of the most
beautiful theological, doctrinal, metaphysical
product, and the supernal divine nature of
everything else that he did, just don't paint
him as some sort of lustful carnal person
like I'm depicting him here.
Jon Streeter: In the presentation, I talk
about how when you look at other non-Mormon
religious predators, you'll find that in every
case they've had to come up with some religious
theological justification to go beyond traditional
moral boundaries.
In some cases, it's a blunt hammer, it's just
really, I think David Berg, The Children of
God, says that "God said that love is the
highest law.
We interpret that to be sexual love, and so
we're going to share freely sexual love with
everybody."
That was his theological justification.
Jon Streeter: Whereas you can look at somebody
else, like David Koresh, who had an intricate
justification drawn from the book of revelation
in the Bible, injected with his own prophetic
claim, to dissolve marriage bonds of everyone
that gave him sexual access to people in his
flock.
That's more complex than David Berg's.
And somebody looking at that might say, well,
one of those prophets right and one of those
prophets it's wrong.
But you really have to engage in special pleading
to do that, unless you can articulate some
argument or justification that is beyond,
well, my prophet claims, the real authority,
that prophet doesn't have the real authority.
And really that's all that you're left with
with Joseph Smith.
Jon Streeter: I made that argument and the
response back is, well, he was just so powerful
as a prophet.
He was a genius.
And really the thing you have to reflect on
is that we have in the history of humanity,
creative geniuses who are absolutely brilliant
in other parts of their life, who also, by
the way, were sexual predators that used these
forms of psychological manipulation, isolation,
all of these different things, to prey upon
vulnerable targets.
Jon Streeter: We have Bill Cosby and Michael
Jackson recently in the news, that when you
learn the story of the things that went on
there, you can never see them in the same
light again, because despite their brilliance,
there's this dark, hidden aspect of their
character which went along with it.
And in many cases it was the power and influence
that they wheeled because of their genius,
that gave them access to vulnerable people
and then they could use their position to
further basically reveal their character as
predators.
Jon Streeter: But it's one of those things
where, as a Mormon, you have to confront that
this letter exists and then you have to say,
why did this letter exist?
That's where you look at all of the history
that we've gone over here.
And then you really have to ask some searching
questions.
Jon Streeter: If this is what Joseph does
when he has private access to a woman who
is completely in his influence, what does
that say about the character of Joseph Smith?
And remember this is right around the time
that he is revealing the endowment ceremony.
If you accept that this is not a righteous
activity and that it would impeach the priesthood
of anybody else who claimed priesthood power,
then you have to wonder is the endowment ceremony
itself revealed under a righteous priesthood
umbrella.
He's expounding on the doctrine of baptism
for the dead.
There's all these different things that are
happening in Joseph Smith's religious life
at this time, including the publication of
the Book of Abraham, and all of that.
If he is secretly engaged in these things
that we are compelled to acknowledge are sexual
predations when we compare them with modern
sexual predators, what does it say about his
legitimate authority to reveal these other
things in his public life?
Jon Streeter: Those are really difficult things,
I think, for people who hold a faithful view
of Joseph Smith to wrestle with it.
It becomes easier if you acknowledge that
the pattern that he shows in the Happiness
Letter matches other sexual predators, other
religious charlatans have come up with their
own complex theological things that are the
product of their genius and not the product
of divine revelation from God.
Some of them are more successful and long
lasting than others.
There's always going to be the one that lasts
the longest, has the most success, is able
to just strike the right notes, and become
a multibillion dollar corporation.
We just happen to be in one of those groups
that has the longest staying power.
Bill Reel: Yeah.
And so two thoughts.
One is, since the beginning of time, there's
been millions of spiritual gurus who have
used spiritual manipulation and had lots of
sex with lots of women.
One.
Bill Reel: Two is that, well, let me say another
part of one which is you can look within our
own tradition, people like Warren Jeffs or
James Strang, and you can see that even within
Mormonism as break offs, the same types of
concepts seem to come up over and over again.
Where one claims authority, one uses creative
theological statements, uses that as manipulation,
and ends up creating a permission within the
culture of having sex with somebody outside
of their standard spouse.
Bill Reel: The second thing is that if you
go back into Mormon history and you look at
other stories, like Nancy Rigdon, this story
doesn't just sit isolated in a vacuum.
You've got the Lucy Walker story, which I
think puts a Sophie's choice in terms of deciding
whether you're going to accept a God who changes
a relationship, a father daughter, into a
husband wife type of relationship.
Bill Reel: You've got the Partridge sisters,
you've got other stories within Joseph's polygamous
partners that indicates that there's serious
unhealthiness, there's serious manipulation,
there's serious abuse of women who are young
and vulnerable, and putting pressure of time
limits on them.
Bill Reel: When you dive into Mormonism's
history outside the correlated curriculum,
you begin to sense like, wow, this gets deeply
unhealthy, deeply problematic, and Joseph
Smith, it's impossible for him to escape squeaky
clean.
Jon Streeter: Yeah, absolutely.
And you brought up some good examples.
I think Emily Partridge in particular, the
fact that she later testified that at exactly
this time, early 1842, Joseph Smith offered
to write her a letter about some secret thing
that would place him at risk, but she would
have to promise to burn it afterwards, that's
an affirmation of the Nancy Rigdon story,
and it also speaks to the messy dangerousness
of having this man wield this power and use
it against these vulnerable people.
Jon Streeter: When you listen to people like
Brian Hales and other defenders of the church,
one of their most common defenses of polygamy,
like Brian Hales, I think, no longer defense
polygamy as a practice in general.
He doesn't say that it was a glorious thing
for the women involved, but that it was from
Joseph Smith.
One of the common defenses is that, well,
it's not just about sex and lust, it's about
binding families, sealing families, and all
of these different theological things.
And when you just step back and you say, that
no longer removes my concern because every
one of these religious charlatans had some
sort of theological excuse.
That does not sublimate it.
That does not make him not a predator.
It's the nature of the manipulations, the
secrecy, the undue influence, the ecclesiastical
abuse, that is part of the messaging of all
of these things.
Jon Streeter: Those things paint the picture
of the predator, regardless of everything
else.
If God really wanted to have bindings and
ceilings and power, if he couldn't find a
way to do it in an ethical way that respected
the autonomy and the individual free choice
of people, then there's a problem there.
And that concept of free choice, what you
see in the Happiness Letter, and what happened
to Nancy Rigdon after, when she talked about
it is another problem for the church because
Brian C. Hales will say frequently that Joseph
Smith did not impose this on anyone.
Women were free to reject him.
And what he doesn't tell you is that they
are free to reject him as long as they stay
quiet about it.
If they go public about it, as Nancy did here,
then they are subject to reprisal.
And everything that Chris talked about in
terms of how Sidney Rigdon's family, Nancy
Rigdon in particular, was dragged through
the mud, that is a pattern of reprisal, which
again you find in other religious sexual predators
when people go and talk about what's happening
in their secret practices.
They get punished within the group.
Jon Streeter: All of these things come together.
As we learn more about how predators work
by studying other groups, and then we go back
and reflect on what is happening in the early
church, we realize that as long as men have
desired sex, as long as men have held power
over women, as long as people have had reverence
and devotion to God and imbued implicit trust
to men claiming to speak for God, that there
have been predators who have exploited that
for their own gratification.
And we just happened to have really good documentation
of it.
Bill Reel: Yeah.
I think sometimes Mormonism the thing it did
the worst, or the thing Joseph Smith did that
really hurt him the most, was trying to be
a record keeping people.
I think once you look in the documents, Mormonism
really struggles to hold up when you look
at it with objectivity.
Bill Reel: To the two of you.
I've got three minutes left.
Any final thoughts from you guys before we
close this out?
Chris Smith: I just want to quote a couple
of things from the trial record of the men
who were, the John C. Bennett trial, the men
who were tried by the church for approaching
women with sexual overtures.
A couple of these women actually asked the
men, "Why is Joseph Smith teaching publicly
something else if he's teaching you this privately?"
And William answered Catherine Fuller that
"Joseph was obliged to teach to the contrary
on the stand, to keep down prejudice and to
keep peace at home."
Chris Smith: Chauncey Higbee told Sarah Miller
that "Joseph now taught as he did in public
through necessity on account of the prejudices
of the people and his own family, particularly,
as they had not become full believers in the
doctrine."
Chris Smith: So pretty explicit evidence that
I think answers the Joseph fought polygamy
people who really pointed Joseph Smith's public
teachings as his true teaching.
I think the people very close to him, including
his brother William, make very clear that
his public teaching was not his true teaching.
It was his private teaching that really reflected
his private views.
Jon Streeter: That's a good point.
For me.
I would just say, if you're an apologist and
you're listening to this podcast, you should
immediately abandon any efforts to try to
preserve the Happiness Letter as coming from
Joseph Smith.
You should take Gerrit Dirkmaat's letter,
approve it for publication in the Interpreter,
in any other thing, and run with that.
Get as far away from the Happiness Letter
as possible, introduce as much fear, doubt,
uncertainty as possible into the origin of
it, and throw every general authority who
ever quoted it in general conference under
the bus.
Because that's way better than tying it to
Joseph Smith.
Bill Reel: And I'm with you.
The Mormonism I grew up with as a young adult,
was so gorgeous and beautiful, but I stuck
in some ways.
I knew some of the issues, but I also accepted
whole cloth, the correlated story.
Once I dove deeper into who Joseph Smith was
in all of these behind the scenes comments
and then tracing all these quotes back to
journals and other historical documents, suddenly
my view of Joseph Smith deeply changed, and
so I'm with you, Jonathan.
They're going to have to distance themselves
from this, or just not deal with it at all,
because if you accept this letter is from
Joseph and you understand the story behind
it, you deal with the Lucy Walker story, you
deal with Partridge sister's story.
Bill Reel: It's more than just the apologist
saying like, "Yeah, he was fallible.
He made some mistakes."
What we have is what you point out, which
is a predator.
Somebody who is deeply manipulative.
Somebody who finds young women who are vulnerable,
even in a lot of the times working in his
own home, and abused his power in order to
get things that he wanted from these women,
including sex.
And I think it just gets really messy for
anybody who wants to study this stuff with
any level of sincerity.
Bill Reel: I want to say thank you to both
of you.
Appreciate it so much.
There will be a ton of links for the listener
on the end of this episode.
If you go to the show notes at the website,
mormondiscussionpodcast.org, and you'll see
the show notes there.
We will link everything we've talked about.
You can see the documentation, the source
notes for those.
I hope that this episode has been interesting,
although I don't think it's going to be pleasant
for anybody who's trying to wrestle with Mormonism.
Thank you to both of you and appreciate your
time 
this morning.
Chris Smith: Thank you, Bill.
Jon Streeter: Thanks, Bill.
Speaker 31: (singing).
